Transcendent Outsiders, Alien Gods , and Aspiring Humans: Literary Fantasy and Science Fiction as Contemporary Theological Speculation Ryan Calvey concedes some incompleteness, but this is what he talks about.
In his introduction, he proposes liberal-religion and New-Age "sane spirituality" as an alternative to both religious conservatism and atheism. He continues onward to ET's as authoritarian gods, and then New-Age gods. He ends with "voices from below: aspiring humans", mentioning robots, supercomputers, magically-animated toys and statues, holograms and other AI simulations, projections of others' minds, assembled and cloned human beings, and also ET's.
Here is a more complete classification.
Angry -- authoritarian and judgmental and punitive. The Day The Earth Stood Still is a classic of that, with the ET's bringing a message of "behave yourself -- or else!!!"
Friendly -- like liberal and New-Age theology. Carl Sagan's Contact, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Starman, Cocoon. From Contact:
CEIII is rather disjointed. The ET's are first very annoying, then very friendly. Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End fits, after a fashion, and also the Brobdingnagians and the Houyhnhnms of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Some additional theology is the sort-of virgin birth in Starman and the miraculous healings of Starman and Cocoon.
RC also mentions UFO contactee Orfeo Angelucci in this context, and George Adamski has some good examples. "Space Brother" Orthon from Flying Saucers Have Landed, about nuclear bombs and the devastation that they can produce:
"Space Sister" Kalna from Inside the Spaceships about war and things like that:
Aloof -- though such deities involve themselves with humanity, they don't communicate with us very much, if at all. The black slabs of 2001: A Space Odyssey are an obvious example, and H.P. Lovecraft's "Elder Gods" may also qualify.
In UFOlogy, UFO surveillance (the usual reason proposed for their presence) and UFO abductions (like what wildlife biologists do) clearly qualify.
Apotheosis -- humanity becoming gods. Isaac Asimov's The Last Question is an obvious one, and some of Arthur C. Clarke's works seem like that also.
Absent -- if not nonexistent. Humanity is at the top of the heap in sentience, with all entities more powerful than humanity behaving completely impersonally without regard for humanity. Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is a good example of it, with its absence of sentient ET's.
So far, the real-life universe has been like this, Fermi Paradox and all.
In his introduction, he proposes liberal-religion and New-Age "sane spirituality" as an alternative to both religious conservatism and atheism. He continues onward to ET's as authoritarian gods, and then New-Age gods. He ends with "voices from below: aspiring humans", mentioning robots, supercomputers, magically-animated toys and statues, holograms and other AI simulations, projections of others' minds, assembled and cloned human beings, and also ET's.
Here is a more complete classification.
Angry -- authoritarian and judgmental and punitive. The Day The Earth Stood Still is a classic of that, with the ET's bringing a message of "behave yourself -- or else!!!"
Friendly -- like liberal and New-Age theology. Carl Sagan's Contact, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Starman, Cocoon. From Contact:
Quote:
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... the alien “Caretaker” she encounters provides her with a different, more sophisticated model for God. Contrary to her expectations of traditional religion/theology (judgment, intervention, commandments, etc), her encounter, while in surface ways similar to most human/transcendent outsider interactions, is far more in line with progressive and New Age spirituality than those we have discussed earlier. ... ‘It isn’t like that,’ he said. ‘It isn’t like the sixth grade.’ […] ‘Don’t think of us as some interstellar sheriff gunning down outlaw civilizations. Think of us more as the Office of the Galactic Census. We collect information. I know you think nobody has anything to learn from you because you’re technologically so backward. But there are other merits to a civilization’ ... The emphasis in Ellie’s interaction with the Caretaker is growth, expansion, and development—humans have reached a point where they are on their own. |
RC also mentions UFO contactee Orfeo Angelucci in this context, and George Adamski has some good examples. "Space Brother" Orthon from Flying Saucers Have Landed, about nuclear bombs and the devastation that they can produce:
Quote:
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To this, too, he nodded his head in the affirmative, but on his face there was no trace of resentment or judgment. His expression was one of understanding, and great compassion; as one would have toward a much loved child who had erred through ignorance and lack of understanding. This feeling appeared to remain with him during the rest of my questions on this subject. |
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It is a great pity that we must talk of such sorrowful things—and still sadder that such woe exists anywhere in the Universe. In ourselves, we of other planets are not sad people. We are very gay. We laugh a great deal. |
In UFOlogy, UFO surveillance (the usual reason proposed for their presence) and UFO abductions (like what wildlife biologists do) clearly qualify.
Apotheosis -- humanity becoming gods. Isaac Asimov's The Last Question is an obvious one, and some of Arthur C. Clarke's works seem like that also.
Absent -- if not nonexistent. Humanity is at the top of the heap in sentience, with all entities more powerful than humanity behaving completely impersonally without regard for humanity. Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is a good example of it, with its absence of sentient ET's.
So far, the real-life universe has been like this, Fermi Paradox and all.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/21rKP4M
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