i hope those who are staunchly christian will not take offense, nor atheists condemn me as a crackpot.
for a university subject, i was required to read a portion of the bible of my choice. i chose ezekiel (rather at random) and began reading. soon i was struck by the oddness of the thing being described in the ‘vision of the chariot’ (chapter 1 verses 1-26). out of curiousity i began sketching it from ezekiels words (admittedly removed from directness by the passage of time and the translation into greek, then english from the hebrew.) what struck me in a flash was the resemblence to a space-ship. the account is what one would expect of an uneducated israelite from several thousand BC when faced with a piece of alien technology (i use alien in the sense of foreign). the sound of jet-engines (the noise of the ‘wings’) the metallic colours, the ‘dome’ with the throne on top, how the chariot is described as moving and flying, all seem to indicate a ship of some description, capable of moving ‘like lightning’, and with a power source (‘things like coals from a fire’ from which lightning emanated).
my question is: is it irrational, or fallacious to interpret passages from the bible in this context? is it possible also that some, if not all, of religious experiences could be ‘abduction experiences’ of a real or psychological nature? finally, is it plausible that extraterrestrial beings have visited the earth at certain points in civilisation?
No, actually, I have heard that passage from Ezekiel compared to other UFO reports throughout history. Which really makes it no more wierd than…well, other UFO reports throughout history.
Many of the stories in the Bible, even outside of Ezekiel, can be interpreted as alien visitation. There are stories in the book of Genesis about men walking with God, and of the sons of God before Adam, and even of wrestling with God.
These stories are taken by many to mean “alien” and there are myriad concepts in physics, such as time dilation and special relativity, even some radical versions of string theory, that could take that slant.
I, not that anyone asked, think it is more likely that there were more technologically advanced humans that escaped areas of catastrophe, and that their stories became those of Viracocha, Prometheus, and even Moses and Imhotep. Their stories could be remembered as universal flood myths, catastrophes, or the sinking of great continents like Atlantis and Mu.
Don’t worry, this staunchy christian takes no offence.
I think it’s important to remember it was a vision, and the way it’s written there can be many meanings behind what he sees, like Jesus in other passages described as the sacrificial lamb, he wasn’t an actual lamb, but that is what the image refers to.
Anyway, I’ve found a good website that might help. It’s a bit long, but it explains the vision pretty well logon.org/english/s/p108.html
Enjoy!
Read Carl Sagan’s ‘The Demon-Haunted World’ for an excellent debunking of alien abduction/visitation theories. I’d quote some of it now but I’m at work! I’ll try and remember to do it tonight, it cuts right through the crap with a flaming lightsabre of logic.
Hi Altruist,
when Erich von Däniken came out in 1968 with his first book, there was a lot of uproar and he managed to get a lot of information uncovered that mainstream archeology wasn’t looking at.
Since those days there have been a lot of people who plagarised his books or jumped on the bandwagon - something I suspect you of, university subject, or not.
‘Chariots of the Gods : Was God An Astronaut?’ was printed in English as a paperback back in April 1989.
tkingdoll,
what about logic makes an alien visitation theory ‘crap’. (i wonder if you mean by ‘crap’; lies, figments of imagination)
is there an equation that rules out the possibility of space ships that can go further than ours? or that we’re the furthest advanced life forms?
and the first time we’re visited, (i assume you won’t say its impossible) how is someone gonna report it? a licence plate?
Ok say 12,000 years from now humans emigrate to distant worlds, invent time travel and go back in time- they have evolved significantly in another direction due to climate, diet, altitude, gravity etc. Are they aliens or humans?..By the nature of the definition they are aliens but at the same time they are literal decendants and family…so should we nuke them or give them pocket money and candy cains? LOL
Sure, lies and imagination come into it but I’m talking mainly about the paranoia and superstition that many people allow to govern their lives despite the lack of a single concrete shred of evidence. Dr Sagan draws a comparison with the once-popular belief in ghosts, witches, demons, deities etc that are littered throughout history. There aren’t many intelligent people around today who believe in magic, but at one point it was an every day part of people’s personal superstition. Aliens aren’t going to get you any more than the bogeyman is.
It’s pretty implausable. I don’t deny the possibility of the existence of other intelligent life forms in the universe, but the chances of them having reached this planet (even after they had managed to find it) are nigh on impossible. According to the standard inflationary model of cosmology, the visible portion of our universe is an infinitesimally small speck in a much larger universe of at least a 10[size=75]35[/size] light-years across. So if you had a vehicle that could travel a quintillion light-years per second (which is might as well be infinite), it would still take you 3.7 billion years to cross the universe.
Some people like to say that the above doesn’t apply because the alien civilisation will have technology beyond anything we can imagine, that transcends the known laws of Physics. In return I tell them that I have an invisible dragon in my garage.
Let’s imagine that a) an alien civilisation had such technology, b) had somehow managed to find our speck of a planet and c) had actually bothered to make the journey, why exactly would they do nothing other than ‘borrow’ a few rednecks from sparsely-populated areas and mutilate a few cows? The civilisation that built the vehicle that can travel faster than infinitely fast would surely have better things to do? Or is it a Martian equivalent of trick or treat? Some green-tenticled alien teenagers in a stolen UFO?
Exactly! I doubt whether we have much chance of leaving the solar system for the next thousand years, let alone have a sensible target to head for. Looking at the whole idea rationally, would it be worth the trip?
Speaking of Sagan, SETI was supposed to reveal the ability of mankind to survive it’s own technology. That receiving radio or TV signals and them continuing for enough light years into the future meant that there was hope for us after all. Nothing has been received yet, so I am wondering what Sagan now says about that? SETI has been searching for what, 40 years now? So does that mean no intellgent life within 40 light years of us that has discovered radio and TV? If so, then it is hard to imagine intelligent life that visits us on a regular basis from more than 40 light years away and moves faster than the speed of light, so that they get to us before their first radio and TV braodcasts get to us?
But wait, Ezekiel was dated what? 500 years BC? So there was intelligent life visiting us around 2500 years ago but their radio and TV broadcasts do not reach us even today? I suppose that it is possible they are jumping around faster than the speed of light or that they stopped broadcasting before we ever started listening? But you see my point?
