Aliens and Weak-Minded Fools

More mail! In my blog, my readers know, I focus on religions and, particularly, Christianity. It isn't that I think that Christianity is particularly bad as religions go. Put in cultural context, I feel it's better than Islam and Hinduism, really. I know that it's because of cultural context -- that when Christians could get away with the shit Muslims and Hindus get away with they certainly did. I know that Christianity was stopped from all the murderous excesses that one sees in other religions. Christians wiped out a third of Germany and people said that maybe religious power and religious choice shouldn't be quite so important and worked to rein in the power of religion, over Christian protestations.

But, that said, there are other weird things going on in the world and because of my blog and YouTube, I occasionally get to contact them. Like . . . Truthism. Alas, it doesn't appear to have any relationship whatsoever to truthiness. And the author of the site assures the reader again and again that the site is "real" and not a hoax or humor.

And then it gets into the meat with this little snatch of quotable material:

Truthism 101: Matrix Basics

For those of you who have been asleep your
entire lives, here are some basic things about
reality that you just might want to catch up on

We snap straight into it! You've been asleep your whole life and there are basic things you need to catch up on. Slacker! If you were as smart at the Truthism.com guy you wouldn't be caught with your pants down!

From there, there is an amusing section with these headers: "How Human Beings Deny the Truth", "What the Truth is Not", "The Great Contradictions of You So-called Rationalists", "Officialdom", "Your Ego" and "Morality". The author says some things that are utterly true. It is true that humans often do deny the truth for a variety of reasons and they sometimes do blow off the truth as being funny, hilarious, entertaining, or call people who force uncomfortable truths as mad, illogical and self-absorbed. It is true, too, that the truth is not always popular, easy to swallow or socially acceptable. Without doubt it is true that the winners write the history books and they do so with an eye to promoting their own actions and culture as superior. Likewise, no historian I know doubts that a person's ego can sometimes make it impossible to see a truth that goes against their most inherently held beliefs. And, I think it is obvious that those in power do, in fact, often possess an extremely stunted moral sense.

However, that doesn't mean that any idea that is funny is therefore true. It doesn't mean a crazy, illogical, self-absorbed person is therefore right. Just because something is unpopular doesn't make it so.

But this part is so dear, I'll quote it:

You do not have access to Top Secret government information or to Top Secret government facilities. Nor are you a member of any of Earth's secret societies. In addition, you were not born 5,000 years ago; you were born only within the last 100 years, so you were not able to see history unfold with your own eyes.

Yet, despite all of these undeniable facts, you claim that you already know what the truth is. That is, just like how you know for a fact that 1+1=2, you also claim that you know for a fact what the truth is. So, um, how the hell is that possible???

But the author does have access to Top Secret government information and facilities? He's a member of earth's secret societies? He's five thousand years old and has watched history unfold before his eyes? Somehow, I doubt it. But he goes on to claim that we're all just brainwashed by authority figures and dupes of the global conspiracies that run the world.

Yes, he's a conspiracy theorist. The earth is ruled by the governing elite that constructed the Pyramids in Egypt. They got this knowledge from the Anunnaki, or reptilian aliens who genetically modified humans thousands of years ago to serve as their slaves. The "Reptilians" have indoctrinated us so completely that we are too "weak-minded" to fathom that they exist. Fortunately, we don't have to! We have Truthism.com to do that for us!

Still, there are some gems:

Strangely enough, though, here on Earth, the concept of an imaginary god is perfectly acceptable, and is by no means considered to be the "ultimate crazy fantasy." Yet, the concept of aliens is taboo, and is ultra-ridiculed by society in a freakish "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil"-type fashion.

This is, I think, true. Of course, on my blog, the concept of an imaginary god isn't terribly acceptable. I'm an atheist. It is the ultimate crazy fantasy, even crazier, really, than this stuff because it has been accepted by billions for thousands of years, and has shaped our society in innumerable ways. Still, I think that the idea that humans were genetically adapted by aliens to be almost equally fraudulent. Where's the proof? So far, Truthism.com has given absolutely no logical or physical evidence for the existence of DNA uplifting space aliens.

