This is a ‘what if…’ scenario:
Assume, hypothetically, for a moment that aliens came to earth and announced that what we refer to as human beings, ourselves, were the result of nothing more than an ‘experimental gene splicing process’ with a primitive man like the Cro-Magnum man.
Which group of people would be the most psychologically impacted by this revelation and why:
It’s Cro Magnon. Cro-Magnum would have killed the aliens, being better armed ( couldn’t resist ) .
And I expect all three groups would be irritated, unless the aliens could give a good reason - Cro Magnon were little different than modern humans apparently. I don’t think aliens would have any more right to tamper with them than they would have with us.
Oh; and the Young Earth Creationists will have an extra layer of freak out because their little delusion that we were created 6000 years ago doesn’t jibe with the existence of aliens older than that. And the types who think we were created in God’s image will also freak out ( I was told as a kid that UFO aliens were demons by people like that ).
There is no sense in which the Cro-Magnons were primitive. They were Homo sapiens sapiens, just as truly as we are. A better comparison would be Neanderthals, which were certainly distinct from us, but may or may not have been inferior in any of the ways we consider important. Better yet would be something like Homo erectus, which was certainly less intelligent, tool-adept, etc. than us.
Obviously those aliens are simply Satan made manifest. The end times are coming!
speaking as a theistic agnostic my exact reaction would be
:eek:
:eek:
:eek:
:eek::eek::eek:…
:eek:!!
“Holy crap this is awesome!!!”
What I meant was the earliest, ugliest dumbest beginning of homo sapein and then the Aliens use that for genetic material.
I am interest in which group would have their world rocked the hardest: Atheists, Agnostics or Theists?
Agnostic = “see? who could have seen that one coming?”
Atheist = “see? all the god myths were relics of the aliens”
Theist = “God even uses aliens in his mysterious ways”
You think even aliens could shake views that entrenched?
Theists, naturally. The dogmatic nature of their worldview ensures that any really profound or interesting discovery is going to bother them more than agnostics/atheists. Like evolution, heliocentrism, the Big Bang, etc.
I don’t know, I think that the atheists might be shaken not by what the aliens have to say, but when their existence gives weight to the idea not all just random chance that created everything like the big bang theory would suggest. Multiple “happy accidents” seem suspicious, don’t they?
OTOH, there are a lot of theists who would immediately be worried about which species of intelligent life was created in God’s image, because how could it be both? Others would say God is multifaceted, so there is no either or to worry about. Neither, of course, would believe that the aliens are telling the truth.
My guess is that the agnostics would as a group have the easiest time accepting the new reality, given they’re not as invested in being right as either theists or atheists.
What “happy accidents” ? Interference by aliens is neither. In fact, it undercuts Creationism even more, since even if evidence of artificiality is found in something alive, we can just say “Eh, it was the aliens.”
For that matter, where did the aliens come from ? Presumably they evolved somewhere.
Atheists aren’t especially “invested in being right”.
As an atheist…
In the immortal words of Radha, “Prove it.” Just because they’ve been watching long enough to work out how to say “we created you” doesn’t mean they’re actually telling the truth.
Not if the sample size is sufficiently large.
Given that unlike theists, who are charged with the duty of spreading the “good news,” they are not required to pester anyone, yet still feel the need to try to convince others to accept their point of view belies any claim that they are not invested in being right.
Being constantly harassed and threatened and insulted will do that. When people constantly insist that I believe the sky is plaid, when it’s clearly blue with clouds I’m going to argue back. And there’s also the sheer cruelty and destructiveness of religion. There’s plenty of reason to argue against religion that have nothing to do with any “investment in being right”.
There’s also the problem that we clearly ARE right. If there’s one thing I don’t worry about, it’s being proven wrong about my atheism. Religious beliefs on the other hand are clearly mythology, and exceedingly stupid to believe in regardless of how taboo it is to point that out. So of course they are anxious about being proven wrong; their worldview is a house of cards, dependant on everyone involved pretending real hard that myths are true.
And since when has a religious claim ever turned out to be true ? I’m certainly not worried about my beliefs being proven wrong by people who are never right. Especially when all the facts are on my side.
And where’s your evidence that most atheists try to convince others ? Most as far as I can tell keep their heads down because of the hatred they’ll get if they even admit to atheism, much less argue for it.
cite?
Der Trihs, you can do better than that. That answer is just as weak from an atheist as it is from a theist asked the same question. If you want to take it as an article of faith that God doesn’t exist, that’s fine, but the nonexistence of God has not been and cannot be proven.
It’s been proven as well as anything outside of mathematics can be proven. That’s why the believers insist that the laws of physics don’t apply, that logic doesn’t apply, that God doesn’t even exist in the universe, and on and on. For any other thing, we wouldn’t hesitate to say that it doesn’t exist - but God gets a special, unmeetable standard of “disproof”.
I said “all of human knowledge”, because all of human knowledge shows no evidence of gods, and leaves no room for one. Asking for a “cite” implies that there’s some single bit of evidence.
There’s also the problem that it’s not my job to disprove a delusion that’s been carefully designed to be as un-disprovable as possible. It’s the job of the believers to come up with some evidence. Again, just like every other belief than religion; if someone claimed that Obama was a lizard alien everyone on the board would laugh and demand proof; not demand that the skeptics disprove Obama’s lizardness.
If you are rational about it, you are an atheist. If you apply the same standards of reasoning to religion that people do to virtually everything else, you are an atheist. Religion survives by demanding and getting a special, privileged set of standards.
WE’RE older than that. Why would the existence of aliens that were older than that bother them?
Because we don’t have home movies or the equivalent from back then. Apparently these aliens have records going back that far. There’s also the possibility that they, personally were alive that long ago.