Why the pseudo-religion about ancient aliens?

[mike3]

Why people like the ancient aliens stuff?

1. Makes you feel special. You know something most people do not, including those egg-headed labrats, despite not having a formal academic degree. You are [f-word]ing good, eh?

2. Makes you feel special. You know your creation was due to something other than sheer chance, there's a higher purpose, a reason for your existence. You are [f-word]ing good, eh?

3. Makes you feel special. You know, those guys from the past were dummies. If you can't figure out how they built those things, someone or something better, more intelligent than you must have been involved. You are [f-word]ing good, eh?

4. Makes you feel special. Real life is boring and fantasy can build a nice cozy special place. After all, you are [f-word]ing good, eh?.

5. With current science's advances, all the tales about your origins provided by conventional religions became outdated. This created a hole that must be filled by some sort of modern magic compatible with (1), (2), (3) and (4).

Not happy with human sacrifice? Simple. The aliens never actually asked for it. It's human invention, a rite born out of despair after the aliens went back to the stars. Build the image you're comfortable with for your alien god and worship it.

Oh, Jodie, the start or the end of ice ages can't be blamed for erasing the signs of ancient advanced civilizations. Its a hidden archeology woo excuse; sorry to say that, don't get me wrong, no offense intended, but considering it as plausible requires a good dosis of ignorance about Earth sciences, archeology and the way civilizations work. Sorry for being blunt but there's no other way to say it. Ice ages start and end slowly. You would have plenty of time to move your cities away from the advancing glaciers at the start and away from the advancing seas at the end. Also, even bronze age- level civilizations would need resources which can not be found at the shorelines. They would need to have cities located inland, not to mention there are lots of nice places to live far from the seas. Oh, and since glaciers have covered just a bit of the suitable places for setting up cities... As soon as you start to think about it all, you'll see how silly it is. Its a nice romantic idea, can be used to create interesting movies, books and stories but thats as far as it can go.

I'm curious here: is there anyone here who may have believed in this stuff but gave it up, and who had the above as their reasons for believing?

And "real life is boring" -- do you feel bored by it? Or is it not? Because I've heard from many here that it is possible for one to gain wonder from real science. Even that it can be more than what you get from fiction/woo.

 

[Warrior1461]

What causes the ancient alien theory fall apart for me. Wouldn't an advanced race of aliens who are technologically advanced beyond anything we can conceive teach these ancient cultures something more worthwhile like, HOW to combat disease by teaching them the germ theory. NOT lets show you how to build a big structure to hold the dead body of your god king.

Ancient Aliens is to archaeology to what creationism is to biology and human origins. Since science cannot as of yet tell us the whole story we need to fill in the gaps with some fantasy. As we become more and more a science based society our modern myths reflect that. Aliens are just the new Angels.

 

[mike3]

Precisely. But this thread isn't really about the plausibility of such a scenario, except as a necessary corollary of the subject of why people are generating a subculture of aliens-as-saviours. The OP is "Why the pseudo-religion about ancient aliens". It's not spreading because it's plausible. It's spreading because it's a perceived way out of the dead-ends so many aspects of our world culture seem to be heading into.

There's a definite undercurrent in western people of "instant gratification".... there was a meme of progress after WW2, and science was the engine and the flag. As a perceived instrument of the Establishment, confused radicals in the 60s began a backlash which was eagerly embraced by the xtians (ironically) who were threatened by their perceptions of the radicalisation of the world, even as the backlash against those radicals by the Establishment outlawed psychedelic drugs and caused the non-real retreat into fantasy trips using crystals out of the ground instead of crystals of chemistry in the form of LSD, and the whole sorry cart has trundled down the road towards the cliff of cultural collapse, as playing out in the USA today most spectacularly in the Tea Party etc.

Despairing young hippies find the sky-daddy aliens an exciting possibility that could free us all... with one leap, we will all be free!

That we need to climb an intricate mountain (the universe) using the crampons and ropes and teamwork of science, and that it will take a while and a lot of effort... that's what we must be ready to provide as the true escape route from the mess we (or they) perceive in world culture today.

That the chaos may be the seedbed for new forms of culture and community, a sign of future hope, is an outlook which would probably be more useful than wishful thinking... but from the midst of the chaos it can be hard to remain hopeful, even if you have picked up the concept that new forms can only arise if old forms make way.

