God, Aliens and Astronauts

[tacotiklah]

I get asked this question a fair bit, and I give the same answer; I don't know and I don't care whether I ever do find out. Everybody has theory and/or some "explanation" but the harsh truth is that in the grand scope of things, we know jack shit. Unless you were right there to witness what happen, the best thing you can do is guess. Thing that bothered me with a lot of religions is that for the minor details that they couldn't explain, they kinda made up as they went along and then stated it as uncontested truth, when all along they should have said "I have no idea."

Oh honesty, everyone talks about how they need more of you and then avoid you like the plague....

Do I believe in aliens? Nope. There's only theories and educated (but more commonly uneducated) guesses at best. Even if there were aliens, they wouldn't be some insanely smart super race that benevolently taught us random shit. They would be small organisms that have adapted to their planet; like protozoa or bacteria. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say you may have something that may have evolved to the point of indigenous wildlife, but not super smart green men that want to be taken to our leaders to butt probe them. Of course I accept that I can be woefully wrong on all of this, but I take into account that if the 2012 and Y2K scares taught us anything, it's that people have seriously overactive imaginations and create far scarier shit than you'll find in real life.

God? Well for many years I believed unquestioningly that there was a god. I'm at a point right now where it's a thing you cannot prove or disprove so I see it as something that just simply is. So I guess I'm moving more and more back towards agnostic as opposed to christian. Some certainly helped spark evolution, and nobody knows what. People are too prideful to admit the fact that they simply do not know for certain, hence why you have religious fundamentalists and militant atheists. They are two sides of the same coin in my book.

Astronauts I find more credible than anything else. They document everything they do, run tests, and present their findings to the rest of mankind. No mysterious wrath of god involved there; just truth as they find it.

 

[johnny_ace]

Yeah, there probably has been other civilizations, and there probably will be other ones, too, but according to Drake's equation (with the newest data available), there is currently only 1 civilization in the Milky Way, being ours. [EDIT : that's for Today's skeptical estimates... the optimistic one is way too optimistic for me]

Of course, we cannot know for sure how long a civilization can last, and how long it can be in a technologically-advanced state, so this is mostly arbitrary. A non-human civilization could last billions of years, or a few months, we are just assuming.

Then, even if we had 2 civilizations in the MW, how could they meet?

Anyways, have fun with this : BBC - Future - Science & Environment - Drake equation: How many alien civilizations exist?

i dont try to rule anything out it's like i think Neil deGrasse Tyson said," to discredit all life in the universe intelligent or not is like taking a glass of sea water and saying there are no whales in the ocean"

 

[The Omega Cluster]

i dont try to rule anything out it's like i think Neil deGrasse Tyson said," to discredit all life in the universe intelligent or not is like taking a glass of sea water and saying there are no whales in the ocean"

Yup. The Milky Way is but a glassful of seawater, but the metaphor is kind of awkward just given the size of it.

Maybe this : It's like watching Jersey Shore to determine if the human species is intelligent.

 

[johnny_ace]

Yup. The Milky Way is but a glassful of seawater, but the metaphor is kind of awkward just given the size of it.

Maybe this : It's like watching Jersey Shore to determine if the human species is intelligent.

guess it was meaning that well we looked at this glass of water , we didnt find anything why look any further there isn't anything out there anyways... so in scientific research type of way im assuming

 

[fortisursus]

I am a skeptic in many ways. I see god as a man made creation used as an excuse for what we do not know. An excuse for our own ignorance I suppose.

As for aliens and the such. I am 100% positive there is extraterrestrial life out in the vast unknown we call space. Their development? There is no way to know. We may be the most developed life forms in the universe or we may not be. But I am sure from the sheer number of planets/solar systems/ galaxies, that there is some form of life out there which likely functions in ways we have never imagined.

no I do not believe in flying saucers/ghosts or that there is any other meaning to life other than survival.

 

[The Reverend]

I am a skeptic in many ways. I see god as a man made creation used as an excuse for what we do not know. An excuse for our own ignorance I suppose.

As for aliens and the such. I am 100% positive there is extraterrestrial life out in the vast unknown we call space. Their development? There is no way to know. We may be the most developed life forms in the universe or we may not be. But I am sure from the sheer number of planets/solar systems/ galaxies, that there is some form of life out there which likely functions in ways we have never imagined.

no I do not believe in flying saucers/ghosts or that there is any other meaning to life other than survival.

I hate to be nitpicky, especially since I actually share the same belief in a fundamental way, but..

You aren't 100% positive. You don't know anything. I suspect there is life outside that which we know; saying I know there is puts me in a position of ignorance. It's when people start thinking they know the answers to questions we either can't answer outright or can't answer just yet that you pave the way to institutionalized ignorance.

