June 17, 2012: A.D. After Disclosure

[wwkirk]

It was just a term to explain the claim that he had been 'given' some kind of telepathic glimpse of some binary (1's and 0's) from touching the craft reported seen in Rendlesham forest.

Of course, whether there is a grain of truth to that or not is another matter entirely!

Okay. Thanks.

 

[trainedobserver]

It was just a term to explain the claim that he had been 'given' some kind of telepathic glimpse of some binary (1's and 0's) from touching the craft reported seen in Rendlesham forest.

Of course, whether there is a grain of truth to that or not is another matter entirely!

In ASCII yet! That really puts a major taint on it for me. It is really hard to imagine that any alien or time traveling machine from the future would be running any recognizable code much less using ASCII. That says contemporary, terrestrial, and human to me.

 

[pickles]

Episodes like this create threads like this, which dissolve into anti-religious bigotry. It's endlessly fascinating that the ones that assault religion with such acidic fervor and zeal are usually the ones that preach "tolerance." It's also amusing, frankly, how the types that assault religion as "intellectual placeholders until the smart people figure it all out" are usually the ones that know so little about the religions they attack. Ironic? Yes. Predictable? Like clockwork.

That said, the presence of God need not be validated by ET. These civilizations may not have any clue about God any more than the Jujubee tribe in the darkest reaches. That doesn't invalidate His presence.

Folks tend to forget that even if ET manipulated our development, the question remains who made them and everything else. If you think that everything is purely an accident and the product of physics, great. Answer for us all then who started the entire process in motion.

 

[Muadib]

Answer for us all then who started the entire process in motion.

Read Stephen Hawking, there was no need for someone to have started it, it was the inevitable byproduct of the laws of physics. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to set the Universe going." Personally, I'm an agnostic that leans toward atheism, I'm not arrogant enough to say that I am 100% certain that there is no God. Do I doubt it? Yes. Too many contradictions in religious thinking and the Bible, too much evidence that, contrary to what religious folks like to think, the universe was not designed with us in mind and it was made randomly without any great intelligence behind it. I've nothing against most religious people, fundies piss me off when they spout ignorant horseshit theories with nothing but a bible verse to back it up, but otherwise, as long as you don't preach at me or bother me with it, I really couldn't care less if you're religious or not.

 

[trainedobserver]

That said, the presence of God need not be validated by ET. These civilizations may not have any clue about God any more than the Jujubee tribe in the darkest reaches. That doesn't invalidate His presence.

Don't you think the validation of any terrestrial god would be practically and logically impossible for a non-terrestrial being? I mean, unless you can imagine them flying Quetzalcoatl or some other terrestrial god down and holding a press conference you have to wonder how that could be possible.

Wouldn't you agree that if we were visited by ETs that their gods would by definition have to be different than ours? Also, nothing says they would have to be monotheistic. Wouldn't any concept of god presented to us by ET clash irrevocably with the views of the fundamentalist religious sects here on Earth unless ET evoked the same names and described the same personalities belonging to terrestrial deities?

If humans can't agree on what a god or the God is or if it exists at all, how could we relate with a non-human extra-terrestrial being's concepts of those things? Aren't many of the most popular concepts of "God" held by human beings pretty "exclusive" in that they do not allow for the embracing of other gods or practices brought in from other religions?

I think the best thing to hope for is a total silence from ET on the subject of religion and their gods should they ever appear and want to get chatty. Although it seems like the first question many would want to ask, it seems like the last subject we want to broach with them.

Answer for us all then who started the entire process in motion.

For some folks it seems just as likely and requires fewer assumptions to suppose that it has always been motion than to assume the presence of a builder with no creation story itself. You have to stop somewhere or "It is turtles all the way down."

Hopefully when and if we meet ET and ask them the burning questions about God and the origin of the universe they won't pat us on the head and feed us a Santa Claus story to keep us happy or see such questions as permission to proselytize humanity for their off world religions.

 

[SRL+]

Richard Dolan

 

[nameless]

In ASCII yet! That really puts a major taint on it for me. It is really hard to imagine that any alien or time traveling machine from the future would be running any recognizable code much less using ASCII. That says contemporary, terrestrial, and human to me.

of course wasnt that the point.

 

[nameless]

As said its easy enough for local religions to believe in aliens

Vatican Prepares for ET: Can Religions Survive UFO Reality? « Bodhi Thunder




The trouble is, what if the aliens dont believe in the local religions.