So do you think that by "climbing" the "intricate mountain" of "the universe" "using the crampons and ropes and teamwork of science" and "a lot of effort" to secure the "true escape route from the mess we (or they) perceive in world culture today" we will be able to build a civilization that will endure for age upon age?

 

[pakeha]

We know the northern hemisphere experienced some very large (and very rapid) flood events, post Devensian (and post Younger Dryas). There's no doubt people witnessed these. I don't think we have to look much further for the source of global flood legends. Then there's cultural copying, where Utnapishtim becomes Noah, or whoever. Everybody loves a good yarn and everybody lies that it actually happened to me and nobody believes them...

Not sure why anyone would conflate end glacial floods with aliens though.

I'd say the main contributor to a pseudo religion about ancient aliens is the "Stargate" TV series...

My Google fu is weak this morning and I'm not really getting an idea of how rapid those glacier melts would have been.
Could you point me in the right direction to learn more about glacier melts?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I'm curious here: is there anyone here who may have believed in this stuff but gave it up, and who had the above as their reasons for believing?

And "real life is boring" -- do you feel bored by it? Or is it not? Because I've heard from many here that it is possible for one to gain wonder from real science. Even that it can be more than what you get from fiction/woo.

*raises hand* Me.

I grew up with parents who believed all sorts of woo -- mom literally believed she's somehow telepathically linked with me, for example, and not just to keep me in line; and I still can't convince her that I didn't somehow help her with her university exams when she was pregnant with me -- and had books about woo about everything from spiritism to Erich von Däniken's books about alien astronauts. Just about the only thing that was missing there was the Necronomicon

If it's any excuse, though, we are talking about a kid, and at that a sickly one who didn't go out much. So as I read a rather impressive collection of books from one end to another, starting at the age of three, well, there wasn't much critical thinking involved. I just gobbled up everything from physics to sex education to alien astronauts to ritual magic. (Yeah, I was also reading about human reproduction at about the same early age when Lovecraft was shocked by it )

I mean, really, I read some of that stuff at an age when, for all I knew, it's a fact that cats and mice bash each other with frying pans over the head. Why would I think that ancient astronauts or ancient liches or for that matter Jesus were any less real than that?

It also doesn't help -- although eventually it did -- that I kinda am the suggestible sort. If you listen to Dan Barker talking about how he can still feel touched and get goosbumps by thinking about God, even though he now knows it's not real... well, I can still do that with anything. I can get myself in awe of Cthulhu or Yog Sothoth, or feel touched (in the head) by the Flying Spaghetti Monster's noodly appendage, or by the Force, or by the Lich King.

And bear in mind that there was nobody to dispel that kinda delusions. The input I got from, say, mom was stuff like that it was a telepathic miracle that she passed her exams while pregnant with me. (The fact that she passed exams perfectly well before that, or before ever having any sex, or that she was considered nothing short of a genius by her first boss after I was no longer inside her, somehow still don't seem to count against it.) And most of the day I was with a deranged grandma who was more concerned that I be a girl than whatever nonsense was in my little head.

Just saying, there wasn't much of a reality check there, so maybe I can have some excuse for believing all that nonsense.

However growing up, and reading exactly the kind of stuff I wrote in the OP kinda put the kibosh on most of that. Or yes, figuring out the kind of technology I could teach to primitive people without them needing a Ph.D. in physics and still would do them more good than a pile of stone blocks (e.g., wash your hands and boil the frikken water), and that there is no historical evidence that any of them actually did that.

So I'm still somewhat at a loss as to why educated grown-ups still believe that crap.

And for the last woo parts, hearing about Randi's million put the kibosh on that too. I figured that if any mom could actually telepathically communicate with her baby, well, someone would have one heck of a college fund by now

 

[Dinwar]

Oh agreed, it's much messier than that... which is why all CT stories are doomed to impossibility from the start...

What I meant is that you have a perfectly linear cause and effect chain for huge cultural movements across multiple generations. I'd be very, very surprised if it held true. Human societies simply don't work like that--in even the most monolithic society there are many, many influences, internal and external, impacting the next stage of that society.

My Google fu is weak this morning and I'm not really getting an idea of how rapid those glacier melts would have been.
Could you point me in the right direction to learn more about glacier melts?

