Supercivilizations and the
Extraterrestrial Hypothesis
Dan D.
Farcas
This essay exposes a
synthesis of the some current ideas, as well as personal opinions, about
the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH): the possibility of existence of
other civilizations in our Universe, some of them very old, the
possibilities of contact with them, as well as the consequences for the
study of the UFO phenomenon and for all of us.
How many civilizations are in
the Universe?
Now it is accepted that major part of the stars have planets. The
spectroscopy assures us that water and the basic components of carbonic
life, including aminoacids, are everywhere in Cosmos. More and more
specialists admit that the germs of life are travelling throughout the
space, “infecting” immediately all appropriate places. If the favorable
conditions last several billion years, life can reach the abundance and
complexity we see on our Earth. In some cases such a complex life system
can give rise to a “technological
civilization”, that means to intelligent beings capable to build
spaceships to conquer other inhabitable planets.
How many such
“technological civilizations” could be in this moment in the Universe,
excepting ourselves? Frank Drake
proposed in 1961 a well-known formula to estimate this number. Several
researchers made, on this base, their own calculations, for our Galaxy -
the Milky Way. The results were varying from tens of thousands to
zero.
I did again this
calculation, respecting more the spirit than the form of Drake equation.
Some estimates give 400 billion stars in our Galaxy. Probable around 1.5
billion of them are third generation stars, with sufficiently long life
span (minimum 5 billion years), with
solid rocky planets,
containing heavy elements, with stable orbits. Probable 20 millions of
these planets are in the “ecosphere”, that is they have a temperature
maintaining liquid water, sufficiently high gravity to retain the water
for billions of years, near circular orbit, reasonable day-night and
summer-winter alternation etc. Practically on all of them, life will
appear, but it will reach the abundance we see on Earth on about one
million planets. One percent of such biospheres will give birth
eventually, after billions of years of evolution, to a “technological
civilization”. I hope I am not too optimistic supposing that 9 of 10 such
civilizations will destroy themselves or will degenerate, but 1 of 10
will survive for a very long time, maybe millions of years,
metamorphosing itself eventually in something we can name a
supercivilization. Following our calculation, the Milky Way can give birth
to around 1000 such supercivilizations. Several hundreds appeared in the
past and are existing now; the rest will appear in future. This is a good
average between the figures proposed in literature.
But, if
somebody considers that we were too optimistic, and the intelligent beings
are much more scarce, we should add that our Milky Way is only one of
about 100 billion more or less similar galaxies of the Universe
accessible to our instruments. And we have strong reasons to believe that
there are other universes too, maybe “parallel” ones, maybe from other
states of substance etc. Therefore it is almost absolutely sure that in
the Universe there are now many supercivilizations.
What can be a supercivilization?
Unfortunately, we
know only one technological civilization – our own - and no
supercivilization. Yet, the only more or less rational way to answer the
question “what can be a supercivilization?”
is to extrapolate our evolution in future, supposing we will avoid
self‑destruction.
If the pioneers will not disappear, in several decades the planet Mars
will be explored, as well as some other bodies in our Solar System.
Afterwards we will start to think about other solar systems. There are one
thousand stars in the neighborhood of 54 light years. 46 of them seam to
have solar systems similar to ours.
In the last fifty years the engineers imagined a lot of starships to
travel towards them. We can mention the thermonuclear ships ORION and
DAEDALUS, the ionic ship YANTAR, the laser ships STARLIGHT or
SUPERSTARLIGHT and so on. Not the technology is missing but the money and
the motivation. These very “classical” ships can cover the distance of 4
light-years until the nearest star – Proxima Centauri – in fifty years.