Its one thing for the vatican to say we accept the existance of aliens, what if the aliens say we dont accept the existance of god.

If they confirm Hawking



And say The truth is it can all be explained as the result of the inevitable laws of physics , and we have never found any evidence of your god, or that of the myriad other gods dreamed up on any number of inhabited planets

That creator myths are the product of ignorance , intellectual place holders until a species develops the science and technology to properly understand how the universe came into being.

Accepting that and giving up the myth will be impossible for many.

If this



Did happen, you can bet one of the questions asked was does god exist, if the answer was the same as hawkings....... then thats as good a reason as any why disclosure hasnt taken place.

Imagine para-sailing onto this building during the hajj

And proclaiming Allah is not real, mohamed was just a man, and islam is an empty superstition.........

Even as a member of their own species, the crowd would tear you to bits........
Would an alien species fare any different ?, i doubt it

Even in the west an ET embassy would if they disclosed that god was a myth, be subject to the same bombings as abortion clinics by radical fundies.

Religion might be ready to accept ET, but only as long as ET accepts religion.
If ET rejects religion as superstitious nonsense........ religion will reject ET as demonic deceivers

Religion wont handle disclosure if Disclosure is

"ET is real, god is not"

But imo thats the more likely scenario we face

dude. if no one else is going to i will:

i hereby place a Fatwā on your ass. be afraid, the easter bunny has many guises and many followers.

 

[nameless]

..But what if "ET" is not "from space"? What if the presence of ET means something far different, something so outlandish that it does not fit our concept of reality? What if ET's presence was so bizzare that it completely upset our notions of who we are and how reality is constructed? We think we know what reality is. We think we've got a pretty good notion of how the Universe is constructed. We've got Newtonian Mechanics down cold. We can do anything at all with electricity. We're exploring string theory and branes, quantum mechanics, and relativity and yeah! Some of that stuff is a little weird, but the thing is, it's explainable. People like Stephen Hawkings and Carl Sagan can explain it to us, even if we can't personally do the math.

But what if ET said something like this: "This is our planet, too. We live in a different dimension than you do because our vibration is different. We've learned to traverse dimensions so we can be in yours, too, but really, we're sitting right next to you on that couch. We're as close as your TV set. The fact is, humans do survive death and go to the next dimension where they meet up with other souls. You reincarnate constantly. We help that process. In fact, we control it. Your body is a container for your soul, and you know what? Your personality is irrelevant. It goes away. What you think is you is not you at all. We're in charge and we don't care much what you think about that. Our technology is so advanced that it seems like magic to you."

We could go on, but the point is that this view of reality does not match our current meme at all. It's far different, far more challenging, and far scarier than the normal idea of ETs from space. If this is correct, then ETs aren't ETs. We are that amount of wrong. If THAT'S the secret, no wonder they don;t want to tell us. As far as After Disclosure? It's a lot of speculation and hot air.

I liked the show although i though it was a little unchallenging.

/|\Yeah, this seems to be the only relevant, current and interesting thing to be said about "alien disclosure" and social concious meme creation as devices for control and deserves more air time. "What if" scenarios could go on forever and if are purely imaginative speculation, they could be practical like a researched expert corrobarative manual or maybe could be entertaining fiction like "The Zombie Survival Guide". IN this case is it pitched as a brain experiment? or is it hiding more prosaic beliefs as alluded to by others in this thread?

I don't think people would be ready for a life altering event. Isnt that what we have learnt from the countless number of Sci Fi films and other excercises in imaginative speculation as to what could happen... But back down to earth maybe we should be more considerate of the criminal law practicalities of what is a suing/ accident claims society?!!

What if aliens where made from Ham and or Ice cream? What are the implications on the meat industries and italian imigrants? I for one would relish the meeting of man and tasty aliens. What if everyone was abducted? How would the world survive then? If no humans existed would the world end? would the world end if only bees were abducted?
When i went on holiday to a foreign country I had a little bit of a weird experience. Talk about a culture shock. i didnt realise that a culture shock was actually that, a "shock" to the system. i was effected by what i saw. i guess its the same as watching an animal being slaughtered. you dont really know how it will effect you until it happens, no matter how well your prepared for it.

This book could have been about who, how, what and why in the concreting and creation of the ET meme. Someone wants us to believe in ET and is creating extraordinary, ridiculous, sophisticated and amateurish attempts at doing so, wether its collective conciousness, unwilling victims, subconcious mental plagues or just plain hoaxing with an undisclosed agenda etc..

