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Post by hawkinthesnow on Oct 25, 2008 18:56:47 GMT
I have been debating someone on an atheist website who suggests that this present universe might have been created by a race of superaliens who may have become extinct billions of years ago. Has anyone else come across this notion?
Back in about 1970 Erich von Daniken came up wth the notion that earth was visited by aliens in the past, who left clues to their visit in ancient artefacts, like the Nazca drawings in Peru. He thought that they might have tampered with ape DNA to produce humans. This latest notion just takes it to a whole new level though.
My antagonist said that something had to have existed before this universe - quite an admission form an atheist when you think about it! And this was his suggested solution.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Oct 25, 2008 20:48:20 GMT
I have been debating someone on an atheist website who suggests that this present universe might have been created by a race of superaliens who may have become extinct billions of years ago. Has anyone else come across this notion? I nearly choked to death on my cider when I read that. How did they reach the level of sentience needed to create a universe and still become extinct?. Did they get careless and leave the iron on or something?. |
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Post by bjorn on Oct 25, 2008 21:18:02 GMT
Däniken has been debunked so many times (even by me, in an article on Graham Hanc ock - www.skepsis.no/kultarkeologi/fra_arken_til_orion_nr_kreativ.html) that any theory having similarities, is curious for an atheist to hold. Though I have ran across a lot of non skepticcal atheists, so it is quite possible. There are even atheistic religions connected with a belief in aliens (e.g. the Raelians). However, what one here does is just redefining God. Any superalien with that kind of power is so godlike that its is impossible for us to distinguish if we ever met one. And in a multiverse reality such godlike aliens are bound to happen. Any atheist who believes in the multiverse, also believes in God. |
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Post by hawkinthesnow on Oct 26, 2008 10:39:14 GMT
Däniken has been debunked so many times (even by me, in an article on Graham Hanc ock - www.skepsis.no/kultarkeologi/fra_arken_til_orion_nr_kreativ.html) that any theory having similarities, is curious for an atheist to hold. Though I have ran across a lot of non skepticcal atheists, so it is quite possible. There are even atheistic religions connected with a belief in aliens (e.g. the Raelians). However, what one here does is just redefining God. Any superalien with that kind of power is so godlike that its is impossible for us to distinguish if we ever met one. And in a multiverse reality such godlike aliens are bound to happen. Any atheist who believes in the multiverse, also believes in God. That seems to be the case. As you say they are redefining God, but then they land themselves in a regress, because these Gods are still natural beings. One can still ask what caused them. It seems to me that the atheist has a choice: either to go along with an infinite regress with no ultimate beginning, and therefore no final explanation, (which was Russell's position in his debate with Coplestone - "I see no reason whatsoever to say that the total has any cause whatsoever", and leave the universe as just a brute fact. The other alternative is to say that the universe (defined as the totality of all natural reality) has a cause, and that cause is necessary and non natural. I cannot think of a logical reason why Russell might not be right, but it does seem to me to be a very unsatisfactory position. But I would much rather appeal to Russell's explanation must stop somewhere, why not the universe? approach, than this pseudo scientific nonsense about superaliens! |
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