Why is the Ancient Alien Theory difficult to accept?

Originally posted by ButterCookie

Originally posted by SpearMint

Originally posted by ButterCookie
reply to post by SpearMint

 

The religious idea of a 'god' would be illogical in nature...

an omnipotent being who punishes you for not worshipping him, but he himself committed more murders than anyone in our human history...yes, that is illogical.

The AAT is not talking about 'that kind of god'. According to it, 'god' is not a single being- it was a common term to describe an extraterrestrial visitor.

The same way we today say 'alien'.

No matter how you define god, what I said remains true.

So.....according to you, there can be no extraterrestrial visitors?

Are you saying that there are no extraterrestrials, or that they would not have the ability nor desire to visit Earth?

You completely misunderstood what I said. Go back and read, thats not what I said at all.

Originally posted by ButterCookie
reply to post by CloonBerg

 

I agree.. and there is no physical evidence for evolution

Yes there is.

There are mountains of evidence for evolution. Millions of years of fossil records for one thing. Active evolution for another. Selective adaptation is very clear in science. Also, there are a huge array of primate fossils showing the evolution from earlier hominids to proto-humans. Never understood the "no evidence of evolution" people. Do they just mentally block out all facts and science?

reply to post by ButterCookie


Thanks for fleshing out my briefly given classifications given on another topic last week.

reply to post by ButterCookie

THE RELIGIOUS
The claim that gods and angels are tangible, extraterrestrials who are not 'watching them over them' and making things happen on their behalf is frightening. This poses insecurity, and it makes them realize that they have to be responsible, as there is no 'god' that loves them and will be them in the afterlife. They feel ashamed that religion has fooled them, and its scary to think that they're deceased loved ones are simply gone.

THE ATHEISTS
The claim that there are beings more advanced than humans is intimidating to them. Not only do they have to consider the bible as a true document, they have to acknowledge that humans are most intelligent or the most advanced. They cringe at the term 'god', because it shows humanity's inferiority. The Ancient Alien theory forces these atheists to accept their true perspective place in the universe.

And so, you say, whether we're religious or atheists, those who disbelieve in the Ancient Alien Theory are doing so purely because we're afraid to face the facts, or have too much invested in our existing belief systems to accept ideas that don't conform to them.

So what are these 'facts'? A bunch of correspondences between mythology and science fiction, both of which, you may have noticed, are human inventions. Statues carved by primitive people look like spacesuits drawn by civilized people. Totem poles made by humans look like rockets drawn by humans. Big deal.

You come to this forum with a head full of self-deceiving conviction, based on your gullible ingestion of a boring, long-discredited idea originally floated by scientific ignoramuses and intellectual pygmies like Erich von Daniken, and you have the nerve to tell us the only reason we don't swallow the same tripe you do is because we're cowards?

We don't swallow it because we're not idiots, that's why.

Originally posted by Klassified
No, I cringe at the idea of a god, because even if there were a being that far in advance of us, that doesn't make it a god, it makes it a being that is much farther advanced than us. Why ascribe divinity to an entity just because it knows more than we do?

Hmmm well you wouldn't care much for me then. Or my immediate family, the gods themselves.

What about the Arthur C Clark saying that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"?

Wanna see some magic? Ancient Alien mythical gods. Would that be on topic?

Here is Set brother of Osiris, I am Osiris, here is his email to me imprinted on your planet...
(Use Bing Maps on left of following page)
www.flashearth.com...
Near Ica Peru. Where the Ica stones were found.

Here is a picture of my grandma, Zeus' mom...as seen from space around Nazca...
upic.me...
(Might be a slow server)

Most of my ancient family is depicted in that area of the world. Here is my uncle Robert...
He is sticking his tongue out and assuming the Aztec Calendar pose...
www.flashearth.com...

Thats not as cool as the fact that some of the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades have reincarnated and are dark haired beauties and hang out in Hollywood as famous people.

But you wouldn't know that unless you knew them. Osiris Orion same person, and my destiny is to chase them across the sky and stuff or so uncle Robert told the Egyptians eons ago.

reply to post by Rocketman7


The reason Set appears in that email as a rocketman is because he can't draw feet.

(cannot)

If you are expecting me to stand on a box and say "People of the Earth....People of the Earth...listen to me, I am Zargon" well it ain't gonna happen neither do I want you to take me to your leader.

But the purple pickled cabbage? From Germany? Thats quite good.