Differing hypothesis as to who or what strange lights/uFO experiences are have lead to differing factions and "unsubstantiated claims" to the phenomena. This in turn has created political structures and movements which in order to survive or gain credibility needs a corroborative and intrinsic doctrine and religious ideology to protect itself, from the nuts n bolts Roswell guys to the Pleaidian cultists, belief, religious miracles/events artifacts and aliens, they have all got loads in common with one another...Each in turn are staking their claim on a phenomena and inadvertently in a future" Truth will out" disclosure/apocalypse event. Fundamentaly, the speculation which in turn produces cults and religions factions gives us a retelling of religious disparation with cult movements forming under a mysterious nexus. One could even be as cynical as to suggest that belief systems are engineered with this "final act" in mind such as the cult of Greer or the Rapture Christians.

It might be worth looking at a disclosure event in terms of the society of the spectacle and the disclosure event itself as inherently negative in terms of us being "passive spectators" in thrall to an event which is a confluence of mass media and advanced capitalism. The "event" itself being the ever anticipated but never reached "money shot", the final act exposé. the medium and nature of the event itself being an indicator of meaning without having to fully know or understand the message. The medium overweighing the message, the repercussions of which having a tremendous life altering effect.

It seems if there was a truly distinct benign inteligence at work that had yet to disclose itself, it would have to do so without the possibility of interference, misunderstanding, control or reinterpreation by a second or third party. Its nature would have to be clear, precise and distinct and have an emotionaly logical and "rationaly empirical" veracity. good luck with that reconciliation.


(note the use of "quotation marks" to express ideas and opinions not necessarily shared by myself but are an alluded to common concept or someoen else's expression or thought and can alaso allude to an alterior meaning.)

 

[Apocalypto]

Great show, but I'm not holding my breath for disclosure. Heck, I don't even know what disclosure is. If aliens have been visiting Earth for centuries, how is the government the institution that knows anything interesting about it anyway? The government is nothing but a collection of megalomaniacal mouth breathing morons... and that's being kind.

 

[SPX]

Good show, I disagree with the point that religious folks would be all good with the realization that we are not alone in the universe. I don't think it fits into Abrahamic religion's world view. People like to say they would be cool with the fact, but lets be honest most of us on these very forums would struggle with a paradigm shift of that magnitude, and we for the most part want to believe or already do. But lets not mistake belief and knowing, these are two different things.

I grew up in a very religious, Protestant family. I have since swung toward agnosticism, but my dad is still a true Christian believer and he is okay with the idea of UFOs and aliens. Even Billy Graham once said that the idea of ET life is not out of the question because the Bible talks about the "worlds" that God has created.

I will say this though: Once aliens landed and had no idea about Jesus or Yahweh or any of that, I think there would be some problems.

 

[SPX]

As far as Santa goes, the only correct answer is to not teach the lie to children. It's a ridicules tradition.

I sure liked it when I was a kid. . .

Why take that away?

 

[Muadib]

Yeah I agree, I enjoyed the hell out of the whole Santa Clause thing when I was a kid. If you're so sensitive that you had serious issues when you found out that Santa wasn't real, I feel sorry for you.

 

[dr.abbadon]

This was an excellent show! I watched all of the DS series in a weekend! I read many of Richards works. I loved DS apart from the rubber latex aliens! haha. Bryce and Richard put forward some interesting aspects that I certainly did not consider. Listening to the pandoras box that would be unleashed by disclosure would be daunting for anyone to put their hand up and want to tell the truth. I do feel world governments treat us like 8 year olds and what ever happened as a result we would all get on with it. I honestly have to agree with Chris O'Brien, the only way disclosure will ever happen is if it is forced upon the powers that be. My head is still spinning thinking about all the permutations!

 

[pickles]

Good show, I disagree with the point that religious folks would be all good with the realization that we are not alone in the universe. I don't think it fits into Abrahamic religion's world view. People like to say they would be cool with the fact, but lets be honest most of us on these very forums would struggle with a paradigm shift of that magnitude, and we for the most part want to believe or already do. But lets not mistake belief and knowing, these are two different things.

Disclosure will cause uproar and discontent in places where any minor tipping of the apple cart creates a problem - i.e. the Middle East, Africa and parts of Southeast Asia with large Muslim populations. Although you may encounter some fundamentalist Christians having a cow over it, they're far enough away from mainstream Christianity that I don't think we'll see much rioting in the streets in most Western nations.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

I cannot stand the idea someone has decided I can't handle the truth on this matter. Because I am such a fervent anti-religion type, I would welcome the day ET came to tell us what was what, specifically letting the religious types know they have been conned by superstition.

