2001: A Space Odyssey and the monolith. We've been looking at the monolith for years.

[originalpckelly]

The monolith is on your money:


If an alien species came to earth, and they had advanced technology, wouldn't that look like magic? Or maybe an act of God?

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

If we listen to the Bible, which is not a religious text but an irrational interpretation of such a visit, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a Virgin.

If we assume that just like in other areas, native people's had myths that turned out to be observations made without the knowledge to rationalize them, why wouldn't the same be true for this kind of thing?

If we assume they saw 100% what's in this tiny tidbit, we must assume the following is true:
1. Parthenogensis, something that's simply not possible with a mother who is XX and child who is XY
2. An act of God, or magic

Today, we know that it is not impossible for a woman to have a baby while still being a virgin. It's called artificial insemination. If we ourselves were to travel back in time, and take the necessary samples from Joseph and inseminate them into Mary, we would probably be considered Gods ourselves. To create a human being without the act known to be prerequisite to such a thing? Out of all things in this world, that would have seemed just amazing to them.

So, either we are Gods ourselves, or the people in that time had an irrational explanation for what they saw, based upon incomplete information. A while back, maybe a year or so, this research team claimed to have found the tomb of Jesus. It had an ossuary, which I guess is like some kind of weird coffin, which said "Jesus Son of Joseph."

On the tomb, it had this symbol:


It looks pretty interesting to me. Looks kind of like the eye of providence.

God, at least the one talked about in the Bible, is just an alien race.

Either we are Gods, a totally irrational thing to say, or we have been visited by ETs which is now more rational to say. It's now only a little into the impossible, because we'd have to be Gods if it weren't.

If this sounds irrational to you, then you are not ready to hear it, and your brain is throwing up an error like a computer does. It's probably for your own protection.

Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Dune, and Stargate were probably myths to help us understand this stuff.

[WhiteTara]

1. quantum physics says

we are co creators of this dream/world.

First rule: The observer affects the experiment.

[lunatica]

2. Or we could also be ET descendands who are Gods

It's rarely either or. Shades of gray are most likely to be the norm

[customerserviceguy]

16. Then those "gods" sure did a good job

of making us have so very much in common with other animal species on this planet. If someone wants to make the case that an extraterrestrial race unleashed a virus that implanted DNA in the human race to cause us to utilize our brains more than we had been doing, that's another thing entirely.

But, Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest explanation is the most likely one, so I'm sticking with evolution right now.

[Hanse]

3. That Clarke quote about advanced technology and magic is a load of crap.

You don't know how your computer works, but you don't think it's magic.

"So, either we are Gods ourselves, or the people in that time had an irrational explanation for what they saw, based upon incomplete information."

Or, we're just regular people who've figured out the advanced technology of turkey basters.

"If this sounds irrational to you, then you are not ready to hear it, and your brain is throwing up an error like a computer does."

No, it's just irrational. Like the timecube stuff.

"Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Dune, and Stargate were probably myths to help us understand this stuff."

No, they're fiction. Designed to entertain us, and make their creators money.

[Fumesucker]

6. The Clarke quote is correct..

"Indistinguishable from magic" does not mean something is indeed magic, it means that from a lower technological level of development something of a higher level *appears* to be magic.

And in fact, to the great majority of people who use them, computers might as well be magic for all the real understanding those people have of them.

The Necronomicon versus the Turing Test.

[Hanse]

8. No, it's not.

If you take sufficiently advanced technology to, say, aboriginal hunter-gatherer people in the Amazon region, they're curious, but get bored rather quickly.

They don't fall to their knees and worship it like a god, like the OP thinks.

[Fumesucker]

10. Depends on the technology..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

And besides, I wasn't even referring to primitive people so much as I was to clueless people that use high tech every day and haven't the slightest idea how it works, as far as they are concerned high tech might as well *be* magic.

Edited to rephrase Clarke's law a bit:

"If you are clueless as to the operating principles of a technology then for all practical purposes it might as well *be* magic to you."

[HysteryDiagnosis]

14. A coke bottle could be a sign from heaven....

[originalpckelly]

7. Your brain is not capable of handling this then.

If you didn't question me, then you would go completely insane if you weren't ready for this information.

[Hanse]

9. No, my brain's fine.

Your brain on the other hand...

