3-2-1 Contact

Does anyone else remember that show? I remember having to watch it fairly often in elementary school. It had a pretty catchy theme song. Con-tact...is the feeling(?)...of the moment...that makes ev-ry-thing hap-pen...con-tact. Yeah, that’s right. Even back then I was a total music dork. I often would feel inadequately masculine because I found myself enjoying music class more than P.E. Well, that and the fact that I didn’t weigh more than 100 pounds until I was almost 15. But I digress. (I really need to shut up sometimes.)

Anyway, the real reason for this post is that earlier I watched the movie Con+act with J0dy F0ster. In a marked improvement over the other movies I’ve seen lately, this one did not make me want to kill myself. Though to be fair, after seeing it for the first time in high school, I was upset in spending $14 on it.

In my opinion, it’s one of the best movies with a horrible ending. Everything is great up until the last 30 minutes or so. I won’t spoil the horrible ending for those of you who haven’t seen it (though it came out in like 1998, so what’s the hold up?) but it deals with the existence of life on other planets, in other galaxies, etc.

It also deals with how people would react to it. It portrays so-called religious conservatives as being panicky, in shock and opposed to any scientific pursuit of contact with other civilizations. As with most movie portrayals of religious people, I took exception to this.

There’s always this air about religious people in movies that they’re irrational, ignorant and patently afraid of and opposed to any advancement of science or anything that contradicts their perception of the Bible. This is, as they say, stupid. Granted, there are some religious factions that behave in such a manner, but I would hardly count them in the majority.

Personally, I’ve always had an inkling that there is indeed life on other planets. And as with most other beliefs I hold, I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just common sense to me.

From a religious standpoint, I don’t recall there being any part of the Bible that says that we’re the only life in the universe. And believing in at least some form of a creator, I think, would lead people to believe that he/she/it didn’t stop with us. I mean, honestly...would God just be sitting around for billions of years, with an area as unfathomably expansive as the universe and call it a career after making Earth? I for one don’t think so.

From a scientific standpoint, if the laws of the universe are, indeed, universal (hence the term, I suppose), then what reason do we have to believe that conditions similar to our own don’t exist elsewhere in the (again, unfathomably expansive) universe? To say that there’s no other life out there is like saying there can be life in America, but not Australia. At least in my unscientific opinion.

That said, I also don’t believe that life on other planets would be incredibly different from our own. By that I mean any contact between our civilizations would more closely resemble the pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock rather than the cantina on Mos Eisly.

Not that my opinion on any of this matters at all, it’s just something I think about from time to time. Any thoughts?