Originally posted by pierregustavetoutant
There are mountains of evidence for evolution. Millions of years of fossil records for one thing. Active evolution for another. Selective adaptation is very clear in science. Also, there are a huge array of primate fossils showing the evolution from earlier hominids to proto-humans. Never understood the "no evidence of evolution" people. Do they just mentally block out all facts and science?

Evolution is real. It can occur in species.

But humans are not a result of it.

The human race inexplicably 'quantum leaped' from stage 1 to stage 6 over night (in archaeological terms).

reply to post by CloonBerg

I have pinned to the top of my facebook timeline some compelling evidence:
www.facebook.com...

And speaking of AAT, this could fall in line...or just a REALLY bad case of pareidolia:
www.facebook.com...

Why some folks refuse to believe that our ancestors were responsible for the construction of ancient megalithic sites/structures is beyond me. I like to think that men of old were fully capable of building such things, and because of this, I refuse to accept the ancient alien theory. What was in their actual tool-kit? I don't know.

Not being one to shun the AAT, in fact up until recently, I considered myself an avid believer in it.
Getting your head around the theory is not difficult, sure a lack of tangible evidence is always the big talking point, and rightly so.
For those who are firm science people, we need evidence to support any of our claims, putting any grey areas beyond doubt. This will always be difficult unless you are happy to really open your mind, however this nearly always leaves you open to be flamed!
For those who embrace religion, blind faith is bedrock, and that is fine.
The way that I put this into perspective is to consider articles similar to this:

ezinearticles.com...

Using this as an example, any alien interaction with modern man, happened in the last couple of minutes! There is a whole period of earths' history before this which we have almost no idea about. Yes, I know the earth was supposedly uninhabitable for a four hour period of the remaining time as it formed and cooled, but even so, it still leaves a huge amount of time unaccounted for. Single celled organisms and the like crawled around for sixteen hours! That's approximately 750 times longer than our own history!
I am sure you get the point and do not want to sound patronising, it is just that so much could have gone on during this "day" that we have no idea about now or never wil.

Just my thoughts, please feel free to shoot me!

Originally posted by ButterCookie

THE ATHEISTS

The claim that there are beings more advanced than humans is intimidating to them. Not only do they have to consider the bible as a true document, they have to acknowledge that humans are most intelligent or the most advanced. They cringe at the term 'god', because it shows humanity's inferiority. The Ancient Alien theory forces these atheists to accept their true perspective place in the universe.

what nonsense, why in the world would we need to accept the bible as true even if i accepted the AAT? it could just as easily been produced as stories about those god-alien things and still be untrue.
i don't cringe at the word god, nor do i think it magically makes us inferior. it would be nice for once someone could refrain from arrogantly trying to tell atheists or theists what they think, you are not a mind reader.

If the biblical stories and characters seemed fantastical, why is it that several ancient civilizations, with oceans and mountains between them, wrote about extremely similar accounts of human history?

uh no, the accounts are not "extremely similar" accounts, many are very different, the only ones that are extremely similar are ones in the same geographic area.
sumarian, akkadian, and even hebrew are a lot alike because they influenced each other. celtic, norse, sub-saharian african, native american and south american stories are nothing like ancient middle eastern stories, other than details dealing with human life.

-Gods and angels arriving from the heavens in celestial chariots
-performances of miracles and blessings, in what today we'd deem as advanced technology

.......surely they were not ALL delusional about the same thing??

no, they made their gods analogous to themselves, hence why the gods traveled in celestial chariots, what else would they use?
uh, you have to really ignore a lot of stuff to make the claim that what the gods did we would deem as advanced technology, very little stories about the gods fit your claim, in fact it maybe something like a few percent.

AHA!

We then made the connection between religion and science, perfectly understanding the Ancient Alien Theory. We recognize it to be the most plausible, and have no problem with accepting the fact that the truth lies in the middle of this religion/science spectrum.