I actually find it easy to believe there are other intelligent life in the universe. Heck, I'm willing to believe that intelligent life out there in the universe would consider us to be woefully stupid and backwards (just like I suspect that in a thousand years we'll look back and say how woefully stupid and backwards we were). I accept that possibility, that the universe is big and it seems increasingly likely that the conditions for earth-style life are pretty common. Amino acids and terrestrial planets seem to litter the galaxy. But from that vague belief that aliens might exist, and there is no compelling reason at least some of them wouldn't be more technologically sophisticated than we are and might have come to this planet in times past for a variety of purposes.

However, even if they did come to earth for our resources -- which is unlikely, by the way except for our biological resources -- they would have come here with the full technological weight of an advanced space faring civilization. It is impossible, of course, to imagine what their technology would look like . . . except it would have to be far superior to our own requiring them to be able to build generation ships, or accelerate to a very high fraction of light speed (well over 99%), or to travel faster than light speed (my money is on the middle one -- generation ships would be too subjectively slow to make broad exploration of the galaxy possible and the is, I would think, be too energy costly for general use . . . tho' I could be wrong). Whatever the option, their technology would make ours look primitive in comparison. And it would probably be pretty . . . weird. We're getting there, ourselves. What will, in the fullness of time, be done with biotechnology, cybernetics and nanotechnology? All good questions. But it's likely to be weird and in ways that fundamentally change the definition of humanity. While it is not possible to know what alien technology would look like, if they're to the point where they're exploring the universe they're past the point where they'd have to answer these sorts of questions. However, it would be highly unlikely that aliens, on arriving on earth, would spend too much time making apes to do their work. Far more likely that they'd bring their robot legions with them to do it.

Moreover, alien intervention on that scale would leave traces behind, and more than just human life. We can see this from our own colonization efforts. When a technologically superior people invade or colonize a place, they bring with their their tools and techniques. So, when the Spaniards invaded Mexico they swiftly built things in the Spanish style. When Americans during WWII landed on Polynesian islands to build air bases, they left behind asphalt runways and concrete bunkers. While they might build with local materials, they do so in a technologically sophisticated style and leave behind durable examples of their presence.

So, where are the 5000 year old steel-reinforced concrete bunkers, or refined aluminum or titanium-steel beams? No. What we have are pyramids. Despite the fact that a pyramid is, at the end of the day, just a mound of stones we're expected to believe that this is the paragon of alien engineering on earth. It's childish to say that obvious neolithic construction techniques were inspired by aliens, especially when no durable proof of alien existence has been found.

My favorite "proof" is the neolithic carvings and drawings, like this one:



Aliens arrived in ships that looked like . . . Buck Rogers spaceships? The "proof" is also in the form of jewelry and the like from Pre-Columbian America that looks vaguely like delta winged jet fighters. This is not proof, of course, of aliens -- any more than modern sci-fi art of space ships is proof of alien space ships. It's fascinating how they'll take a little bit of data and stretch and twist it to fit their preconceived notions. It reminds me of . . . religious people!

Really, it seems to me that in the end that the alien/conspiracy people are driven by many of the same impulses as religious people -- they just have made a slightly more plausible sounding argument insofar that it doesn't require any supernatural agency. But when you ask for proof, they do pretty much the precise same thing that theists do and take little dots of data and stretch them to encompass their entire bizarre theory while completely ignoring or ridiculing those that point out that 1. their theory is bizarre and 2. there is no real proof for it. Like with religion, they'll misinterpret or give specious interpretations of limited data while using arguments identical to the god of the gaps reasoning saying that the real evidence is out there but that we're unable to see it due to our weak-mindedness because of alien indoctrination. Which seems the same to me as saying that I'd see god, too, if not for my sin-induced weakness and the indoctrination of Satan.

Still, I do get some interesting emails, these days!