The End of Days: Cancelled Due To Unforseen Circumstances: Part Two

The End of Days should have happened a long, long time ago, 80 generations ago in fact – if it were to happen at all. They didn’t end, though many hope, pray and predict they still will. I say they won’t. Why? Nearly all the players have exited stage left - and right. So, it’s not the end of days that’s coming, rather the twilight of the gods that have come, with just a mere handful around now. We call them the ‘Greys’.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

5) End of the World: When it comes to the end of the world, at least in Biblical mythology, you get various buzz phrases like: Book of Revelation; the Apocalypse; Armageddon; the Second Coming; the End of Days, etc. There’s been more than just a minor industry spawned by this concept. So, we’ve had the hype, where’s the substance?

Alas, no substance, because the end of the world (according to Biblical mythology) won’t happen IMHO due to unforseen circumstances beyond God’s (and the gods) control.

Jesus Christ (hereafter J.C.) said those End of Days (the end of the world as we knew it) would occur within the lifetime of those he spoke to. Here are some relevant quotes from the King James Version of the Bible that verifies Jesus stating that many of those hearing his words would be alive to see the End of Days and his Second Coming: Note: [PL] equals Punch Line.

Mark 9: 1

[PL] 1: And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

Mark 13: 23-30

23: But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things.

24: But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,

25: And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.

26: And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.

27: And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.

28: Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near:

29: So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors.

[PL] 30:  Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.

Mark 14: 62

[PL] 62: And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.

Matthew 16: 27-28

27: For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

[PL] 28: Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

Matthew 24: 29-34

29: Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

30: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

31: And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

32: Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

33: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

[PL] 34: Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

Now either J.C. hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about, or the End of Days he thought was imminent has now been cancelled (2000 years on is a bit of a stretch to call it a mere postponement). IMHO, if it hasn’t happened by now, it’s not going to.

Finally, and more than just a tad relevant, 100% of all End of Days prophecies, and there have been thousands of them, scholarly or otherwise; have failed to come to pass; so much for the Bible being the literal word of God; so much for spot-on Biblical accuracy. I hope all Fundamentalists and especially those TV Evangelists take note of this (not that they will of course).

6) Oops – Those End of Days Cancelled: The Gods Leave, Never to Return: The players have left (or been taken off) the field – that’s the unforseen circumstances bit that J.C. didn’t hit upon. Okay, the players left the field, they vowed to return, they haven’t returned; the field is well and truly covered in weeds by now, if not built over for a high-rise or two. So, what went so horribly wrong? Well here’s my take on things given my initial premise that the gods aren’t gods but extraterrestrials behaving badly, very badly.

That being the case, I surmise that God and crew along with most of the other polytheistic gods who’s behaviour wasn’t all that much better, were recalled back to home base, relieved of duty and made to ‘please explain’ their gross violations of whatever version of a Prime Directive they have. Since no amount of explaining will convincingly explain away their atrocities on our home planet, they have now been subjected to whatever justice system these extraterrestrials have – at best imprisoned (or equivalent); at worst, executed. If the latter, “good riddance to bad rubbish” applies. 

That recall (or forced removal) probably happened shortly after J.C.;s demise. J.C. seems to be the last of our deities. Before J.C. we were awash with deities, thousands and thousands of them – Polynesia; Asia; North, South and Mesoamerica; the Norse counties; as well as the Greek/Roman pantheon we know so well. Only Antarctica was deity free, though I’ve yet to double-check that with the native penguins. Then they all went away, probably kicking and screaming. At least to the best of my knowledge there have been no verified or historically confirmed sightings of any deities in the past 2000 years, though they used to be commonplace and walked (and raped and pillaged and strutted their bloodthirsty stuff) among men (and women).

7) Modern Times: Fast forward to modern times and we find that there are still a few of these pseudo-deities hanging around our turf – we call them the ‘Greys’ and atrocities are still being committed. There’s animal abuse and kidnapping and all sorts of unauthorised medical experimentation (i.e. livestock mutilations and alien abductions). These relatively minor atrocities (not real violations of their Prime Directive) are probably and conveniently overlooked by those alien powers-that-be on the grounds that they need some sort of presence here; an alien spy network is in order and in their interests in order to keep tabs on us least one day we unexpectedly pay them a visit and return their favours – revenge will be sweet. Meantime…

Conclusion: If you’re eagerly waiting for the End of Days, have a nice wait. The odds are greater you’ll find a pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow first; but at least you’ll have something to do – search for the pot; spend the gold – while you wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, then wait some more. 

The End of Days: Cancelled Due To Unforseen Circumstances: Part One

The End of Days should have happened a long, long time ago, 80 generations ago in fact – if it were to happen at all. They didn’t end, though many hope, pray and predict they still will. I say they won’t. Why? Nearly all the players have exited stage left - and right. So, it’s not the end of days that’s coming, rather the twilight of the gods that have come, with just a mere handful around now. We call them the ‘Greys’.

Introduction: I start the story here to point out that 1) behind all mythology, including Biblical mythology lurks a tiny grain of historical truth and that 2) God isn’t a supernatural deity but just one of many extraterrestrials who have arrived on Earth eons before and have divided jurisdiction over various terrestrial geographical areas among themselves. God’s patch of turf to oversee and govern was of course what we now call the Middle East. The logic behind that is too long and complicated to go into again; I’ve done that previously. Let’s just say if you believe in God then you actually believe in extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial intelligence and ‘ancient astronauts’. Since our mob of ‘gods’ are extraterrestrials, they must have arrived in spaceships, one of which, for lack of a better name I’ll call the Starship Heaven under the command of Captain God (or His more alien sounding name, Yahweh). 