There are rocks around Lake Erie that were carved by these floods. They present evidence of absolutely amazing water velocities.

 

[pakeha]

Thanks for the heads-up, dinwar.
The photos I found are awesome.

ETA:
What glacier activity would have been in the Middle East to inspire the Flood stories? Off to google.
ETA:
Fantastic. Something I just found:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-editio...rs-what-caused-ancient-atlit-to-sink-1.247223

 

[Warrior1461]

Aliens are the new angels, science fiction is the modern day mythology, born from our increasing tech advances and knowledge, like the myths of old, these fables also teach higher truths and try to speculate the wonders and dangers scientific progress can bring. Like religion sf has its own apocalyptic scenarios. Sf has three, zombie apocalypse, robot holocaust and the alien invasion.

 

[Brainache]

Aliens are the new angels, science fiction is the modern day mythology, born from our increasing tech advances and knowledge, like the myths of old, these fables also teach higher truths and try to speculate the wonders and dangers scientific progress can bring. Like religion sf has its own apocalyptic scenarios. Sf has three, zombie apocalypse, robot holocaust and the alien invasion.

Don't forget Nukes, and the Grey Goo...

 

[pakeha]

Just in case:
http://www.greygoo.org/

 

[xterra]

<snip>

There are rocks around Lake Erie that were carved by these floods. They present evidence of absolutely amazing water velocities.

Dinwar,

Please post a reference to this.

Thanks.

xterra

 

[Cainkane1]

If aliens from another solar system had come to earth and built things they would have used materials other than stone or in conjunction with stone. There would have been artificial light, flying machines, autos, smooth paved streets and outdoor lighting heating and plumbing. There would have been plastic and smelted metals way before they appear in history.

Ancient aliens on earth is wishful thiking at best and lunacy at worst.

 

[Dinwar]

Dinwar,

Please post a reference to this.

Thanks.

xterra

Here are the formations I was talking about.

Here's another section.

Unfortunately, I don't have a link to the idea that they are due to extreme velocities. That was something I heard at a talk. I don't remember if it was at GSA, or at colloquium (I went to school in Ohio, near the lake, so we had a number of talks on the subject of glacial lake formation). The argument was based on formations similar to the second photo (which is why I included it)--the way the grooves are formed is impossible for ice to do, but extremely common for fast-moving water to carve out in softer sediment. Higher velocities equal carving into stronger rock. The velocity came from pressure--the ice put tremendous pressure on the water (ice floats, but there are limits, and a km of ice or more is way, way, WAY above that limit), and basically shot the water out like a super-soaker (it's exactly the same principle, in fact).

Here's a perfect example of that sort of thing. Towards the center you can see two pits, where the ice would have had to dip down then rise up again, in the span of a few meters. Or, it could simply be a standing wave, something quite common in high-velocity water. The grooves around it either represent ice behaving in a manner that has never been observed, or typical flow patterns in turbulent water flows.

 

[Correa Neto]

There's no doubt massive floods happened in the past. I question, however, the alleged links between them and flood myths found across the world. I have serious doubts if the memories from such events could be transmitted orally not just through tens of thousands of years but also through who-knows-how-many cultures.

Personally I think, or believe, smaller higher-frequency events extrapolated throught fiction and storytelling at different cultures and different times are more likely sources. Interpretations by biblical litteralists surely also played a role...

 

[Dinwar]

"Never let the facts get in the way of a good story." Midrealm bard.

"The most fertile ground for a deer to grow in is a hunter's mind." Patrick McManus.

 

[Correa Neto]

Sure.
Thor being a myth inspired by thunderstorms is quite dul...
Now, Thor being a myth inspired by aliens with ray guns waging wars against each others...
Well, this is something I can sell.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, actually there is another thing that is weird about ancient aliens: the way they're invariably described by those people as riding in chariots, fighting with swords (even while flying through the sky!), or in Thor's case with a hammer, and so on.

The usual apology usually runs along the lines of "ah, but they'd describe those things in terms of the things they know", but that makes no sense. If I draw a winged pig and show it to someone, even if they've never seen a flying pig before, they won't think I drew an airplane.