Arriving there, the travelers could build colonies and, maybe in other
fifty years, three other starships. These starships, and the next
generations of pioneers, would repeat the performance in another century
and so on, as in a nuclear reaction. In this manner, the human race could
conquer the Milky Way in one or two million years. Of course, supposing
the science and technology will stop at the level of XXI century, which is
extremely unlikely. Otherwise the time will be considerably shorter. Some
other authors find greater or smaller values. Freeman Dyson or Joseph
Shklovskii spoke about 10 million years; Stanislav Lem was convinced that
this period will be only of several hundreds of thousands years.
But I am strongly convinced that in the next centuries (or sooner) we will
discover new principles of physics to avoid the limitation imposed by the
speed of light. Theories as the superstrings, the sub-quantum world, the
energy of vacuum and many other new approaches, as well as some recent
experiments assure us that, in several centuries, all actual
preconceptions concerning the nature of substance, space, time, dimensions
etc. will be changed. Thus the inter-stellar travels will be much simpler
and much shorter than we can imagine today.
The human race will
change too. Research projects are in progress concerning regeneration,
extension of life expectancy, genetic engineering, bio-robots, cyborgs,
etc. Almost all bigger artificial objects will become “intelligent” in the
near future, with integrated microchips, and will be interconnected,
through the Internet, with all computers and databases in the world. The
wireless command of all those appliances and computers will be made by
microprocessors implanted in head, connected directly to the human brain.
In less than one hundred years it will be sufficient to think about a
topic and in the next moment all the requested information will be in the
mind of the person interested. We will see through eyes situated thousands
of kilometers away, we will act with robot arms at the same distance, or
we will meet each other in the virtual reality, all only through this kind
of implant, without the complicated appliances used today in
tele-presence. Moreover, we will speak to each other “mind-to-mind”,
through the digital network, without sounds, and at any distance.
In the XXX century
shall we still use words to communicate? Shall we still be bound to our
physical body? We can continue with these questions. But all the above is
only for the next several centuries. What could bring us the progress in
one million years is far beyond our imagination. Therefore it seams
almost sure that a supercivilization will have no problems to perform
interstellar travels in a reasonable time, and that we could not
make the distinction between the technology of such supercivilization and
magic.
The time gap
If our estimates were correct, the average distance between the
supercivilizations in our Galaxy is of several thousands light years. But,
paradoxically, not these distances give the most important divide, but
those in time.
As we accept now,
the age of
the observable
Universe is at least 15 billion years, starting with the
“Big
Bang”.
We were lucky, as it was a Universe favorable for life (the Anthropic
Principle). At the beginning there were only hydrogen and helium.
Stars of first and second generation were formed and burst after some
time, creating heavy elements to form third generation stars as the Sun,
with some rocky planets as our Earth. More than 4 billion years ago the
life began to develop on it. Two billion years ago the first eukaryote
cell appeared, after another billion, the first tiny worm, and, in the
last billion, the descendants of this worm realized a technological
civilization.
In this marathon
of more than 15 billion years, of the life and intelligence throughout the
Universe, the chances were different in different places. This difference
could be of hundreds of millions years or more. As an example, at 37 light
years from us there are two stars:
Zeta1
and Zeta2 Reticuli, both of them of the same type as the
Sun, but older than it with one billion years. By coincidence or not,
these stars are often mentioned in the UFO abduction stories as the origin
of abductors.
If we
accept, for the sake of simplicity, that the several hundred
supercivilizations supposed to be in the Milky Way were born, in a uniform
way, along one billion years, it results that supercivilizations appear
each 2-3 million years. This is the “normal” gap between two neighboring
civilizations in time, despite the fact that, in all SF encounters, the
technological distance between two civilizations is only of several
hundreds or thousands of years.
In
2-3 million years,
a technological civilization should be transformed in something else,
maybe in spiritual beings, or virtual beings, maybe in
something we cannot even imagine.
And we
have to think also about the oldest supercivilization, which could have
one billion years ahead of us. I repeat - our ancestor, one billion years
ago, was a small worm. In the next billion the evolution can be faster.
What should be now they, the masters of supercivilizations, what
shape they have, after another billion?
We
can only hypothesize that they became a Higher Intelligence.