The End of Days/Second Coming was supposed to have happened by the year 100 AD at the very latest, probably earlier according to no less an authority than Jesus Christ himself. It ain’t happened, so what went wrong? Well, what went wrong was probably due to that motley and rather nasty crowd of extraterrestrial cast and crew (God and His; the gods and their alien hangers-on) being arrested, tied and convicted for all those gross violations of their Prime Directive against us, as well as their planned atrocities we know as the apocalypse or Armageddon (or polytheistic equivalents).

Our gods, including God, now convicts, are now probably still cooling their alien heels in the slammer of whatever extra-solar planet they originally hailed from. Let’s look at and trace the background to this scenario.

1) Wars between the Gods: The mutiny that Captain God of the Starship Heaven faced was just one of many in mythology. In the Judeo-Christian lore, we have angels loyal to God vs. angels loyal to Satan. We all know the story how those not loyal to God got the heave-ho, though it was rather more a case of a ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ where Captain Bligh won and the mutineers were exiled.

Mythology is full of turf disputes – wars in heaven – the second best known example being the ten years war between the Titans and the Olympians. And we all know who won that contest, and if you need a hint, think of those Olympic Games and how they are not called the Titan Games.

In the mythology of the Norse lands, the Aesir and Vanir War was a war that occurred between one clan of gods, the Aesir (Odin, Thor, etc.) and another tribe, the Vanir. So these two groups of gods fought a war over turf, but in this case the war ultimately resulted in the unification of the two clans into a single tribe of gods. The deities Njord (daddy to), Freyr (the son), and Freya (the daughter) were members of the Vanir.

In ancient Mesopotamia, you’ll find references to a conflict between the older and primordial gods and the next generation of younger gods. For example you have Enlil (King of the gods) challenged by his daughter, hardly daddy’s little girl in this case, Inana (or Inanna), goddess of sex, fertility and war. To make long stories shorter, this older vs. younger generation conflict ultimately resulted in the epic battle between Marduk and Tiamat.

Even in tranquil Polynesia you had the god Tu (or Tumatauenga) who wanted to do in mum and dad – the earth mother and sky father gods Rangi (or Ranginui) and Papa (or Papatuanuku). Yet another domestic power struggle apparently.

2) Gods Behaving Badly: God’s not the only SOB. The gods not only committed mayhem on each other but took special delight in singling out us humans for a bit of the old blood sports. Of course, based on the authority of the Old Testament, this was especially true for God.

God’s record on human rights violations puts Him heads and shoulders above any and all human dictators, historical, recent or present that you care to name. God is a bloodthirsty, vengeful, egotistical tyrant. The authority for that statement is provided by the Bible itself which provides dozens of case studies that run counter to those who would like to persist in the fiction that God is a loving God who cares for each and every one of us. Read the Bible and learn that the phrase “loving God” is an oxymoron – a total contradiction in terms. No official representative of any monotheistically inspired Church of God based on the Bible should be able to say with a straight face that “God loves you” – the hypocrisy would be sickening.

However, it’s rather unfair to single out God alone as bloodthirsty. We all know how bloodthirsty the Aztecs, Maya and Incas were, sacrificing thousands upon thousands of victims, not all of them POWs by any means, in honour of their gods, and in very Old Testament like fashion. And more than one deity (like Zeus) tried to drown the lot of us.

Fortunately for the human species, the gods (including God) left (or were dragged away kicking and screaming) before they exterminated the lot of us. The Big Question is why. We know they left because many said they would return. Second comings aren’t unique to God and company.

3) Second Comings: However, the exact reason for the departure of the gods (including God) isn’t detailed in our historical literature, but they apparently vowed many eons before General Douglas MacArthur to return.

So we have the Greek/Roman Astraea, a goddess of justice, daughter of Jupiter (but not Mrs. Jupiter), who got entirely fed up with humans and their violent ways, and left for the heavens, but vowing (at a time never mentioned) to return to usher in a new Golden Age! One question needs asking. How come she pointed her finger at humans as being violent without first looking and criticisg her own kind?

Quetzalcoatl was one of the most important of ‘gods’ in the Mesoamerican pantheon, starting with the Olmecs, but also the Maya, and most notably the Aztecs. Quetzalcoatl must have left promising to return one day for the Aztecs welcomed Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors with open arms thinking this event was the return of their beloved Quetzalcoatl and company (though there’s now some academic doubt about the reality of that relationship). Needless to say, they found out differently and much to their sorrow that Cortes was not Quetzalcoatl.

And of course most relevant to most of us is THAT Second Coming, otherwise hyped as the End of Days, and boy is it ever hyped.

4) The Hype: It would seem that every time there is a natural disaster (even oil spills qualify), anywhere in the world, but especially in America, right-wing Christian Fundamentalists and TV Evangelists jump for joy, do high fives and are more than happy to point out, even gleefully telling “I told you so”, and the more the destruction, the better the mayhem, the greater the death toll, the higher they jump, the happier they are and the more they rub their hands gleefully together. Why? It’s to them yet another Sign that the End of Days are near.

