What do we make of that?
Seems like the Catholic Church at least is "trying" to adapt (change?) to the times.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7399661.stm

Well , I do have to admit the theory of aliens making contact with humans thousasnds of years ago , bringing in religion as well as understanding to your human race is one of the theories that makes the most sense. Because when you look back , our real evolution as a species took place not long ago , we are talking about , 5 or 6 tousand years, more or less. Though new dating techniques are actually actually pointing to the pyramids of Giza as well as the Sphinx to being around 10,000 years old , so let's say around 10,000 years. Thats NOTHING. There are some fossils that date back to around 195,000 years , i thought the oldest we had was 100,000 but double checked on google and it's aparantly almost 200,000 years , so that means , that in all that time , somehow , only at most 10,000 years ago , we formed civilizations , what caused this rapid advancement in humans ? And not only that , but we had religions , believed in gods from the heavens , had technology , astrology/astronomy , there is a big lack of understanding of how we started becoming an intelligent civilization , and the Alien theory does answer a lot of unanswered questions.

Oh yeah , and there are white people in the world , which completely contradict evolution , since if we come from monkeys, white people shouldnt exist.

I too think that the church tries to find it's way in modern times. If they deny everything, they will lose followers for sure. It's not a bad thing, finding excuses to grab the chance to stick with modern times, it's a habit of humans. We don't like to admin we're wrong. Don't know about the church, but I thought they firmely discarded 'aliens' in the past?

That is a faulty assumption and doesn't belong here.

Well yes they discared aliens in the past , but now that we have airplanes , and technology , now when you read the events of moses and the like , we can see that he could have been experiencing another technologically advanced civilization , take the passage where the 10 commandments are "handed" to him. Of course , before we had technology , all of this was interpreted divinely , we had no electricity , we didnt have lightbulbs , no cars , airplanes , so aliens would have been out of the question. Today's advancement allows us to interpret the scripture differently , but it still doesnt discard it or it's authenticity , it merely restates the fact that something very strange happened during the time our civilizations came to being.

"That is a faulty assumption and doesn't belong here."
No faulty assumption , look at the genome project , it is estimated the dna mutated around 3000 years bce , affecting the pigment , thus brining white people , but why would this mutation stay prevalent ? well i'm in a rush , i'll write more on this later.

Stick to aliens please.
Don't you have a separate (and incomplete I might add) thread to discuss evolution instead of doing it here?



This is contradictory to what you state next.
After all, by your own words,:



If moses could have been experiencing a "technological advanced civilization", then he wasn't experiencing "god". If he wasn't experiencing god, then his teachings aren't divine. If his teachings weren't divine, then everything that follows after his as suspect since it could also have been a "tech. ad. civ." experience and not god.


--Arthur C. Clarke, 1961

Thus if we interpret the scriptures, according to you, to take into account modern advance by, for example, suggesting that Moses saw had a "tech. adv. civ." experience, then that undeniably "discard it or it's authenticity " or those writings as coming from god, as divine.



Doesn't this statement naturally lead to the belief that in fact, all of religion could be possibly based on technology we didn't understand and not divine? It doesn't state that it is "THE" one and only possibility, but isn't it a possibility none the less?

I assume you are talking about fossils of the 'current' human species, because there are very very close human ancestor fossils found as old as 600.000 years if I'm not mistaken.



Actually more often it's a case of underestimating the evolutionary success of the human race when it comes to organization, intelligence and adaptation/design/construction/cooperation through trade etc.

Successful civilizations usually leave impressive monuments and other 'marks' of their technology and knowledge behind and that can be even more impressive if such knowledge got lost for a long time afterwards or seems too advanced for a certain time in the past.

It all started somewhere though and many many many things probably got shared all over the world. Take for example certain kinds of stories in religion that tends to be universal. It either has to do with the way these ideas come into existence (for example; a God for rain, please the Gods and it will rain enough for a harvest to be successful; many civilizations had such a God), or it has to do with contact these people must have had.

Having a good understanding of astrology/astronomy is no prove for any alien interference, there's no knowledge they couldn't have figured out themselves so to say.



Advancement in technology and so on isn't inevitable, that's what it proves. You need great minds, great inventors and people with the guts and time to try and figure out things. When survival demands all your attention, it's no wonder not many new things are being discovered along the way. At least not when it comes to technology. So why did it change only this recently? It has to do with social inventions, figuring out that larger groups can be supported with different methods of providing food, dividing tasks among people most fit to do them and so on. After that, it soon became the case that people had 'free time', time that some of them spend on figuring out things.

