As many of you recall, I attended the International UFO Congress in Scottsdale, AZ a week ago. The trip had three purposes.
The first was publisher business. I wanted to promote my novels, The Facade and The Portent. I didn’t sell much. You never do at an event like this when your aim is to give people real data (even in story form) that might lead them to rethink their UFO religion. But the good news was being able to re-unite with two members of Miqlat, “Ward” and “Clarise” (those of you who have read The Portent will understand). We had a lot of interesting conversations during the week, including some that dealt with Christianity (the real kind, not its gnostic new age caricature or its demonization that one often encounters at events like this). Several Christians came up to the table and thanked us for showing up.
For me the most interesting moment was the conversation I had with Byron Belitsos, one of the folks who were in the booth next to ours promoting the Urantia book (sort of the ET-alternative history Bible). I of course don’t put any credence in the Urantia book (it feels like warmed-over theosophical literature). Byron was in a doctoral program years ago and planned to do his dissertation on the Urantia book but couldn’t because its foundation refused to allow any citation of it in any documents. Things are different now since the foundation lost a lawsuit over that, but it’s too late for Byron. He said he was anti-Sitchin and told me he’d given a lecture critiquing Sitchin at a Contact in the Desert Conference. I haven’t been able to find any description of such a lecture, though (but I’ve only put a few minutes into that). But at least in our conversation he had no enthusiasm for Sitchin. My guess is that he “corrects” Sitchin at points (whereas my advice would be to just ignore anything he says about ancient astronauts). At any rate, it would be amazing that the Contact in the Desert conference tolerated anti-Sitchin material since 2015’s event features basically all the members of the pro-Sitchin / ancient astronaut nuttiness pantheon (Giorgio Tsoukalos, Jason Martell, Michael Tellinger, Erich von Daniken, James Gilliland). The amount of verified data/truth from primary texts and peer-reviewed research you’ll find in their collective presentations would fit on the back of a postage stamp. Byron offered to ask the organizers to invite me to speak at one of those events. I wished him luck. It was a nice gesture, but one sort of like when Art Bell tried to arrange a debate between me and Zecharia Sitchin. That of course never happened because Sitchin was no fool.
The second purpose was to chat with a couple serious ufologists (yes, they do exist) about a further round of testing for the Majestic documents. I got some encouragement, direction, and promises of data that will help frame the project. At some point in the future I’ll announce what’s up.
The third purpose was vacation time. My wife and kids were along. We had a lot of fun, on-site and off.
More generally, for those who’ve never been to a UFO conference, this one was pretty typical: lots of unsubstantiated claims (the session on the Allaghash abductions was a textbook sampling) mixed with mind-numbing nonsense (James Gilliland is the new master of that domain), with a dash of thoughtful material (Rich Dolan’s session is one example). Here are some links with pretty good synopses of the IUFO lectures by Robert Sheaffer of the Bad UFOs blog:
A Skeptic at the UFO Congress 2015 – Part 1
A Skeptic at the UFO Congress, 2015 – Part 2
A Skeptic at the UFO Congress, 2015 – Part 3 (final)
“the Urantia book (it feels like warmed-over theosophical literature).” Because it is.
LOL
Nah, the UB has little in common with Theosophy. No Ascended Masters, and especially no reincarnation. No “thought forms” and other theosophical goodies. The UB affirms the deity of Jesus as a “Creator Son”, responsible for the existence of our “local universe.” There are other such universes distributed in space (not other dimensions), created by other Creator Sons.
I’m not a UB believer, myself, but I can say that it’s pretty different from Theosophy and the many New Age philosophies that have been spun off from it.
no ages and races? no inherent racism (racial inferiority and superiority)?
Oh it has all that, but I don’t think of racialism as distinctively Theosophical, more just typical of the era. The UB also has an interesting form of pre-Adamism, according to which Adam and Eve were semi-spiritual beings whose mission was “racial uplift”, a mission that went south due to effects of the “Lucifer rebellion”.
It’s still a mystery how the UB came to be written (a mystery not solved by Martin Gardner), but however it happened I don’t think there was much, if any, influence from Helena Blavatsky.
Theosophical literature was much wider than Blavatsky. I’ve been looking up what’s available in the public domain under that label and it’s frankly stunning. Hundreds of thousands of pages by people whose last name isn’t Blavatksy.
