MARS AS DIVINE CARTOON

By LANCE MORROW

The great American metaphysician Chuck Jones discerned some years ago that the universe operates in sequences of violent Newtonian reciprocities. Jones dramatized his ideas in the famous Wile E. Coyote-Road Runner Dynamic: Coyote sets in motion giant boulder A, which whistlingly descends into a canyon to strike seesaw lever B, catapulting giant boulder C into orbit...and so on. Jones' work is a bridge that carries Isaac Newton across into Chaos Theory.

And now Jones is vindicated: we see that some 16 million years ago, the slapstick asteroid A slammed into planet B (Mars, the fourth rock from the sun), dislodging spud-size meteorite C, which spitballed through space and whammed into planet D (Earth). Betimes, the alien microspud wakes up in the Antarctic and assumes the shape of an outlandishly hot idea, E (LIFE ON MARS!!!!), which pinballs hectically through Earthling media, knocking vases off the mantelpiece, toppling assumptions, causing tabloid amazement and theological consternation.

More vindication: Jones anticipated last week's news by suggesting long ago that life on Mars takes the form of a supercilious ass who wants to disintegrate Earth with his "Iludium pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator" because Earth obstructs his view of Venus. Earthkind's hero, Bugs Bunny, snuffs out Marvin the Martian's modulator fuse and saves the world, a feat that, theologians agree, must rank slightly ahead of Daffy Duck's space exploration in quest of "Aludium Phosdex, the shaving-cream atom."

The mind resists reducing cosmogony to cartoons. On the other hand, what could be more in the spirit of Coyote and Road Runner than the Big Bang? Science instructs us that the universe is made of beer suds, or of string. Time bends like a pretzel and vanishes into a black hole. What if the universe is the hysterically funny work of a trickster-comic?

When humans confront the unknown, they may, at one extreme, resort to humor, or, at the other extreme, to theology. Both impulses (one disciplined, the other not) are forms of speculation, and both may be, in different ways, profound. Anarchic humor tends to inherit the universe when theology falls apart. The humor is either a refreshing relief or a prelude to despair.

The wandering piece of Mars reminds everyone of cartoons and fantasies that the Red Planet has always stimulated; among other things, it has brought radio talk shows alive with the voices of vindicated UFO spotters, the Mars rock being their Rosetta stone, the key that unlocks the mystery. But does the rock threaten the centuries-long assumptions and designs of theology?

Most of the world's faiths are content to enlarge the franchise and embrace the possibility: if life exists on Mars, or anywhere else in the universe, God put it there. "In my Father's house are many mansions." Humankind has been living in one small room.

Interesting questions do arise among Christians. For example: If life exists on other worlds, is it intelligent life? Mars' fugitive microbial traces are a long, long way from the ensoulment that distinguishes humankind. If creatures on other planets have souls, are they fallen in the Christian sense? Or are they an unfallen, sinless race? If fallen, does the earthly incarnation and sacrifice of Christ redeem all extraterrestrials as well? Or will--must--Christ redeem each planet's souls separately by taking an incarnation in their form? C.S. Lewis worried about these questions years ago, and quoted poet Alice Meynell's Christ in the Universe: "...in the eternities/Doubtless we shall compare together, hear/A million alien Gospels, in what guise/He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear."

The possibility that life exists elsewhere is of course a blow to the incorrigible human sense of self-importance. People accustomed to thinking of themselves as significant--masters of the universe to whom God made all else in creation subsidiary--might be demoted to distant cousins tenant-farming on their speck of dust.

Sentimentalists have clung to the thought that life gives meaning to a barren, indifferent universe. What if life--surprise!--turns out to be a miracle almost infinitely replicated across the universe? Is its meaning thereby infinitely augmented, or is it instead reduced to a commonplace, as the miracle of human flight became ordinary? The moment, of course, is far off.

As early as the 18th century, British scholar Richard Bentley pursued the argument that God's omnipotence and glory might require many planets, many arenas, for their display. Comedy might reconcile with theology along the same line of thought, by suggesting that perhaps God is a performer who created intelligent life because he needs an audience.

"Good evening, ladies and germs," begins the Voice across the deep. "I know you're out there. I can hear you breathing."