“Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way.” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-7)

Having been in the Air Force with a Top Secret NATO/SCI clearance I’ve seen things that are very strange in the intel briefings to 4-Star Generals (I was at PACAF headquarters at Hickam in Hawaii). Even at that level – they are talking around what they found when it comes to alien visits, and crash sites. In particular I saw something referencing a crash in England in which at the TS level – the intel was not specific about what they found. They found it – but, they would not describe it exactly or describe where things went that were picked up at the crash site.

Why is THAT?

The idea that we would “know” if other worlds were contacting us – arriving, etc. is false because the widespread panic and total revolution of religion, culture, etc would set the people of the earth on such an unpredictable course – that it’s too frightening for any government to consider. In an instant the world would change faster and more totally than has happened over millenia.

I couldn’t guess what the ramifications would be. Though I’m sure there are books out about it – I’m not a sci-fi reader much.

Governments too – couldn’t guess what the outcome would be. They’d best sit on it until the white elephant in the room turns flourescent yellow and says – I’m HERE – FROM THIS DISTANT PLANET – there are 65 million universes and 1,498,032 human like and beyond, intelligent species in these other universes. You have been an experiment that 2 punks in a science class made a couple million years ago your time. We’ll give you a couple years to come to grips with that – and monitor you here so no nuclear weapons are fired. Other than that – do as you will.

Jesus – what a free-for-all that might end up, yes?

lol.

Maybe I’ll write a book about that… or read one. Thanks Stu – great comment up there, topic of post, and your entire site – as usual.

Vern aka: italktogod aka; farkedlife aka; mikeFOOK

Barry’s comment does say quite a lot, but it’s not brilliant – it just appears novel to me. His method of writing (typing), is unusual and that’s probably what grabbed you. Still it is worth highlighting.

On the actual subject matter he raises, I do think we are very naive to think we could possibly be alone. But then again, according to a Gallup poll, 18% of Americans still believe the Sun revolves around the Earth. http://www.gallup.com/poll/3742/new-poll-gauges-americans-general-knowledge-levels.aspx

Those regular pauses really do make you stop and think, just as it appears he was doing as he was typing it, but instead of cleaning up the text to make it one continuous, clean submission, he’s left it as it was created – warts and all – but as you say, amazingly with no typos.

I see in his subsequent comment at the original article he does say, “No, I come by my hyperbole honestly.” I wonder how long it took him to compose?

“Thank you so much for your kind response!”

….More below:

Oh. My. G-D. Dear Mr Browning. I would like to say thank you for taking me on a wondrous journey at 6:30am on a Thursday in 2009.

…I must see my solicitor…the will clearly needs updating…

This article and its sister, “How Hubble Killed God” have sat here for a few years now, attracting comments in…

… a massive spurt up-front, then trickles ever since.

….(vigorous slapping of the hands, and initial response deleted)…

But no reader comment has ever kept me as intrigued and awestruck as yours.

…As they say….”Thank you for the flowers!”

Your use of extended ellipses (four dots instead of three) gave me the image that you were clearly pausing to think about what to say as you were composing the response, all the time causing the reader (myself in this case),

….how is it put….”Engage-brain-before-opening-mouth”….

to pause to reflect on what was just stated….to very powerful effect.

…Quite the nicest compliment I’ve been paid in a long time…

The care you took in crafting your response is also most appreciated. I swear I could not spot a single typo.

….Well…..a “Small College in (the former District of) Maine(U.S.A.)”…

…..wherein our late President….the “Jolly” Roger Howell….a Rhodes Scholar, naturally…was the only American ever to teach English Literature at Oxford….some of this may have rubbed off….I sincerely hope it is not overly contagious…

I even Googled some of the text to see if this was not some cut-and-paste-job,

…No, I come by my hyperbole honestly….

….”Raised and trained for a world which no longer exists”…

but lamentably, Google, with its bill-yuns and bill-yuns of references could not find a match. I feel honored that your contribution was composed just for me (and every other fortunate visitor who visits this article in the future).

…Well….I….may just have too much time on my hands….

In response to what you actually had to say, you are right.

…Well….what I wrote made sense to me….and if we test our point of view publicly, sometimes we are lucky enough to have it tempered by those wiser-than-us….

….Suffice it to say that it is like when one reads a great book….It leaves one with that comforting feeling that “one is not entirely alone in one’s thoughts”….

Odds are, there ARE powers greater than our own out there in the glorious magnitude of the universe. And while they may not actually be listening to our wall-of-sound prayers, they may well be planning a visit.

