The Fortean/paranormal/conspiracy thread

[King Coconut]

3 hours ago, FelatioLips said:

Some people don't even believe the moon landing or that the earth isn't flat. They won't believe this.

 

In this specific case, they'll be unusually accurate in their beliefs.

Edited June 26, 2017 by King Coconut

[BomberPat]

The long-standing sci-fi assumption, and one parroted by Reagan, is that proof of contact with intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would force mankind to confront their differences and bring about some sense of unity - effectively a global display "I can call my mate a prick, that doesn't mean you get to".

It's bollocks, though, isn't it?

As for the impact on religion, it's an interesting one. Does it directly contradict Christian doctrine to say there's life on other planets? God created the whole universe, not just Earth, so it wouldn't be a huge stretch for the church to adapt to a new paradigm. There's an interesting bit of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles about priests going to Mars and debating whether or not Martians can be, or should be, sworn into Christianity, with the crux of the debate being that because they are not from Earth, they were never in the Garden of Eden, so therefore never fell victim to original sin. Hell, if intelligent life from other planets ends up being broadly human-like, that would throw a lot of evolutionary theories into question before it casts any doubt on religion.

 

It depends what we mean by contact, and what we mean by life. I find it very difficult to believe that we have made contact with intelligent life, or vice-versa. If we've found evidence of any kind of life outside of Earth, it's a huge scientific breakthrough, that could lead in any number of directions - it recontextualises what we know about life and the universe, and could lead to heightened political interest and investment in science, and probably on the other end of the spectrum an upsurge in claptrap conspiracy theories and pseudo-religious interpretations of life.

 

Personally, I think it's probably bullshit anyway. "Anonymous have said..." is a meaningless statement, considering Anonymous by definition aren't a defined, connected network, it's just any number of people. They're represented as some kind of underground elite network of hackers and insiders, but the vast majority of them are probably teenage nerds and trolls. They don't exactly have the best accuracy rating, either.

 

I don't believe in intelligent life on other planets. Microbial life, perhaps, but the notion of there being a species out there that we can interact with in anything meaningful sense is preposterous to me, for a few reasons;

1. We have no idea how likely the evolution of life, let alone intelligent life, is. We have one case study - Earth - where, as far as we know, life has only evolved once. We have no way of knowing if that was likely or unlikely under "Earth-like" conditions, if the rate of evolution of life was at a normal pace or abnormally slow or fast, because we have nothing to compare it to. If it could be proven that life has evolved on Earth on more than one occasion, that would be a far more meaningful way of establishing the likelihood of lifeforms emerging than scouring the universe for signs of life.

2. We don't really understand what "intelligence" even is. When we talk about intelligent life, we mean life we can interact with in any meaningful sense. But would any lifeform, no matter how intelligent, that evolved with no interaction with, or knowledge of, ourselves or anything like us, be able to interact with us? Humans and dogs have co-evolved for thousands of years, to a point where we can "understand" each other in a way we can't with any other animal - but can we explain, or understand, a dog's "intelligence"? Or the "intelligence" of the great apes? If we can't fully quantify the intelligence of our closest genetic relatives, or of a species that have spent thousands of years as our companion, what hope do we have of understanding the intelligence of something we'll have absolutely no frame of reference for?

3. Let's assume that, as it appears to be, the evolution of life is extraordinarily rare. Even in a vast, near infinite universe. Not only does that make the odds of life evolving elsewhere incredibly slim, and the odds of that life being near enough to us as to make contact even rarer, but consider the issue of time. We're not just looking at the vastness of space, but the sheer expanse of time that the universe has existed for. Life would have had to have evolved at roughly the same time, at a concurrent pace, at two points in the universe near enough in space to make contact. I wouldn't want to calculate the odds against that eventuality.

[Duke]

6 hours ago, quote the raven said:

Total utter melt down of every faith on the planet. Who knows what follows,

Probably not, no. 

[King Coconut]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Hell, if intelligent life from other planets ends up being broadly human-like, that would throw a lot of evolutionary theories into question

That's not really true. Even on Earth we have many, many examples of convergent evolution. The fact that we currently only have a sample size of one actually forces biologists to assume, until further evidence is forthcoming, that life on other planets would be similar to life on Earth.

 

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

3. Let's assume that, as it appears to be, the evolution of life is extraordinarily rare.

Let's not. Life on Earth developed almost immediately once conditions were suitable, so it appears as though it's highly likely.

[Astro Hollywood]

It's not like there'd be one set reaction from the religious community to the news of alien life. Even among Christians, opinions on that vary from "God created the universe and all life in it" to "aliens aren't in the bible, so can't exist, and when you talk about aliens, you're talking about demons!" and everything inbetween. To get a bit speculative sci-fi about it, if there was intelligent life who could prove they'd been around for longer than 10,000 years, with a big photo album or something, then that would contradict bible literalists to the age of the Earth and universe, but then, so does current science, and that doesn't stop them believing that dinosaur bones were put there by the Devil or by God to test our faith.

