What does God need with a Starship?
Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 8:07 pm
Any Star Trek fan will recognized the title of this post, a question asked by Kirk from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, to a super-powerful entity thought to be God. And I have found it is a very appropriate question, indeed.
What I am going to discuss here is a different kind of world view (a Weltenschauung), specifically the religious and spiritual aspects of man--which I have come to learn are two very different concepts.
The perspective began when I realized that only mankind worships a creator god. I could not find a single instance of any other species on this planet that acted the same way, including the intelligent species documented in mythology (excluding man's anthropomorphizing of the stories).
Being a big fan of Dewey Larson, I took a similar approach to religion that Larson did to the physical universe--come up with a set of postulates (assumptions on the way things are), determine the natural consequences of those postulates, and compare to observation. This worked well during the development of Larson's Reciprocal System of theory, allowing him to determine the physical characteristics of space, time, matter and energy.
But in his book, Beyond Space and Time, Larson realized that not ALL observation could be explained by the postulates of his physical universe, including such things as biological life and ethical behavior. So what Larson did was to bundle up everything that DID match his postulates, remove that bundle from what was generally observed, and then took a look at what was left. From that, the nature of biological life became apparent, because it was no longer cluttered with misunderstandings from the inanimate realm. He then did the same with his biological postulates, creating a "level 2" bundle, subtracting that out from observation, and ended up with the latter half of his book dedicated to "level 3", the realm of ethics and metaphysics. That is as far as he got--but it is the methodology that I find to be very useful.
Religion is not all that different from physics. It, too, has a set of postulates that control religious doctrine and behavior and though it may have different names for different people, the ideology remains the same. Up on top you have a creator, usually a single god or a god with sons/angels to carry out his orders. Christianity has Yahweh, with the trinity and hosts of angels. The Sumerian epics have An up top, with his children, Enki, Enlil and Ninhursag, with the hosts of annunaki. These gods created mankind, and usually from some difference of opinion, forms a dichotomy of "good guys" and "bad guys," whether these "guys" be gods, angels, or crossbreeds with humans. And it is usually the "bad guys" that defy the primary god and teach mankind the things he was forbidden to know, which is then followed by a "war of the gods" and some kind of destruction of mankind, classically described as a Deluge or great flood. After that, the gods tend to take a back seat in the affairs of man, becoming more of a concept than an actual being. These days, the closest we get to interaction with the gods is the occasional UFO sighting, but still, it is primarily just memories of the past.
So where does that leave mankind? Religious scholar Mauro Biglino opened my eyes quite a bit with his literal translation of an old, Hebrew Bible. What he found was that it was not a spiritual text, but a history book--and the history it revealed was really nothing to do with spiritual gods, but more with an extraterrestrial colonization of Earth by advanced beings, in a very similar pattern to what Zecharia Sitchin interpreted from the Sumerian records. I can hear it now... blasphemy!!! And what is blasphemy? It is the violation of a world view that is tightly held on to. And this post is about a NEW world view, not trying to apply an old world view that will never fit. As any computer programmer knows, sometimes code becomes so patched, eventually it is better to just put it to the side and do a complete rewrite based on a more complete understanding. And that is what I am attempting to do here... define a world view that, as unlikely as it may seem, is actually a simpler perspective of god, religion and their effect on the behavior of mankind.
So, "what does God need with a starship?"
God needs a starship, if He's an astronaut.
Mankind has a strong desire "to explore strange, new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before." (Opening to Star Trek TV series.) Man is made in god's image... that's probably where we got the motivation from.
Consider the possibility that the "gods" were not spiritual entities, but just an advanced, space-faring race moving across the galaxy, much in the way the explorers of old Earth were, looking for a trade route to India from Europe and discovering America along the way. But in this case, these space traders ran into a young, fertile planet that had abundant life and resources.
What did the Spanish explorers do after discovering the abundant life and resources of America? They went and domesticated the local populations (the North and South American tribes), turned them into a slave race to do the mining and exportation of gold and precious minerals back to their home country.
If man is, indeed, a reflection of god, then what did god do after discovering the abundant life and resources of Earth? They went and domesticated the local populations (Neanderthals), turned them into a slave race to do the mining and exportation of gold nad precious minerals back to their home world.
