Documentary: "Ancient Aliens Debunked"

Ancient Aliens Debunked is a 3 hour refutation of the theories proposed on the History Channel series Ancient Aliens. It is essentially a point by point critique of the "ancient astronaut theory" which has been proposed by people like Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin as well as many others.

The film covers topics like:

Ancient building sites: Puma Punku, The Pyramids, Baalbek, Incan sites, and Easter Island.

Ancient artifacts: Pacal's rocket, the Nazca lines, the Tolima "fighter jets", the Egyptian "light bulb", Ufo's in ancient art, and the crystal skulls.

Ancient text issues: Ezekiel's wheel, Ancient nuclear warfare, Vimana's, the Anunnaki, and the Nephilim.

All the claims are sourced at the website: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com

It was produced by Chris White and includes commentary from Dr. Michael Hesier.

The Uniqueness of the Earth Still A Mystery and Enigma

Our earth seems special – maybe because it is. Some astronomers are seriously considering that life might be rare or unique on our rare (or unique) planet. If so, hopes for finding sentient aliens on the celestial radio dial drop accordingly. The 50th anniversary of the first SETI search came, unfortunately for search enthusiasts, at a time when funding is harder to get.

New Scientist has been running a series called “Existence” for the purpose of examining big questions about the origin of the universe, life, and consciousness. Most of the articles try to give atheist answers to arguments of intelligent design. In “Why is the universe just right for us?” for instance, Marcus Chown tried to explain away fine-tuning arguments with responses that physical constants might be interconnected, or are not as finely tuned as they seem, or that the multiverse hypothesis provides a way out. Even so, he could not explain away the incredibly “fortuitous” dark energy parameter.

In “Where did we come from?” Stephen Hawking presented the standard big bang scenario with inflation, but admitted at the end that “many huge mysteries remain,” leaving the solution in the future.

In “Why is there a universe?” Amanda Gefter tried to explain how something can come from nothing via quantum fluctuations.

MacGregor Campbell posted a cartoony animation trying to convince puzzled readers that “nothing” and “something” might be one and the same – i.e., that our physical universe, including us, might really be nothing. At the end, though, Gefter realized this is not a satisfactory answer:

None of this really gets us off the hook, however. Our understanding of creation relies on the validity of the laws of physics, particularly quantum uncertainty. But that implies that the laws of physics were somehow encoded into the fabric of our universe before it existed. How can physical laws exist outside of space and time and without a cause of their own? Or, to put it another way, why is there something rather than nothing?

Readers of these articles might well ask how nothing could know anything.

Live Science put forth a new idea by David Spiegel [Princeton U] and Edwin Turner [U of Tokyo] that allows for sentient life being so rare that we might be alone in the universe. Using Bayesian analysis, they showed mathematically that there is no way to prefer the belief life is common over the belief life is rare, even using the famous Drake equation. When you have only one data point, “Our own existence implies very little about how many other times life has arisen.” Accordingly, it is just as scientifically reasonable to believe life is unique in the universe as to argue it must be common.

In a Nature News article, M. Mitchell Waldrop announced royally, “SETI Is dead – Long live SETI.” By that he meant that “The closure of the Allen Telescope Array shifts the search for extraterrestrial intelligence away from big science.” California’s budget crisis has shut down hopes at the Hat Creek site to scan the skies for intelligent signals. With that comes the graying of the true believers:

The melancholy vista at Hat Creek makes it easy to entertain equally melancholy thoughts about the SETI enterprise itself. It's the ultimate in high-risk, high-payoff science, pursued by only a handful of passionate researchers. In 50 years of searching, they have turned up nothing — and they can't quite shake an association in the public mind with flying-saucer sightings and Hollywood science fiction, all of which is so easy for cost-cutting politicians to ridicule that any substantial federal funding for SETI is impossible. Private support for the search is getting tighter because of the global recession. And many of the pioneers who have championed the search are now well into their 60s, 70s or 80s.

SETI Institute research head Jill Tarter remains optimistic, however, because smaller, cheaper searches are still continuing, and all searches over the past half century have only represented a tiny sample of space. Bottom line, though, is that nothing has been found, and even the most optimistic proponents cannot provide any reasonable estimate of the chances of success, despite the self-reinforcing opinions of those whose reputations depend on high hopes (see Space.com).