What say you?

edit on 14-5-2012 by ButterCookie because: (no reason given)

i say that you, like so many AAT people ignore so much to make your stories work.
you ignore that people back then thought just like we do, in concepts related to ourselves, we anthropomorphize everything.
also i think AAT people need to stop pretending that a few shared ideas that people share magically means somehow there was some being from outerspace that caused it, and not just simply that people think alike and given people live in generally similar areas they would have like ideas.

i mean norse mythology has a flood story, but it has nothing to do with punishing the wicked or wiping out life, like the bible does, the norse version is an accident.

another thing, AAT need to realize that just because you can cherry pick things out of a few vague texts that seem "technological" to you doesn't mean they were, that is stretching the text and you have no evidence to back it up.
i've read about the hindu vehicles of the gods, the celestial chariots claimed to be some sort of spaceship, what evidence beyond imagination does anyone have? the texts, hinduism and all images depicting them present them as elaborate chariots, nothing about them, the assumption is that since they fly they must be space ships, even though they are the vehicles of GODS.
AAT is nothing but circular claims, it must be alien because they have vehicles that fly, and we can't do that so it must be aliens because they have space ships.
the problem is that there is no reason to think they are, only the desire to think so.

reply to post by ButterCookie

We then made the connection between religion and science, perfectly understanding the Ancient Alien Theory. We recognize it to be the most plausible, and have no problem with accepting the fact that the truth lies in the middle of this religion/science spectrum. What say you?

I have often wondered how something so obvious could be so neglected, if not wholly denied, by those in both far camps of belief. The line between God and ET is nonexistent... with both being something a lot different than the simplistic deity v. extraterrestrial approach preferred by the great majority.

Of course, what is abundantly clear to some is beyond the grasp of another. This is the nature of our species... a specific niche in the human condition that assures diversity in all of the other million aspects. If we did in fact all think the same, we might have all agreed that the world was flat and the center of the universe... or that heavier-than-air-flight was... or perhaps is, still impossible.

So, I guess we need the compartmentalization to assure continued expansion.

It is from here where we must learn tolerance for our opposites... because as we gaze down into the toxic environment of politics, we can easily see the cost of such complete and purposeful intolerance. This is something that both science and religion should spend some time considering as their behaviors towards one another are not much different.

God may well be the greatest scientist in the universe, manipulating energy/matter at will, resulting in the wonderful bouquet called creation. But so long as he is called 'God' before some, and 'ET' in front of others, there will the the divisions.

Great subject!

Originally posted by ButterCookie
To begin, I whole-heartedly accept the Ancient Alien theory to be true.

Because there is no way to travel back in time (yet) and witness the events of human history, one must examine the physical as well as the theoretical evidence. Of course any ideas about our early beginnings will only be theories; the reasonable thing to do, however, is to decide which is more plausible, and to be willing to change positions on this issue as new evidence is discovered.

As I talk to peers regarding this topic, I seem to encounter two different groups of people. I decided to explain why I feel that each group has a difficult time accepting the AAT. As I see it, it takes an intelligent, but humble person to balance out the viewpoints of each theory: evolution without intervention or intelligent design without tangible science.

Here is what I concluded....

THE RELIGIOUS

The claim that gods and angles are tangible, extraterrestrials who are not 'watching them over them' and making things happen on their behalf is frightening. This poses insecurity, and it makes them realize that they have to be responsible, as there is no 'god' that loves them and will be them in the afterlife. They feel ashamed that religion has fooled them, and its scary to think that they're deceased loved ones are simply gone.

THE ATHEISTS

The claim that there are beings more advanced than humans is intimidating to them. Not only do they have to consider the bible as a true document, they have to acknowledge that humans are most intelligent or the most advanced. They cringe at the term 'god', because it shows humanity's inferiority. The Ancient Alien theory forces these atheists to accept their true perspective place in the universe.

What you are left with are people like me.

It's quite easy to argue against straw men, isn't it?

The above two categories are far from the only possibilities.

I don't believe in Ancient Aliens because there's not a single iota of evidence that they existed.

Obviously, had you included a category for people such as myself, then you couldn't make such a tidy argument.

Harte

There are several objections to "Ancient Alien" theory:

1. Lack of professional competence among the researchers. They do not have the necessary understanding of linguistics, philology, historiography, scientific archaeology or astro-archaeology to engage the subject matter.

2. The absence of any evidence that cannot be better explained by conventional interpretations.

3. The propensity of its proponents to create hoaxes, or accept hoaxes at face value.

4. The statistical unlikelyhood that extraterrestrials would single out Earth for their attention, and, having discovered a promising species, abandon it.

5. Formally, AAT collapses into religion, with all its shortcomings. Religious dogma puts an end to inquiry by positing a predetermined dogmatic answer. "Why is the sky blue?" "Because God(s) created it that way, QED." Similarly, AAT puts an end to potentially fruitful investigation. "What were the logistics involved in building the pyramids?" "Aliens did it, QED."

