1. When it comes to novels about life on another Planet, I’ve just begun developing ideas for one. Here is the introduction:
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    In the beginning, God created the myriad multitude of galaxies, throughout entire the Universe. Among the galaxies, He created a multitude of Earthlike planets. On one of those Earthlike planets, the Adam and Eve of that world, begat sons and daughters, before the forbidden fruit was eaten. Several generations have been begotten, and so far, no one among them has taken a bite.
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    As I said, I’m just at the beginning of developing the story. I’m not anywhere near ready to begin the actual writing. After reading the introduction, there is something that should be obvious.

    Oh! Have I got a lot of work ahead of me!

    • Travis Perry says:

      What are your thoughts about life on planets that are not Earthlike?

      • “…life on planets that are not Earthlike?” That’s something I’ve never actually thought about. I don’t usually write sci/fi. Most of my fiction could be classified as Suspense/Thriller, often including Supernatural.
        The introduction, to the novel that I’ve posted here, could be classified as Science Fiction. After that, the actual writing might be called “Modified History”, based on ancient sacred writings. I should also state that the work is fiction, and that I am not committing heresy.
        I don’t know if my reply answers your question.

  2. Larry P. says:

    There is an episode of Voyager where the crew finds an ocean (no land or solid matter at all) floating in space. It had been there an untold number of years but was inhabited in the recent past (several hundred years as I recall) by an alien race. It had life in it that even they did not know about.

    For myself, I have a series of stories I’m working on (presently on the back burner due to other projects) where man ventures to the stars and finds no life but many worlds perfectly made to receive the life forms of earth. This is because in God making the universe and the world for man, man was to inhabit those worlds as well as his own home world. We just disobeyed and were stuck here.

    • Travis Perry says:

      I remember that Voyager episode–not quite what I’m talking about, but kinda similar.

      It certainly would be an interesting story idea to find worlds without life but with oxygen atmospheres, which scientists confidently say cannot happen naturally…

  3. Tyrean A Martinson says:

    When I write SF, I have a tendency to imagine orbiting stations and inhabited planets in the Milky Way Galaxy, with some linking between Earth and this other planets through similar faith stories, or a genetic link between species.

  4. Life on other planets being genetically linked to us wouldn’t necessarily mean much either way, as far as God’s hand being involved or not. He can make things however he likes, and would do things according to what he wants and what will be best. Maybe that means alien life would have genetic similarities to us, or maybe it wouldn’t. But whatever people find in terms of that, people will rationalize the implications of that discovery in whatever way they see fit.

    Can’t recall any stories about water worlds right off the bat. I’ve considered making a story based on that at various points, but for the most part the ideas are just little seeds right now, rather than plots in the making. I have a mostly aquatic world, but there’s still land in it. Most of it is just buried beneath tons of ocean, though there’s tiny islands now and then.

    A world made entirely of water poses some interesting story telling issues, such as having a harder time defining a sense of location and destination and even purpose. There wouldn’t be any landmarks. And if the world is, say, covered in ice or other harsh surface conditions, navigating based on the stars would be hard. So there’s a lot of differences to account for with such a story world.

    Here’s some more info about life that exists under completely different conditions than what we’d consider normal. Along with the circumstances and environments they could live in:

    • Travis Perry says:

      I disagree with you a bit. Since the concept of evolution in general asserts that life developed naturally, without any guiding hand of Divine intervention (as is seen in the videos you shared), it would be a surprise to find life with DNA that matches DNA found on Earth. But if the match were only partial, the surprise would be a lot lower, since people would be thinking of comets or other celestial bodies somehow transferring early DNA from one place to another.

      But if we found a planet, let’s say Enceladus, in which exact species that exist on Earth, say of various kinds of octopus, ALSO exist there, then that strongly would imply a Divine Creator having intervened in the story. Materialists would at first be flabbergasted by this, but then would counter that ancient aliens must have moved species around.

      But a kind of unity of life across different worlds really would imply the same Creator of all of them. Therefore, a lack of similarity of life on different worlds would support the idea that life erupted by essentially random forces acting to create life. Believers of course could still assert “God can create anything he wants” (and be correct) but nothing about that kind of discovery would even make believers in a strictly materialistic universe blink.