So, I don't see any real change, certainly not the massive religious meltdown that fiction often suggests. Most people would likely just hold firm with their beliefs, that the aliens were created by God when he made the universe, or that they're demons or another test signalling the end times before Jesus comes back, any day now.

Though, nothing's going to be announced.

[chokeout]

1 hour ago, Astro Hollywood said:

It's not like there'd be one set reaction from the religious community to the news of alien life. Even among Christians, opinions on that vary from "God created the universe and all life in it" to "aliens aren't in the bible, so can't exist, and when you talk about aliens, you're talking about demons!" and everything inbetween. To get a bit speculative sci-fi about it, if there was intelligent life who could prove they'd been around for longer than 10,000 years, with a big photo album or something, then that would contradict bible literalists to the age of the Earth and universe, but then, so does current science, and that doesn't stop them believing that dinosaur bones were put there by the Devil or by God to test our faith.

 

I'd love them to rock up with just enough info to piss off Young Earth Creationists

[BomberPat]

Like Astro said, it would make no difference. I've been routinely amusing myself with arguments on evolution with a particular Young Earth Creationist on the Guardian website - his arguments are so circular; basically "the world is only 6000 years old, therefore evolution can't have happened because the timescales science says it requires aren't possible". They back up one wrong theory with another, like a shitty theoretical house of cards.

If these people could be convinced to change their mind in the light of new evidence, they'd have changed their minds hundreds of years ago.

[Duke]

Of course, if the aliens turned up and were religious themselves.....

 

Also, it's important to restate that religion is not necessarily Christianity. There's a significant number of other faiths that wouldn't necessarily be affected by this at all. (and I'm not sure Christians would either, necessarily). Anyone who thinks all religion would just collapse if intelligent life turns up has particularly low religious literacy. 

[King Coconut]

16 minutes ago, Duke said:

Of course, if the aliens turned up and were religious themselves.....

I think that's the most unlikely thing in this whole thread. We could be so primitive in comparison that we receive them as gods though. All they'd need to do is turn a spot of water into wine, job done. 

[UK Kat Von D]

I don't doubt that intelligent life has or will exist somewhere other than earth. They might have died out a million years ago or they might be early in their evolution now.

I don't think we will ever meet them though. I am of the opinion that any civilisation that is advanced enough to travel here will destroy themselves before they get the chance to. We have already been pointing nukes at each other for years, if other lifeforms have anything similar to our mindset then we will never get the chance to meet them 

[Arch Stanton]

4 hours ago, Astro Hollywood said:

if there was intelligent life who could prove they'd been around for longer than 10,000 years, with a big photo album or something

The thought of this has just blown my mind a little bit, has it ever been done in a book or film or anything? Imagine aliens turning up to reveal they had been walking among us for centuries and had HD images or better yet, footage of some of history's biggest events.

 

[Astro Hollywood]

32 minutes ago, Arch Stanton said:

The thought of this has just blown my mind a little bit, has it ever been done in a book or film or anything? Imagine aliens turning up to reveal they had been walking among us for centuries and had HD images or better yet, footage of some of history's biggest events.

I don't know about in fiction, but maybe in 'fact'. Waffle incoming. The aliens we know now came about following a cultural shift in the late 80's following the release of Whitley Striber's Communion, with its cover popularising greys with big black eyes.

That cunt ^, the Travis Walton abduction, which was made into the movie Fire in the Sky, and then, the X-Files and such, changed the entire narrative into "Aliens are grey and they come to Earth when we're sleeping to put things up our holes." Prior to that, especially in the 50's and 60's, aliens were Space Brothers; hippies who didn't care about our anuses (anii?) and picked people up for a joyride in their UFOs, and would often show them video of Earth's desctruction if we didn't change our ways, and pictures or video of moments in our past, such as Christ's crucifixtion. All they wanted to do back then was spread love, and share old family videos of humanity's past. Billy Meier was taken back to see the dinosaurs, and though it wasn't HD, this picture he took is incredible proof that would change any biblical literalist's mind, I think you'll agree.

He definitely didn't get it out of a children's book.

Edited June 26, 2017 by Astro Hollywood

[Arch Stanton]

Interesting! Love the idea of Hippy Space Brothers.

[Duke]

15 hours ago, King Coconut said:

I think that's the most unlikely thing in this whole thread. We could be so primitive in comparison that we receive them as gods though. All they'd need to do is turn a spot of water into wine, job done. 

Why? Wouldn't they have the same psychological instinct to create the safety net of a God? It's been stated a few times in this thread that religion tends to survive scientific progression. I'm not saying that they'd have identical religions to ours (although that'd be a hell of a curve ball if they did) but the idea that they have something with a more than passing resemblance isn't completely out of the question. You're assuming that they wouldn't have any formal religion because that's what you want to believe about a race thats that advanced (very much aware of the irony, thank you). 

[King Coconut]

I don't deny that their civilisation would very likely have developed religions; that appears to be a standard, primitive stab at understanding the world that I would imagine is pretty universal. But yes, you're right that I assume that any civilisation that has developed interstellar travel has long since done away with religion. But that's just me extrapolating our only known example to its logical conclusion.