Why Do They Have To Be Mutually Exclusive?

Last year Nasa was perusing some pictures they took of the first "man made" holes on Mars. They were made by the drill on the Mars rover. In one of the pictures someone noticed something that looked a bit unusual. In fact they thought it looked like a fossil of a worm. If you look at the picture you will see that it could be almost anything really. But if that turned out to be true that it was a fossil, then it would be proof positive that life once existed on Mars. But they never got any other pictures of it.

I read an interesting article tonight about that in a magazine. There is the supposition that they purposely didn't take more pictures of it because if it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was life on Mars, or anywhere else for that matter, every religion on the planet would crumble.

Now I can't say how accurate that article was since there were no references or facts to back it up. The writer was proposing a conspiracy theory, which I suppose is possible, but it might also be possible that NASA simply didn't see the fossil or whatever it was in time to get more pictures of it. If it was intentional as the article writer was suggesting however, I don't get that line of thinking. I have heard this notion of what would happen before.

A large portion of scientists are atheists, so how can they assume what people of faith would do or think when they don't have that in their own arsenal of personal experiences to draw from?

If you go outside and look at the night sky you will be seeing over 2 billion stars at any given time. It's pretty safe to say at least some of them have planets orbiting them. I think deep down inside us we all have a basic instinctual knowledge that we are not the be all end all of life in the universe. If we were, wouldn't it be a waste of those 2 billion stars we can see and however many more lie beyond those? Wouldn't it be vain of humanity to believe it's all out there just for us?

Now whether we will ever get to meet any of that other life during the existence of our species, or whether we would even want to is a whole other can of alien worms.

Ok so suppose we found proof positive that life existed elsewhere. How would that change anyone's faith in a higher power? I haven't read all the religious texts in the world, but I do know in the Bible it says "And God created the Heavens and the Earth..." Notice that Heavens is plural. So where is the problem?

When did science get to the point where it always had to be mutually exclusive of any other line of thinking? In science there are no miracles, no magic, no faith, no intelligent design. Just cold hard facts. But yet from my perspective as someone who does have a working knowledge of physics, quantum physics/mechanics/evolution, biology, chemistry, astronomy, geology, paleontology and a whole host of other sciences...I don't see how you can't believe in something more than yourself.

If you can't look at the stars and see the magic, if you can't look at the creation of life and see the miracle, and if you can't see how complex things are at the tiniest subatomic levels of existence and have faith along with the facts, then how can you possibly study it objectively? The whole point of scientific study is to be open to all possible answers until you find the right one. But sometimes there isn't just one. I will never believe that something so vast and complex on every level in every layer was an accident, and I will never believe that in this amazingly huge universe we are all alone.