Source

Fr. John Romanides on Extraterrestrial Alien Life

In November 2010 it was reported that the Vatican called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church. The Director of the Vatican Observatory commented that the discovery of possible alien life would have "many philosophical and theological implications" for Catholics. In 1965 Fr. John Romanides offered a valuable resource on this topic for a series run by the Boston Globe that explored this topic from various religious perspectives. In the fifth response of this series, he gives the unique Orthodox perspective. The full text is below. 

All Planets the Same: Religion’s Response to Space Life V

Rev. John S. Romanides, Ph.D

The Boston Globe

April 8, 1965

I can foresee no way in which the teachings of the Orthodox Christian tradition could be affected by the discovery of intelligent beings on another planet. Some of my colleagues feel that even a discussion of the consequences of such a possibility is in itself a waste of time for serious theology and borders on the fringes of foolishness.

I am tempted to agree with them for several reasons.

As I understand the problem, the discovery of intelligent life on another planet would raise questions concerning traditional Roman Catholic and Protestant teachings regarding creation, the fall, man as the image of God, redemption and Biblical inerrancy.

First one should point out that in contrast to the traditions deriving from Latin Christianity, Greek Christianity never had a fundamentalist or literalist understanding of Biblical inspiration and was never committed to the inerrancy of scripture in matters concerning the structure of the universe and life in it. In this regard some modern attempts at de-mything the Bible are interesting and at times amusing.

Since the very first centuries of Christianity, theologians of the Greek tradition did not believe, as did the Latins, that humanity was created in a state of perfection from which it fell. Rather the Orthodox always believed that man [was] created imperfect, or at a low level of perfection, with the destiny of evolving to higher levels of perfection.

The fall of each man, therefore, entails a failure to reach perfection, rather than any collective fall from perfection.

Also spiritual evolution does not end in a static beatific vision. It is a never ending process which will go on even into eternity.

Also Orthodox Christianity, like Judaism, never knew the Latin and Protestant doctrine of original sin as an inherited Adamic guilt putting all humanity under a divine wrath which was supposedly satisfied by the death of Christ.

Thus the solidarity of the human race in Adamic guilt and the need for satisfaction of divine justice in order to avoid hell are unknown in the Greek Fathers.

This means that the interdependence and solidarity of creation and its need for redemption and perfection are seen in a different light.

The Orthodox believe that all creation is destined to share in the glory of God. Both damned and glorified will be saved. In other words both will have vision of God in his uncreated glory, with the difference that for the unjust this same uncreated glory of God will be the eternal fires of hell.

God is light for those who learn to love Him and a consuming fire for those who will not. God has no positive intent to punish.

For those not properly prepared, to see God is a cleansing experience, but one which does not move eternally toward higher reaches of perfection.

In contrast, hell is a static state of perfection somewhat similar to Platonic bliss.

In view of this the Orthodox never saw in the Bible any three story universe with a hell of created fire underneath the earth and a heaven beyond the stars.

For the Orthodox discovery of intelligent life on another planet would raise the question of how far advanced these beings are in their love and preparation for divine glory.

As on this planet, so on any other, the fact that one may have not as yet learned about the Lord of Glory of the Old and New Testament, does not mean that he is automatically condemned to hell, just as one who believes in Christ is not automatically destined to be involved in the eternal movement toward perfection.

It is also important to bear in mind that the Greek Fathers of the Church maintain that the soul of man is part of material creation, although a high form of it, and by nature mortal.

Only God is purely immaterial.

Life beyond death is not due to the nature of man but to the will of God. Thus man is not strictly speaking the image of God. Only the Lord of Glory, or the Angel of the Lord of Old and New Testament revelation is the image of God.

Man was created according to the image of God, which means that his destiny is to become like Christ who is the Incarnate Image of God.

Thus the possibility of intelligent beings on another planet being images of God as men on earth are supposed to be is not even a valid question from an Orthodox point of view.

Finally one could point out that the Orthodox Fathers rejected the Platonic belief in immutable archetypes of which this world of change is a poor copy.

This universe and the forms in it are unique and change is of the very essence of creation and not a product of the fall.

Furthermore the categories of change, motion and history belong to the eternal dimensions of salvation-history and are not to be discarded in some kind of eternal bliss.

Thus the existence of intelligent life on another planet behind or way ahead of us in intellectual and spiritual attainment will change little in the traditional beliefs of Orthodox Christianity.