What If God Were a Space Alien...

[LAGC]

There's a really interesting free eBook available on Barnes & Noble's web-site right now that is well worth the read:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/If-God-Were-a-Space-Alien/James-Hamilton/e/2940000690697/?itm=2&USRI=god+space+alien

Even if you don't have a Nook e-reader, you can download the free e-reader app for Android, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, PC, and Mac here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks/index.asp (see the side-bar on the right side of the page).

The book is only 77-pages long, a real quick read. The basic premise is, if we were visited by something claiming to be "God", how would we be able to know it was really God and not just a highly-developed, advanced space alien? What if it was able to perform "miracles" -- heal the sick, walk on water, and seemingly defy the laws of physics? What would it take to convince you that it was really God and not just a space alien?

As various sci-fi authors have pointed out, "To a primitive people, a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Really makes you wonder if some advanced space visitors might be listening to all these religious sermons we are broadcasting into space, and tailor their arrival around one of the religious traditions to get us to cooperate with their plans of conquest. Maybe stage Jesus' Second Coming? Get a sizable chunk of Christians to worship their long-lost messiah, paving the way for the aliens to suck our resources dry? (Of course, why would God need a space-ship? They'd have to be more subtle than that...)

The book raises quite a few other interesting points though, really makes you ponder the nature of Higher Powers.

[Chulanowa]

1. Given that most religious people would worship their toaster if someone told them to...

I doubt it would change much.

[cleanhippie]

39. exactly

[jtuck004]

2. Kick. There are some good free books there. Thank You. n/t

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. I assure you that aliens are here already!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. What if that's the plot of a half dozen original Star Trek episodes?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. A trekkie, how cute. n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. No, I think the show mostly sucks.

Mostly due to such dumb plots.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

9. You stay up late to watch it don't you... miss work for the reruns,

and have a crush on the green belly dancer, I know you do.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Oh, you've got me.

When I'm not missing work for something I can watch online any time I want, I'm busy conducting "scientific research" by watching youtube videos and reading the angry tirades of out of work electrical engineers.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

11. One of your own once said... and this is only an "if" but it is still

a rather large "if"

Carl Sagan
"If Arp is right, the exotic mechanisms proposed to explain the energy source of the distant quasars—supernova chain reactions, super-massive black holes and the like—would be unnecessary. Quasars need not then be very distant."

Do you see the Faraday motor in the center of this photo? Of course not.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

Here's another Sagan quote.

"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

[HysteryDiagnosis]

14. Are you willing to laugh at peer reviewed papers from the IEEE,

are you willing to laugh at the 700 plus members of the alternative cosmology group? Of course you are, for now.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. I'm willing to laugh at the dipshits who believe in the Electric Universe,

if that's what you're asking.

So are most of the members of the IEEE.

Appeal to authority is not a defense against being laughed at over such stupid ideas.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

16. Plasma cosmology is gaining traction and the big bang is dead but

no one has told the people with the purse strings yet.

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=d4fsrk24

And in New Scientist of May 22, 2004, an "Open Letter to the Scientific Community" was published. It has now been signed by hundreds of researchers around the globe. The letter notes: "the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centred cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles."

The open letter led to a conference, "Crisis in Cosmology: Challenging Observations and the Quest for a New Picture of the Universe," held in Portugal in June 2005. Its stated aim was to "consider the present state of understanding of the universe in the light of the increasing number of observations that challenge the conventional cosmological model. Participants will address observations such as the non-Gaussianity of the CMB, the excessive apparent ages of high-z galaxies, discrepancies in dark matter observations, the early formation of large-scale structure, the increasingly discordant results for light element abundances, the angular-size/redshift relation, and others."

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

17. Really scientists don't actually believe that.

Carl Sagan didn't. And Arp's been proven wrong since Sagan gave that quote. Not that Sagan ever actually believed it.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

18. Yes yes, he's been proven wrong perhaps by the wrong people who

have vested interests in things staying the way they are. Let's pin the tail on the galaxy. READ.



http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm

Stephan's Quintet

In "Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies" (p. 96-101) Halton Arp discusses the five interacting galaxies NGC 7317, 7318A, 7318B, 7319, and 7320 that constitute Stephan's Quintet. The last one, NGC 7320, has a redshift value of 800 km/sec. The other four have redshifts of either 5700 km/sec or 6700 km/sec. Mainstream astronomers therefore claim those last four are about eight times farther away from us than NGC 7320. Therefore, they say, there cannot be any interaction between 7320 and the others.