Oh that’s certainly. There were Alice Bailey and Charles Leadbeater, to mention a couple of the better-known contributors to Theosophy. Still, I think there’s a recognizable core of beliefs in Theosophy, many of which still ripple out into contemporary New Age and “spiritualist” schools of thought. These beliefs include the belief in reincarnation, with Earthly incarnations for the purpose of learning various “lessons”; the existence of many “planes” of existence, differentiated by “vibrations”; the reality of “thought forms”, or perceivable realities caused by focused thought/meditation; the existence of “ascended masters”, beings far advanced on the planes of existence, who can and do sometimes manifest here on our plane to guide us. We saw much of the same stuff in the channeled “Seth material” from Jane Roberts, and we’ve seen it from quite a diverse collection of mediums. Stafford Betty and Michael Tymn have both made a project of putting together synopses of the world according to mediums of the last century or so, and the results are strikingly similar to Theosophy. The UB, whatever it may be, doesn’t easily fit into this group. In fact, I’d say that one reason why the UB has so few adherents (apart from the sheer difficulty of the text itself) is that it is too unorthodox for most Christians, while rejecting too many ideas dear to the New Age community, and its Theosophical ancestors.
Another interesting point, for what it’s worth. However you classify the UB (channeled literature, alternative revelation, whatever), it certainly resonates with the Divine Council worldview more than most New Age stuff I’ve seen. One of the key ideas, developed in mind-numbing detail, is the extent to which God creates a hierarchy of celestial beings and then DELEGATES authority to them. Even the regulation of what we regard as “constant” physical forces is managed by quasi-personal beings created for just that role.
Giorgio Tsoukalos – ever notice how his wierd hairdo like a sideways mohawk is the same that that imperial whatnot alien human looking type wore in Babylon 5?
I figure aliens are genetically modified humans whose ancestors were offworld when The Flood hit, and that when they came back WE taught THEM megalithic building, maybe they taught us underground building, but definitely probably helped in developing some crude electricity or recovering the technology and a little flight.
In my book A Possible History of Life on Mars, I suggest that they cautiously lent Ravanna of the Mahabhara a flying device, but not the technology to maintain it or build more, maybe lent him two, and considered him enough of a problem they then lent Rama some focussed energy weapons to deal with him.
” … a couple serious ufologists … the Majestic documents.”
– must have been Robert and Ryan Wood.
These documents seem to fall into two categories:
1) verifiable, old (usually early ’50s or before) U.S. military documents, before UFOs became hush-hush in govt – back when high-level post-WW II people were making open comments about “visitors from other worlds” in major newspapers; and
2) the Jamie Shandera-type documents that look on the face of it as though they are authentic (SOM-1, for instance) and might be, but for which the provenance is nevertheless an unsettled matter.
One of the stalwarts of document investigation, Stan Friedman, however, has turned up tiny but tell-tale clues that tantalize belief that authentic verification might eventually emerge. Then theologians will write “ETs, God, and the Bible” papers for general audiences.
Hard to follow this one. Friedman hasn’t produced anything that suggests verification is coming. He also hasn’t addressed the linguistic testing I had done on several of them with (phony) author attribution. If you’re depending on these documents for some sort of faith in ET reality, you need to look elsewhere. There are actually better trajectories than these documents. You should watch Alejandro Rojas’ video on their history. He’s a ufologist (and organizer of IUFO), not a theologian. And his expose shows how suspect these things are.
Friedman has contributed to documents mainly in the first category. The earlier documents do not seem to be much contested as they were released by govt sources or dug out of Presidential libraries by Friedman and have an established provenance. Some of these high-level documents are rather suggestive that advanced technology, if not ETs, exist.
I am familiar with Rojas as a newer, serious UFOlogist who has been debating Friedman regarding some of the category 2 documents. These are the most interesting, yet have the least established provenance.
DennisF’s Law of UFOlogy Documents (a variant on Murphy’s Law): The authentication of a document is inversely proportional to its amount of disclosure.
P.S. As for disclosure, have you sifted through the testimonies collected by Steven Greer and his Disclosure Project? It appears to be an interesting source of testimony from credible people.