In this huge time
gap, of hundreds of millions of years, between the early
supercivilizations and us we can find the key to answer to the most of the
problems linked with our cosmic destiny.
Where are they?
Following our
estimates, our civilization could have conquered the Galaxy in a maximum
two million years. Almost sure, all supercivilizations did somehow the
same before us, millions of years ago. Therefore they should know, for
long time, a lot about us and they should be here, now.
But, at least officially, they are not. The tradition says that Enrico
Fermi put first, in the early forties, the rhetorical question: “They
should be here; where are they?” Were we wrong? Are we, in spite of our
calculations, alone in the Universe?
For most of the people
it seems normal that if some (friendly) space travelers come to us, they
should land at the White House Loan (why not in Place de la Concorde, or
in front of the Buckingham Palace, or in the Red Place or Tien An Men
Place etc?). The visitors should ask to see the Big Chief of the Earth,
and to offer us some new technologies in exchange for some goods or rights
here (e.g. row materials or genetic experiments on humans), and so on. For
most of the people it seems normal that a cosmic civilization will send
us, by radio, some signals about their existence, waiting for an answer.
For many others, a space invasion, as in the “Independence Day”
movie, is perfectly plausible (as well as the final victory of USA).
All these scenarios about ET contact are false, being mined by serious
preconceptions.
A list of several ET preconceptions
We can
start with the preconception of equal rights. A difference of millions of
years, or even hundreds of millions, is so huge as between us and a monkey
or a lizard. If they are here (as it is highly probable), they can examine
us, monitor our evolution, even contact us in some form, but they will
never put them at the same level with us.
The
second could be the preconception of conversation. Even we interact
sometimes with a lizard; this will never be a conversation.
G. Cocconi and P. Morrison, argued in
1959, that if the difference between two civilizations is of
millions of years, the probability
they exchange ideas is zero.
Another
preconception is the temporal chauvinism (or temporal provincialism
upon J. Allen Hynek). It states
that, in opposition with the previous centuries, the last one or the last
two hundred years brought us finally to the light of truth and
science. In this light, now we can decide what can be real and what will
never be possible. If one hundred years ago or so we discovered the radio,
some believe it will last the best mean of communications forever. If one
hundred years ago Einstein postulated that the speed of light is a limit,
no other physical law will be discovered until the end of times to avoid
this limit, etc. As a peculiar example, we have the SETI
preconception. According to it, even if the radio signals need thousands
of years from one inhabited word to other, some civilizations will
consider that these radio signals are the most appropriate mean for cosmic
contacts; and we should search for them.
For
some people (I suspect many of them are linked with the
military-industrial complex) it should be normal if a cosmic civilization
arrives at the Earth, it will attempt to conquer us by force. They should
be “invaders”, as in so many SF novels and movies. This can be named the
preconception of the invasion. If we agree with the reasoning in the first
part of this article, we should accept that, for almost sure, no invasion
will take place in future. That is because the supercivilizations knew
about us millions of years ago, therefore they could invade us in those
times, and, in a certain sense, we are already invaded by them, for
millions of years.
There are some
well-known footprints in stone, as in Berea (Kentucky) or
Antelope Springs (Utah) as old as 500-600 million years. Inside rocks
formed thousands or millions of years ago, very old and unexplainable
technical objects were found too, as those of
Schöndorf (Austria), Coso Mountains (California), Narada
river (East Ural, Rusia), etc., even in Romania near Aiud, in the
bed of the river Mures. Maybe they are signs that somebody is visiting us
for a very long time.
Of the
same kind is the preconception of intervention. The UFO sects hope that
the ET will help us (or at least the “chosen”) to overcome some future
catastrophes. Although it is not a perfect comparison, we can remember
that centuries ago, when people arrived to a new place (e.g. a wild
valley, an uninhabited island) they settled, building houses, destroying
the forest to make agriculture, bringing cows, pigs, hens, killing tigers,
bears, wolfs etc. In the name of biodiversity, now we understand that this
attitude cannot continue, and in the last decades we witness a strong
ecological movement. Now the norm is that if we discover a valuable piece
of land, which escaped from the human intervention,
a new island or a new valley in the rain forest,
we shall declare it a reservation,
permitting only a very limited intervention, for scientific reasons.
