Garyp88 said:
I'm agnostic about aliens. But I do think they are very likely. I guess the difference for me between aliens and god is that we know aliens are possible since here we are. It was possible on this planet for life to form, so I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be possible elsewhere. And when you take into account the sheer size of the observable universe it really comes down to "just how unlikely was it for life to form on earth". It could be astronomically unlikely, and we really are the only life in the universe. Or it could be slightly less unlikely and the universe could be teeming with life. Who knows. But we certainly know life can come to exist on planets, and we can see plenty of other planets out there. that gives aliens an edge over god for me.
Even if the formation of life was a
ridiculously improbable thing (the abundance of life in extreme environments like volcanic vents at the ocean floor seems to argue against this)... but even if... life would still be rather plentiful when you realize just how many galaxies there are, and how long 15 billion years really is.
Of course, life in other galaxies (or even in distant parts of our own) would seem to have the formidable obstacle of extreme distances to contend with. If you are only considering material, human-ish lifeforms coming here in physical ships, this certainly
does narrow the field for human/alien contact. But we can not really speculate about the technology of more advanced species with much accuracy.
I think that chimpanzees in the Congo might not be able to comprehend our own ability to circumnavigate the globe with relative ease... and certainly will have no understanding of hypersonic jet flight.
It is within reason to assume that life in the Universe could be 1000x more advanced than we are to chimps...
I believe in alien life. I also believe that the Earth has been visited... regularly. I am even leaning towards the idea that humanity has some alien genetics or influence making us at least part alien to the natural development of this planet.
Do I have solid evidence of this? NO.
But I do have anecdotal experiences which confirm this
for me including what I am pretty sure are close encounters with aliens. (not including drug induced entity contact which I also feel are likely to be alien intelligences)
Thus, I am fairly well a gnostic believer on this topic.
I think it worth mentioning again that belief in aliens is
itself a type of
theism. This tends to get ignored, but there a number of theistic conceptions of gods as being ETs.
This doesn't just include the various UFO Religions
UFO religion - Wikipedia like Scientology and Rael-ism but is a basic tenant of even Mormonism where they see G*d as a being living on a distant planet.
In my mind, nearly all religions talk about aliens whether they acknowledge it or not. The various polytheistic gods and devas, angels, demons, devils, rakshasas, djinn etc. are all, to a one, said to
not originate on the Earth. Most religions claim they were created elsewhere in the Heavens.
Not from Earth = Extra Terrestrial.
By this simple logic, Jehovah himself is clearly an ET. You can`t be from the Earth if you created it.
Personally, I find the Zecharia Sitchin concepts of alien gods to be compelling. He may have made some mistakes, but there is a wealth of good stuff in his books even if you toss out the idea of Nibiru as the 12th planet and all that stuff. The overwhelming fact that
every "mythology" on the planet describes fairly well the same basic set of flaming chariot flying, vimana driving, powerful weapon wielding, imperfect and morally ambiguous divine beings that unanimously come from the stars... is a fairly substantial heap of circumstantial evidence.
If you follow the hit Ancient Aliens TV Show (I hate to bring it up), they at least do a decent job of invoking the Erich Von Danniken
ancient astronaut theory... which has enough basis in archaeological record to be worth considering seriously. The abundance of
truly ancient ruins that are unexplainable, with sheer blocks of granite and diorite weighing 200 tons or more... built deep into what we call the Stone Age... well, it makes you think.
Having visited many of the more inexplicable of these ruins myself, I will just say that being there only substantiates the wild ideas about these ruins by leaving you with the clear understanding that primitive people did
not build these sites. Even the height of human megalithic civilizations
pale next to those truly ancient sites. The fact is that the oldest ruins we know of are the most astounding... this is not something that lends itself to a typical learn-as-you-go progression. It smacks of an intact culture coming here fully formed, and then a gradual degeneration as the knowledge of the original people is lost over time.
Our best stone masons stand
awed when presented with the intricate perfection of the blocks at Puma Punku. The perfect angles and "still sharp enough to cut you" 90 degree edges of inlaid designs that fit together like leggos, and are
identical to each other down to the millimeter... suggest that
whoever built those modular diorite blocks could melt the stone down to a liquid, pour it into a mold, and crank out a large number of identical building blocks... in a time when cavemen were still hunting mammoth with wooden spears tipped with chipped rock.
As usual, I seem to have rambled on a bit. I guess I will stop here, and let you all have your says on this fascinating topic.