Well they are both right and wrong. There will be an end of days when the Sun engulfs us and roasts us alive, making global warming seem downright frigid in comparison. A real Hell on Earth certainly should appeal to the Fundamentalist and Evangelist mobs. However, it’s that ‘near’ part that’s in error. We won’t be solar barbequed for another five billion years, give or take a hundred million or so years in either direction.

As to THAT End of Days that so many are looking forward to – and if it takes disasters to convince the faithless and bring it on, so be it - sorry to rain on your parade folks, the solar barbeque is probably going to be something only for your great, great, great (add several million more “greats” here) grandkids to look forward to and enjoy. 

Of course if our Fundamentalists and TV Bible Thumpers had lived 500 years ago, or 1000 years ago, or 1500 years ago, they would have been strutting out the same old line, the same old hype, the same old gloom and doom (gloom and doom for the rest of us sinners that is).

How long can these Evangelists go on playing the same old End of Days song before credibility runs out? - Seemingly indefinitely if you’re already preaching to the converted and/or the gullible.  No doubt 500 years from now their descendents will be screaming out the same old tired tune.

I could of course name the names of many of these showbiz Evangelists, but you Americans know who I am talking about – those who live in opulent lifestyles thanks to your generous donations supporting their cause – the style of life to which they’ve become accustomed!

To be continued…

Death, and All That Jazz: Part Two

“Nothing is certain but death and taxes”, so the saying goes, and while much has been written about taxes, death is my topic under consideration. The concept or subject of death (and closely related subjects) has (much like taxes) spawned billions of words (and conversations), millions of documents, multi-thousands of texts – and for all of that, we’re still none the wiser when it comes to death, or at least post-death! [Taxes we understand!]

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Anyway, back to the question as what is or results in death, I offer the following which is pure speculation on my part and probably shouldn’t be taken seriously – probably. My basic premise is that death is the result of the irrevocable lose of “The Inner You” – “The Inner  You” being that part of the physical you that defines or is your personality, wisdom, emotions, memory, ‘soul’ (if you will), sense of self, and all other traits that make you an individual; the individual that you are. That’s the loss of your mind in other words.

I suspect that a clue to death is to be found in those unfortunate individuals who do survive after having suffered a prolonged lack of oxygen to the brain. These ‘living vegetables’ (as it were), while maybe having perfectly functioning body organs or systems, have lost most of their mind – the “The Inner You” - facets, like memory, personality, knowledge, etc. and as such, usually hence require round the clock, 24/7, care for the rest of their natural lives as the ability to somehow get those essentials back is apparently lost.  The hardware is still there, but the software has been largely deleted or at least severely corrupted.

Notice I said immediately above that most of “The Inner You” is gone in these surviving individuals, but not all. Death is the total inability of your brain to further store, process, or add to those “The Inner You” elements. I surmise that lack of oxygen causes those bio-molecules (in the brain) that are part and parcel of housing and processing the inner you -“The Inner You” - to break down, presumably into much simpler bio-chemicals which don’t have the ability to store and process those “The Inner You” elements. Therefore, you lose your abilities and processes essential to such operations, and the longer oxygen starvation goes on, the greater the loss, until “The Inner You” is totally lost, and you die.  Now while that’s pretty simplistic, and there’s probably much more to the death process I’m sure, it’s also pretty probable that lose of “The Inner You” is an essential part of the death process and what death is. Why?

It’s clear that you have an automatic nervous system that functions independently of your conscious mind – you breathe in your sleep; you don’t have to think about keeping your heart beating, and lots of other body processes are on automatic pilot. But, “The Inner You” has a lot of mastery over your physical body too. “The Inner You” (call it the conscious mind) can dictate to your body to walk across the room, or do unnatural acts like very rapidly blink your eyelids for no apparent reason – just because you want to. If 100% of “The Inner You” is lost , the physical body has lost too much of the software (including ultimately the automatic piloting) that’s in charge of regulating or controlling it, and thus the physical body, albeit there’s a lag time or delay, follows the death process that’s already been legally and medically verified. Perhaps all this is an example of ‘mind over matter’ – lose the mind, and the matter goes to pot! [Or, if there’s no mind, then it doesn’t matter anymore!]

All of this may be just a very long-winded way of saying that with lack of oxygen, higher brain function areas are the first to feel the effects and the first to go. And while your physical body could, in theory, be kept on artificial life support for years, what’s the point if there is no longer any of “The Inner You” left in that physical body?

All of the above equally applies to other ‘higher multi-cellular’ animals that also have a “The Inner You” component in them. (Since plants don’t have minds, or a “The Inner You” aspect to them, I exclude them from this rambling.) Anyone who has ever had pets or observed wild animals close up knows they, as humans, are individually unique – with all the traits that humans have, even though they be to a lesser degree. I don’t expect my cats to learn and do calculus though every cat I’ve owned has been unique in his/her own way(s)!

Apart from organic death, there are two other types of death I can think of, but both invoke you not having the reality you think you have. Firstly, if you are just a figment of someone’s dream (or imagination), and they wake up! Secondly, you are part and parcel of someone’s computer software, say as in a video game, and then that someone hits the delete key, or kills you off (if its one of those types of video games), exits the program or turns the PC off. Should the physical you be an illusion, that is, you’re actually a virtual person, a product of computer software (never mind who’s computer), then concepts central to an afterlife, reincarnation and/or immortality are just other software routines that you can be routed towards at the programmer’s whim when the software program that runs the physical you and your environment terminates! The saving grace is that in either case (wetware dreams or software video games) there’s the possibility of a resurrection!