Yes on Greer, despite his poor reputation for honesty. What he has is good/credible people who offer their belief in a theory (ETI). None of them have hard evidence. And if you know something of the history of Area-51 during the cold war, it’s easy to believe that they were out of any loops that someone wanted them excluded from. If at certain points of time during the cold war there were literally only 2-3 people who knew what was being tested at Area-51, that leaves a good number of high-ranking officials out of the loop. It’s not hard to believe since examples are not hard to come by.
Given the growing social consensus (as shown in media, survey’s and UFO conferences) that aliens do exist in some form or another (including super intelligent beings), I find the subject too infrequently discussed in Christian circles. Collectively the Body of Christ needs more of this topic.
Many commentators, both Christian and non-Christian, seem to forget a few critical details that bear on this subject when writing about how a government disclosure of super intelligent non-terrestrial life forms will wreak havoc on world religions, and specifically Christianity.
There are things from a Christian perspective that are highly relevant and pretty obvious to most well read and Biblically literate believers regarding the question of extraterrestrial life (ET’s) or EBE’s (extraterrestrial biological entities).
Point 1: Man’s View is Not God’s View
Some people suggest Christians will become dismayed when they learn that aliens exist, and even more confused when they learn that they are both intelligent and technologically advanced, but perhaps have no eternal salvation. If this were the case, the implication is that God isn’t “good” or “fair” when it comes to providing for his creation – therefore he is a liar or cheat who plays with words and intentions, or perhaps he doesn’t even exist at all. They go on to suggest that if God were to be “fair” he would need to provide some means for the aliens to receive eternal redemption. Many suggest that the Son of God would have to go from world to world in an everlasting tour of eternal incarnation, death, and resurrection as means to redeem all of the “super intelligent races” living in the cosmos. Of course this presupposes that all alien life forms are in need of salvation regardless of intelligence, or that God really has a desire to redeem them to begin with (whether or not they exist is another debate).
There is a flaw in this thinking, and that is we should never apply man’s view of “fairness” to God’s choices or his eternal plan. Saying “It’s not fair that God doesn’t provide redemption for aliens” isn’t a valid argument from a Christian perspective. Neither should one suppose that if aliens exist they are also “fallen” or in need of salvation. They may or may not be in need of redemption based on how you interpret the “curse” of sin bestowed on creation after the fall of man.
To be clear, scripture tells us that salvation is not based on one’s intelligence or even on a sense of “fairness” on God’s part – it is only based on belief in Christ AND his resurrection and atonement for man’s sin. Scripture also tells us that salvation was offered only to mankind and for a reason. Salvation is given by grace, not by works, goodness, accomplishments, intelligence, or advanced technological ability.
Therefore we can surmise that if there were intelligent life elsewhere in the universe the need for salvation is a non-issue for them all the way around. They may need it, or perhaps they don’t. God may have provided for it already, or he never planned on it from the very beginning. That notion should not be as confusing for Christians as some make it out to be.
For example, there is nothing to suggest in scripture that animals on earth require or need salvation – and neither does it say that living creatures on this earth receive a resurrected body after death in the new heavens and new earth. Since the atoning work of Christ doesn’t provide them salvation, we can conclude that it may not apply to intelligent aliens living in space.
For example, there are sea creatures in our world at the bottom of the ocean that have yet to be discovered. They may not be intelligent like humans – but Biblically speaking they don’t need salvation. As a species, they too remain “undiscovered” just as one or more alien life forms may remain hidden for now all the while just waiting to be found.
Point 2: Scripture Already Tells Us We Aren’t Alone
Scripture states that man was created a “little below heavenly beings” (for now let’s call them angels), and yet still given a unique status among all of God’s creation (which includes the entire cosmos). That means God has already told us there is “intelligent life” beyond human kind, and that they are more superior (or higher) than us at least for the present. The Bible also says that Christ’s work was never intended for the salvation of angels, even the fallen ones. So this message conveys clearly that man can be less intelligent than other entities that do not require or are granted God’s salvation. Because God tells us angels do not receive salvation, we can conclude that other entities such as flesh and blood aliens may not either.
Point 3: Having Super Intelligence Does Not Mean One is Therefore Closer to God
Some have suggested that if aliens have their own religion and are more intelligent than us, then they are “closer to God” and we should follow their religion instead of our own. To this argument I would say “no, not necessarily…and probably not.” Intelligence does not convey a higher understanding or closeness to God – so aliens may or may not “have it right” when it comes to religion or theosophy. They may simply worship whatever they have conceived as correct in their own minds (the cosmos, nature, etc.) just as many earthlings currently do.
