The End of Chewbacca

Sam Harris has written a book called, "The End of Faith."

In it we read such claims as this one:

"As we stride boldly into the Middle Ages, it does not seem out of place to wonder whether the myths that now saturate our discourse will wind up killing many of us, as the myths of others [terrorists] already have." [...] "We must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. … It is imperative that we begin speaking plainly about the absurdity of most of our religious beliefs" (pp. 47, 48).

And when is this time?

"Two-hundred years from now, when we are a thriving global civilization beginning to colonize space, something about us will have changed: it must have; otherwise, we would have killed ourselves ten times over before this day ever dawned" (p.47).

See, aliens who had lived long enough to invent interstellar space travel would know the evils of religion.

Carrier writes,

"Of course, "God performed a miracle" is even less plausible than "Space aliens healed Jesus," because we do have credible evidence to believe that there could be space aliens with the means and the motive to heal Jesus: the existence of a spacefaring species is well attested in at least one case: us; the technology to travel through interstellar space and restore life to a corpse is within the realm of known physics (faster-than-light travel would not be necessary for a species that has conquered death); etc."

http://www.columbia.edu/~rcc20/TheftFAQ.html

But surely Carrier's aliens would be smart enough to know what a primitive and superstitious society would have believed about a man who came back from the dead!

And so it looks as if Harrris' aliens are the real evil ones. Harris should put an end to aliens.

It's not Christians who are to blame, but the Wookiee's!

I mean really, Richard, isn't it more plausible that space men who have developed the ability for interstellar space travel would be highly intelligent? And on your view isn't it most reasonable to assume that these highly intelligent beings would be atheists? And surely, given the evolutionary development of religion, wouldn't they have experienced religiosity in their more primitive days? And surely they knew the dangers of religion. And so why would it be plausible, Richard, that these intelligent beings would do something like bring back to life a highly religious figure? Wouldn't they want to put an end to faith?

I think that aliens would be involved in more technological and scientific enterprises. Like building pyramids. Don't you think?

And so why doesn't Carrier think it's more plausible that aliens built the pyramids?