A friend of mine says yes they have, and they put signs up all over the Solar System warning others to stay away from the insane asylum on the 3rd planet.
No, because why wouldn’t he just send regular looking angels? Its not like they have to look the way they do. This kind of thing bothers me whenever there is a discussion on whether some misunderstood phenomenon could be a sign of god. If god didn’t want to be misunderstood, he’d actually send the real, unequivocal thing.
Like, for example, curing illness. Some people attribute some miraculous health turn to god, like if a cancer goes away or an organ heals itself. If god were real, why not have the cancer fly out of the body in a flash of light, hover in the air, then destroy itself in a shower of radiance and perfume? Why just have someone get better? Or if some athlete thinks god helped him, why not send winged, angelic humanoids down from the sky to carry him? Or on the other hand, if Jesus wanted to punish some team because they’re not sufficiently religious, he should appear between the goalposts and smack away a field goal with throwing up double middle fingers
This “could X be Y due to god?” thing is silly. If god wanted you to know he was sending angels, then robed, white people with feathery bird wings accompanied by a 40 string orchestra should appear in the sky above Manhattan during rush hour, not vague allusions to bright lights or smears on a lens that might be angels or raspberry jam
Decades ago if Farmer Brown complained a UFO landed on the “back forty” and knocked down his fence, there was always the excuse he didn’t have his old Kodak Brownie camera with him, so there were no photos.
Today everyone has a cell phone camera, many of which shoot 4k video. Here is an amateur video of a sudden unannounced B-2 flyover. It’s not very good but it’s not a blob of light in the distance. I have never seen any legitimate UFO video even this good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCIoughBnlg
Besides cell phones there are hundreds of millions of digital cameras and camcorders produced each year, some with stabilized 20x-50x optical zoom lenses.
If any of those ever captured a UFO you could see the rivets, scuffs, etc. It would look something like this: https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-mh5w6LL/0/O/i-mh5w6LL.jpg
Alas, we never see that. It’s always a fuzzy blob of light in the distance.
But with today’s optically stabilized, 20x zoom lenses and high-def imagers, people have no problem capturing high-resolution images of military planes, tornadoes, etc – all kinds of unpredictable transient events. They can capture all these things at high resolution, but not UFOs. That should tell us something.
BTW why would a star-faring civilization joy-ride at low altitude across Farmer Brown’s pasture? Today we have reconnaissance satellites that can minutely inspect earth from orbit. We have tiny robotic nano drones that look like birds and insects. Why would an alien civilization not use far more advanced methods? The answer is simple: the teller of those tales didn’t think about it, and framed the scenario only in areas he was familiar with. There is a lesson there.
Two words: biblical archaeology. You have thoughts you want to believe so you’ve gone out to find some reasoning (e.g. evidence) that sounds good to support them. It’s easy to find evidence for something you want to believe. It’s harder to develop the willingness to just go wherever the evidence leads you. While you’ve asserted a nice fantasy, there are more reasonable explanations. For instance, why was everybody looking up to find a god? Probably because the sun is the most noticeable thing in the waking world…it’s so intense you can’t stand to look at it. Further, we have ample evidence of the sun serving as a primary element of religion all over the world. Indeed, you can find echoes of it in the bible if you look. Then, you have the other celestial bodies…we find evidence of those all over the place as well, including the bible. As for the last question, ever hear of propaganda? Miracles were a dime-a-dozen in ancient times.
I like the idea that it’s related to sleep paralysis. The idea is that stories of aliens and succubi/incubi, for instance, share a lot of traits: an inability to control your body, telepathic communication, and the demon or alien stealing your semen and eggs to make half breeds, impregnating you, or doing some sort of sexual experimentation. I think the technical psychological summary for this is that people are perverts.
As for the OP, why would aliens travel so far to have such piddly, indirect influence? I never understood why ancient aliens would do something like help humans move a bunch of rocks to make a pyramid instead of, I dunno, teaching them calculus, or handing out some miracle technology. Or at least teach them sanitation and germ theory.
David Brin said the same thing once: “Why draw landing fields in the sand at Nazca? Give us a junior college, and you can have landing radar.”
It’s at least a little bit reasonable to argue that the Nazca lines could have been attempts by the locals to attract the attention of otherwise-aloof LGMs - to tempt them to land and buy souvenirs.
I mean, I don’t believe that for a minute, but if one was to ascribe any merit at all to the ancient astronaut stuff, it would make more sense that the locals independently thought up, then did stuff they thought was helping, rather than that they did it under the direct instruction and guidance of the LGM.
Could Aliens be gods angels?
I think the opposite is more likely. What some people perceive to be angels, could very well turn out to be aliens.
And if aliens ever do pay a visit to Earth, you can bet every religious nu will be declaring them as his angels.
I’m reminded of the Vorlons during the last season of Babylon 5, I think it was.
I really doubt that. If the behaviour or attitude of such aliens is inconsistent in any way with the religious mythos, it undermines the notion that the religion was ever right about angels. Unless you’re prepared to accept an uncontrolled external change to your beliefs, you can’t declare some uncontrollable external beings as an important fundament of your religion.
It’s slightly more likely the religious nuts would say they’re demons - that way, anything good they do can be described as deceit and temptation; anything bad they do can be described as characteristically demonic.
Okay, but apart from teaching us calculus, sanitation, germ theory, miracle technology, and building the Pyramids, what have the aliens ever done for us?
Well, maybe some people like anal probes.
Well, you’ve convinced me. I was skeptical about the idea that space aliens visited prehistoric Earth, but now that you’re talking about magic space aliens, everything makes sense.