Point 4: Assuming Flesh and Blood Aliens Are Created in God’s Image
Scripture tells us that mankind was created by God for his purpose and in “his image”. That image is often understood or conveyed as “intelligence, skill, or ability” but that isn’t really what the God is saying exactly. “Image” refers to “unique status” – meaning human beings are God’s only ordained representatives on earth, and also in all creation including the cosmos. We are to rule over creation as he would, and as his representatives.
That technically puts all living creatures, the universe, and any aliens in it, under mankind in God’s overall plan. That plan, we are told by God, was taken off course by man’s fall, hence the need for redemption and salvation. Despite the fall, God’s plan is still to put mankind above all creation (other than himself of course) and to co-rule with Christ as our king and savior over all things under God. Therefore there can indeed be aliens out there that fall into God’s plan in some way as it unfolds – they may be protagonists of a sort that seek to aid in this plan or not. One must be careful not to supplant Christ (the leading protagonist) with a sense that aliens are in fact “a better substitute” than Christ himself. It may be that aliens are in fact deliberate or unwitting antagonists who play a lethal game in deception which confuse and alter man’s understanding of God’s eternal plan.
It may be that like earthly animals, aliens play no defined role in God’s eternal plan for mans’ salvation. Despite their super intelligence, they may not be aware of God’s plan for mankind in the same manner that animals on earth are likely unaware of it also. For example, despite the Elephant’s intelligence, who can argue that they as a collective species are cognitively aware of God’s actions and plans for mankind? Therefore a super intelligent species from space may in fact have little to no understanding since they play little to no role in God’s strategy.
Point 5: God May Have Other Reasons Why He Created Aliens If They Do Exist
In the event we learn that aliens are neither fallen nor spiritually aware of God’s plan for mankind, this revelation does not necessarily mean that aliens have no purpose. Just because we discover their existence does not mean they have a specific role in relation to God’s plan. The Bible clearly teaches that God created all things for his glory, and that he delights in his creation. Why must we therefore establish a reason for God having created super intelligent beings in another part of the galaxy? Scripture tells us that God created the seas with teeming life of all varieties; some for the mere sake of his own delight in seeing them frolic and play. The same may be true of creatures living elsewhere in the universe that might just come our way.
Overall Christians should not be fearful of the advent of some future discovery that life is out there in some form or another as long as they abide by scripture in regards to their beliefs. Yes there may be a deception at play, and probably there is, but Christians for the most part should bone-up on the subject and avoid it far less. Cheers!
MSH–thanks for sharing; and thanks to others for commenting on this thread.
I don’t have a dog in this fight; however, it does intrigue the heck out of me.
I do have two hypothetical questions, and would be very interested in your responses:
1. If three independent DNA testing labs sequenced a complete genome from a living hominid and a significant percentage of that DNA was determined to be “not of this earth” (i.e., not in any available DNA database), what in your opinion should be the next step? Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the DNA sequencings are achieved through the very best scientifically accepted methods (absence of contamination, etc.), and the results will be favorably peer-reviewed.
2. For the sake of lively banter, I’m going to ask you to argue the other side: From your perspective, what would constitute irrefutable proof that living, flesh-and-blood non-humans have played a direct, and significant role in developing Homo Sapiens?
Thanks,
Dan
First, which independent labs (I want names of the labs, and of the researchers).
Second, where are the findings published with the “not of this world” statement? I want to see peer-reviewed journal material.
I don’t know of any evidence that would or even could show that. We can’t know any part of our DNA is “not of earth” until we found it’s match on some distant planet. DNA from space (if there ever was such a thing) doesn’t fit that description — it’s the old panspermia problem about whether the material began in space or was jettisoned from earth in the distant past. I guess you’d need to have aliens show up, take humans (publicly, with fanfare) back to their home world to prove they’re really from somewhere else (as opposed to being manufactured via synthetic biology here), and then have some feature of their DNA in our with no other explanation. In short, don’t hold your breath.
MSH–thanks for the reply.
I’m a little new at this; it sounds like you’re a bit more familiar with the science-end of things. Can you share some labs that you would trust to do the work? Honestly, I think that every lab on the planet will jump at the chance to sequence living DNA from a non-human hominid.