…Or may already have been here.

(…Or may already be here now.)

…As I say….I don’t go running about worrying about “where the little green men are”, but I do follow with interest what happens in space, and this at least, to the extent that I may run into people who have a more direct experience of these things…..

….and no, I am not privy to any special information about any of this….just regular news reports and published sources….

…..but it just makes sense…..that….you-know….

Thank you Mr Browning.

…Well….thank you! I’ve enjoyed it…..and if you care to forward your direct e-mail address, I can send you under separate cover my response to your initial article.

Amities,

Your use of extended ellipses (four dots instead of three) gave me the image that you were clearly pausing to think about what to say as you were composing the response, all the time causing the reader (myself in this case), to pause to reflect on what was just stated….to very powerful effect. The care you took in crafting your response is also most appreciated. I swear I could not spot a single typo. I even Googled some of the text to see if this was not some cut-and-paste-job, but lamentably, Google, with its bill-yuns and bill-yuns of references could not find a match. I feel honored that your contribution was composed just for me (and every other fortunate visitor who visits this article in the future).

In response to what you actually had to say, you are right. Odds are, there ARE powers greater than our own out there in the glorious magnitude of the universe. And while they may not actually be listening to our wall-of-sound prayers, they may well be planning a visit.

Thank you Mr Browning.

It’s one thing….to “play” with what first seem like abstractions like “parallel universes” and “black holes” and “changes in the space-time continuum”….and it’s quite another thing…for those of us under I.Q. 160, to be able to “image”, without a little photographic help….what all that might look like….and the Hubble has done that, for me anyway….while looking at “deep space”, for example, I can just hear Carl Sagan’s voice from PBS broadcasts: “Mill-yuns….and-mill-yuns….and-mill-yuns….” (only he needs to juice the figures up a little, as in “bill-yuns…and-bill-yuns….and-bill-yuns…) If realizing that each of those at-first-glance “stars”, is actually a galaxy, itself containing-billions-of-stars, doesn’t give us a “Za-Zen” into a limitless….if not “primitive humanoid-bound”…sense of the Infinite…I don’t know what will…. Wow! It takes a good university to hear about Martin Buber’s “Ich-Du versus Ich-Sie”, and Rudy Otto’s “Mysterium Tremendum Et Fascinans”, much less Aquinus’s “That-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought”….(I think what the Hubble stimulates in us humans even-goes-beyond-thinking….but I digress)…

…and after four years of bathing in this in academic splendor, so many years ago, of “decent and scholastically-grounded” Comparitive Religious Studies(Religionswissenschaft), and Philosophy and Psychology, (yes, this included Jung), both in the U.S., and abroad, I have yet to hear anything but a paucity of this from any so-called “Christian” pulpit in the U.S. Well….the Inquisition forced Galileo to “recant”….d’ye suppose some “fundamentalist”idiots will declare Hubble itself “a work of the Dark Side”? I can just hear-it-in-my “mind’s-ear”….”Don’t-confuse-us-with-the-facts, Barry”….

….Now…..and again, this from looking at pictures from the Hubble….how can we….doubt the possibility, given the permutations of billions of billions of stars, and the infinite number of planets that presupposes…..the Europeans of late have done a good job of “proving” from Hubble and other sources, the existence of a specific number of observed faraway planets, which is growing….

….How can we doubt the possibility of other beings?

…And if we don’t doubt this, why, why, WHY…..do we insist, that if-they-exist, they-must-be…..anthropomorphic, bifurcated….humanoids? This is one of the “bastard children” of bad theology….we aren’t aware enough of what goes on inside ourselves psychologically, to recognize a spiritual projection of ourselves on any outside phenomenon when we experience it…..300 hours of good psychological training BEFORE candidates get to go to seminary would fix this….fat chance of that…..

…We are in the process of….”having-the-doors-blown-off”….of what we experience as “real”, and this has not substantially happened in the West, give-or-take-a-few-exceptions, since the Greeks-Presocratics….(but perhaps in the East has been available conceptually ever since the Brahman-Atman Union was described in Sanskrit)….

…and in the midst of this experience…of these discoveries…..