Arp states "The deepest 200 inch (Mt. Palomar) plates that I have been able to obtain clearly show a 'tail' coming out of the southeast end of NGC 7320." He points out, "A tail like this from NGC 7320... must be an interaction tail - which could arise only from physical interaction with the adjacent high-redshift members of the Quintet."

He then states that at least one amateur has been able to see the tail but, "it is amazing that so many professionals have difficulty seeing it." NASA routinely crops their images of Stephan's Quintet to exclude the area where this tail would be seen.

However, my good friend, amateur astronomer John Smith acquired a full image of the Quintet.

The large, dark galaxy on the left is the low redshift NGC 7320. Then going counter-clockwise we have 7317, 7318A, 7318B, and 7319. At the top of the image is the small galaxy NGC 7320C. After some digital image processing (which only increased contrast), the result shown below was obtained.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. Vested interests?

Like what? Keepin' the white man down?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

21. Two problems here, one you didn't read and or comprehend and

two, you don't understand scientific research funding.

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=d4fsrk24



>> Here we see the improvement in resolution between COBE and the WMAP project. The pie chart shows the constituents of the universe based on Big Bang cosmology. The most important result from WMAP is the filamentary structure and (red) hot spots in the microwave background. Images courtesy of NASA.

Ironically for the Nobel jury, the death notice for the Big Bang has been provided by the unprecedented accuracy of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP project, which was designed to map the CMB. Rather than "pinpoint when the first stars formed and provide new clues about events that transpired in the first trillionth of a second of the universe," the more detailed map matches the unique heated plasma signature of interactions between local interstellar hydrogen filaments. So it is, with a sigh of utter relief, we can dispose of all the whimsical nonsense accompanying the Big Bang hypothesis—the invisible dark matter, the dark energy, the expanding universe (whatever that meant) and creation of matter from nothing. (And cosmologists can don sackcloth and ashes and admit their profound ignorance—while pigs perform aerobatics overhead and the Nobel committee ask for their prize money back.)


As the Open Letter notes, "Big Bang proponents have won the political and funding battle so that virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to Big Bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and supporters of the Big Bang dominate all the peer-review committees that control the funds. As a result, the dominance of the Big Bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory." It points to a failure of the way science is done today and the way scientists are trained.

One of the casualties in modern physics has been the natural philosopher. If natural philosophers had retained their primary role in physics, instead of having it usurped by mathematicians like Einstein, Hawking, and many others who jumped on the bandwagon, we might have fewer "visions of God" in their "beautiful" mathematical equations and a better grounding in the extent of our ignorance.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

24. I comprehend everything you say.

The fact that you don't make any sense isn't my problem, it's yours.

If somebody could prove that the Big Bang didn't happen, that guy would be the most famous scientist in the 21st century.

The reason nobody has ever proven that the Big Bang didn't happen, or cares about it, is because it's a proven fact that the Big Bang happened.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

25. Oh really.... it did it did it did I proclaim..... everything out of nothing

how cool is that?

[skepticscott]

27. As opposed to...what?

Everything out of something? And the something out of....what? Guesswork?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

Always was, always will be. So simple a cave man could do

it.

[skepticscott]

40. It's simple enough to invent

but in the end, it's nothing more than special pleading, and still something out of nothing. You'll have to think above the level of a Neanderthal to be taken seriously here.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

36. Dupe dupe.

[skepticscott]

23. New Scientist is a crapfest

for proponents of fringe theories, so I wouldn't rely too heavily on anything from their pages.

And your link talks a good game, but has plenty of howlers that clue a careful reader in that the author is not too well versed in his subject. Such as:

They announced in 1992 the discovery of residual heat from the big bang. Residual heat from the Big Bang was discovered long before 1992.