Following these regulations of non-intervention, a researcher
cannot help today even a baby turtle to overcome an obstacle toward the
sea. This attitude seems to be strengthening in future.
A supercivilization observing the Earth and the human
technological civilization should act in a similar manner, avoiding to
interfere in our evolution, but taking samples, making some experiments,
having very limited contacts (not at all as equals) with only some
individuals, selected upon their and not our criteria.
With the premises above, we can accept
that the Earth could be seen as a cosmic reservation monitored by some
supercivilizations (it is close to the so-called zoo hypothesis).
There are, in my opinion, some other stronger reasons for non-intervention
too, which transcend the zoo hypothesis. I will refer to them later in
this paper.
Therefore no
settlement, no destruction, on one hand, and no official contact,
conversation or substantial help, on the other hand, are to be expected
from the advanced cosmic civilizations, even if they are here now.
The primitive ET
hypothesis and some questions about UFOs
Many persons promote and believe in a primitive extraterrestrial
hypothesis (ETH). In opposition with the ETH exposed early in this
article, the primitive ETH states: that everything with ET is “nuts and
bolts” material, that the limit imposed by the speed of light will never
be transcended (or not too much) by any civilization, that all travel in
Cosmos will be made from one planet to another, by more or less STARLIGHT
type spaceships, and, very important, that the difference in evolution
between two encountering civilizations is equivalent at most with several
hundreds or thousands of years.
Obviously, with this meaning of the concept “extraterrestrial”, many
significant researchers are reluctant to accept the extraterrestrial
origin of UFOs. The best example is probably Jacques Vallée. He expressed
four main objections in this respect.
The first
objection was that there are too many UFO landings to be ships of
some space explorers. A Romanian skeptic asked even if “did the Earth
became kind of Cosmic Mecca?” I believe, for a supercivilization the
cosmic distances are more affordable than to us, thanks to their
additional millions of years of scientific and technological progress. But
if we accept the supercivilizations monitor us for a long time, they can
have some cosmic bases nearby, the UFOs being suitable mainly for
short distances. On the other hand, the apparition of a new technological
civilization, candidate for a future supercivilization, is a rare event in
a Galaxy, occurring once in several hundreds of thousands or even in
several millions of years. We
are alone, in our entire Galaxy, for a long time, in this “new‑born”
phase.
It is nothing unusual that such an event is
of a great interest for the older civilisations.
The second objection was that the reported behavior of UFOs is too strange
(non-inertial movements, weightlessness, curved or cut beams of light,
stopping the time, beings passing through the walls etc.). But for the
inhabitants of the rain forest, the wireless Internet could be magic too.
They did sometimes even worship our technical achievements. And do not
forget - the distance in evolution between a possible supercivilization
and us is many thousands time greater than between the rain forest people
and us.
To say “it is
impossible” because “it contradicts the laws of the nature” is a proof of
a great arrogance or ignorance. Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed that
“to say that something contravene the laws of the nature you should know
the laws of nature. Who can say that he knows all of them?” In the same
manner, several centuries before, a scholar was denying the possibility of
miracles, because they contradict the laws of nature. Saint
Toma D’Aquino answered him “You believe you know all the laws of
the nature?”
Why now, at the
beginning of XXI century some still behave as if they know all of them?