We spend so much time in our own little heads, convinced that the way we see the world is much more accurate than everyone else's, and it's never the case. In the back of your mind, and mine, and everyone anyone who reads this has ever met, we think we are right. Our sly brains slip us little lies, excuses, really, for why other people don't get it. Oh, they don't have the knowledge I do. Oh, they aren't smart enough to understand it. Oh, they're in denial, but they secretly know the truth. It's bullshit.

Worse than being bullshit, it leads to things like religious persecution, state-supported genocide, parasitic elitism, and idealistic slaughters. Individuals or groups who think they are right without first trying to disprove themselves with an open mind are behind the worst atrocities in our collective human history, and will be behind all the atrocities to come.

I beg anyone who reads this to reconsider whether they know anything and are right about it. I beg anyone who reads this to question whether what they think is right should be forced on anyone else, even. After all, someone with an opposing viewpoint thinks that they are just as right as you. We see it on SSO all the time. This isn't the first ancient astronaut thread, and AoA and Explorer have tussled over this much more eloquently and humorously than I have or will, but the fact remains that neither has changed positions. Enlightened debate only occurs when both parties say, "This is what I support/believe; convince me otherwise," and then proceed to honestly evaluate the evidence presented and ignore the cognitive dissonance hardwired into our brains.

America.

 

[BadStarWanderer]

Why are humans so obsessed with gold.?.

Why does egyptian history tell us gods were boinking humans.?.

How did we figure out the science of splicing DNA and pairing it with another species DNA to make "improved" species.?.

In a quick sorta nutshell Ill share my Belief on the matter.


A planet of life forms simular to ours needed to travel space to find more resources for their home planet and/or to find a new place to live.


So they found our planet and noticed our neandrathal cousins and the vast amounts of untapped resources and said... Hmm let's Genetically engineer these Humans and make them harvest these resources for us.


So these Acient Astronauts took a little strand of dna from them selves and paired it into our dna. I believe they some how implemented a limiter for our brains so that we remained subdued and can't really organize a uprising and what not.

So they gave us enough smarts to take orders and harvest all the shiny metal known as gold for them.

I believe they wanted our gold wwhich is our best conductor of electricity. I believe they needed it to improve their super sweet space age technology. Maybe a hint to why humans are completely obsessed with gold or Money.which represent gold...or used to. Haha.


I believe that all the gods that different religions talk about are all apart of some. Ancient astronaut squad that was sent to earth to to do various thing but mostly to genetically enginneer humans into a "improved" species , harvest precious materials and to just leanr and observe as real scientist would do.

All mankind saw shit coming out of the sky and explained it the best they could...of coarse our god is slightly different from anothers god because it took multiple "Gods"all around the world to accomplish their mission.

There's a lot more but organizing these kind of thoughts is mind botteling ... so for now ill stop. Haha.

But real quick... Reincarnation ina nutshell...

You die... all your body is still their your mind and thought are gone. But your super tastey body is there for all sorts of animals, insecgs and some time even humans to use as nurishment ..

Food to help some wolf that eats your ass generate enough sperm to impregnate their mate. Right there.... boom. Your energy was literally used to create a baby wolf...so in some way you are apart of the wolf.

Non of this "ima come back as a mighty shark and rule the sea or some shit" just death as we know it. You and all your youness totally gone. But your death is totally required for the rest of existence to thrive.

"NOW is our Turn." Everything that has Died before us, Died so that we could Experience Life...If only for a Moment."

 

[TheHandOfStone]

That guy above me? Just made one of the best SS.org posts ever.

EDIT: and it shall be immortalized.

 

[Diggy]

every big find is nothing more than a stepping stone. every "top scientist" has been proven wrong over time. there's not enough time in human history for humans to really understand whats going on.

think about it.. 200,000 years for humans (supposed obviously).. 13.8 billion years for the universe (supposedly).. and we really think we have a clue..

preach on bruthas, preach on

 

[GatherTheArsenal]

1) In terms of Gods:

I'm an athiest, and here is how i became one. Summarizing several years here...

I was born a Muslim and practiced it until I reached the age of reason, developed the ability of self-formulative thought, critical thinking... and more importantly until I moved to Canada.

What's the importance of the move??

A change in the environment that allowed, or i should say that didn't block, different external influences that gave me the opportunity to develop all those things, debate religious credibilty, and the freedom to question anything. Because the socio-cultural norm in the Middle East, for the most part, puts a huge emphasis on doing what's socially acceptable, as opposed to individual freedoms, so publically questioning the religion that i was born with is out of the question because it would bring shame to my parents and possibly lead to us being ostracised to a degree in our families, communities, etc. True story.