Plus even the ancients had bows and arrows for example. They wouldn't mistake an air battle for a melee with swords. Even if they were grasping for something familiar for them, there is no reason to assume they'd describe ranged combat as involving swords as opposed to arrows.

Or since they had birds, they'd describe an airplane as a giant bird, not as a chariot.

 

[Soapy Sam]

There's no doubt massive floods happened in the past. I question, however, the alleged links between them and flood myths found across the world. I have serious doubts if the memories from such events could be transmitted orally not just through tens of thousands of years but also through who-knows-how-many cultures.

I'm not so sure. While the major floods like the Missoula or Altai events, predate agricultural settlement and permanent records, these did not simply stop at the start of the Holocene. There would be many nomadic cultures who would, from time to time, find that time honoured routes to old grazing or hunting areas had become too wet to cross. Over several years, lakes would appear where there had been dry routes before. Some of these events would seem global to people whose "world " was maybe only a few hundred miles across.
Story telling being a matter of time compression and spatial exaggeration, such events could soon become bigger and faster than reality. People were more landscape aware in those days. They would have recognised the remains of floods for what they were and claimed that those were the ones their tales referred to.
It doesn't really require that people witnessed jokulhaup type glacier bursts or glacial lake dam failures. But it's hard to believe nobody ever did. And if ever there was a memorable event that might lead to a legend, one of these is a likely candidate.

Personally I think, or believe, smaller higher-frequency events extrapolated throught fiction and storytelling at different cultures and different times are more likely sources. Interpretations by biblical litteralists surely also played a role...

I'm sure multiple sources are involved. But when you wander out of your country, or are kidnapped and hauled to another- and learn they have the same global flood legend you have at home, you have to wonder if the stories describe the same thing.
Pakeha. The following wiki entries are a good start point for the sort of floods that follow the end of glacial periods.
The water released to the sea also causes eustatic rise in ocean levels, flooding coastal areas, where many ancient settlements may have been, (but that does not mean those settlements involved technology beyond what we expect of the neolithic or the Bronze Age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_Floods
The latest Missoula floods probably postdate the arrival of modern man in North America, but this is contentious. But there is no doubt people saw the Altai floods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_flood


The third link refers to refilling of the Black Sea basin as sea levels rose in the Mediterranean. I'd agree with Correa Neto that it's a bit simplistic to equate this event (which remains highly contentious among palaeoclimatologists and geologists) with the OT deluge, but I also think it's unlikely these events are not in some sense connected to the very widespread legends of huge floods in a species expanding into the north as the climate amelioration permitted,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis

Here's a home grown Scottish example of a glacial ice dammed lake that periodically drained producing immense , short duration flash floods. The erosional features form the Spean Gorge, with the sand & gravel deposits filling a large area of the Great Glen near Fort William.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Roy

 

[Correa Neto]

Assuming, of course, the alien craft would look like our airplanes and dogfight Star Wars-style (which is actually WWI-style).

Even nowadays' air war is nothing like that. Fights usually are beyond visual range, missiles fired from far away hit the targets. From the ground, if you are lucky, you'll see a dot flying high above, a moment later its blown to bits and some seconds later you'll hear the explosion. Usually you'll just hear the explosion and watch flaming debris falling from the sky. Ancient aliens tech is outdated... Well, it has to be, since they are ancient aliens...

Thinking is not good for the ancien aliens business. It will only work well if the customers do not think too much about the huge pile of stupidity they are buying. I find ironically depressing the fact these folks quite usually call those who do not buy that sort of trash "close-minded", "sheeple", etc.

 

[Correa Neto]

@Soapy: just after a civilization develops writing, data storage through hundreds and even thousands of years becomes more likely. However, we are talking about events which happened thousands of years before writing was invented. We also can not be sure about cultural continuity between the cultures which experienced them and those which came later.

Why don't we have myths about beasts such as saber-toothed cats and mammoths? I believe (note the word "believe") the reason is due to oral data storage and transmittion through time being a fragile thing.

Most sea level changes were slowN for human terms. You would see your neighbour's house being more and more affected by high tides and storms. Eventually, you too would move. Sure, this could be a root for a flood myth.
So, Og was raised hearing that tale. Og travels and captures Aa, a woman whose tribe had a flood myth rooted in, say, periodic floods of a nearby river. Og and Aa may tell a merged flood tale to Ooga, their son.