If death is final, no afterlife, no reincarnation, no prospect of immortality before you’re a goner, then the big regret, at least in my case, is never having been able to find out an answer, or the answer(s), to all those questions that’s been bugging me for all (or at least most) of my life! Phooey!

Death, and All That Jazz: Part One

“Nothing is certain but death and taxes”, so the saying goes, and while much has been written about taxes, death is my topic under consideration. The concept or subject of death (and closely related subjects) has (much like taxes) spawned billions of words (and conversations), millions of documents, multi-thousands of texts – and for all of that, we’re still none the wiser when it comes to death, or at least post-death! [Taxes we understand!]

Death is certainly a topic that has interested us, probably since the earliest humans who had evolved the intelligence and language to ponder such things walked the Earth. Unfortunately, nobody has returned from that state, at least beyond any reasonable doubt currently acceptable to mainstream medical science, to tell the still living what death and post-death is all about.

Of course there are lots on anecdotal tales of death and post-death (the afterlife) – religious texts (hundreds of them), tales of ghosts and ghostly hauntings, spirits communicating from beyond the grave, so-called near death experiences (where you get a preview of things to come), perceptions of previous lives (reincarnation) etc. Alas, when crunch comes to crunch, anecdotal tales remain just that, anecdotal tales. Speaking just for myself, I personally can say that (to date) I’ve never had or experienced any vision or visitation or communication from anyone who has passed away into that great unknown beyond, be they pets or parents, friends or foes. If there is an afterlife and its ‘easy’ to crossover and manifest your ‘spirit’ back in our dimension, you’d think there would be indisputable evidence for that by now. I mean, you’d think family; loved ones, who have passed on prior to you would, if they could, manifest their spirit selves to you to reassure you about life-after-death, the spirit world, how you get three meals a day, and how everything and everybody is lovey-dovey. So, either there’s no afterlife, or, it’s not easy to accomplish a spiritual return to say “hi” to previous loved ones. 

One thing is certain, it’s a universal fate, something that we will share in common, not only with other humans but with, at least, all other multi-cellular life forms, from mammals to reptiles, amphibians to fish, invertebrates, and much of the plant kingdom as well. You will boldly go where nearly every living thing prior to you has gone before. I say ‘nearly everything’ in that unicellular critters that reproduce asexually achieve a sort of immortality. In the sense that you, as a multi-cellular critter die, you ain’t unique. You’re not being discriminated against! What perhaps makes humans (collectively) unique is that we alone (probably) have a before-the-fact awareness of our demise. I have to admit I have often wondered whether or not any of my companion animals (pets) and by extension the rest of the animal kingdom (at least), have any perception of their death? Alas, I don’t have the ability to ask, and they don’t have the ability to answer, that question. If they don’t, is that perhaps a blessing in disguise? 

Death is, at least from an ecological and biological point of view, essential. If multi-cellular living organisms were immortal, what point evolution? Evolution wouldn’t happen, indeed couldn’t happen. And how would Nature recycle the stuffs essential to future life if said stuffs remained locked up eternally in currently existing life forms? Eventually all essential life-stuffs would be locked away in existing living tissues and no further life forms could be created as there wouldn’t exist any more of the ‘right stuff’ to help them on their way!

So, what exactly is death? There’s obviously a legal and a medical definition, but it’s probably a tad more complicated than the legal and medical niceties make out. I mean when you (legally and medically) die, the entirety of you, in most circumstances, isn’t dead – yet. One minute after your last breath, most of the individual cells that comprise your body are still very much alive (although it’s apparently a myth that your hair and fingernails/toenails will continue to grow for a while – post death).

Leading up to your death, from a whole body point of view, slowly but surely various cells in your body must be dying – they cease to function – until some sort of critical number is reached. When that number is reached, you collectively die, even though at that time lots of your cells are still left alive and functional, including, I surmise, some of your brain cells, which I also surmise are the critical ones. Even when pronounced medically dead, at least some of your brain cells are still alive and viable. Your brain just doesn’t die on mass as a lump sum in the space of a few seconds.

One saving grace is that in nearly all cases, death results because of oxygen starvation to the brain. Anything which stops the transport of oxygen to the brain will cause death. Such oxygen stoppages include massive bleeding, the heart stopping, your breathing ceasing, choking, an arterial blood clot, fluid in the lungs, etc. Ultimately, something essential is going to fail inhibiting or preventing oxygen from reaching the brain. The state of play as that happens is that you lose consciousness prior to your medical and legal death – in other words, you go to sleep first, then die, or in other words, you die in your sleep. Those final few seconds are trauma free, no matter how traumatic the events causing said oxygen starvation to the brain may have been. In that sense, death is perhaps somewhat akin to something you’ve experienced many times – the act of going to sleep, only in this case, you don’t awaken again. That’s not so bad, is it?  I have observed in my time the final moments of various birds, cats, fish, etc. – the universal I observed is that their final last moments had every appearance of being peaceful.

