MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS

Yesterday, I stumbled upon some interesting things that triggered a bit of inspiration that I thought would be perfect for a discussion. First, I saw remarkable footage of what looked like a fleet of UFOs flying over Casper, Wyoming. I decided I would post them on Facebook to see how many people would declare them to be Chinese lanterns. There was also a write up in the Paris Review about how UFOs are everywhere.

However, the article borrowed from the cynicism that has remained since the 1980s and that is if you believe in UFOs and aliens, you also believe that our inept, inefficient government has maintained a nearly perfect cover-up across thirteen presidential administrations.

Once again we have to wonder if the so-called intel about such things ever makes it to the president but we know one thing and that is knowing what we’ve done to the universe makes us imagine what a species with superior technology might do to us.

Every alien invasion movie we have watched over the many years can be read as an expression of colonial anxiety — it’s about the fate of the indigenous people with the viewer put in their position. It’s all about the speed of change.

When it comes to attitudes about aliens and space – things are changing rapidly.

President Trump held a Rose Garden event to commemorate the establishment of the U.S. Space Command as the president pushes for the creation of his sixth branch of the military, the Space Force.

Since the Space Force, the president wants to create requires congressional authorization, the administration is establishing a U.S. Space Command that will draw from other parts of the armed forces. One “Space Command” already exists. The Air Force Space Command reports to STRATCOM, which reports to the Pentagon, just as the Pacific Command and the European Command do.

President Trump is visibly fascinated by furthering the United States’ role in space, emphasizing that doing so is key for national security. This move is an acknowledgment of the importance of space in military operations but is, in essence, a kind of rewiring of existing command arrangements.

There are really no real clues as to what has to be rewired but rewiring of attitudes about what is above us is an understatement.

Strategic plans are not only vital for National security but it also has that hidden nuance of creating a branch of the military that will eventually have to deal with extraterrestrial affairs.

While space is a matter of unfinished business – the business model has to be changed as we push through an apocalypse that includes the eventual discovery of extraterrestrial life and what it may tell us about human life and perhaps even human consciousness and spirituality.

Recently there have been a few interesting articles being written in science journals about intelligent design, evolution, and the relationship between mans perception of what God might be and the advent of a possible exotheological perspective on creation, God and extraterrestrial biological intelligence.

Avi Loeb is the well-known American theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology. He has been on Ground Zero before speaking about the new discoveries that are indicating that life in space is a reality.

Loeb stated in an article for Scientific American, when looking around us, the most mysterious phenomenon we encounter routinely is the sophistication of complex life. Some scientists wondered whether life itself was seeded on Earth by an alien civilization in a process called “directed panspermia.”

Basically, a seeding process that was either natural or brought on by extraterrestrial intelligence.

Loeb says in his article that: “If we ever find evidence for life on other planets and it all looks the same, or if extraterrestrial life would appear to be unusually clustered in space, we might realize that it has a common ancestry and panspermia is at play.

The situation would be just like recognizing that too many kids in the neighborhood resemble the milkman.

If life was seeded artificially on earth, one may wonder whether the seeders are checking on the outcome. And if so, the fact that we have not heard from them may indicate that they are disappointed. The experiment may have failed, or we are simply too slow to mature. Well, this may not come as a surprise given the irresponsible way we behave sometimes. Perhaps if we only knew that someone is looking over our shoulders, we would do better.”

This would mean that God or some other God-like being would be the Cosmic Milkman.

Can it be that easy to believe that God, angels, demons, and aliens are that interchangeable? I would say that there are complexities that I believe divide the substance and that God controls all of these creatures of creation from man to angel to demon to alien.

However, the attitudes of millennials are changing with regard to God and extraterrestrial life.

Survey after survey finds 60% of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. A few years back a National Geographic study reported 70% said they believed that extraterrestrials had already visited the earth.

Overall, about 55% of American adults believe in God as presented in the Bible. That number is propped up by the over-sixty crowd with 66% holding their faith. Millennials, however, come in around 40%, with the other 60% betting on E.T. or nothing.

Modern archeology has been busy finding ancient artifacts that indicate that extremely intelligent beings existed thousands of years ago. What is most interesting is that these civilizations show that they were far more intelligent than our own today.

During the times of what is called the enlightenment, there was a movement to embrace the idea of God as a brute extraterrestrial force.

