Answers in Genesis founder Ken Ham says scientists are always looking to the heavens in search of extraterrestrial life because they want to fuel their belief of evolution and disbelief of God and the Bible.
"Though Mars is often considered the primary candidate for extraterrestrial life, now scientists are saying perhaps our neighbor Venus once harbored life. Why do they think this?" Ham writes on his blog. "Well, several universities and science institutes partnered to create several simulations of what Venus may have been like billions of years ago."
Ham says the scientists based their models on climate models from Earth, and assumed that both planets were pretty similar several years ago. They also assumed Venus has shallow seas. The promising simulations assumed that Venus has the same topography that it has today, even though there is no proper basis of what Venus' topography was like back then.
"The more promising simulations also assumed the same rotation rate for Venus, though the authors acknowledge that the rotation rate has changed. One of the simulations allowed Venus' temperature to be low enough to support life until 715 million years ago," Ham says.
So what has Ham learned from all these simulations? The creationist noticed that scientists made a lot of assumptions, such as the assumption that Venus is billions of years old, and that Venus and Earth were similar in the distant past.
"These scientists are doing what is called historical science. They are looking at Venus and trying to determine what happened in the unobservable past, based on their worldview. This isn't the same thing as observational science, the kind of science that works in the here-and-now," he says.
Even though people would gladly teach these scientists' assumptions in public school classrooms, Ham laments that the same courtesy is not extended to Christian teachings.
"But as soon as a Christian claims that the universe and life are the result of a Creator, that's labeled as religion and not allowed to be taught in science classes. Yet observational science confirms that life and the universe (including the laws of nature) could not come about by natural processes!" he says.
Ham says secularists are imposing their religion on government-run schools. As a Christian, he says he is duty-bound to proclaim the truth of God's Word: God designed only Earth to be inhabited, and He made this happen during the fourth day of Creation.
"Since Earth, not Venus (or any other planet), was designed to be inhabited (Isaiah 45:18), our presupposition implies that we wouldn't expect to find life on Venus in the past or the present," he states.