Looking back, this should have been a big clue that something was really wrong with this picture lol...

When I stepped out of my bubble and thought out of the box, as it were, I realized the following things about Gods and religions:

a) I was only a Muslim because of the region and time (as in date/era/century) that I was born in, that being Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates circa 1980's which is predominantly Muslim. I had no choice in the matter whatsoever, just as many more don't, it's by chance as far as my own existence is concerned. That doesn't sit right with me.

b) Each part of the world has it's own collection of religions and gods, the last number that i have read about was 2700 different gods, deities, and supernatural beings that have been recorded in time around the world. Also, never mind that the big 3 religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have several different sects that are inherent to each one spanning from disagreements within them. Clearly everyone in the world is in severe disagreement about the origin of life, so it sounds to me like someone along the way is making this shit up based on interpretation. Very not credible.

c) I personally believe that we as humans have the inexplicable need to always ask and attempt to figure out things like the origin of our existence and beyond, hence religions, science, and more presently this thread. Religions are a by-product of that, a man-made explanation stemming from our curiousity, and are unfortunately given the protective shielding of divinity which makes it taboo to question. Simply put there's a whole shit load of em because of our inherent curiosity and the global spread of the human race over time, and they all claim divinity. If you're going to believe in one religion, what logical reason do you have not to believe in other religions, and their different sects??

d) Religion, like so many things, separates the human race through division and produces negative thought through rhetoric, misinformation, grudges based on wars, ethnocentrism, and ignorance of other cultures because it creates a bubble that deflects external influences from cultures that are considered "different." I don't want a part of that.

e) Religions at their core are just one proposed explanation to the origin of the life, and it's the best that we could do without science. Considering how preposterous the stories of religions are, that's not saying much.

f) I find that people who do believe in religion generally don't have the fortitude to say to themselves or others, "I don't know how life started, that's okay, but I'm working on it." Instead they'd rather believe, because it's more comfortable, the supreme being hypothesis/story that cannot be proven or disproven. Believing something out of convenience or social fear is just...plain... stupid....

2) In terms of Aliens:

Very probable, I don't have evidence so I can't logically put forth an argument that says yes they do exist. Simple as that.

I would like to ask this though for the sake of debate. If one day aliens show up and prove to us that they bio-engineered the human race, which seems to be the common consensus amongst believers in aliens, then that would explain the origin of our existence. Ok, awesome. I'm down. But what about their existence? And the ones before them? It's a slippery slope argument.

That being said, i want to put forth this notion - nothing that is alive can possibly explain the starting point, or even take credit, of all things in existence, because the being that is alive would be a product of the starting point. It's like the chicken and egg argument. One chicken can't take credit for laying the first egg, because where the hell did that chicken come from??

What do you guys think??

 

[Jakke]

How did we figure out the science of splicing DNA and pairing it with another species DNA to make "improved" species.?.

Dedicated research by talented individuals?

So they found our planet and noticed our neandrathal cousins and the vast amounts of untapped resources and said... Hmm let's Genetically engineer these Humans and make them harvest these resources for us.


So these Acient Astronauts took a little strand of dna from them selves and paired it into our dna. I believe they some how implemented a limiter for our brains so that we remained subdued and can't really organize a uprising and what not.

So they gave us enough smarts to take orders and harvest all the shiny metal known as gold for them.

I believe they wanted our gold which is our best conductor of electricity. I believe they needed it to improve their super sweet space age technology. Maybe a hint to why humans are completely obsessed with gold or Money.which represent gold...or used to. Haha.

Except that Neanderthal was an evolutionary dead end, and our cousins. Had we come from them, we should see that in our genome, and we don't. We see that some interbreeding took place (although far less than expected, which is currently explained by humans being racist bastards), but Neanderthal and Sapiens Sapiens are two distinct species.

Now, I find this idea that we are some sort of slaves to a superior galactic race extremely insulting. Not only is you conception of gold being the best conductor wrong, but you also insult everyone of your own species, which is a god damn accomplishment. Apparently we are not only duped, but we are also genetically stupid. What sample have you used to empirically arrive at that conclusion?

Are you going to claim that there is a race sophisticated enough to traverse space and engineer a race of slaves from a completely unknown alien species hasn't discovered either graphene or superconductors? Gold is an extremely primitive conductor, and silver is regardless a better conductor from a physical standpoint. The only real reason that gold is used at all for conducting is:
1. People are willing to believe that gold is the best conductor, and pay premium for it in applications such as audio.
2. It's remarkably resistant to corrosion, which makes it suitable to sensitive applications until we have perfected graphene technology and/or above-zero superconductors.