There is no known matter that does not involve electric charge and/or magnetism. Apparently he has never heard of neutrons.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

26. Yes apparently he has never heard of neutrons, then there's this

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070917151054.htm


The findings are based on data collected at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va., the Bates Linear Accelerator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Mainz Microtron at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany.

The three labs examine various aspects of the properties and behavior of subatomic particles, and Miller studied data they collected about neutrons. His analysis was published online Sept. 13 in Physical Review Letters. The work was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Since the analysis is based on data gathered from direct observations, the picture could change even more as more data are collected, Miller said.

"A particle can be electrically neutral and still have properties related to charge. We've known for a long time that the neutron has those properties, but now we understand them more clearly," he said.
He noted that the most important aspect of the finding confirms that a neutron carries a negative charge at its outer edge, a key piece of Fermi's original idea.

[TZ]

38. To quote your own paper

"also could lend to greater understanding of the interactions that take place in our sun's NUCLEAR furnace, and a greater understanding of the strong force in general, Miller said." Got that? It DOES NOT SUPPORT YOUR ELECTRIC NUTTERY.
You do this all the time, you post an interesting scientific paper and TOTALLY misunderstand it as being in evidence of whatever freak babble you are pushing. If I, who are by no means a physicist can find the holes in your arguments in 30 SECONDS of reading maybe that says something. I hate illiterate outsiders who without having a clue what they are talking about think because they can do teh google they know better than established scientists like Stephen Hawking.

[skepticscott]

34. So why didn't it just say

"the big bang theory can boast of no predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation"?

That's absolutely, perfectly, 100% true, right?

And there are other theories out there that haven't been designed to fit observations (or preconceptions) and that HAVE made testable predictions and that have affirmative evidence in their favor (as opposed to theories of the gaps), right?

[TZ]

37. lol

So you know better than Stephen Hawking now do you? Oh wait, I forgot you are the same person who always knows how to design experiments much better than people who make a career out of that thing. No one should take ANYTHING you post about "science" (and mostly you post "psuedoscience") seriously. You make REAL cosmologists cringe. But hey, must be nice living in la la world where real scienctific principles don't apply

[LAGC]

6. There's more to the book than just the alien-God possibility.

He delves into general philosophy about the nature of God in general, some original stuff that I've never heard posited before.

He really just uses the alien-God idea as an introduction to his other points about the nature of God and our place in the universe.

It's a really a good read, well worth the few hours of time it takes to read it. In fact, I'm really surprised he's offering it as a free eBook. He could have easily charged just $5 and made a small fortune off of it, I have no doubt.

[laconicsax]

8. There's a great episode where the 'aliens' think Picard is a god.

What follows is awesome, unabashed atheist propaganda.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. I think I vaguely remember that one.

Is that the one where there are the bronze age aliens are meeking out an existence in a rocky southern california backlot?

[laconicsax]

29. That's the one.

"Dr. Barron, your report describes how rational these people are. Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the dark ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? No!" - Picard

[FarLeftRage]

20. Back in the early 1970's

Erich von Daniken "sort of proposed" that theory...

[skepticscott]

22. The whole question of what

would qualify some being, creature or entity as a "god" is one that I have never seen a satisfactory answer to, or even an interesting discussion about. Is it enough that some culture or society somewhere has worshipped the thing as a god, or does it need to be something inherent? Is there a fundamental difference between the weakest "god" out there and the most powerful non-god?

One the central themes of Star Trek DS9 concerned the Bajoran "gods", which they called the Prophets, but which were actually very powerful alien beings. They really did exist, and made no secret of it, so there was no need to be an atheist on Bajor.

[rug]

28. What does God need with a starship?

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

[laconicsax]

30. What does God need with burnt offerings?

What does God need with blood sacrifice?

[rug]

32. Got me, McCoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vweSLmSgO-k&feature=related

[laconicsax]

35. Drat! The clip ends before the end of the line.

I hate it when that happens.

[LAGC]

31. Star Trek 5 was a HORRIBLE movie!

I can't believe you'd bring that up. ;)

[EvolveOrConvolve]

33. Just reading the synopsis made me a little dumber

The conspiracy is strong in this one.