However, there was one hitch. The American Indians were already very intelligent when they encountered the Spaniards, and therefore made good slaves. The Neanderthals encountered by the ancient gods were dumber than mud. They couldn't even carry a tray without spilling something. But just as a few boatloads of Spaniards conquered millions of natives, a few gods were able to do the same using a genetic hitch: update the Neanderthal with the "image of God" to make him sufficiently intelligent to be a good slave, but not too intelligent to think for himself. And the resulting hybridization of gods + Neanderthals resulted in Cro-magnon man, now called Homo sapiens.
The concepts described are now known as "Intervention Theory," and are gaining popularity as the evidence continues to mount in favor of this scenario.
So who and what were these "gods"? The Sumerian epics contain a significant amount of information on the gods, giants standing 10-20 feet in height, bipedal, with a fish-like tail and having a kind of iridescent skin that was often seen as gold, green or blue in color. They had what we would call a "saurian" (reptilian) appearance, though they may have been of a species never documented on Earth. (See: Oannes.) They had gender and a patriarchal society with distinct lines of rulership. The males were in charge, much as human society has been over the centuries. (During my research, the parallels between the behavior of man and the mythical gods is amazing. Man definitely follows in god's footsteps.)
In many religions, the gods were never seen directly by the general population, residing in their temples usually atop mountains, pyramids or ziggurats, attended only by their trusted priests. It was common knowledge that "one could not behold the face of God and live." (If they did, they may have been a bit shocked at what they would have seen.) And if god wasn't in his temple, then he was up in the heavens, as a Lord (the etymology of the world "lord" comes from "a bright light in the sky." Later, after some problems between god and man arose, they were referred to as "royal" or "regal", which means "tyrannical lord" an ancient Latin.)
Most religions have a heavenly abode for the gods, "Heaven", "Nibiru", "Asgard"... different names, but refer to the same concept, which today we would call some kind of orbital space station or a mothership. Many speak of the gods ascending from their temples on fiery chariots--can you say, "shuttlecraft"? It is not all that different than the space shuttles making runs to the International Space Station these days.
So this "Intervention Theory" world view has the gods as an advanced, space-faring race of giants with a saurian appearance, whom created Cro-Magnon man as a slave race to worship Him and do His bidding. This forms the based of "religious" belief.
But the gods also kept a secret from man... and it is in that secret that one finds "spirituality," rather than "religion."
What I am going to discuss here is a different kind of world view (a Weltenschauung), specifically the religious and spiritual aspects of man--which I have come to learn are two very different concepts.
The perspective began when I realized that only mankind worships a creator god. I could not find a single instance of any other species on this planet that acted the same way, including the intelligent species documented in mythology (excluding man's anthropomorphizing of the stories).
Being a big fan of Dewey Larson, I took a similar approach to religion that Larson did to the physical universe--come up with a set of postulates (assumptions on the way things are), determine the natural consequences of those postulates, and compare to observation. This worked well during the development of Larson's Reciprocal System of theory, allowing him to determine the physical characteristics of space, time, matter and energy.
But in his book, Beyond Space and Time, Larson realized that not ALL observation could be explained by the postulates of his physical universe, including such things as biological life and ethical behavior. So what Larson did was to bundle up everything that DID match his postulates, remove that bundle from what was generally observed, and then took a look at what was left. From that, the nature of biological life became apparent, because it was no longer cluttered with misunderstandings from the inanimate realm. He then did the same with his biological postulates, creating a "level 2" bundle, subtracting that out from observation, and ended up with the latter half of his book dedicated to "level 3", the realm of ethics and metaphysics. That is as far as he got--but it is the methodology that I find to be very useful.
Religion is not all that different from physics. It, too, has a set of postulates that control religious doctrine and behavior and though it may have different names for different people, the ideology remains the same. Up on top you have a creator, usually a single god or a god with sons/angels to carry out his orders. Christianity has Yahweh, with the trinity and hosts of angels. The Sumerian epics have An up top, with his children, Enki, Enlil and Ninhursag, with the hosts of annunaki. These gods created mankind, and usually from some difference of opinion, forms a dichotomy of "good guys" and "bad guys," whether these "guys" be gods, angels, or crossbreeds with humans. And it is usually the "bad guys" that defy the primary god and teach mankind the things he was forbidden to know, which is then followed by a "war of the gods" and some kind of destruction of mankind, classically described as a Deluge or great flood. After that, the gods tend to take a back seat in the affairs of man, becoming more of a concept than an actual being. These days, the closest we get to interaction with the gods is the occasional UFO sighting, but still, it is primarily just memories of the past.