Not to mention, if we are here to mine gold for them, why are not everyone working in mining, and why is the gold that we take up from below ground accounted for here on this planet?

 

[The Omega Cluster]

I think that what Badstarwanderer posted was only a hypothesis like any other... hypothesis does not need to be supported by facts or evidence. Like : "I think the sun is God" is a hypothesis.

If we don't intend to prove the hypothesis, we should call it a postulate.

So. BSW's postulate was kind of flippant indeed. Genetically engineered humans by an alien sentient species in order to extract ore? Gosh... If they are advanced enough to engineer our genome, maybe a thousand lightyears away from their home planet, wouldn't they have us build their mining machinery instead? It would be much faster then. Of course, I don't pretend to be able to put myself in an alien's mind, but it would mathematically be easier, and faster.

Then reincarnation. Yup... makes sense. You are indeed energy, and when you die, there is a ton of organisms and microorganisms that will take this energy you don't use anymore to survive and thrive for some time. It is possible that it was how the whole reincarnation concept came to be in some religions, how they got the idea, but it's been dumbed down or it became more esoteric since then.

Next time, try to label what you say correctly : just a postulate.

 

[Jakke]

Nomenclature matters

 

[flexkill]

The other day I thought about the fear of death, and initially I was like fuck I don't want to die man...

I think I know death... I think we all know exactly how death is and feels. Feels like before we where born, no? I am not afraid of death, as their is nothing to fear....it is after all....death. We will be no more, no thought, nothing....just death.

Now that last fleeting moment before death comes....I could see how that might be terrifying as your mind races and thousand of unanswered questions and fears flood your mind..... but as I said, we have all been dead before we where alive...how terrible was death then? I suspect no more terrible as after life....just death.

 

[The Reverend]

I'm never going to take the time from my life to write a post about keeping open minds and pursuing truth in the face of admitting erroneous beliefs again.

I'm just so shocked.

The OP's latest post doesn't even cut it as a good sci-fi movie plot, and he's clearly unaware of where even our technology is headed. These fucking aliens are incredibly stupid bitches if they can't provide for themselves and have to do all the shit BadStar mentioned.

I'd backhand them even if they did exist and showed up at my door.





Stupid fucking aliens. Really, man? That is actually what you think?

















What the fuck.

 

[flexkill]

Stupid fucking aliens. Really, man? That is actually what you think?

















What the fuck.

 

[BadStarWanderer]

you wouldn't have to have a society to much more evolved than our own to do what I'm saying.

I believe our own governments are trying to get to other planets in hopes to make the next stomping grounds for humans.

what if our own astronauts from earth found homosepian-ish humanoids on another planet? there's no way that we could resist the urge to exploit the planet and all its life.
is nature not imperialistic?

genetic engineers at corporations like monsanto are taking strands of trout dna and combining them with vegitables like corn. they do it to make the corn tougher against cold along with change other properties. they do this just for pure profit . so imagine what scientist ,chemists and smart people alike would do to push the bounderies.

how far has science really come? dont you think that some scientist type fellow some where would start to mix genes in morally unexceptable manners. in every manner for that matter. we as humans mix every thing with anything. it truley beautiful. I suspect these super smart guys around our planet are doing every thing they can to figure out how to improve the capabilities of all living things. they'd study how to make you age slower or live longer, how to grow super harvest, how to have the most mind integrated technology ever.

will mankind reverse engineer thier own existence before becoming extinct?

 

[bhakan]

So your reasoning for saying that aliens have been a major influence on our society is because everyone likes gold, and everywhere has some sort of religion?

Regardless of whether you're told that gold is valuable or not, if you're walking around a bunch of gray and brown rocks, and then suddenly you see a shiny gold object, you're going to think "look at that, that's pretty cool, I'll take that," so it is desirable, combine that with the fact that it is rare, and it will become valuable in all societies.

As far as deities, everyone wants to know how life began, what happens afterwards and such, so when we couldn't figure it out, we created stories to explain it. Naturally the stories would use the mechanics of life that we know best, which is human interaction, so the easiest explanation at the time would be an all powerful, human like creature that created us and watches over us as parents would.

Neither phenomena seems like it would need aliens to explain it.

 

[The Reverend]

After careful deliberation, and a thorough examination of my own worldview, I am now inclined to believe BadStar's Postulate: Mentally incompetent aliens came to Earth, mixed their own DNA with that of apes or early hominids, in a quest for gold to use in their electronics. It is from this event that all the God myths in the world come from.

 

[Jakke]