Genetic experiments
The third objection of
Jacques Vallée was that the reported appearance of EBE (“extraterrestrial
biological entities”) associated with the UFO encounters are too close to
the shape of humans. There are even reports about alleged interbreeding,
which would be possible only if humans and extraterrestrials are of the
same species. This is a serious objection indeed. On one hand, the
carbonic life, based on the DNA, seems to be the base for most (if not
all) life forms in the Universe, not because it is the only possible, but
because it was the most efficient in the marathon that begun with the
Big Bang. On the other hand it is highly improbable that the creators
of two independent civilizations, born on two different planets, far away
in space and time, will be genetically close (in terms of DNA).
But - who can say what
interbreeding technologies could be discovered in future by the genetic
engineering, after not hundreds but millions of years? We can only
speculate, for example, that an elusive supercivilization could try to
realize, using genetic materials from the Earth, new human races, with
greater brain, with higher intelligence, adapted for some special tasks,
etc. Many “races” described by the alleged abductees (the grays, the tall
blonds etc.) can be such artificial human races or even biorobots derived
from the human species. They can be “produced” for example in reservations
or bases somewhere outside the Earth. In the same manner we make new
varieties of wheat from the traditional ones. Sometimes, the perfect
variety of wheat became sterile or exposed to new diseases. At that moment
the agronomists will try to find some appropriate genes in the pool
represented by the primitive species of wheat, to improve the “perfect”
variety. What if humans on Earth are the “wild pool” of genes, suitable to
improve some artificial races? In this case it will be no problem of
compatibility between the visitors and us. Hypotheses like this could
explain much of the reported UFO abduction and hybridization stories.
Some people even
suppose there was an external intervention in the apparition of the
mankind as well as subsequent interventions to improve it. For what
purpose? To create, finally, the "superman" dreamed by Nietzsche? For more
creativity or an increased intelligence? Some analyses estimate that the
volume of the brain of an EBE is at least double in comparison with that
of humans. What is interesting is that human babies with such a big brain
cannot be born in the natural way, because of the anatomical limitations
of pelvis. The abortion after three months and the subsequent development
of the embryos in incubators, as in UFO abduction stories, could be a
solution...
The old writings are full of genetic experiments to improve the human
species. In the Bible we have the creation of Eve from Adam's rib
(cloning?), afterwards undesirable hybrids were made by the fallen angels,
Noah was an ideal model, all other human specimen being destroyed etc.
There are such examples in the writings of many other religions and in
popular traditions. The Greek heroes as Achilles, Perseus, Hercules etc.
were supposed to be half-human half-divine hybrids. Alexander the Great,
Julius Cesar and many others pretended to have a similar origin. In
addition we have the stories about incubus and succubus in
the roman antiquity, or about fairies in the Middle Ages, and other
similar creatures almost everywhere. In the present days we have all the
UFO abduction and hybridization stuff, starting with the case of Antonio
Villas Boas. With almost no exception all the actors performing such
hybridization were coming from the sky. It seems to be more than a
coincidence.
All genetic experiment stories: from the Bible, from other religious
or folkloric traditions and from UFO abduction reports, are compatible
with the monitoring of Earth and mankind by a Higher Intelligence,
belonging to supercivilizations.
Why they do not offer us their
technologies?
A fourth objection of
Jacques Vallée was that the scientific and technological level shown by
UFO visitors to the abductees is too close to ours. This contradicts a bit
its own second objection. But, if we accept it, that could have two
explanations: on one hand, the reports contain only what the witness
understood, and a person understands more or less what he can explain in
terms of our current scientific and technological concepts. On the other
hand, it could be an “embargo” imposed by the visitors themselves, due to
their non‑intervention policy, an interdiction to show us too much.
In many reports the
visitors stated that they fear the human aggressiveness and
xenophobia. All the technology in the hands of humans becomes weapons.
Advanced technologies given to the humans would lead to a great danger,
both for us and for other civilizations. Therefore the whole mankind
should come to a moral maturity before any exchange of sophisticated
technologies.