The atomists of the enlightened age got rid of the need for a divine creator of nature by asserting that everything in the universe came into being as a result of the chance jostling of brute matter by some unknown extraterrestrial force that moved matter in a limitless universe which had to have produced a “plurality of worlds.” The plurality of worlds had to have produced a plurality of civilizations.

As it was written that whatever the extraterrestrial force was, it most certainly had the intelligence to create a multitude of plants, people, and everything in between — this “in other regions there are other earths and various tribes of men and breeds of beasts.”

The enlightened believed in worlds without number created by their perception of a great extraterrestrial god with brute strength – there was no mixing of the human tribes of other worlds and the unknown force that eventually was made as an image that represented an anthropomorphic or human-like God.

We are told that God created man in the image of God but it was man who created the image of God to be that of a man.

The pre-Christian and the Christian founders were clear about not creating a human image to represent God. Because through countless encounters with emissaries from heaven – they knew that there were spirits from the air, spirits from the earth and biological tribes from the worlds amongst the fiery stones in the heavens.

The spirits of the air were the angels that were ambivalent about God’s creation and the wise spirits from the earth that were more chaotic and yet were crucial in providing information about the future.

They eventually became demons.

Both were spiritual entities and none were really assigned a label of good or evil.

They acted without the consequence of human morality – they were not human.

They were not and never were confused with the biological emissaries from other worlds.

The early Christians knew of seven planets in the solar system which were called “the wanderers.” There were many early Christians that believed that the sun, moon, and five visible planets were indwelt by rational beings or minds” because their circular motion “had to have a rational origin.” Each tribe to its own planet and it was god’s infinite wisdom to separate the tribes by language and by planet.

The early Christians believed that the return of Christ would cause a collision of ethospheres and that the worlds without number would unite with ours and that God would rule and control all living things in both heaven and earth.

The Book of Genesis makes it clear that God created the universe and, consequently, that human beings were intentionally created by God to become caretakers and heirs to creation under his guidance.

The 6th chapter of Genesis indicates however metaphorically that there was a war between God’s creation and the observers that came from heaven to have sexual relations with the women.

According to scripture, the universe is already quite well-populated with intelligent extraterrestrials and that these beings live in what can be called the Father’s house of many mansions. This can arguably be interpreted as many dimensions within the matrix.

In the year 593 BC, ancient history documents the early days of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. A man named Ezekiel witnessed a marvel in heaven, a wheel within a wheel spinning towards him. After speaking with the strange-looking occupants of this flying wheel he was given instructions on how to use the heavenly event for leverage against idol worshippers.

Then comes the incarnation of Christ: the union of an extraterrestrial God’s divinity with our humanity. Human beings were thereby placed at the center of the cosmic drama, which made no room for questions about the redemption of other intelligent beings.

Saul of Tarsus was a Roman who, after he was blinded by a large glowing object in the sky, changed his name to Paul and became Christianity’s Roman Evangelist. The churches started by Paul grew and developed into “mainline” Christianity by the end of the third century. Many of them changed a lot of doctrine in order to create a new religious movement and a new way to see Jesus. It united a great many people and its effects have lasted over a thousand years.

It has taken thousands of years, many books and sacred texts to continually wire the human mind for the arrival of Gods, demons, angels, demons, extraterrestrials, aliens or whatever metaphor you choose to use.

Whoever is behind it has had the sound knowledge of social engineering and a clear view of the intended goal. Keeping a mystery is a subtle weapon and keeping a secret is a manipulative tool to get the reptilian mind working to try and reveal the secret.

The theory of the plurality of worlds became even more fashionable after the invention of the telescope. This created more speculative ideas about various tribes and civilizations among the stars.

From approximately 1600 to 1900 there was first a trickle, then a flood of scientific/philosophical/theological speculation on the nature of extraterrestrial life.

Such speculation often came from the best scientists of the day. Sir William Herschel (1730-1822), the astronomer who discovered Uranus (1781), claimed that he saw near-certain evidence of forests, circular buildings, canals, roads, and pyramids on the moon — all, of course, signs of lunarians. He was equally certain that the known planets of our solar system were all peopled and insisted the sun was “a most magnificent habitable globe” filled with solarians “whose organs are adapted to the peculiar circumstances of that vast globe.” Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), William’s son, inherited both his father’s science and his fantasies; he argued that since the front side of the moon was apparently dead, lunarians must live on the dark side.