6. Because it collapses into religion, it minimizes human achievement. Aliens didn't build Stonehenge, your great-great-great-(etc)- grandparents did. Take some pride in that.

reply to post by ButterCookie

one must examine the physical as well as the theoretical evidence. Of course any ideas about our early beginnings will only be theories;

In what sense of the word are you using the word theories? Because I tend to disagree wholeheartedly if you mean theory in the general sense of "an educated guess" as oppossed to the way it is used in science (archeology being amongst the sciences) as being a unifying framework for various facts, laws and ideas. For instance Evolution is a scientific theory, this doesn't mean it's an unproven guess, the biological fact that bio-diversity is the result of genetic change over time is quite well known and accepted, but instead Evolutionary theory is the framework for studying that bio-diversity.

So yes whatever we come up with about history from the evidence we collect will likely be part of a theory, but not a theory in the broad sense of the term. In scientific terms ancient aliens are at best a HYPOTHESIS, they would not come close to qualifying as a scientific theory.

Not only do they have to consider the bible as a true document, they have to acknowledge that humans are most intelligent or the most advanced.

In regards to ancient alien claims there is no need for an atheist, or anyone, to accept the Bible. The Bible doesn't mention aliens from another a planet, it mentions spiritual beings, a God, angels and the like. To equate them with aliens is to take the Bible out of its historical and mythological context and is only done by those with an agenda. Interpretation is one thing but stretching the scripture to the breaking point to fit a preconcieved bias is another.

They cringe at the term 'god', because it shows humanity's inferiority.

You do realize you're generalizing right? I'm an atheist. I have NO problem whatsoever thinking there might be life out there better than we are. In fact there MIGHT even be something we'd want to call a god. But the possibility of such things is not evidence of them, they'd still need to be proven. I can't tell you how often I lose hope when looking at the sheer stupidity, ignorance and prejudice of my fellow human beings and there are many times when I've wished aliens would abduct me just to show me that there actually is intelligent life elsewhere. The idea that human beings might be the best this Universe has to offer frightens me. So the claim that somehow atheists aren't open to aliens or some higher intelligence is absolute poppycock, I just want to see some damn evidence before I'll accept their existence.

I have a general standard when it comes to these kinds of claims. The greater my desire, the higher my emotional incentive, to believe a claim of this nature, the greater the skepticism must be to balance out the desire to believe.

wrote about extremely similar accounts of human history

This is a vague and unsupported (I would argue FALSE) assertion. Which stories are similar and in what way? For instance most creation accounts differ WILDLY, everything from the magical creation of Genesis to a cosmic egg. Many mythologies do contain common elements of course but this is hardly evidence for alien influence.

in what today we'd deem as advanced technology

This is another unsupported assertion. If the ancient accounts ALL mention chariots (that in and of itself is a GROSS simplification) then how can we presume to reinterpret chariots as flying saucers? Flying saucers themselves being hypothetical in nature, as all aliens and their craft still remain.

Sorry but I just want to see some evidence, that's why I have such a hard time accepting ancient aliens. Tearing myths from their context to stretch modern ideas of UFOs and aliens overtop of what the ancients actually meant is absolute nonsense.

Originally posted by stupid girl

Seriously though, I guess it's hard to accept for me because I just can't get past his hair.

Ever notice, as ancient astronaut theorists believe,
that crazy hair guy pronounces it "exa-terrestrials"?

If his hair and the above fact alone isn't enough of a reason to doubt, what is?
///////\///////
OP:
btw I am agnostic, and both doubt the bible and the AA THEORY.

Nice try but this baiting sort of OP won't draw me into an impassioned argument.

reply to post by redoubt


Thank you!!

And thanks for seeing that this thread was not to bash or create argument, as so many have stated was
the purpose. I just wanted to examine the main two reasons of the main two groups that oppose the AAT.

Its obvious that some nerves were struck....

reply to post by ButterCookie

I just wanted to examine the main two reasons of the main two groups that oppose the AAT.

You forgot a group, then.

Critical thinkers and those that need actual proof to even start to believe something.

Originally posted by Chamberf=6
Ever notice, as ancient astronaut theorists believe,

that crazy hair guy pronounces it "exa-terrestrials"?

No, it's "Exta-terrestials."

Harte