Posted on 05/02/2013 6:04:40 AM PDT by Fennie
standard Area 51 claims
***They occur over a military airbase, correct? Doesn’t Ockham’s Razor dictate that this portends more towards a secret-weapon hypothesis rather than the ET hypothesis? Or do you actually believe that aliens run our guvmint?
May God bless you always and in every way.
Well said, mitch5501!
I had a pretty good immersion in "new age" thinking a few decades back — which postulated the existence of the Hidden Masters, a hierarchy of spiritual beings who really do run everything that takes place in the universe. If one signs up for the "training," and finds the right "spiritual master" to guide it, one can through one's own efforts eventually become such a spiritual being oneself — to, as it were, promote one's self into godhood.
Now G. I. Gurdjieff (I mentioned him in an earlier post) was a very prominent New Age guru. As mentioned, in his book Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, he has Satan and his collaborators racing all over the universe in space ships, trying to run things. What makes Gurdjieff unique among such gurus is that he points out — and laughs at — all the stupid things that "go wrong" when these "hidden masters" get their hands on things....
It's hard to tell where Gurdjieff "is coming from." He is a self-admitted master jokester. So I guess we need to take him with a grain of salt.
I only mention this, dear brother, because you suggested that "ETs" might be malevolent beings; i.e., those of Satan's party. The Holy Scriptures are silent about rocket ships; but they are not silent about the presence of Evil Ones — malevolent beings — in the World.
Or then again, maybe Kevmo's right, and UFO sightings evidence a secret government weapons program.
It seems there is no "hard" evidence for either view — or any view for that matter — at least so far. So I certainly wouldn't want to rush to the conclusion that just because there is life like us on Earth, there is life like us elsewhere in the universe. As dearest Alamo-Girl has already pointed out, if God did create "humanlike" creatures — living beings possessing soul, intelligence and self-consciousness; i.e., beings in His own image — that reside elsewhere in the Universe, He did not tell us about it.
So please forgive me if I'm a tad "agnostic" re: this issue of ETs and UFOs. As far as I'm concerned, the jury's still out.
BTW, I don't doubt that people who report such sightings have very likely seen something real. It's just that they cannot really tell us exactly what it is they have seen. But they do hold opinions about what they have seen.
Thanks so very much for writing, dear brother Mitch!
The Holy Scriptures are silent about rocket ships;
***Ezekiel may have had a vision of one.
Ez 1:15-21
15-16 As I watched the four creatures, I saw something that looked like a wheel on the ground beside each of the four-faced creatures. This is what the wheels looked like: They were identical wheels, sparkling like diamonds in the sun. It looked like they were wheels within wheels, like a gyroscope.
17-21 They went in any one of the four directions they faced, but straight, not veering off. The rims were immense, circled with eyes. When the living creatures went, the wheels went; when the living creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted off. Wherever the spirit went, they went, the wheels sticking right with them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures went, the wheels went; when the creatures stopped, the wheels stopped; when the creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted off, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
Shhh...
I thought you were about to blow our cover...
Well,I wouldn’t insist that they don’t exist but I don’t find anything scriptural that compels me to think they do and the universe being really really big doesn’t either.
***We covered this probability in an interesting thread several years ago, where the resident abiogenesis adherents refused to plug in their assumptions to the Drake Equation. Dr. Coppedge’s numbers are especially eye opening.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1904271/posts?page=1#1
Oooooppps! sorry!!!
Thank you, dear brother in Christ, for reminding me of Ez 1:15-21!!! I'd forgotten about Ezekiel's vision.
Sounds a lot like what people are reporting in the here and now re: UFOs. Curiouser and curiouser....
I can't shake the suspicion that a UFO sighting is somehow at bottom a psychic phenomenon.
But then two questions arise: What is the cause of this phenomenon, and what purpose does it serve? At which point, I usually stop thinking about the problem.
Thank you again, dear Kevmo!
It's amazing to me how much they did know; and how much modern science owes to them, though this is rarely acknowledged nowadays.
I am speaking of the presocratic and classical philosophers of ancient Athens, and preeminently of Plato.
Regarding Plato's unparalleled contribution to human thought, it has been said that "all of philosophy is but a recapitulation of Plato." Plato himself, at least in part, is a recapitulation of the great thinkers of an age older than his own; e.g., Pythagoras and Heraclitus especially.
Yet Plato was a true original in his discoveries. I believe it was he who first identified and "isolated" psyche — self, soul — as an object of study. It was he who sought the relations between the Kosmos and the Unknown God "Beyond" the Kosmos, which gives the Kosmos its Order.
Indeed, "order" is what the Greek word kosmos means. It was Plato's insight that this "order" could not arise sui generis from materials available in the Kosmos itself, but has a transcendent Source, "located" entirely outside the Kosmos. He also said that, in relation to this Kosmos, man was "mikcrokosmos," the eikon or image of the Kosmos, who recapitulates within himself all levels of cosmic hierarchical order.