I’ll grant that there is a difference between losing consciousness while routinely going to sleep – and gaining same as one slowly wakes up – and losing consciousness just prior to dying. There’s the fact that in the former you expect to regain consciousness; in the latter you might well be aware that you won’t. One commonality I suspect is that in both cases you do feel extremely tired, and, as you welcome sleep when seriously fatigued, so to might you welcome ‘sleep’, however final, just because you are exhausted – for whatever reason (loss of blood or just pure old age). In any event, events leading to sleep seem to be the closest analog we have to events leading to death. [Sort of reminds me of the student’s prayer – “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep; but if I should die before I wake; that’s one less exam I’ll have to take!]

As an aside, I suspect children are far more clued about death than we adults would give them credit for. Even young kids see death in the form of leaves turning color and falling off trees and eventually rotting; road-kill; mice killed in a trap; dead fished washed up on a beach; squashed insects; the demise of pets (theirs or neighbors); perhaps the death of a neighbor or their friend’s parent, etc. That’s quite apart from simulated ‘death’ experienced via watching TV shows or hearing about real death via the news. Death is, no matter what your age, something academic (even if still somewhat traumatic), since it isn’t yours. It’s only up close and personal when it’s yours!

By the way, I reject that entire visual “life draining out of the victim’s open eyes” concept. I’ve seen the open eyes of cats, fish, & birds immediately pre-death and immediately post-death, and I’m damned if I could see any difference.

A negative, I suppose, is that when you die, you die alone. Even if 100 friends and relatives surround your deathbed, it’s YOU facing death, not they. Even if you are one of 100 passengers in an airplane about to fatally crash – with no survivors - you still face your THE END all by yourself. Perhaps a case where misery doesn’t love or need any company!

To be continued…

The Contactees: A Reassessment or Re-evaluation

If the subject of UFOs brings embarrassment to the scientific community, then the subject of the contactees brings embarrassment to the UFO community! Shortly after the dawn of the modern UFO era (1947), an offshoot appeared; humans claiming to have been contacted by the extraterrestrials of those UFOs. Unfortunately, those making the claims, the contactees (as they came to be called) told such outlandish tales that not only did they discredit themselves, but took nearly the whole UFO subject down the gurgler with them. Perhaps it’s now time for a reassessment or reevaluation of the contactees: perpetrators or victims? Did the contactees knowingly try to hoodwink the public with tales of the “Space Brothers”, or did real “Space Brothers” hoodwink the contactees, at least in part, into telling on the surface rather outlandish tales?

Certain privileged humans (called ‘contactees’) have claimed to have had personal and/or mental (psychic; channeling) contact with friendly, completely human-appearing space aliens – at least claimed by their own admissions. These angelic-like UFO related extraterrestrial beings, fully human in appearance, were pretty much a stand alone staple of the (mainly 1950’s) contactees who claimed to have had personal contact with and feel-good cosmic messages from said like angelic-like extraterrestrial beings, often called by the contactees as our ‘space brothers’ who have come to Earth in their ‘flying saucers*’.  Of course many contactees were further privileged to have been taken for rides in these ‘flying saucers’, and traveled into space and to other planets, usually the home abodes of their angelically-human hosts, most often Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. Well actually the ‘flying saucers’ were more akin to Star Trek’s shuttlecraft; the real alien vessels were the orbiting ‘Mother Ships’, akin the Star Trek’s NCC 1701 Enterprise, and it was these ‘Mother Ships’ that usually zipped our contactee passengers on a grand tour of our solar system and their home planet.

It was unfortunate that such claims tarnished the wider subject of UFOs (as possible evidence that extraterrestrial intelligence existed). However, in some degree of historical hindsight, when perhaps tarnished then, that clearly might not be quite the case now.

The contactees were often bucketed as total loonies back then (in the 50’s) by the mainstream, even mainstream people interested in extraterrestrial life and UFOs, including myself. That’s no less so today if someone is still foolish enough to mention them – like me here and now. But a question remains on the grounds of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, did the contactees (collectively) invent these angelic-like extraterrestrial beings, the ‘Nordics’, with the intent of fraud; or to have some fun and hoax the public and pull the wool over their unsuspecting eyes; or perhaps they just, collectively, had some serious mental issues, say delusions of sorts. Or, perhaps the contactees were relating the truth as they thought they had experienced it, when perhaps the angelic-like extraterrestrial beings were being less than 100% honest with them for reasons best known to themselves, though one can speculate.

Unfortunately, they didn’t provide much in the way of actually evidence in their own defence. Sometimes a supporting witness or two; perhaps a plaster cast of a sandal imprint (the ‘space brothers’ tended to wear quasi-ski gear and sandals. Also in support of their claims, some early 1950s contactees produced photographs of the alleged ‘flying saucers’ (sometimes known as ‘scout ships’) or the much larger often cigar-shaped ‘Mother Ships’ though rarely of the ‘space brothers’ themselves. More than a number of ‘genuine’ photos of  typical extraterrestrial ‘flying saucers’ were noted to bear a suspicious resemblance to mundane terrestrial artifacts like a commonly available chicken egg incubator, complete with light bulbs serving as ‘landing gear’. Pretty obviously faked photographs did nothing to assist their credibility quotient.

However, let’s start with the assumption that the contactees are or were in fact innocent (until proven guilty) and told their stories as actually perceived or as it seemed by them.