[tkmorris]

4. See, I want to merely ignore this

But this phrase, "If this sounds irrational to you, then you are not ready to hear it, and your brain is throwing up an error like a computer does." is just tremendously arrogant and demands a response.

It sounds irrational because IT IS IRRATIONAL. Perhaps the word doesn't mean what you think it does.

[Speck Tater]

5. The word that was translated into English as "virgin" just meant "unmarried", NOT "virginal". nt

[spin]

13. A link to back your statement up...

The Virgin Birth and Virgin Mary are, pardon the pun, pregnant with social symbolic significance in most, if not all, parts of the world. Whether you believe in them or not, they are solid social constructs, rehearsed endlessly in art, humour, everyday life, and language. And yet their birth is due to a relatively simple mistake in translation. The Old Testament talks about almah 'young woman,' not bethulah 'virgin.' However, the scholars in the 3rd century BC translated the Hebrew almah as parthenos in Greek. Thus the 'young woman' in Hebrew metamorphosed into a 'virgin' in Greek—and she has remained a virgin ever since in translations across the world. The notion of 'virgin birth' was born, thanks to a mistranslation.
http://accurapid.com/Journal/18review.htm

Plenty of mistranslations in the Bible. The King James version says, Thou shalt not kill. The correct translation is Thou shalt not murder.

And of course there is always the problem of misunderstanding terms used in the Bible.

To understand, Thou shalt not commit adultery., first you have to understand the meaning of adultery in Biblical times.

The problem, naturally enough, lies with the meaning of the word “adultery.” People today tend define it as any act of sexual intercourse outside of marriage or, perhaps a bit more narrowly, any act of sexual intercourse between a married person and someone who is not their spouse. That is appropriate in contemporary society but it isn’t not how the word has always been defined.

The ancient Hebrews in particular had a very restricted understanding of the concept and limited it to just sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who was either already married or at least betrothed. The marital status of the man was irrelevant. Thus, a married man was not guilty of “adultery” for having sex with an unmarried woman.
http://atheism.about.com/od/tencommandments/a/commandment07.htm

[sarge43]

11. Or we could assume that the virgin birth myth

is just that, a myth to enhance the press releases of Buddha, Krishna, Quetzalcoatl, Zoroaster, Perseus, etc. Do you really think Alexander the Great was the son of Amon-Zeus? So it was believed during his life time and long after his death.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Carl Sagan

Extraordinary people (real or mythical) attract extraordinary stories.

[The_Casual_Observer]

12. This is the sort of babble I would expect to hear in prison.

Thanks for saving me the trouble for now.

[foo_bar]

15. it sounds vaguely familiar

The script had illustrations in it. The bad guy, a space emperor (sound familiar?) was a bad ripoff of Ming the Merciless from the Flash Gordon movies. His minions were dressed in space opera versions of Nazi uniforms. You know, like the black uniforms the "finance police" were wearing a couple of years later when they gathered $cientologists together in forced meetings and screamed at them for not giving enough money to the cult.

http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/revolting-revolt-stars.htm

Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Dune, and Stargate were probably myths to help us understand this stuff.

In the OT levels, Hubbard explains how to reverse the effects of past-life trauma patterns that supposedly extend millions of years into the past.<126> Among these advanced teachings is the story of Xenu (sometimes Xemu), introduced as an alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy." According to this story, 75 million years ago Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and detonated hydrogen bombs in the volcanoes. The thetans then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to do this today. Scientologists at advanced levels place considerable emphasis on isolating body thetans and neutralizing their ill effects.<127>

<...>

Professor of sociology Stephen A. Kent says "Scientologists see themselves as possessors of doctrines and skills that can save the world, if not the galaxy."<118> As stated in Scientology doctrine: "The whole agonized future of this planet, every man, woman and child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depend on what you do here and now with and in Scientology."<118> Kent has described Scientology's ethics system as "a peculiar brand of morality that uniquely benefited ... In plain English, the purpose of Scientology ethics is to eliminate opponents, then eliminate people's interests in things other than Scientology."<226>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology

If this sounds irrational to you, then you are not ready to hear it

[Mike 03]

17. Very interesting, but I want to consider the full implications of your premise before making

general comments.

You are speaking figuratively of the authority of myths, right; nothing made by human beings could be anything more than speculative when it comes to the issues you are discussing.

On a related note, 2001 is my favorite film ever, no caveats or qualifications.