Plato characterized the God Beyond as Nous, or Divine Mind. It turns out the highest level of the hierarchy of cosmic order is Divine Nous (though it is not "in" this world). At next level below, we find human nous. Thus Plato suggests that God and man can "resonate" together — even though for Plato, apparently the God Beyond has no characterization as Personality.
So I started writing an essay. I'll very likely finish it, too; but wonder whether anyone would find it appropriate to this discussion!
It wouldn't have much to do with UFOs. That seems to be the main topic of interest right now.
Thank you ever so much for your reference to the Great White Throne Judgment. Indeed, in all likelihood the vast majority of us sinners may well have a lot to be sorry for on that day.... especially as we are confronted by all the "roads not taken"....
I'm not sure it's an either/or scenario.I think Kevmo's use of Occam's Razor is apt.What any purpose might be,other than the obvious military implications,is beyond me.Then again,the god of this world has been busy for a very very long time laying groundwork for the eventual appearance of someone the world will consider very very special.ie:'Spiritual Master'...'Ascended Master'...'Interdimensional Being'...'ET'...'most highly evolved man'...'World Teacher' etc etc.All of them seen far and wide as 'saviours'and all of them subconsciously seen as filling that hole in man.That is the lens through which I view this entire discussion.
Sometimes it all just sounds like some sort of cosmic Cargo-cult.
As harmless as doves but as wise as serpents seems very apt right now in this where/when.
"Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices" (2 corinthians 2:11)
"Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:13)
Thanks for the reply dear bb!
Grace and that peace that passes all understanding to you all!
You had me right there!
"Indeed, in all likelihood the vast majority of us sinners may well have a lot to be sorry for on that day.... especially as we are confronted by all the "roads not taken"...."
Or indeed when we came across a Ferrari "in a field" and thinking we knew it all,jumped in and floored it! 8-)
There must be literally billions of civilizations out there! Simply because the universe is so big and huge and vast,because there's just so much room? I wonder if I opened a heap of bank accounts all over the place and applied Drake's equation to it would I get rich?
To my thinking (gulp)if you don't accept that life 'just happened' without any uncaused cause then that equation is little more than blather.
I agree with you.The real mystery lies in what is not seen,if you get my drift.
There must be literally billions of civilizations out there! Simply because the universe is so big and huge and vast,because there’s just so much room?
***The original SETI project assumed that there might be one planet per sun that is in the habitable zone. It’s a reasonable enough assumption. But then it assumed a 1/100 chance of life evolving from nothing, surviving the process, and getting to the point of being intelligent to generate radio waves.
http://www.rae.org/enzymes.html
Coppedge’s calculations of 1 in 10^123 for the formation of a protein of 445 amino acids in length, and 1 in 10^29345 for the formation of an aggregate of proteins minimal for the existence of life are computed on the basis of the left-handed amino acid problem alone.
So the SETI project was off by 29,343 orders of magnitude. It only needs to be off by 50 orders of magnitude to be impossible, by the mathematical definition.
I wonder if I opened a heap of bank accounts all over the place and applied Drake’s equation to it would I get rich?
The conjecture that extra-terrestrial visitors are Satanic is fascinating. Seems to me he would have a lot to gain from making a big show and unsettling people.
But we cannot be fooled.
If ALL the 10^120 atoms in the universe were available at every second in the last 15 billion years (i.e., the age of the universe) for these abiogenesis reactions and you popped those assumptions into the Drake equation, I think you’d end up with the SETI project being off by only 20,000 orders of magnitude rather than the generated figure. It is still... utterly... impossible.
bank accounts
/bank accounts/
***Yup. If you invested one penny into this venture and won, there wouldn’t be enough molecules in the universe to print the $100 bills required to pay you off.
The conjecture that extra-terrestrial visitors are Satanic is fascinating. Seems to me he would have a lot to gain from making a big show and unsettling people.
***It wouldn’t be that big of a jump for some power-hungry military type who’s involved in these secret weapon projects to try to claim they’re extraterrestrial or worthy of worship as a living god.
It seems there is no “hard” evidence for either view — or any view for that matter — at least so far.
***Read the book, “Intercept UFO” by Renato Vesco. It presents “hard” evidence for the secret weapon theory. It costs less than $20 with shipping, normally, from Amazon.
But I do hope you'll post it as a thread of its own, hopefully in the Religion Forum or News/Activism where more posters will see it. News/Activism may be swamped by all the scandal coverage though, so the Religion Forum might be better over the next few weeks.
Plato characterized the God Beyond as Nous, or Divine Mind. It turns out the highest level of the hierarchy of cosmic order is Divine Nous (though it is not "in" this world). At next level below, we find human nous. Thus Plato suggests that God and man can "resonate" together — even though for Plato, apparently the God Beyond has no characterization as Personality.
They are deep issues I suspect many consider at quiet times throughout their lives, when they aren't being bombarded by the necessities of day-to-day affairs.
At least for me, the quiet times are when the big questions come to mind, e.g. "Why this instead of something else or nothing at all?"
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