In the 1950’s our ‘space brothers’ only told as much of their story as would be comprehensible to the relatively simple people of that era. Now truthfully, the contactees (George Adamski say as an example of the general contactee stereotype) were relatively simple folk. They weren’t university deans, or theoretical physicists, or four-star generals, or diplomatic statesmen and legal eagles and MD’s, etc. That brings up an obvious question, why would our ‘space brothers' bother with the great unwashed when they could just as easily land on the White House lawn and be addressing Congress within hours? Well, the contactees, simple folk, were the sort of folk that our gentle hippy-like ‘space brothers’ would have associated with. However, the contactees were fed enough bovine fertilizer that their idealistic philosophical messages got buried along with their tall tales of trips to Venus and Saturn, etc., where the ‘space brothers’ lived. Although then again, you have that angelic-like ancient Near Eastern goddess Inanna or Inana (Ishtar) identified with the celestial planet Venus, so who knows where the ‘gods’ have actually set up camp!

I mean here that any advanced technological civilization can boldly go and thwart Mother Nature’s hostile environments with a bit of can-do effort. Obvious terrestrial examples show how humans can now live on the polar icecaps; under the ocean; in extremely arid regions; even on the lunar surface. So, who’s to say the ‘space brothers’ didn’t have an HQ on Venus or Saturn or the far side of the Moon? 

Now about the cosmic messages from the ‘space brothers’; dead and buried hogwash, or did those 50’s idealistic ‘space brother’ philosophical messages really get buried? Perhaps our ‘space brothers’ are a bit more clued than given credit for. The contactees thought that universal truths and consequences would be accomplished very simply by the ‘space brothers’ or extraterrestrial brotherhood spreading a message of love and associated brotherhood ideals across the world via themselves. That wasn’t to be then, it isn’t now, but (there’s always a ‘but’ somewhere along the way).

I can’t help but wonder, maybe it’s no coincidence that almost immediately following the heyday of the contactees came the era of the Hippies and counterculture with their idealistic philosophical concepts (influences which have filtered down to this very day and age) of “hell no, we won’t go”; burn your draft card; bra-burning; flower-power; love; peace; brotherhood (and sisterhood); the dawning of the Age of Aquarius; free love, drop out, tune in, etc. You can’t help but feel that the ‘space brothers’ as generally described, would have fitted right into that picture. Our ‘space brothers’ might have been more at home with people who smoked pot and attended Woodstock than lunching with politicians and generals smoking cigars, drinking scotch-on-the-rocks and sanctioning the dropping of napalm and Agent Orange on Vietnam.   

However, there’s nothing overly unique about the 50’s and our contactees. Apart from, though not directly linked to ‘flying saucers’ or UFOs, or the 50’s contactees, there is a rather long history of claims of contact with non-earthly intelligences, if by non-earthly intelligences you include all things supernatural – the deities/gods of mythology. Most of the world's polytheistic religions involved ongoing contact between ordinary humans (or more likely as not rulers like kings and emperors) and a supernatural source of wisdom, such as the gods in human form or, moving on to monotheism, an angel(s) or equivalent. It might be predictable therefore that many of the 1950s contactees, or their followers, would form their own religious cults, with the contactee usually as sole spiritual leader. And so that too came to pass, almost invariably.

There might be another historical connection. It’s been speculated that the ‘gods’ (including ‘God’ were really ‘ancient astronauts’ – presumably that would have to include Jesus Christ. So, was J.C. an ‘ancient astronaut’? If J.C. really was an ‘ancient astronaut’, that just might give a whole new credibility to those 50’s contactees. J.C. was a near clone of the 50’s ‘space brothers’.

For example, the ‘space brothers’ are often labelled as the ‘Nordics’ – Fully human in appearance, they tend to be tall, blond hair, rather long-haired in fact, blue-eyed, with athletic builds (male), or Playboy figures (female). In fact, the ‘space brothers’ sort of resemble the Greek (Titan and Olympian), Roman and Norse gods – physical perfection, profound wisdom, all things bright and beautiful. You can also identify with J.C. as a ‘Nordic’ type and he’d fit right in on a ‘flying saucer’ in the 1950’s chin-wagging with the contactees.

The purpose of the ‘space brothers’ is quasi-missionary, not religion so much as preaching morality, ethics, ecology, profound wisdom, brotherhood, make-love-not-war, ban-the-bomb, things of cosmic importance, all the sorts of things one associates with Hippies and the New Agers. You can associate with J.C. as a sort of New Ager Hippy type and thus as a typical ‘space brother’ as the ‘space brothers’ were considered to be highly spiritually evolved beings.

Of course there’s another possible explanation. Might the ‘contactees’, and through them their readers, have been the victims of cosmic pranksters – the trickster gods of mythology, who in the modern context are the ‘gods’ – flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials and sometimes hangers-on from the glory days of the polytheistic gods who weren’t really gods but ‘gods’? The reader is reminded that every ancient mythology not only has a pantheon of gods, but at least one trickster god in every pantheon, with accent on the word “trickster”. The ‘contactees’ could easily have been relatively innocent victims of a massive hoax. You can hear the tricksters now – “ha, ha – fooled you – again”.

There is an interesting quasi-parallel between the 50’s contactees and the later abductees, even though the “Nordic” “Space Brothers” appear vastly different than the abductee’s “Greys”. The contactees were pre-Hippy New Ager types. In contrast, many abductees seem to undergo quasi-New Age lifestyle changes post abduction(s). They may have become vegetarians, gave up smoking or drinking, joined community groups, started participating in charity work, developed ecological concerns and/or become overall a more spiritually-oriented being.