…How are we going to handle the discovery of “intelligent life in the Universe, other-than-our-own”, when on our own Earth, we can neither collectively fathom nor accept the universality of our own encounter with the Infinite in its various and long-established permutations of the world religions, at least one of which is, as this blog’s author has informed us, is more populous in believers than Christianity, and several of which pre-date Christianity by any number of years? How can we HOPE to handle….”intelligent life”, which in all probability, WILL NOT be anthropomorphic, (but may well have the intelligence to appear to us in anthropomorphic form, to save us all from an initial heart attack), when, on earth, and in as “progressive” a country as the U.S.A., we cannot even UNDERSTAND, much less TOLERATE….other world religions…..and when within the revelatory religion of Christianity…..we have a multiplicity of sects, if not of rules, (in direct proportion, apparently, to the lack both of direct experience, and/or paucity of I.Q.)….and where we….can’t….even…..on Sunday mornings….deal with someone next to us with a slight difference in SKIN PIGMENTATION?

…I, for one, suspect that Science has taken us FAR BEYOND the hypocrisies of U.S. religious “fundamentalism”, and that we-have-been-necessarily-lied-to, about what Science and our government actually knows, from EXPERIENCE, about the Universe…..

….but for now am willing to live with Sir William of Occum’s famous Razor…..until-the-little-green-men-come-knocking-at-my-door….I don’t need to modify my life style just yet….

…..and I think this began in the late ’30s, when my mom was leaving Brown University for the weekend, and got caught up in a four hour traffic jam while traveling to East Providence, as the Mercury Theater’s War of the Worlds was being broadcast…

…I’m suspecting that it was decided then, that “we could not handle the truth”, and I must admit, having read the mass psychology studies arising out of that U.S. broadcast event….and its subsequent application in such subsequent world events as Hitler’s Blitzkreig….that they were, and perhaps still are, right…..

….but….a few fun details since then….such as…..rumors of “reverse engineering”….and….perhaps an ulterior motive behind Regan’s “Star Wars” weaponry….and certain observations made by our own and other countrys’ astronauts….and, of late, a suggested other reason for the Hubble’s soon-to-be-engaged, if-not-already-engaged, competitor….the Keppler…..

…Occum’s Razor notwithstanding…..if any of this takes us in the direction which I think it is taking us…..

….then how can the way many, if not most of us, practice Man’s Religions, handle what we next discover, (if we have not already discovered it and are-sitting-on-it)?

…I think……that Man’s Religions….are due for some massive revisions…..

….I think…..that it is well past the time when we….perhaps need a “Religions Race”, to catch up with the results of the “Space Race”….

….I think…..we need a “Weltanschuuang”(World-view)…which admits not only of the existence of other of Man’s world religions, but of their discoveries and unique contributions, collectively, to-what-we-can-claim-to-know-about-ourselves…..

….and I think….it is well past the time for us to accept, much less give lip service to, one unique theology to the exclusion of all others….

…..when there is enough evidence over the centuries, that the Infinite can be experienced by humans, in a multiplicity of ways….and when….for those not “intellectually challenged”, the much overtouted and supposed “differences” between man’s religions, are more a sign of the limited outlook of some individuals….of limited vision….

….and I think…..that if we are to survive spiritually and psychologically in the universe to come, with its implied expansion of intelligent life forms and life-connections…..we need to

…..know ourselves inside more profoundly than we already do…or already accept, is more like it, because the tools to self-discovery have been around for years, and-or are available to us through a variety of introspections and processes…..

….and we need to……expand…..and this greatly…..our SOCIAL model of “what is existentially real”, so that we can HANDLE what we are about to discover, or what we have ALREADY discovered….

….and “not go mad”, as the Greek Tragedies would have instructed us…..

…..”You cannot see G-d and live”……

….We are about to test that statement……can we handle it?

….I suspect….that if what I’ve been suggesting is out there, and is currently happening for us…..

….that we flip ourselves into the category of “meta-cognition”…..(that is, “thinking-about-thinking”), and…..

….ask ourselves, what with the bill-yuns-upon-bill-yuns… of stars-and-planets….”out there”…..

….whether…..any…..

…..culture of primitive intelligence which is trying to expand, such as ours…..

….has ever….encountered….or ever will…..

….intelligence(s) of greater knowing……

….and has survived the experience…..and this, perhaps, under the guidance of the superior intelligences…..(let us, at least, hope so…)

More than any of you may have wanted to deal with on a Wednesday in 2009?

A definite great read….

eLearning does not work unless projects are managed before deployment. A basic failure to engage with the PD discourse that has been here for a decade or more, will result in the well documented short falls in improvement. It seems disgusting that teachers are being asked to do this, when quite clearly, senior executives are not.

But we just have to keep saying it – and eventually social pressure will effect change.

http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2009/09/operating-system-for-mind.html