You seem to have already provided the inspiration around here... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Hits? Did I hear a bong being cleaned? I just had my hits, though ... happy 4:20 to all. But I do think the notion of alien religion makes a huge difference to the topic. That is, if the aliens are atheistic, that in and of itself becomes its own issue. But if the aliens have religion ... well, how big a war does anyone expect? Or will the theologies be easily reconciled? What if that religion points toward common living values that transcend the human species: love, fidelity, perpetuity, security, trust ....? I mean, think of the poor Capitalist who would ask the aliens about economy only to find out they've gone communitarian to the point that currency has no use. Think of the poor preacher who asks of miracles merely to find that the technology has advanced so much that doctors merely lay the hands and nanotechnology does the rest? Or what if they've mastered organic energy control so that they're merely causing the healing or other change directly through manipulation of electrical force? The vegetarian that finds that though they don't kill animals, the food base is laboratory-synthesized animal products because of dietary necessities? The genetic supertomato-guy who finds out that vegetarianism worked until they accidentally destroyed the plant kingdom on their world and had to rebuild it? The poor human species, for instance, if there are few common values and this is a Zerg or Gamilon or other warrior-cult? What if they say alien-seed is true? What if it turns out they were lying? The questions of whether the aliens have religion and what that religion looks like, does, and represents, offer strong indicators of what the future experience could be like. I'm thinking of putting together a topic to "build a religion", and this gives me a link I need. Here's the preview: What can you say about the planet of a grey alien? Short, agile, long fingers, black eyes; these are the characteristics I'm starting with, taken from common witness reports. Well, higher gravity (short, agile), possibly young geological structures (long fingers for picking food out of rock crevasses, suggesting younger rock formations), and a stronger UV presence (grey skin, black "shields" over eyes as per scandalous "Alien Autopsy" video). It's all speculation, but there's my first round of speculation. So high-grav, high-UV, geologically young ... what does this say about water, food economy, &c.? Can we build a broad speculation about the alien world? What would the religious values likely be? If the environment is strapped for water, would the redeemer be aquarian? If the environment is harsh, would the god be wrathful and militant? If the environment provided economic surplus, do we see a more introspective, philosophical ideological development? If the environment was demanding economically, do we see a civilized practicality? It's all about what's important to people, on this planet or any other. And if the aliens have no religion, we can restrict the argument to what it means for religious people on earth; if the aliens have religion, though, gods get another chapter in the book of the living experience. It is a fascinating question in all its dimensions. thanx, Tiassa Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
We are God What if the aliens are coming here because they believe us to be their religious ideals? Maybe their religion is based upon us? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
not likely would you base your religion on ants? . . . I'm thinking on the food for thought you provided, Tiassa
Whoa - what if they all worshipped Finlandia? Considering the history of mankind, if they were like us, they'd probably enslave us, kill us all, and/or try to convert us to whatever religion they follow. That would suck.
We aliens are far too advanced to have religion! We fulfil all our spiritual needs by poking ourselves with licorice sticks!
Thought I replied to this already, but my post seems to have disappeared... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Ah, the ant. That sublime, six-legged, little creature that crawls around at our feet. You would think we'd have nothing to learn from this creature, but it cooperates to build such awesome nests, is very efficient at searching for food, and has strength way beyond it's size. Could there be any more perfect being? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! (you don't think the ants are the aliens, do you? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ) Careful. It could be fattening... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
No wonder the licorice sticks decided to cover themselves with candy coating and call themselves "Good & Plenty". Pretty smart of them... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
*backs away from Adam also* I don't want to know where you be "poking" those things...Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And Xev, I am GOD, hence the name Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Sorry Chosen, God is dead Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for God! I am looking for God!" As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances. "Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from it's sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto." Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on it's way, still travelling - it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves." It has been further related that on that same day the madman entered divers churches and there sang a requiem. Led out and quietened, he is said to have retorted each time: "what are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchres of God?" --Friedrich Nietzsche
More on the death of God. The Nobel Prize winner Elie Weisel had lived only for God during his childhood in Hungary; his life had been shaped by the disciplines of the Talmud and he had hoped one day to be initiated into the mysteries of Kabbalah. As a boy, he was taken to Auschwitz and later to Buchenwald. During his first night in the death camp, watching the black smoke coiling to the sky from the crematorium where the bodies of his mother and sister were to be thrown, he knew that the flames had consumed his faith for ever. He was in a world which was the objective correlative of the Godless world imagined by Nietzsche. 'Never should I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live', he wrote years later. 'Never shall I forget these moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. One day the Gestapo hanged a child. Even the SS were disturbed by the prospect of hanging a young boy in front of thousands of spectators. The child who, Weisel recalled, had the face of a 'sad-eyed angel', was silent, lividly pale and almost calm as he ascended the gallows. Behind Weisel, one of the other prisoners asked: 'Where is God? Where is He? It took the child half an hour to die, while the prisoners were forced to look him in the face. The same man asked again: 'Where is God now?' And Weisel heard a voice within him make this answer: 'Where is He? Here He is - He is hanging here on this gallows.' If this God is omnipotent, he could have prevented the Holocaust. If he was unable to stop it, he is impotent and useless; if he could have stopped it and chose not to, he is a monster. Jews are not the only people who believe that the Holocaust put an end to conventional theology. --- A History of God - Karen Armstrong. ---- And where does that leave us? In the biggest wild goose chase in history - the quest for God. Cris
What I find fascinating is how some people can turn a fun topic into a boring one with just one post. Well, I believe the greys may well have come here to study just the ants, because they might be their ancestors, since they seem to have evolved in an insectoid way. So there you go, it's ok to worship ants. Or, what if the greys are a result of a horrible experiment gone totally wrong when they tried to teleport the first human and an ant got thrown in the coctail by mistake, or by purpose?