*Contactees didn’t use the term UFOs or the phrase ‘unidentified flying objects’ because to them there was nothing unidentified about them.

Clash of the Gods, or Perhaps Here Be Aliens! Part Two

Has Planet Earth been home to thousands of gods, or just one God, or both, or neither? If neither, then our over fertile active imaginations have run riot populating the four corners of the globe with fictitious characters. Perhaps the gods and/or God exist, but not in any sort of theistic sense. Enter ET, stage left!

Throughout human history humans have populated their world with thousands of gods (like Zeus), goddesses (like Hera – Mrs. Zeus) and demigods (like Hercules, son of Zeus, but not of Hera), along with many associated assortment of beasties, often half-human, half-something else (usually animal), or else humanoid with associated ‘defects’ like the one-eyed Cyclops or the Medusa. Add to that zoo, our monotheistic God and associated hangers-on, like angels, etc. What are we to make of this menagerie? 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Postulate Three: Some or all of these beings exist but do not reside in the realm of the supernatural. Perhaps they are terrestrial flesh-and-blood natives! But if they are terrestrial flesh-and-blood life forms, they are extinct now, which is, as far as we’re practically concerned, the same as their non-existence in the first place. There’s no fossil evidence for any of the assumed mythological beasties (like the Minotaur – half bull; or satyrs – half goat; or centaurs – half horse; or a sphinx – half lion), or tombs or gravesites for the gods, goddesses or demigods with actual bodies in them. That might not be surprising seeing as how they (gods and goddesses and demigods) are supposed to be immortal.

Postulate Four: Some or all of these beings exist but likewise do not belong to the realm of the supernatural. Since they aren’t terrestrial, they must be extraterrestrial.

If there is any historical evidence for a god, gods or The God, then that evidence could just as easily be equally interpreted as evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence(s), whose purpose(s) or objective(s) may not be all that obvious or even benign.

What would an extraterrestrial ‘god’ (‘sky being’ might be a good synonym in many cases) do that a bona-fide supernatural god wouldn’t do – or vice versa? I’ll be damned if I know the answer to that, and it’s probably an unanswerable question. It’s at least not illogical to equate a god, goddess or demigod with an extraterrestrial or extraterrestrial intelligence. Any sufficiently advanced (extraterrestrial) technology is just the supernatural to entities that are too primitive yet to know what advanced technology is. A television set or jet airplane to someone living 2000 years ago would be pure magic.

Taking another approach, I’d imagine a theoretical advanced extraterrestrial being or race, like the gods, don’t have attributes that are self-contradictory, unlike God (or the idealized concept of God). The gods are not depicted as all-powerful (just powerful); not all-knowing (yet knowledgeable); not omnipresent; and hardly all-loving. The one attribute usually attributed to the gods is immortality as noted earlier, though that doesn’t mean they can’t be bumped off. They’re immortal, but not invincible or invulnerable. To a human, especially humans living thousands of years ago, immortality could equally translate to and mean a very, very long lifespan (akin to some of the life spans given to a select few in the Biblical texts).  Now very long life spans is something one might desire when postulating getting ET from there (wherever there is – somewhere out there among the stars) to here (Planet Earth).

Is there any suggestive evidence to associate and equate the gods with extraterrestrials? Well, appearance could be a clue. Our modern world is full of images from ancient times of entities or beings that wouldn’t be out of place in any “Star Trek” or “Star Wars” movie. Translated, whatever these images represent, they most certainly aren’t your everyday terrestrial species you’re likely to see in a zoo. I mean you have all seen figures depicted as gargoyles – definitely not terrestrial beasties. Nor are the gorgons likely to be terrestrial. Many of the gods, like say the ancient Egyptian ones, while humanoid, are anything but human in appearance. Lots of beings, creatures depicted as rock or cave art around the world appear very other-worldly. For example, the Tassili frescoes in the Sahara, some going back to 6,000 BC, are very suggestive of ET. One was actually dubbed by an archaeologist ‘the great Martian god’, although there’s no actual evidence to connect the image with the Red Planet Mars. The puzzling statues on Easter Island are very nearly human but just weird enough to be distinctive – close but yet odd. You can ask this logical question – are demons really supernatural, or just rather ugly and potentially nasty aliens?

Even the very well known arch sceptic (when it came to UFOs and ‘ancient astronauts’), the late Dr. Carl Sagan was impressed enough by a combination of ancient text translations coupled with images on ancient cylinder seals to suggest that this might be a bona fide contact between extraterrestrials and humans. The ‘this’ had to do with strange appearing beings who brought knowledge to the ancient Sumerians. Images depicted on later cylinder seals associated such beings (who look quite unworldly) with the stars and stellar planetary systems.*

Last, but hardly least, is, as noted above, one of the interactions between the gods and humans is sex – by trickery, by force, by any means fair or foul, often with disastrous consequences – as demigod Hercules, or Medusa could testify to. In modern UFO lore, sex or sex-related themes, albeit of the more impersonal kind, is a common theme in abduction cases. Whether or not there’s any connect I don’t know, but it’s an interesting ‘virgin’ area for further research. 