Johann Bode (1747-1826), a director of the Berlin Observatory and famous for Bode’s Law, asked of these same solarians, “Who would doubt their existence?” The reason for such certainty was quasi-theological. “The most wise author of the world assigns an insect lodging on a grain of sand and will certainly not permit…the great ball of the sun to be empty of creatures and still less of rational inhabitants who are ready gratefully to praise the author of life.” The same reasoning led him to affirm the existence of extra-terrestrials on the moon, Mercury, and Venus.

If belief in solarians, lunarians, jupiterians, venusians, mercurians, and martians seems madness now, during the 18th and 19th centuries it was taken to be the only rational, scientifically grounded view. Small wonder, then, that theologians — both Christian and deist — felt not only inspired but obliged to incorporate extra-terrestrials into their systems.

Looking first at the Christian attempts, one notices immediately that the doctrine of the cosmic god-like Incarnation underwent a transformation as well-intentioned Christians rushed to keep up with the latest menagerie of extraterrestrials.

This would go on until science demanded hard evidence of extra-terrestrials. During the 20th century, there was an onslaught of UFO activity, reports of contemporary alien encounters, landings like in Roswell, secret cover-ups and conspiracies. These activities have become part of some cloak and dagger investigations that sometimes yielded intriguing finds – but they are dismissed by a science that has become dogmatic on the subject.

Jacques Vallée has pointed out, “If UFOs are acting at the mythic and spiritual level it will be almost impossible to detect it by conventional methods and that UFO experiences can be similar or are similar to spiritual experiences.”

Psychologists studying religion have long suspected that a belief in the paranormal can be a kind of shield from the even harsher truths of the world. The idea is that when something unexpected happens the brain scrambles around for answers, looking for meaning in the chaos.

More people asking questions about extraterrestrials as to whether or not a belief in them compromises religious faith.

Especially Christian faith – and those in powerful positions in the churches see aliens as a threat to their various congregations and so they dismiss them as fallen angels or demons.

There is no reason for this as the possibility of these beings existing has not threatened the belief in God in any way.

I believe that the millennial’s crisis in faith is not because of the aliens – it is because of the harsh response from their church leaders with regard to extraterrestrial biological entities.

No one is saying that they worship these beings because most Christians, who are true Christians, know the difference and would not worship these beings as gods.

Alien beliefs would never be a satisfactory replacement for spirituality.

Without a doubt, the public is becoming increasingly interested in trying to find some sort of resolution to this so-called crisis in faith. The public are interested in having their questions answered, while others are all talked to death about the UFO/Alien topic.

Asking the question of whether or not extraterrestrials or even UFOs exist is becoming an exercise in futility for old school investigators.

It’s a little bit like asking if Jesus Christ really existed. You can have a bunch of scholars who claim they can “prove” to you that Jesus Christ never existed, and you will find 10 scholars who will “prove” to you, with the same documents, that he did exist.

It’s an interesting and challenging question for those few scholars, but it’s not an interesting question for the rest of us, because historically socially, culturally, and so on – Christianity has been a fact of life for millennia and even in the old religions and in primitive Christianity beings from other worlds have always been the subject of intrigue.

UFOs and Aliens are now becoming a fact of life because our space agencies are confirming what most have suspected all along; that there is now reason to say with confidence that there is life out in space.

In 2014, NASA awarded $1.1M to the Center for Theological Inquiry, an ecumenical research institute in New Jersey, to study “the societal implications of astrobiology”.

Some were enraged.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation, which promotes the division between Church and state, asked NASA to revoke the grant and threatened to sue if NASA didn’t comply.

While the Freedom from Religion Foundation stated that their concern was the commingling of government and religious organizations, they also made it clear that they thought the grant was a waste of money. “Science should not concern itself with how its progress will impact faith-based beliefs.”

The FFR’s argument might well be undermined, however, when the day comes that humanity has to respond to the discovery of aliens.

Such a discovery would raise a series of questions that would exceed the bounds of science.

For example, when we ask, “What is life?” are we asking a scientific question or a theological one? Questions about life’s origins and its future are complicated and must be explored holistically, across disciplines. And that includes the way we respond to the discovery of aliens.

This is not just an idle fantasy; many scientists would now argue that the detection of extraterrestrial life is more a question of when not if.

Written by Ron Patton