Another argument often used is that showing us too much, even giving us a
final proof of their existence (as the requested landing on the White
House Loan) will lead to a “cultural shock”, virtually destroying
all our social, religious, economical, political, cultural etc.
structures. I suppose it is still more than that. The
supercivilizations should have a complete exchange of ideas, technologies
etc. among them. Eventually this complete exchange leads to a deadlock. A
new, fresh, viewpoint can be offered only by an outsider, with two
conditions: to have sufficient maturity as civilization (to have something
to say to the supercivilizations and to resist their “cultural shock”) and
to be not influenced in the past, in any way, by the older civilizations.
Therefore, as a hypothesis, we can state that the Cosmic Intelligence
is elusive also because it is waiting something very important, not only
for us but for itself too. It waits (and maybe harvests even now) our
original ideas, viewpoints, creation, produced as a result of millions of
years of our independent evolution, and all this could be destroyed by a
premature contact.
The Database Earth
Trying to extrapolate
our own future, to understand better what a supercivilization could be, we
do not neglect of course the progresses of information and communication
technology. Upon some estimates, all verbal information used by a person
in his life is about 30-100GB. If we add all the images, this will sum up
to around 1 million GB. An average computer memory, around the year 2040,
will attain this capacity. Until the end of the century, probably all
information, all thoughts, all small gestures, concerning all human beings
on Earth could be stored in the memory of one computer. It is not yet
clear through what kind of channels the information will be collected, the
best solution could be a chip implanted directly in connection with the
brain (there are many experiments in this direction); but it is a
technical detail… A very important reduction in size will be achieved
retaining only the “essential” ideas, gestures etc., because many of them
are repeated, or are common for most people.
From the data about
him, a person could be restored in a virtual reality. In the “cyberspace”
we shall construct alternate worlds; there we shall meet living or
deceased people, not only with their appearance, but also with their ideas
and gestures. They will answer even new questions, in the manner they
would answer in their life. Gradually it will be more and more hard to
distinguish the material reality from the virtual one, as it is suggested
in some recent SF movies.
If a supercivilization
is interested to “harvest” the information produced by humans, it will
install such a “memory” somewhere nearby, and will install also
appropriate appliances to collect data (maybe implants), at least from
some interesting persons. The use of such a “memory” will be somehow
similar with our virtual reality. In this “memory” could be included
images from the past as well as scenarios of the future. Of course, a
supercivilization can do much more in this respect. For example, they
could maybe give to the virtual copies of a person some autonomy, the
consciousness of living further, after their death, even some initiative
or free will.
What kind of “hardware”
this memory could be based on is difficult to say, but it should not be
material as a present-day computer. Many abductees or contactees spoke
about ethereal light balls as “deposits of knowledge and intelligence”,
memorizing “everything in the Universe”. Such a “memory” installed by a
Higher Intelligence is frequently recalled, starting with the “Book of
Life” in the biblical writings or the “Akashic Records” of Tibet and
India, and up to the more prosaic “Galactic Encyclopedia” of Carl Sagan.
If such a
memory exists (and it is highly probable), it can explain many paradoxical
reports. This memory could be the source for
channeling (as for healers like Edgar Cayce, Arigó,
etc.), for speaking in languages never learned, etc. Such a memory can
account for “walk-ins”, for “reincarnation”, for stories of past lives,
ghosts, etc., as all of these phenomena could be insights of the medium to
the knowledge about deceased people. It can even explain how Hamlet could
obtain information from his murdered father.
In such a virtual reality the
time is different. We can travel in the past, even interfering in some
events, but only in the virtual reality, without actually changing this
past. We can also travel in future, encountering catastrophes, apocalyptic
events, without the necessity to accept an unchangeable future
(contradicting our free will), because this future is only a scenario with
a certain probability to be realized, not a fate.
Therefore, many of UFO encounters, as well as many other mystical or
unexplainable encounters throughout the world, could be, at least in part,
such virtual contacts, staged by the masters of a supermemory installed by
a Higher Intelligence belonging to supercivilizations.
Spiritual worlds?
