I'm Not Saying It Was Aliens...

[William]

I once was having a cigarette and a cuppa on my front porch. It was a half hour before dawn. In the sky at about 30 degrees angle, there suddenly appeared a white light that looked slightly brighter [and bigger] than the brightest star in the sky. As soon as it appeared [seemingly out of nowhere] it began to slowly move toward the right [north] of my position and continued to do this for many seconds.

After moving for about a foot [from my perspective] across the dark backdrop of the sky, the light suddenly disappeared, and as I was marveling at this thing I had witnessed, Lo! Another light exactly the same as the first light, appeared in exactly the same spot in the sky as the first light had appeared a minute before.

I thought to go get my camera but then laughed at myself for being so foolish as to think the light would still be in the sky when I returned, and for the next 10 minutes I watched as the light-object moved and continued on toward the north - its shine/size slowly growing smaller until my eye could no longer distinguish it, as the suns early morning rays hued up the canvas of the sky.

The sky contains freaky things. Perhaps even more freaky than what the oceans contain.

Q: What are these UFO's [and the supposed extraterrestrial occupants] most likely to be, and why have they been accompanying human beings since the ancient prehistoric times?

Certainly they do appear to behave in a similar manner as adolescent humans...even in biblical terms...just ultra intelligent ones - based on what we know about intelligent advances re our own technology.

[The Barbarian]

The interesting thing about the story was after Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway returned from her experience in the journey re the Cosmic Mind, her testimony was judged as being 'all in her mind' and 'what she wanted to see' and 'product of self-delusion [common materialist arguments] and as she provided no artifact of evidence the whole project was deemed most likely to be the elaborate hoax of secretive billionaire industrialist S. R. Hadden, who was - after all - in a position to be able to stage such an elaborate hoax.

On pg 366 of the book, the alien contact (who appears to the protagonist as her beloved and deceased father) remarks that he can give her some "flavor of our numinous. It concerns pi..."

He suggests that answers might be in that continued decimal. Later, she looks deeply into that number.

"Hiding in the alternating patterns of digits, deep inside the transcendental number, was a perfect circle, it's form traced out by unities in a field of naughts.

The universe was made on purpose, the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find yourself, you take the circumference of a circle, divide it by its diameter, measure closely enough, and uncover a miracle - another circle, drawn kilometers downstream of the decimal point. There would be richer messages farther in. It doesn't matter what you look like, or what you're made of, or where you come from. As long as you live in this universe, and a have a modest talent for mathematics, sooner or late, you'll find it. It's already here. It's inside everything. You don't have to leave your planet to find it. In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature. Standing over humans, gods, and demons, subsuming Caretakers and Tunnel builders, there is an intelligence that antedates the universe.

The circle had closed.
She found what she had been searching for."

Edit: It is also interesting that one of the "good guys" in Cosmos (the book) was a fundamentalist Christian minister.

[LittleNipper]

So you believe in extraterrestrials and I believe in angels and demonic forces.
Ezekiel 1:1-28
The Message
Wheels Within Wheels, Like a Gyroscope
1 When I was thirty years of age, I was living with the exiles on the Kebar River. On the fifth day of the fourth month, the sky opened up and I saw visions of God.

2-3 (It was the fifth day of the month in the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin that God’s Word came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, on the banks of the Kebar River in the country of Babylon. God’s hand came upon him that day.)

* * *

4-9 I looked: I saw an immense dust storm come from the north, an immense cloud with lightning flashing from it, a huge ball of fire glowing like bronze. Within the fire were what looked like four creatures vibrant with life. Each had the form of a human being, but each also had four faces and four wings. Their legs were as sturdy and straight as columns, but their feet were hoofed like those of a calf and sparkled from the fire like burnished bronze. On all four sides under their wings they had human hands. All four had both faces and wings, with the wings touching one another. They turned neither one way nor the other; they went straight forward.

