Do you believe there are Extraterrestrial beings ?

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I agree that people are not too bright, and i do believe there are things / beings far more intelligent than us somewhere 'out there', but i don't believe in any of the experiment theories ~ i think our universe is a living thing, that we are part of it's self expression, that our limitations are as much an accident of evolution as our abilities, that our spirits will return to their most base form when our individual lives are over (just as our visibly material aspects will), and that the harmonies we create will affect the next incarnation as much as any discord ...our genes will have a healthier impact on nature's evolution if we look after ourselves / each-other now.
The garden of eden story (or the little i recall of it) seemed to me to be about the division of the sexes ~ creating guilt about, and fear of, sexuality.
But our ethical problems began before men and woman started fearing each-others bits; the multiverse is parthenogenic, and the objects and creatures it gave birth to reproduce in a variety of different ways, but people (simultaneously fearing their independence, and thinking they're more special than other life forms) wanted to separate themselves from nature's e.g. hermaphroditic ways, so began emotionally / spiritually distancing themselves from plants, animals, and even (or especially) from intersex people ~ it was inevitable that extremely male and extremely female people would then distance themselves from each-other too. Once prejudice had taken root it snowballed, leaving us where we are now ...looking for another planet to live on so we can build another damned garden of eden.


There's no little meaning behind how we are. We adapt to our environment like anything else (which kinda amuses me, as Earth is the absolute best place for humanity to live--there's nothing out there better than here, folks). When our environment can't handle us, we'll change in some way.

There's no test.

There's no purpose other than to continue species survival; when that goes, the species dies out.

And aliens, well, they're just aliens, that have adapted to whatever/wherever they come from.

They won't be any better than the humans you know. They might be worst though (like little Johny squishing bugs good).

there IS a test, and that is if a civilization can get along well enough to not blow itself up or not let disagreements interfere with maintenance of the common good. a civilization that has lasted long enough to achieve level one [kardachev scale] is likely to have passed that test and are not likely to be worse than us. surviving the hurdle of the technological genie is the test. we as a race are failing that test.

I agree. Some of the most amazing things I've seen accomplished by life have been done by things like plants, insects, and cephalopods.



Sagan addresses this very issue in the book "Demon Haunted World". It's one of my favorites.



Yes, Sagan absolutely did that.
Ellie could no longer assume that Joss' exceptional experience was just an internal delusion.

I wanted to add that actual delusions generally have a random scattering of logical inconsistencies and have little or no attachment to the laws of physics. This is very much like many dreams we have.
Whenever one of these delusions are exceptionally logically consistent, obey the laws of physics, and even go further to reveal additional plausible physical explanations, then it certainly seems reasonable to me to consider that it may not have been a delusion.

I like John Lash's views on how ETs are explained in early Gnostic writings.

http://www.metahistory.org/gnostique/ar ... rusion.php

http://www.metahistory.org/gnostique/ar ... ligion.php

http://www.metahistory.org/gnostique/ar ... eaming.php

http://www.metahistory.org/gnostique/ar ... eption.php

^^^
that is fascinating

Yes I've read it. Sagan deals with aliens in chapter 4. His fundamental mantra with aliens is;
The reliable cases are uninteresting," Sagan wrote of UFO sightings, "and the interesting cases are unreliable.

It's a cliche that illustrates that he never took the subject particularly seriously, generally skeptics with a PhD in front of their name enjoy debunking UFOs and alien abduction (which is fine) but they never really read the evidence or testimony or investigate the phenomena beyond joining other skeptics in automatically putting a story or sighting or abduction experience in the BS basket before even looking at the data.

I tend to to agree with late Harvard psychiatry Professor John Mack who investigated alien abduction. He questioned the validity of of many of his critics who were journalists, astrophysics/physics professors (such as Sagan), engineers or chemists trying to tackle subject matter as complex as false or repressed memories as a explanation for abduction phenomena, a subject area clearly they were never qualified to make an educated assessment over.

Yes interesting. The pattern behind the words is very familiar as it repeats at various points in our cultures.


I found this passage quite significant:




I see this pattern emerging once again within new-age beliefs.
They have adopted some misconceptions about quantum physics in order to support a belief of the self-god, in which each individual consciousness creates their own reality.
This misconception is used to separate us from our humanity (innate wisdom) and provides the mechanism for the entire structure of new-age belief to be folded back into the hive mind.
It's a never ending battle of memes.
No matter how much we are warned, we fall into the same traps, described anciently as "tricksters" that are not of this world (not tangible) but are able to influence our behaviors.
They were describing memes and the then more primitive hive mind.

I think Sagan gave the subject more acknowledgment than most in his field. He had to keep his personal views separate from his claims as a scientist though, and lacking more evidence to suggest otherwise had to attribute most abduction experiences to sleep paralysis, something that is very hard for most people to interpret accurately, especially if they have a low degree of metacognition.

Sagan acknowledged the possibilities in every way, writings, movie, video series, etc... and entertained such possibilities as "maybe they are already here, but just in hiding" which is a very reasonable possibility as cloaking strategies were a natural development of life on earth extremely early on after life emerged.
Another example is our developed scientific method by which we study nature. The intention is to remove the effects of the observer/scientist (along with other variables) out of the experiment or observation, so as to protect the integrity of the data.

Any alien intelligence here to study would be beyond foolish not to follow this sort of strategy to even a much higher degree than we do.

Sagan is of course not the least bit qualified in this area so he defers judgement to others who bring in the sleep paralysis hypothesis. Sleep paralysis according to John Mack (A former Harvard psychiatry professor) has fairly similar symptoms which are clearly detectable. Mack demonstrated that he could show alien abduction phenomena manifesting in a variety of forms in native peoples and across cultures as well as in people who were wide awake when they were being abducted. Of course the counter argument is that nobody is immune to mass hysteria including grass skirt wearing natives and that people who are awake are hallucinating (yes we've heard it all before)...


This has also been used ad naseum by skeptics. Scientific theory does not actually require an experimental design. Science is equally well served by observational and descriptive information in the environment. Where the argument becomes unstuck for the UFO folk and a boon for the skeptics is the inability to demonstrate repeatability of phenomena (obviously nobody knows when the next ET event will take place) or reliability of evidence (i.e. smoking gun).


That assumes they even need to come to to study us!

We have a few biologists who are willing to go live with the apes for extended periods, so I'm sure there are a few aliens who would want to hang out with us, - probably safely cloaked though.

They probably require therapy afterwards though to return back to normal.

Idk if there are advanced alien civilizations visiting earth. I will mostly doubt it until a smoking gun, or anal probe is found.

But I have always had a recurring daydream/fantasy of what it would be like if I did run into them, alone. I always envision them as non-aggressive and the question is would I go with them, voluntarily back to their planet.

When I was young, sometimes at night when I was alone in a odd place, like an empty school yard or empty stretch of road I would think of it and sit and wait pretending it could happen.

Back then, before I had a family I would have gone. But that was imagining them looking basically like us. If they looked like giant wood lice I think I would pass.

how many people have heard of the "fire in the sky" experience of Travis Walton?

If aliens are interdimensional then there is no need to leave the comfort of their lounge chairs. They can just send non-piloted probes (drones) into our planet and watch us. Even if they needed to probe us they can send their grey alien clones to do all probing.

Seen the movie and read the book. Walton has not (to my understanding) financially benefited nor did his co-workers. His experience (especially being found naked 1 week after disappearing) seems a little far fetched to be self-inflicted but I suppose a hard nosed skeptic could claim the story was for publicity and he took it further because he was delusional.

While I've got all of your attention

Would anyone care to make a comment on this recent article?
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29342407