Northern Ireland’s culture minister Nelson McCausland wrote recently to the trustees of the National Museums Northern Ireland, urging them add alternative views on the origin of the universe.

In an interview McCausland said, “There are a range of perspectives and I want simply to have in there consideration given to reflecting the diversity of views in Northern Ireland.

“It’s also in fact a human rights issue and an equality issue because culture rights, the rights of people in Northern Ireland, should be implemented.”

McCausland also asked museums to give more prominence to Ulster-Scots and the Orange Order, the BBC reported.

While his letter did not specifically mention creationism, it does open the door to the option of a creationism exhibit.  McCausland’s party colleague and North Antrim assembly member Mervyn Storey has actively campaigned to urge museums in Northern Ireland to add exhibits on creationism, according to The Guardian.

God gives the divine spark to Adam. Northern Ireland's culture minister urges national museums to include alternative views on universe's origins

McCausland noted that around one third of Northern Ireland’s population believed in creationism and intelligent design.

He said, “I have had more letters from the public on this issue than any other issue,” according to The Guardian.

In his letter, McCausland said he had “a common desire to ensure that museums are reflective of the views, beliefs and cultural traditions that make up society in Northern Ireland,” The Guardian reported.

McCausland’s letter has prompted strong opposition from some members of the media, the academe, and the government spheres.

Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist said “Scientific evidence can’t be democratically decided,” according to The Guardian.

Social Democrat and Labor Party spokesman Thomas Burns said it was “a mark of a liberal society that its cultural institutions should be free of party-political interference,” the BBC said.

Storey, who has chaired the Northern Ireland assembly’s education committee, has denied that man descended from apes, according to The Guardian.  He believes in creationism and intelligent design.

British pop star Adam Ant checked into a mental health facility in the UK recently, after an offensive outburst he made during a comeback concert in a church recently, according to the Daily News.

Ant, whose real name is Stuart Goddard, was the lead singer of Adam and the Ants.  He suffers from bipolar disorder and was sectioned under the UK Mental health Act of 1983, Spinner reported.

He is now at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, from where he released a statement that said, “Ant fans — please send me postcards at the Chelsea & Westminster hospital, Fulham Road.”  He discouraged fans from coming to the hospital because “it may upset the staff who have been really pleasant,” according to Spinner.

Ant’s treatment followed several controversial appearances, but the most discussed incident was an intimate show at a Christian charity event at a church in Hampshire on May 10, Spinner reported.

Goddard opened the show with the Rolling Stone song, “Symphony for the Devil.”  When the crowd jeered, Goddard told the audience to “f— off” and then walked off the stage, according to the Portsmouth News.

The event was partly to promote Ant’s new album, ‘Adam Ant Is the Blueback Hussar in Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter,’ and partly to raise support for the Philippines Community Foundation the Portsmouth News reported.

Following the debacle, Ant in an interview called the locals “gangsters” and said the place was “worse than Birmingham or Manchester,” according to the Portsmouth News.

In Ant’s statement from Chelsea & Westminster Hospital he said he hoped to be back in good form later this year. “I am having a well earned rest at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and am painting and continuing being an art student,” he said. “I have a great view and am considering gigs later in the year,” the Spinner said.

The question about the existence of intelligent life on other planets will rise to the fore once again with the release next month of a new Discovery Channel documentary, Stephen Hawking’s Universe.

In the documentary, the British physicist will give his views on intelligent life in other planets.

Reports say he believes they exist, but warns against making contact with them, according to BBC News.

Space alien. Credit: martin_m2/sxc.hu

Hawking notes that aliens might simply raid the Earth for its resources, then move on.

“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet,” Hawking tells BBC News.

Hawkings, in the BBC interview said, “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

The program envisages numerous alien species including two-legged herbivores and yellow, lizard-like predators, but Hawking conceded that most life elsewhere in the universe is likely to consist of simple microbes.

Professor Brian Cox, a physicist from the University of Manchester, said in a recently released BBC series Wonders of the Solar System, that organisms could be present under the ice sheet that envelops Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.

Professor Cox added, “Closer to home, the evidence that life could exist on Mars is growing.  We will only know for sure when the next generation of spacecraft, fine-tuned to search for life, are launched to the moons of Jupiter and the arid plains of Mars in the coming decades,” he told the BBC.

Some Christians agree with part of Hawking’s statement–that visitors from another world could be dangerous–but they do not agree with Hawking about what the creatures actually are.

In response to Erich Von Daniken’s bestseller, Chariots of the Gods, Dr. Clifford Wilson, researched UFOs and the Bible and penned his own bestseller and rebuttal, Crash Go the Chariots.

In the end, Wilson allows for the possibility of some malevolent beings of supernatural origin, but he does not believe they are intelligent life forms from other planets. In fact, Wilson, after his research, concluded he did not believe that life exists on other planets.

The point is further elucidated by Ken Ham who looks to the Bible to explain his viewpoint. In a recent Blog posting, Ham says:

“From an evolutionary perspective, it would make sense to suggest [that intelligent alien life exists]. People who believe this possibility contend that, if life evolved on earth by natural processes, intelligent life must exist somewhere else in the far reaches of space, given the size of the universe and the millions of possible planets…but I believe a Christian worldview, built on the Bible, rejects such a possibility,” he said.

Ham says he  rejects the possibility of rational alien life because, according to the Bible, the Fall of Man and subsequent sin affected all of creation and the only solution to mankind’s sin problem was Jesus Christ.

“Jesus didn’t become a ‘God-Klingon,’ a ‘God-Vulcan,’ or a ‘God-Cardassian’—He became the God-man. It wouldn’t make sense theologically for there to be other intelligent, physical beings who suffer because of Adam’s sin but cannot be saved,” he said.

“Now, regarding animal life and plants, we cannot be so dogmatic because the Bible does not state whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. Based on the passages about the heavens and earth, however, I strongly suspect that life does not exist elsewhere.”