"The obsession over finding life on Mars (or other planets or moons), which NPR’s Science Reporter David Baron calls the “Alien Craze”, is based on several motives.
One important motive is to support the abiogenesis belief that, given the right conditions, life can arise from nonliving matter, thereby supporting evolution.
A meteorite believed to have originated from Mars plunged into Earth some unknown time in the past. It had possible signs of life.webp)
according to a breathless announcement from NASA in 1996. Berkeley PhD Donald Goldsmith opined, “This rock from Mars will change the way we think about life in the universe.” It would change the way we think about life because it would lend support to the view that life can arise naturally and, given enough time, evolve.
On August 7, 1996, a team of NASA scientists captivated the world by announcing they had discovered microscopic, worm-like structures resembling fossilized nanobacteria, along with organic molecules, inside the Martian meteorite ALH84001.
However, the worm-like structures were later determined to be inorganic mineral formations and artifacts resulting from laboratory preparation rather than fossilized alien life.
One of the major pieces of evidence against evolution is the difficulty of accounting for a material origin of life, both
theoretically and in laboratory experiments. It is a problem of such magnitude that evolutionists often attempt to argue that the origin of life lies outside the scope of evolutionary theory.
The common explanation is that evolution explains only how living organisms changed after they already existed. The study of how life first arose from nonliving matter is a separate field called abiogenesis. Evolutionists often claim only the diversification of living organisms through genetic change, which requires preexisting living things—even primitive organisms. Consequently, if life, or even credible evidence of past life, were discovered elsewhere in the Solar System, many evolutionists would view such a discovery as providing strong support for both abiogenesis and evolution.
A meteorite believed to have originated from Mars plunged into Earth some unknown time in the past. It had possible signs of life
.webp)
On August 7, 1996, a team of NASA scientists captivated the world by announcing they had discovered microscopic, worm-like structures resembling fossilized nanobacteria, along with organic molecules, inside the Martian meteorite ALH84001.
However, the worm-like structures were later determined to be inorganic mineral formations and artifacts resulting from laboratory preparation rather than fossilized alien life.
One of the major pieces of evidence against evolution is the difficulty of accounting for a material origin of life, both
The common explanation is that evolution explains only how living organisms changed after they already existed. The study of how life first arose from nonliving matter is a separate field called abiogenesis. Evolutionists often claim only the diversification of living organisms through genetic change, which requires preexisting living things—even primitive organisms. Consequently, if life, or even credible evidence of past life, were discovered elsewhere in the Solar System, many evolutionists would view such a discovery as providing strong support for both abiogenesis and evolution.
Beliefs Shattered
One example is the Viking missions that landed fifty years ago during the American Bicentennial year. Nadia Drake wrote for Scientific American News on July 27, 2026,"Scientists had speculated for years about what scenes would await Viking 1 and its twin, Viking 2, which landed elsewhere on Mars a
few weeks later. Most thought any Martians would, at most, be simple, small life-forms—although Carl Sagan had impishly suggested that polar-bear-sized creatures could populate the landscape. Humans have imagined other inhabited worlds for millennia. And we’ve even “discovered” life on Mars more than once across the last century or two. Yet each time we’ve built sharper tools and taken a closer look, all those claims have evaporated."
CEH
