Three decades ago scientists had a wonderful idea.  

To create a fully-enclosed environment that could sustain a living ecological system.  Humans could live in harmony with nature and each other and the system could sustain them forever.

The project was named ‘Biosphere 2’ (Biosphere 1 being planet Earth).

Biosphere 2 was the world’s largest enclosed ecological life-support system, constructed complete with a desert, a rainforest, and an ocean (all downscaled obviously).  

This miniature version of Earth was completed in 1991 after several years spent being constructed and at a cost of over 150 million US dollars.

In 1991 eight scientists entered Biosphere 2 (affectionately nicknamed ‘Mini-earth’) for long-term study.

Given the level of expertise that went into the project, you would think that life in Biosphere 2/Mini-Earth would easily be sustained indefinitely –   Humans beings nurturing nature and being nurtured by nature.

The experiment failed utterly and completely. 

Within a matter of months things began falling apart.  Equipment failed, leading to parts being secretly smuggled into the system. Oxygen levels grew dangerously low and CO2 Scrubbers were installed. Even relationships between the team fractured, leaving two factions facing almost constant passive-aggressive conflict.

The scientists did last the 2 years but they would never have survived without intervention.

In 1994 a second trial failed completely in less than 6 months.  

To date (in 2020) ALL attempts to create a suitable substitute habitat have failed. 

It just so happens that creating a self-sustaining environment is exponentially more difficult than people originally thought. 

With all of our advanced technology, intelligence and ingenuity, we humans simply cannot replicate the conditions that will allow life to survivie (let alone thrive).

Have you ever considered what actually needed for our planet to sustain life?  Being the exact distance away from the sun for example. Or having a moon the exact size to be able to settle the earth’s ‘wobble’. Or having a tilt of 23.5 degrees which is the exact tilt needed to maintain seasons (without which our plant life-cycles couldn’t survive).  And so on…

One astronomer has estimated the odds of a life-friendly planet existing anywhere in the universe by chance to be 1 in 10129 that’s one in one thousand quintillion quintillion quintillion quintillion quintillion quintillion quintillion.1 

My personal opinion? I really do believe that it takes more faith to believe in no God than it does to believe in God.

He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.

The Bible – Colossians 1:17

1 20 Compelling Evidences That God Exists (Kenneth Boa, Robert M. Bowman, Jr.)
Featured image curtesy of Jesuisedwardo