So where does that leave mankind? Religious scholar Mauro Biglino opened my eyes quite a bit with his literal translation of an old, Hebrew Bible. What he found was that it was not a spiritual text, but a history book--and the history it revealed was really nothing to do with spiritual gods, but more with an extraterrestrial colonization of Earth by advanced beings, in a very similar pattern to what Zecharia Sitchin interpreted from the Sumerian records. I can hear it now... blasphemy!!! And what is blasphemy? It is the violation of a world view that is tightly held on to. And this post is about a NEW world view, not trying to apply an old world view that will never fit. As any computer programmer knows, sometimes code becomes so patched, eventually it is better to just put it to the side and do a complete rewrite based on a more complete understanding. And that is what I am attempting to do here... define a world view that, as unlikely as it may seem, is actually a simpler perspective of god, religion and their effect on the behavior of mankind.
So, "what does God need with a starship?"
God needs a starship, if He's an astronaut.
Mankind has a strong desire "to explore strange, new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before." (Opening to Star Trek TV series.) Man is made in god's image... that's probably where we got the motivation from.
Consider the possibility that the "gods" were not spiritual entities, but just an advanced, space-faring race moving across the galaxy, much in the way the explorers of old Earth were, looking for a trade route to India from Europe and discovering America along the way. But in this case, these space traders ran into a young, fertile planet that had abundant life and resources.
What did the Spanish explorers do after discovering the abundant life and resources of America? They went and domesticated the local populations (the North and South American tribes), turned them into a slave race to do the mining and exportation of gold and precious minerals back to their home country.
If man is, indeed, a reflection of god, then what did god do after discovering the abundant life and resources of Earth? They went and domesticated the local populations (Neanderthals), turned them into a slave race to do the mining and exportation of gold nad precious minerals back to their home world.
However, there was one hitch. The American Indians were already very intelligent when they encountered the Spaniards, and therefore made good slaves. The Neanderthals encountered by the ancient gods were dumber than mud. They couldn't even carry a tray without spilling something. But just as a few boatloads of Spaniards conquered millions of natives, a few gods were able to do the same using a genetic hitch: update the Neanderthal with the "image of God" to make him sufficiently intelligent to be a good slave, but not too intelligent to think for himself. And the resulting hybridization of gods + Neanderthals resulted in Cro-magnon man, now called Homo sapiens.
The concepts described are now known as "Intervention Theory," and are gaining popularity as the evidence continues to mount in favor of this scenario.
So who and what were these "gods"? The Sumerian epics contain a significant amount of information on the gods, giants standing 10-20 feet in height, bipedal, with a fish-like tail and having a kind of iridescent skin that was often seen as gold, green or blue in color. They had what we would call a "saurian" (reptilian) appearance, though they may have been of a species never documented on Earth. (See: Oannes.) They had gender and a patriarchal society with distinct lines of rulership. The males were in charge, much as human society has been over the centuries. (During my research, the parallels between the behavior of man and the mythical gods is amazing. Man definitely follows in god's footsteps.)
In many religions, the gods were never seen directly by the general population, residing in their temples usually atop mountains, pyramids or ziggurats, attended only by their trusted priests. It was common knowledge that "one could not behold the face of God and live." (If they did, they may have been a bit shocked at what they would have seen.) And if god wasn't in his temple, then he was up in the heavens, as a Lord (the etymology of the world "lord" comes from "a bright light in the sky." Later, after some problems between god and man arose, they were referred to as "royal" or "regal", which means "tyrannical lord" an ancient Latin.)
Most religions have a heavenly abode for the gods, "Heaven", "Nibiru", "Asgard"... different names, but refer to the same concept, which today we would call some kind of orbital space station or a mothership. Many speak of the gods ascending from their temples on fiery chariots--can you say, "shuttlecraft"? It is not all that different than the space shuttles making runs to the International Space Station these days.
So this "Intervention Theory" world view has the gods as an advanced, space-faring race of giants with a saurian appearance, whom created Cro-Magnon man as a slave race to worship Him and do His bidding. This forms the based of "religious" belief.
But the gods also kept a secret from man... and it is in that secret that one finds "spirituality," rather than "religion."