I would accept the consequences of disclosure (tho I also think it will never happen from the government - it would have to be them) and if many of societies institutions crumble then so be it.

 

[trainedobserver]

I cannot stand the idea someone has decided I can't handle the truth on this matter. Because I am such a fervent anti-religion type, I would welcome the day ET came to tell us what was what, specifically letting the religious types know they have been conned by superstition.

I would accept the consequences of disclosure (tho I also think it will never happen from the government - it would have to be them) and if many of societies institutions crumble then so be it.

What if the disclosure went something like, "We have discovered that Earth and everything on it is the property of an incredibly advanced non-human civilization. We are being used as test subjects in a project that we are told we could not comprehend even if they were able to explain it to us from our perspective. We are taken and replaced routinely with only a relatively few of us having any recollection of it. Our science, military, and philosophy have no mean of coping with them. We can do not better than to ignore their existence and go on with our lives."

The result of such an announcement might be wholesale madness and anarchy requiring an intervention or perhaps scrapping of the whole project, which would probably be bad for us.

I think that all of the above is just a big fantasy though. I think the "terrible truth" is that despite all of their efforts they still don't know jack. Things are seen but as to their origins and purposes they are still in the dark.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

I just don't care what the truth is. I absolutely can guarantee whatever it is I wont go mad. Can that be said for those 100% sure of their place in the universe? I doubt it, even though that annoys me a lot.

 

[Jeff Crowell]

I had a friend once tell me that if he ever got into a fight he knew he would win because he would just get really mad (Red Ross from Friends) and start swinging until the other guy went down. Later on I took several years worth of martial arts training and I realized that the "Red Ross" plan of action rarely works. Although anger (and fear) make you stronger and faster they also make you far less rational and you run out of energy far quicker. I understand that the angry fighter becomes the wild swinger who can easily be avoided until he runs out of steam......then he loses the fight. A fight, or physical confrontation with another human being, is very unpredictable, and a person's reaction to a sudden physical confrontation is just as unpredictable. I've seen seasoned fighters freeze at the first hint of a street fight and get their a**'s handed to them.

What's my point in all this? Only that you can prepare and 'think' about what you'll do in certain circumstances and situations but until those circumstances and situations actually come to pass no one truly knows how they, or others around them, will react. I believe disclosure is one of those circumstances. There are simply too many variables to consider (like in a physical fight) to be able to accurately predict how we or others will react and behave to the news. We can sit here in the comfort of our dens in front of our computers with our kids playing in the background and say, "Oh, if aliens show up, I'll be totally cool about it," but the fact of the matter is that's being a tad (sometimes a massive tad) dishonest.

That's not to say disclosure shouldn't be considered a worthy mental exercise since alien discovery is likely to occur to our species, but we have to do it within a realistic boundary. Truth-be-told, how people will react, including ourselves, is probably not a realistic boundary. Such human behavior will be directed by several other otherwise unpredictable factors such as....

• How the information is revealed to us. Do the aliens suddenly show up in massive ships hovering over every major city in the world, or do they suddenly start pouring out of the caves and vents of the crust of the Earth? Or do they subtly transmit a message that interrupts our radio and television signals, 'gently' letting everybody know they're here? Or does the government tell us?
• What are the properties of the alien species? Are they bipedal? Do they eat meat? How do they communicate with us?
• What are the intentions of the alien species? Are they were for scientific or observation purposes or do they want to 'share' Earth with us?

These questions go on-and-on, but other considerations will involve short term and long term ramifications. Information presented at the beginning of disclosure may cause little distress and may even appear comforting, but a few months down the road when the situation becomes more apparent people may start to panic about the whole thing, again, depending on the details of the scenario. It's a complicated topic (which is why people rant about it so much) but the idea of "Oh, I'll be cool about it," probably isn't worth discussing too much.

 

[trainedobserver]

I just don't care what the truth is. I absolutely can guarantee whatever it is I wont go mad. Can that be said for those 100% sure of their place in the universe? I doubt it, even though that annoys me a lot.

Then we're faced with the more real problem of "Would you believe anything they told us anyway?" I think most would ignore it or chalk it up as more government B.S. unless some very convincing demonstration were performed. I am in perpetual doubt. I would find it hard to take whatever disclosure there turned out to be at face value. I would be waiting for the other shoe to drop.