Science and Significance

Firstly, it may be suggesting that Christian Theism requires (or is most comfortable with) a small universe. The universe in question could be that of the ancient near east with water above the vault of the heavens and under the pillars of the earth, or that of the Aristotelian cosmology of the middle ages, with a Ptolemaic round earth at the centre of planets and stars, in harmoniously circular orbits. Early Genesis clearly addressed the first of these, while the history of science has addressed the second. But even Young-Earth Creationists, while claiming a world in the order of 10,000 years old, have never even blinked at the idea that the universe is simply vast. They would follow Psalms in seeing it as a demonstration of God's power:

He counts the number of the stars. He calls them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and mighty in power. His understanding is infinite.

And they are not in this respect unreasonable: philosophically, a being who creates the universe from nothing could be expected to find a large universe no more difficult to make than a small one. The transcendence of time and space that is envisaged here is qualitative rather than quantitative.

Secondly, the argument often comes across saying that we live on an average star in an average galaxy, where at any time we could be hit by an average comet and go the way of the average dinosaur. Hence there is nothing special about us.

Now I won't go into the so-called fine-tuning arguments here, which purport to show that only a truly spectacularly average earth could support life at all. Nor does it seem necessary to reiterate that human significance doesn't come from physical measurements, including such averages, but from personal qualities. Living near an average star, or being hit by an average comet simply doesn't change much. C.S. Lewis articulated this particularly well in his paper The Weight of Glory:

Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects. ... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

In Theism, personality -- whether God's or our own -- is the fundamental unit of reality. All else is derived from it.

Thirdly, the argument may be suggesting that alien life offers the ultimate counterexample to Christian parochialism -- the idea that only one small group has a mortgage on ultimate truth. How would aliens have heard about Jesus, huh?! I think it would only trouble a Christian whose theology did not accommodate equally obvious earthly cases, like tribespeople living in Papua New Guinea 5,000 years ago. Any view of human significance or destiny that does not handle such cases well has clearly not been thought through.

The argument from magnitude may simply represent a failure of the imagination. In the questioner's mind Christian Theism may never have been connected with open inquiry or speculative and creative thought. In the west since the Reformation, and especially since the rise of Christian Fundamentalism, this charge has carried weight; the creative sphere of life has been largely abandoned by an increasing number of Christians, or limited to only narrow, safe areas like music.

There have been notable exceptions though, and who knows, mentioning them might inspire some more to make a start in 'hard' sci-fi. See the Inklings page for inspiration if this is you!

The Catholic poet Alice Meynell (1847-1922) addressed this by simply considering whether other life might be created within the same theological framework as our own.

    Nor, in our little day
May his devices with the heavens be guessed,
His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way
Or his bestowals there be manifest.

    But in the eternities,
Doubtless we shall compare together, hear
A million alien Gospels, in what guise,
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.

Such ideas were explored at length in Lewis' science fiction novels Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, in a stylish tribute to H.G. Wells. On reflection, such ideas are simply obvious concommitants of Theism. The important thing is to reflect upon them.