Do you think that “fake aliens” are being bio-engineered on earth? My guess is that if you can turn a wolf (genetically) into a toy poodle over time, it would be possible to make a person that presents as a “grey alien” from selectively bred humans (distasteful as that may be on moral and ethical grounds).
Thanks,
Dan
Any lab that does serious genetic profiling would be fine. If a specimen purports to be very old, there are labs that specialize in paleo-genetics. The real key though (since competent people/labs are all over the place) is the willingness to have such testing done and the results submitted for peer review. It greatly decreases the opportunity for cheating and silly claims.
The “plasticity” of the dog genome is rather large in that so many dogs with differing characteristics can be produced from it, but this is not true for all species, including human beings. The differing characteristics of the human major ethnic groups show some of the plasticity but they do not differ to the extent that dogs differ. So short Grays bred from human beings is unlikely and would not be a good assumption to make.
Even if no physical evidence of ETs on earth can be demonstrated, there is for Bible-believers still the biblical fact that intelligent, non-human (often humanoid) beings are here on earth, such as the Devil and other angels.
There seems to be two schools of thought on this, that they are either extraterrestrial (ET) as you are suggesting, or “interdimensional”, whatever that means (though it can mean something). As an engineer into physics, I do not find these two alternative hypotheses for describing the rather voluminous material in scripture that describes various higher beings all that different. A sufficiently advanced race capable of interstellar travel is probably applying some kind of multidimensional physics. The references to the heavens in scripture are numerous. They do not seem in scripture to be interdimensional but spatial in 3 (or 4) dimensions. Wormholes and other contrivances of physics make the far-away close at hand.
What makes this intriguing is the possibility that we humans are reaching a point of advancement where the angels, or gods, are interacting more with us, if only to observe more closely. In scripture, they do interact, though on their initiative. Consequently, if they (like the Lord himself) are not subject to our scrutiny, all we can do is follow what evidence comes from various events of an ET or ID nature. Yet they are numerous nowadays.
Dennis – not certain I agree. Scripture does not frequently refer to heavenly creatures as physical beings. It may describe some “angelic” beings in those terms, but those beings seem not to be present in physical form here on earth. Rather I suggest these spiritual beings created by God have spiritual bodies and their primary abode is a heavenly realm with God. As beings with free will, some have clearly chosen to “press into” this world in physical form at least temporarily, and some do the same under clear instruction by God. Neither seem to be here in physical form permanently and all those under God’s instruction materialize in human form which is clearly pointed out by scripture. The event in Eden is a different story and different in that those entities where in their heavenly form.
Brian,
Scripture describes heavenly creatures as intelligent beings, not physical beings. Yet they must be if they have bodies. If by “spiritual body” you mean what Paul does in 1 Cor. 15:44 (the only instance I know of the expression in scripture) then this is not a spirit without a body but a body like that in the age to come. Theologian George Eldon Ladd has explained at length how to the pagan Greeks, man has a body, man has a soul, while to the Yahwist Hebrew mind, man is a body, man is a soul – not parts but aspects of the one being who is man.
I do not find anywhere in scripture talk about “materializing” beings. This sounds like more of a Greek body-soul dualist viewpoint than a biblical and Hebraic present-age – age-to-come dualism.
What it comes down to is creation doctrine. If the character of the Creator is revealed in what is created, then the creation operates by one unified, self-consistent set of principles, not by one set of “physical” laws on one hand, and a different set of “spiritual” laws on the other, or even no laws, like the ancient pagan gods.
What this means for created ETs/angels/gods is that they have a physical form of existence that is more advanced than our present science can explain, not that they operate by a different set of laws – not if the laws of creation reveal the character of the Creator. We do not yet know all the laws of the creation. I expect scientific discoveries to be possible in the future whereby the unexplained events and beings of scripture will become explainable, not that they are of some inscrutable realm that has some other character than what the Creator has manifested in the creation we can scrutinize.
