Observations in the past several years, combined with our past knowledge, basically confirmed we live in a weird and unusual part of the universe. Some of those are supported by fairly hard numbers and others are a bit more vague. The famous Drake equation would need several more factors just to cover all relevant information to explain the lack of spacefaring civilizations.

Here are a few new-ish ones, either newly discovered, or just something we didn’t realize is highly relevant in this context.

1. The Sun is not normal. It’s a type G star, this puts it in a group of stars numbering 7.6% of the Milky way. Of those it’s in the 10% most stable type G stars stars. A stable star is probably necessary for life and the factor for a suitable star is around 0.7% at this point.

2. Plate tectonics. In relatively recent times we came to realize plate tectonics are probably important for life, recycling the crust into the mantle without wrecking havoc on the surface every few million years. Of the planets in the Solar system, only Earth has suitable plate tectonics. We don’t know how common they are in the universe, but 10% is probably generous.

3. Rocky planets are typically larger than Earth, around 1.5 times Earth mass. This is relevant, because at 125% the size of Earth you can’t make an orbital chemical rocket any more. If you want a spacefaring civilization you kind of need that, at least as a stepping stone. Let’s call this one at 10%, it shouldn’t be very far off. //

4. The Solar system itself is highly unusual and will get several points. We have large planets on the outer edges and small planets closer to the star, which is only seen in about 10% of cases. Most star systems have large planets closer to the star and smaller planets outwards.

5. Solar system part two, it is unusual for a solar system to feature both rocky planets and gas gigants. Most have one or the other type of the planet, but not both. Let’s say this is another 10%, it’s probably lower but let’s put it at 10%.

6. Solar system part three, about 85% of star systems have more than one star, 15% have one star. For type G that’s a bit higher, with 56% and we can’t explain this yet. Let’s call this one 50%.

7. Solar system part four, we’re located in an unusually calm part of the galaxy. Most places have been variously zapped with X-ray bursts, supernovae or came across various other types of other cosmic horrors that would have ended any nascent life with prejudice. Let’s put this one at 10% of the galaxy being as calm as our bit, though it could be considerably less.

If you want to count the zeroes, we’re at approximately 1 in 100 billion at this point, certainly below 1 in 10 billion. Milky way has approximately 400 billion stars. Just accounting for these factors, then adding the “chance to develop life” in and some of the other stuff present in the Drake equation, pushes the probability of advanced, spacefaring civilization forming life being present in the Milky Way, to 1 planet or less. It’s probably a lot less, we rounded plenty of those estimates upwards, because it honestly didn’t matter.

Earth is rare. We know enough to state that with some certainty. We don’t know what other solutions to the Fermi paradox are also valid, but we know enough to state Earth and Solar system being total weirdos is one of them. They might well be unique to the Milky Way and possibly even rarer than that, there’s no way to know for sure.

The conflict between the natural sciences and Christian theology has been going on for centuries. Recent advances in the fields of evolutionary biology, behavioral genetics, and neuroscience have intensified this conflict, particularly in relation to origins, the fall, and sin. These debates are crucial to our understanding of human sinfulness and necessarily involve the doctrine of salvation. Theistic evolutionists have labored hard to resolve these tensions between science and faith, but Hans Madueme argues that the majority of their proposals do injustice both to biblical teaching and to long-standing doctrines held by the mainstream Christian tradition.