10-12 Their faces looked like this: In front a human face, on the right side the face of a lion, on the left the face of an ox, and in back the face of an eagle. So much for the faces. The wings were spread out with the tips of one pair touching the creature on either side; the other pair of wings covered its body. Each creature went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit went, they went. They didn’t turn as they went.

13-14 The four creatures looked like a blazing fire, or like fiery torches. Tongues of fire shot back and forth between the creatures, and out of the fire, bolts of lightning. The creatures flashed back and forth like strikes of lightning.

15-16 As I watched the four creatures, I saw something that looked like a wheel on the ground beside each of the four-faced creatures. This is what the wheels looked like: They were identical wheels, sparkling like diamonds in the sun. It looked like they were wheels within wheels, like a gyroscope.

17-21 They went in any one of the four directions they faced, but straight, not veering off. The rims were immense, circled with eyes. When the living creatures went, the wheels went; when the living creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted off. Wherever the spirit went, they went, the wheels sticking right with them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures went, the wheels went; when the creatures stopped, the wheels stopped; when the creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted off, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.

22-24 Over the heads of the living creatures was something like a dome, shimmering like a sky full of cut glass, vaulted over their heads. Under the dome one set of wings was extended toward the others, with another set of wings covering their bodies. When they moved I heard their wings—it was like the roar of a great waterfall, like the voice of The Strong God, like the noise of a battlefield. When they stopped, they folded their wings.

25-28 And then, as they stood with folded wings, there was a voice from above the dome over their heads. Above the dome there was something that looked like a throne, sky-blue like a sapphire, with a humanlike figure towering above the throne. From what I could see, from the waist up he looked like burnished bronze and from the waist down like a blazing fire. Brightness everywhere! The way a rainbow springs out of the sky on a rainy day—that’s what it was like. It turned out to be the Glory of God!

When I saw all this, I fell to my knees, my face to the ground. Then I heard a voice.

[William]

[Replying to LittleNipper in post #12]

So you believe in extraterrestrials and I believe in angels and demonic forces.

Q: What are these UFO's [and the supposed extraterrestrial occupants] most likely to be, and why have they been accompanying human beings since the ancient prehistoric times?

Ezekiel 1:1-28
The Message
Wheels Within Wheels, Like a Gyroscope...

Sounds like a scene from a sci-fi story.

the sky opened up and I saw visions of God.

This relates to my question in another thread.


Can Advanced Technology Explain The Bible Stories?

Does the idea of artifacts of more ancient and advanced species threaten the philosophies of Supernaturalism if "visions of God" are thought to be the product of advance tech?

I think so, simply on the grounds that supernaturalists refrain from discussing the possibility.

[boatsnguitars]

Isn't real life amazing enough for people? Why do we need to resort to making up alternative realities when there is so much verifiably awesome about our universe?

[William]

Isn't real life amazing enough for people? Why do we need to resort to making up alternative realities when there is so much verifiably awesome about our universe?

Are you saying that these things don't actually exist in "real life"?

[boatsnguitars]

Isn't real life amazing enough for people? Why do we need to resort to making up alternative realities when there is so much verifiably awesome about our universe?

Are you saying that these things don't actually exist in "real life"?

What things? Be specific. It's your claim. Defend it.

[William]

Isn't real life amazing enough for people? Why do we need to resort to making up alternative realities when there is so much verifiably awesome about our universe?

Are you saying that these things don't actually exist in "real life"?

What things? Be specific. It's your claim. Defend it.

What "resort to making up alternative realities are you referring to?" Be specific.

[boatsnguitars]

Isn't real life amazing enough for people? Why do we need to resort to making up alternative realities when there is so much verifiably awesome about our universe?

Are you saying that these things don't actually exist in "real life"?

What things? Be specific. It's your claim. Defend it.

What "resort to making up alternative realities are you referring to?" Be specific.

Alternatives to the great body of knowledge we have about the Natural world.

[William]

Yes but what are you referring to re the body of knowledge re the thread subject and my supposed claims?

Are you wanting to debate or just make throwaway comments?

[William]

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