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Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Exodoxy

Some commenters have been asking us how we know that God is not an alien or alien simulation.

To begin with, you need to realize that in a first contact situation, we like to play our cards close to our vest.

You earthlings are such paranoid and panicky lot.

But since you insist, the reason we know that God is not an alien or alien simulation is that you have the question all backwards.

You see, God can’t be an alien because I’m an alien.

My fellow Calvinians and I are really little green men incognito.

BTW, this doesn’t mean that Reformed theology is false. To the contrary, the First Council of Alpha Centuri reads a lot like your Westminster Confession, once you make allowance for certain untranslatable, Centurian idioms like !@#$% and ^&*+<.

In observing lower life-forms like human beings, we assume various disguises. For example, we often take the form of lab rats, paperweights, teacups, and orchids.

Now, if you must know, atheism, not theism, is an alien simulation.

We’ve programmed certain members of your species not to believe in God. The programming comes complete with a number of self-refuting arguments like evolutionary psychology and secular ethics.

Evolution is part of the simulation.

This may strike you as a bit unfair, but to give you a sporting chance, we planted a number of witticisms here and there (e.g. missing links, suboptimal adaptations) so that if you pay attention, you’ll see that it’s just a simulation.

Unfortunately, some members of your species, like Dawkins and Dennett, have no sense of humor. They take everything so dog-gone literally. The irony of it all is quite lost on them. They treat our VR program as if it were the King James Bible.

For example, Richard Dawkins, who is one of our favorite test-subjects, has written that “biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”

Or course, the joke is on him since the illusion is the reality. For the simulation, like any scientific experiment, was, indeed, designed for a purpose.

This is not to denigrate the man, who’s the Nim Chimpsky of Darminions. We’ve taught him quite a few words and phrases, like “meme” and “methinks-it’s-a-weasel,” in exchange for a ripe banana or two.

9 comments:

  1. Steve,

    You're going to get thrown off the Intergalactic Council for revealing these secrets. You may have foiled the arguments of these silly humans, but was it worth it?

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  2. I see in this the hand of Monty Bristow, alias 'The Disturber'!

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  3. We are watching....

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  4. Needless to say, the green man is an authority on little green men.

    In case you're wondering if he's one of us (ETs), the answer is that we're not allowed to tell.

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  5. So, you don't know?

    that's what I thought.

    Cute little post though!

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  6. Steve, Steve, I'm shocked, shocked by all of this. As you know you shouldn't fool the test subjects this way. Everyone knows that all truly inteligent races in space speak Esperanto. Now everyone repeat with me: "Ni venas en paco!"

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  7. Well, I'm convinced Apollyon's brain has escaped from the ethereal electro-lab. He clearly is in the simulation mode, can someone flip the switch on the back of his head? He just doesn't get it....

    He seems to be using this little inane proposition to comfort himself over his rejection of God.

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  8. Apollyon, I, for one am able to answer, and I have already answered.

    I am certain as I can be that the Christian God is NOT an advanced alien race. Why?

    1.The Christian religion does not lend itself to use by an advanced alien race which seeded this planet with life and has been guiding its development in a certain direction. Why?

    An advanced alien race would be constrained by time, even if they possessed time-travel technology. Thus a once for all bodily intervention like the incarnation would be hyper-risky. Better to have a system of multiple prophets, like Mormonism of the Islamic model. In such cases a new prophet could be equipped in case of an unforseen crisis, or a system of avatars, as in Hinduism, where the odd trip down from the mothership can accomplish the same thing, or the pantheon of Greco-Roman paganism, where messengers can be sent often.

    2. The existence of atheism. If the advanced aliens are directing the development of their 'children', atheism surely represents a dire threat to their plan.

    Of course, it could all be a part of the master-plan, but in that case the scenario is essentially unprovable. As with the conspiracy theories about Kennedy or the Moon-Landing, which people hold to because they can never be discredited wholly, the question is not whether we can be wholly certain, but whether we can be satisfied as to the direction in which the evidence points.

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  9. Further, it occurs to me that were the Bible the sort of book some atheists say it ought to have been (containing advanced medical techniques, details as to the generation of energy, etc.) the probability of God being a cover for an advanced alien race would increase. The message of Jesus, primarily for the next world and only secondarily for this, is less likely to have come from an advanced extra-terrestrial source.

    Now, I hear you say, 'I cannot know this for certain', 'I cannot know this to my satisfaction.' Well, the degree to which an opinion may be considered probable depends upon, among other things, the extent to which exact knowledge is possible.

    So, in the nineteenth century and before, the standards for certainty as to paternity were much lower than they are today, when we have genetic testing. In the Middle Ages it was considered sufficient that the husband and wife had had sexual relations about a year prior to the birth (in the case of widows, this meant they had three months after their husband's death to get pregnant).

    Had someone demanded that a person's paternity be established with a 90% degree of certainty in 1806, or even in 1906, they would have been laughed out of court, that sort of certainty being impossible. Resemblance to the father might have helped, but we all know that not every child looks like the father. So we know we cannot be 100% certain as to the existence/identity of God, but that need not concern us unduly, as we also know that such certainty is impossible, for we see through a glass darkly, walking by faith and not by sight.

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