Conclusions: All the gods and God and all their associated supernatural baggage are total inventions of our fertile imaginations, OR, some or all of those gods (probably including God) are actual flesh-and-blood extraterrestrial entities. The middle ground, belief in the supernatural, gods and/or God with actual magical powers, is not really a credible option, IMHO.

*Sagan, Carl & Shklovskii, I.S.; Intelligent Life in the Universe; Holden-Day, San Francisco; 1966; p.455-462.

Clash of the Gods, or Perhaps Here Be Aliens! Part One

Has Planet Earth been home to thousands of gods, or just one God, or both, or neither? If neither, then our over fertile active imaginations have run riot populating the four corners of the globe with fictitious characters. Perhaps the gods and/or God exist, but not in any sort of theistic sense. Enter ET, stage left!

Throughout human history humans have populated their world with thousands of gods (like Zeus), goddesses (like Hera – Mrs. Zeus) and demigods (like Hercules, son of Zeus, but not of Hera), along with many associated assortment of beasties, often half-human, half-something else (usually animal), or else humanoid with associated ‘defects’ like the one-eyed Cyclops or the Medusa. Add to that zoo, our monotheistic God and associated hangers-on, like angels, etc. What are we to make of this menagerie? 

Postulate One: All of these beings are mythical and imaginary. To be honest, that’s the most likely scenario, though of course millions of Christians, Muslims, and Jews would have one survivor from the deity zoo – God. However, if thousands of gods don’t exist, then isn’t it logical to assume that thousands and one, gods plus God don’t exist?

Assuming neither the gods nor God exists – then we play the ‘what if’ game…

‘What if’ no deities exist or have ever existed?

Then billions of people, over thousands of years, have spent trillions of ultimately wasted hours in prayer, attending church, observing/attending various religious rituals, spent in religious/Biblical study, door-knocking, preaching, discussing, arguing, going on pilgrimages, etc.

Then all those religious rituals, the do and do not rules that govern things regarding food, dress codes, ceremonies, relationships, sex, and etc. ultimately have been meaningless. 

Then millions of people have been tortured, murdered or executed, imprisoned, ridiculed, humiliated, exiled, and hated for no reason.

Then billions of dollars have been spent on cathedrals instead of say hospitals; Bibles instead of textbooks; educating priests instead of medical doctors, nurses and scientists.

Then for those formally educated and qualified in religious studies, spending entire careers preaching, etc. they have wasted their lives in devotion to an invisible friend(s) that has all the reality of Casper, the Friendly Ghost.

Then multi-millions of animals have been sacrificed and offered up to a supernatural being(s) that doesn’t exist.

Then you can’t blame all your aches and pains, your bad back and creaky joints, on some all knowing great intelligent designer(s), who apparently bioengineered you (from dust or a rib or whatever) while simultaneously failing Bioengineering 101. I mean placing the food tube right next to the breathing tube was a disaster waiting to happen, as evidenced by all those people who choke to death every year. And how many women have died giving birth because the compatibility between the birth canal and the size of the baby, well just wasn’t! A divinely created human wouldn’t be flawed and have need of eyeglasses or a hearing aid. God wouldn’t create a human with jaws to small to allow for wisdom teeth. As to the appendix organ, that’s just another oops.

Postulate Two: Some or all of these beings exist and are associated with the realm of the supernatural.

Assuming both supernatural God and gods exist…

1) Both might exist quite independently from each other in space, in time, or both. One doesn’t know about the existence of the other.

2) Both might exist as independent entities (not of the same family) in the same time and space, but choose to have no interactions.

3) Both might exist as independent entities (not of the same family) in the same time and space frame and interact.

4) Both might exist, but God is just one of the gods. That is, there is no independence between God and the gods; they’re all kin.

5) God and the gods do not get along, be it #3 or #4. But while the gods are silent on God, God doesn’t overly love His god kin, since He instructs us not to have any other gods before Him!

God or the gods: who comes first?

1) In terms of human history, the gods existed before God. Polytheism existed prior to monotheism.

2) Therefore, the gods, if responsible for all things created, created God. Monotheism is subservient to polytheism. God answers to the gods.

3) If God came before the gods, and God is the supreme creator, then God created the gods. Polytheism is subservient to monotheism. The gods answer to God.

4) However, if God created the gods, God is ultimately jealous of the gods (as per His Commandments), and therefore of His own creation. God, being all-knowing, foresaw this, but did it anyway. That’s illogical. 

Assuming God exists and the gods don’t – well, that’s pretty much the status quo today. What few believers still exist in worshiping Zeus, Jupiter, Odin and associates aren’t sufficient to cause any resurgence in polytheism.

Assuming the gods exist, and God doesn’t – well, a significant percentage of the inhabitants of Planet Earth over the past several millennia have got lots of collective egg on their faces. Much of the ‘what if’ given above applies equally well. However, in one sense, the gods make more sense than God.  Contrast the following. There’s this God, your invisible friend who art in heaven, which is also invisible and a place you can not travel to. Contrast that vis-à-vis the Greek gods say, who were visible to and interacted (i.e. – mated usually) with the mortal Greeks. Further, they lived right next door up on Mount Olympus, a place you could actually climb up and visit. I mean the gods are practically your next door neighbour. How could the Greeks get something that obvious so wrong? Maybe they didn’t – get it wrong that is. So who is more likely to be mistaken, the monotheist who has never seen God or heaven, or the Greek polytheist who has their gods living in the neighbourhood? Who has more credibility?

To be continued…