      But I think there are plenty of future discoveries that will make those who believe in a universe without God wonder “How did that happen?” Because I think that’s part of how God operates.

      • Hm, yeah, I was thinking more in terms of partial DNA similarities. Here on earth most things aren’t exactly the same, so even with a Creator in the picture, we couldn’t necessarily expect to find something that is basically a clone. Like, it’s possible, but in general not even two members of the exact species are going to have the exact same genetics.

        Even if we did find an earth species on another planet, it would probably be in a similar niche/environment as its earthly counterpart, (or else inside a niche where it’s adaptations would be useful) In which case, people would probably say it’s the result of convergent evolution.

        Even in a very strict six day creationist worldview, there’s still some evolution, though. Like, that theory starts off with two human ancestors (Adam and Eve) and diverges into the wide spectrum of races we have today(technically that’s a very small divergence, since humans are all very genetically similar, but still an evolutionary one). And a lot of six day creationists might want to include Neanderthals in the divergence from Adam and Eve.

        There’s also other types of evolution that would be acceptable in six day creationist terms, like artificial selection, which basically includes the way humans selectively breed dogs and farm animals and such. A similar process happens with natural selection as well. So, even if, six thousand years ago, God made an octopus species on another planet that was the same as one on earth, they would have probably diverged from each other a little bit by now. And whether or not we would have fossil evidence for the same species existing on both planets at one point would be unpredictable. Like, on a completely watery world, would we still have fossils?

        If we did find an exact earth species on another planet, it would probably be easier to say that God’s hand is in all of it, but it wouldn’t be a requirement. God would probably create things to match the environments of other planets, or according to his own desires. So finding bizarely different life on other planets could just as easily be a testament to God’s creativity and practicality, rather proof of evolution and nothing more.

        If they kept discovering planets over and over again and none of the creatures have any resemblance to anything on earth, though, would your faith be challenged? If so, there’s not really any reason for it to be.

  5. notleia says:

    That feel when you want to start a discussion but Star Trek has Already Did It.

    Tho I do enjoy the riffs on Humans are Space Orcs: https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=humans%20as%20space%20orcs&rs=typed&term_meta%5B%5D=humans%20as%20space%20orcs%7Ctyped

    • notleia says:

      TANGENT AHOY: Makes me think of bioengineering species for new adventures! Like resurrecting the mammoth, or redesigning horses so they aren’t so fragile (guys, there are SO MANY things that can go wrong with horses).

      But it turns out the Internet doesn’t have an easily accessible comparison between horse bones and deer bones, and only relatively useless ones in archaeological contexts for horse bones vs cow bones, so I don’t have the fodder for determining if two-toed anatomy is an improvement on one-toed. Or how that might make a difference between a gait comfortable to ride and a bone-rattling nuisance. But it seems if we gave horses the ability to throw up, that would improve horse husbandry a whole heck of a lot. Should we give them an extra stomach? That would probably make them easier keepers, but would the resulting change affect their anatomy on their speed and agility? What if we made them browsers like donkeys rather than grazers?

      • Something important to understand is that what is an ‘advantage’ or ‘disadvantage’ depends on the environment or situation. Like, an animal with short fur and large ears would do better in a desert, but not in the arctic. As far as a situational issue…a human’s ability to throw up is a good thing, but if they happen to be laying on their back while vomiting, they can accidentally breathe it into their lungs and choke. So you would probably have to know a lot of specifics about the environment you’re trying to bring horses into.

        As far as the amount of toes, if I recall correctly, earlier ancestors of horses had multiple toes, so that means that in some environment or other, there was some advantage to having fewer toes. Or, at the very least, fewer toes didn’t inhibit their survival.

      • Here’s some answers to your questions. And yes, I like PBS Eons 😛

    • Travis Perry says:

      Notleia, I’m afraid I don’t get your point about what Star Trek already did. Maybe you were actually talking to Autumn?

      Anyway, I certain wasn’t talking about anything Star Trek has ever done that I know of. They did interstellar travel to Earthlike planets and never asked any intelligent questions along the lines of “What would qualify as reasonable evidence for Intelligent Design in discoveries of alien life?”

What do you think?