Also, and this is quite important, figuring out how to make tools isn't as accidental as you might think. It's pretty inevitable in some cases. For example to crack nuts, you'll probably need a stone. They undoubtedly have thrown with stones too, probably have seen it break and later someone stupid picked the broken stone up, cut his hands with it and a clever person figured they could use it to cut meat or leaves or whatever.

What I'm saying is that sóme technological advancements can be slightly inevitable in a way. So it probably has been a combination of intelligence and social change and situation if you'd ask me.



Apparently you are unaware of the fact that there are both white skin monkeys and black skin monkeys on this planet. Mostly it's hidden under their hair, but to say we shouldn't be 'white' makes not much sense. In fact, there are very good reasons why some of us became white and so on.



Just about anything goes when it comes to the possibility of theories, so it's questionable whether or not it's really all that valuable as such, but yes it's definitely still a possibility. One of many I might add and when it comes to probability, there's a huge chance it's as wrong as the infinite amount of other possibilities I guess.

In some cases you could say a lack of understanding of how physics and chemistry work does make it easy to believe in "magic", even though it's basically an illusion or neat trick.

The question of value is undoubtedly up to the individual. I for instance place no value in either possibility: divine or alien it affects my world-view none. Others however get offended at the mere suggestion of one or the other. In this case however, the question is not value or even if it is right or wrong.

Rather, I am curious how someone can admit that if Moses's teaching are not being divine but alien this would NOT affect their belief system. After all, it would seem to make a HUGE different for me whether god tells me to not covet my neighbors wife or if it was a bunch of puritanical aliens.In effect, trying to understand the seeming contradiction of this line of thought:





Isn't that exactly what modern day stage magicians do?

Well what I was refering to fastlane was the theory of aliens coming to earth and genetically altering the current inhabitants of earth , thus creating a more intelligent superior being , us , which took over earth. So , if then that was the case , then the Aliens would be God. The Bible clearly states the new Jerusalem will decend from the heavens , and it also states all of the nations of the world will unite to to fight to all mighty God . What in the world could cause the nations to want to fight God ?

It also matches with the fact that there is also a missing link between the neanderthal humans and the cromagnum humans , they appear to have even coexisted together for time in parts of the world. There is however , no link inbetween them , and , from what archelogists have found , Cromagnum just appeared out of nowhere , were much smarter than neanderthals , and eventually overtook the inferior race. There is a believe that this cromagnums were genetically altered neanderthals , and that the forbidden fruit from the Bible was this more beastlike humans, which eve mated with. This are just theories though , but they seem to patch up a lot of the current unanswered questions wwe have with all of our findings and theories amd religions. It also answeres why all this old humans had such great and complex religious books , which all talk about Gods from the heavens.

Here is a good movie on the subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKBGBHTwURw

There is definately a lot we dont know , and something strange definately happened around 6 thousand years ago , which ushered the age of civilization and intelligence , and to this day , no one has been able to figure out what it was , however , we do have all those books of Gods from the sky , I think this should be taken more seriously. Unless , you believe all of our ancestors were all basically , liars , and just invented things and teached them to their people (like modern scientists) . But why would all of our foundation as civilization , moral values , and structure , be based on lies ? The stories the sacred books retell are very very complex and detailed , much more so than the stories our writers write today , why would they devote so much time on pure lies ? There are a lot of puzzle pieces we are missing , or is it , pieces that we refuse to see and ignore ?

As I've learned with you, I won't try to talk reason but merely point you in the direction of the research that people have done in the past decades and let you come to your own conclusion on it's validity.

You should read up on Eric Von Daniken. He was the first one to give serious thought to this matter back in the 70's. He presents the same arguements you do: the sudden rise of civilization, religion, etc. I was actually a really big fan of his back then as well. However, in over 30 years since he proposed his theory, and under all manner of scientific (and not so scientific) studies, this theory is still considered "fringe" by both science AND religion due to it's exclusive reliance on interpretation... Hence the famous tomb carvings as a "space suited mexican" or desert designs as "the nazca spaceport".




Noooooo, they would still be aliens. But I'm not going to argue semantics; hopefully when my "disambiguation list" comes online, we can nail down what god is and thus see if a powerful alien race qualifies..

The resurgence of questioning alien existence seems to be rather popular these days... It's really just one of those things that we cannot truly know, but I would heavily doubt it. Of course there are many who seen aliens, so I guess if they believe it, then good for them.