It is highly improbable the world of supercivilizations is the same as
ours. In millions of years of evolution the Cosmic Intelligence should
discover not only traveling skills avoiding the limit of the speed of
light, but also some other forms of the substance (the two seems to be in
connection). As all the material particles are accompanied by a wave and
can be regarded in both manners, maybe there is also a structured
spiritual double of the material Universe as well as of the living
creatures in it. The “supermemory” could be itself something “spiritual”.
We can speculate even further, supposing for example that the spiritual
world was before, or that the material world is only a kind of a great
virtual reality or so, even these hypotheses seem unlikely.
Also, the whole Universe (or
rather the “Multiverse”) could be much older and much more complex than
the part we can observe with our instruments. What was before the “Big
Bang”? What is beyond the limits of our close Universe (maybe in another
dimension or another state of reality, maybe in a spiritual state of the
substance)? If there is another Universe, similar to ours, that mean we
can have an infinity of them.
Accepting that
our Universe was born by a “Big Bang”, maybe we should accept also an
ending “Big Crunch” after let us say 100 billions of years. Is this time
sufficient for the intelligence born inside this Universe to find an
escape? To move to another Universe? If so, we should accept the
existence of a Higher Intelligence much older than our Universe. It
could be, around us, as well a
hierarchy of supercivilizations and of intelligence,
potentially with no end.
Supercivizations
and Divinity
Therefore,
even if we were too optimistic, the probability is 0.99999… that a
supercivilization is now here on Earth, monitoring us. In the history,
in old writings, as well as in our days, there are many reports about
unexplained facts and happenings (including the UFO encounters), that seem
to prove its presence. They are in general ignored or refuted by the
mainstream science and seldom accepted as miracles by the Church. However,
now, when we have huge databases on them, we discover that these reports
are so many and so self-consistent that we could accept them as a second
argument for the presence of the supercivilizations on Earth.
The science
and technology as well as the objectives of such supercivilizations are
far beyond our understanding. The same is true for the endless hierarchies
of supercivilizations. As it was observed, it is not possible for humans
to distinguish between the acts of a civilization, millions of years ahead
of us, and magic. We can add – in the limits of rationality, the
human mind cannot distinguish between the activity of such
supercivilizations and what we know as sacred, holy, divine.
As an
example, the statement that divinity has unlimited powers, leads to a
paradox: can Divinity erect a wall so resistant that even himself cannot
destroy it? If yes, his power is limited by that wall, if not, there are
limits in what he can do. The rational answer is to accept, instead of
“unlimited power”; attributes like “more powerful than anything that we
can imagine”. Or we can say that this attribute of divine is beyond our
understanding. In both cases we have a good example that we cannot
distinguish between a supercivilization in the top of the hierarchy (or
its main leadership) and divinity. The same can be repeated for all
attributes of the divine. For example, instead of “without beginning”, we
can say “older than any other intelligence in the larger Universe” and so
on.
If we
define a concept, we should distinguish it from other concepts. If we have
no means to distinguish two concepts, we should recognize that the two
concepts are identical (at least for us) and we have only two names for
the same concept. In our case, we can not distinguish the “Higher
Intelligence of a supercivilization in the top of the hierarchy” from
“Divinity”. Therefore for us “Higher Intelligence of
supercivilizations” is just another name for Divine.
Closing remark
Of course, the reader understood that all the above is not a proof
that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is the explanation for everything
strange, particularly for UFOs. But it is, beyond all exotic conjectures,
a reasoning that the extraterrestrial hypothesis (of course not the
primitive one) cannot be discarded with the arguments we have at this
moment. More than that – this hypothesis seems to be highly probable. Of course, there is room for other hypotheses too, and we have still to
wait for the certain, doubtless answers.
(This paper
was also published in the European Journal of UFO and Abduction
Studies - EJUFOAS - in the September 2002 issue. Please send your
remarks to our e-mail address: asfan@asfan.ro
or dandfarcas@yahoo.com ) |