I agree on the Greek thing (or any religion that proposes such) that body and soul are distinct things – God made spirit and flesh one. But that does not exclude the fact that heavenly beings cannot have a body in their own distinct realm, nor take human form when pressing into the material world. Scripture does give clear descriptions of such things – Lot and the Angels God sent to him were not invisible or transparent ethereal and luminescent beings – they took human form. The Angel of The Lord (preincarnate Christ) took human form many times in the Old Testiment. However note that when Angels did appear to people as the Bible describes they weren’t 3-4 foot tall grey colored beings with large heads, four fingers, cat pupils, and black lense covers over their eyes. While the Bible does not desribe their physical appearance in detail in this realm, it does give some indications of what they look like in a heavenly realm. In Lot’s case it’s enough to conclude that these entities were not “aliens” by modern notions. That appearance would seem odd and perhaps frightening to most now and then. In the case of the Garden these entities were in spiritual form with bodies that perhaps were in some cases indeed serpentine. Adam nor Eve would have no fear of such appearances because they knew they were distinctly different but more importantly living in the very real environment of God’s heavenly court, realm, etc. where these entities also resided.
Brian,
Your comments presume the validity of the Greek body-soul dualist viewpoint, a viewpoint which has been investigated at length and found to be in conflict with the biblical worldview. They are also speculative in that your case is built on what scripture does not affirm or claim.
For instance, you assume heavenly beings “take human form” rather than already have human form. There is nothing in scripture (that I have found) which says they take on human form except in the incarnation of Yahweh as a human being. Yahweh appears as humanoid before the incarnation but scripture does not say he is at that time human as Jesus is human.
Angels are humanoids; the Bible presents them as such, as you illustrate. They are not human beings but look similar enough to be called humans because they can do things humans (as we know us) cannot.
So far as the present reports of how ETs look, there is nothing to say that the angels of scripture must fit the descriptions given in the last few decades of beings that look significantly different than human beings. There are exceptions. (See what Frank Stranges says about Valiant Thor, for instance. He is essentially human-looking.)
Forgot to mention on the question concerning “someone” growing “aliens” in a lab I really, really doubt it. There isn’t a shred of evidence that we can clone or create living humanoid entities of high intelligence from a lab dish. More Ufologist bunk in my opinion. Besides, I believe the depiction of a so-called “Grey” originated from abduction cases – not from the Roswell alien description, which by the way resembles Japanese children more than anything else (assuming there were even any bodies found).
Dennis – regarding Valient Thor, Frank Stranges, his book, Ashtar Command, and the claims of intelligent life on Venus you should understand these are fictional events. People who place their religious faith on a so called being that claims he is from Venus (if Mr. Thor even existed), are not holding to a Biblical perspective in any way. “Contactees” like Stranges are in fact the very heart and soul of “UFO Religions” which tend to mix Eastern thought with Gnostic beliefs as means to explain man’s purpose and relationship to God – or in some cases how to become a God themselves. That’s not Biblical and it’s not Christian. You should note that while Thor claimed he knew of Jesus and his divine nature, this neither proves Thor was God sent, an angel, or an alien. There is no evidence this person even existed – if he had and did present himself as such or could have even demonstrated divine capabilities (as he claimed to do), it doesn’t mean he was representing Yahweh in any way shape or form. As scriptures teach, even Satan himself can and does quote scripture and even masquerades as an “angel of light”. You will note that even today this Thor claims to be here on earth, in the US, and has a Facebook page (lol). Read it – what he posts there (or whomever is now pretending to be him) presents nothing Biblical at all – it’s more Eastern thought on how man can transend the physical and become one with the cosmos and hence “be like God”. There was a character in the Garden who said the same thing…and he lied.
Brian,
Thanks for your comments regarding Frank Stranges and Valiant Thor. Stranges is inaccessible for further investigation (deceased) and whatever cult following might have grown out of his story about the Pentagon visit is secondary to me. As I see it, to make anything more out of this strangest of cases, those who were involved with the putative Thor at the Pentagon will have to come forward. Otherwise, apart from what one makes of the testimony of Stranges (on YouTube), there is not enough evidence to draw any firm conclusions.
This is generally the vexation caused by this subject-matter. There is enough evidence to draw the attention of serious truth-seekers, investigators, and scholarly people, yet not enough to draw firm conclusions.
That said, I do share your interest in the subject as driven by the many direct and unassuming incidents of higher beings appearing in the world of human cognizance in the Bible. Those of us who accept the biblical record as historical have grounds for seeking the possible involvement of higher beings in our world of today.