If God exists, where is he? (Page 10)

ghostgeek: Despite the impression one gets from textbooks, our current knowledge of the universe represents a small island in a vast ocean of ignorance. The scientific enterprise is all about expanding the landmass of this island. And it is fun to engage in the activity of gaining knowledge; knowing everything in advance would have been much more boring. Still, it would be shocking to learn all at once of the discoveries of an alien civilization that been doing scientific and technological exploration for billions of years, in contrast to our mere few centuries. The eminent science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke codified this idea in the third of his three laws : “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Put another way, members of such a civilization would appear to us as a pretty good approximation to God.

[ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/advanced-extraterrestrials-as-an-approximation-to-god/ ]

ghostgeek: In 1954, a London cabbie named George King received a telepathic communication from an extraterrestrial intelligence named Master Aetherius: “Prepare yourself! You are to become the voice of Interplanetary Parliament.” This message, delivered from the planet Venus, was the first of hundreds of similar communications King allegedly received over his lifetime — some telepathically, some while in a trance. In 1955, King’s experiences inspired him to found the Aetherius Society, a religious group “dedicated to spreading, and acting upon, the teachings of advanced extraterrestrial intelligences.”

King soon anointed himself as “Primary Terrestrial Mental Channel,” and devoted his life to cultivating the unorthodox theology of his religion. One of the core beliefs of the Aetherius Society is that extraterrestrial life exists, and that aliens are highly evolved spiritual beings known as “Cosmic Masters.”

Occasionally, these extraterrestrials will take human form and visit us on earth, spreading spiritual guidance across the globe. Examples of Cosmic Masters include Buddha, Sri Krishna, Confucius and Jesus. The spiritual work of the Aetherius Society revolves around five “Cosmic Missions,” which are rituals designed to cooperate with these Cosmic Masters, and heal the world through prayer.

[ https://medium.com/mel-magazine/jesus-was-an-alien-6864228e90dc ]

ghostgeek: Mmm, so are Revelators just a nineteenth century version of those twentieth century "Cosmic Masters"?

ghostgeek: And was Baha’u’llah hooked up to an alien drip feed?

Zanjan: Gerald, you can look up any Holy Book and read it online for free -> Google "Interfaith Explorer" and bookmark it in your browser. It's a word search engine but will show you a list of religions and the Books it has.

Zanjan: Ghost, I think any extraterrestrial civilization would only need to be ahead of us by a couple of thousand years to visit earth. That's quite possible. Likely, they'd send drone scouts first because that's what we would do.

We want to know what we were getting into before we leap. I remember scientists saying they had no idea what they were going to land on when they went to the moon. Cheese or quicksand? Of course, we have better tech now. The problem is the funding. The moon is supposed to have hollow chambers - I say we bury our garbage there.

For interstellar space travel, scientists are working on the idea of drones that are like slightly larger microchips, saying it would be much cheaper, safer, and they could send them in groups much faster through the expanses of space than a craft. Spacechips, eh.

Baha'i writings say that every fixed star has its own planets and every planet has its own life forms, fit for the conditions. We might be disappointed to only find weird microbes but it seems to me, we might also want to redefine our concept of "life".

Zanjan: Anyone could think of God as an alien except one would be hard-pressed to believe an alien could live as long. How would one verify that?

Besides, the moment we form some idea or visual of God, that would be a concept......and we'd be wrong.

ghostgeek: Everything is relative, so in comparison to the lifespan of a microbe we must seem like eternal beings. Therefore it's not inconceivable that other lifeforms, if they exist, might have a span of years that dwarfs ours.

ghostgeek: As for space travel, drones may not be the way of the future:

Atlanta-based SpaceWorks Enterprises is currently working on a cryogenic application for NASA. Their solution involves mimicking torpor or short-term hibernation as it’s also called. Some mammalian animals use it, so it’s not entirely implausible for this to work for humans as well. The plan is to build a torpor statis habitat inside a spaceship where the astronauts can hibernate for much of their voyage. Inside the pressurized chamber up to six crew members could co-exist in the low metabolic state simultaneously. Torpor would be induced by an assisted hypothermic state in which the body is gradually cooled, all while attached sensors to the astronaut’s body monitor their condition and trigger automatic safety mechanisms in case something goes wrong. “Food” would be administered intravenously through TPN — total parenteral nutrition. A catheter would be inserted to drain urine and thus handle all the generated waste, since bowel is virtually rendered inactive because there’s only liquid nutrition. Waking up out of cryogenic sleep after 6 months of slumber might sound like the worst hangover in the universe, so electromagnetic muscle stimulation would keep away muscle atrophy.

[ https://www.zmescience.com/space/how-cryogenic-sleep-mars-0954123/ ]

ghostgeek: So alien "gods" may exist in suspended animation until thawed out by an inconsiderate prayer or two. Then they might lay waste to a whole world before returning to bed-e-byes. If nothing else, it could be a good plot for a story.

Zanjan: They're supposing they could get to point B in 6 months. Using what? First, they have to develop a propulsion system that doesn't use fuel, then find a way to travel as fast as the speed of light, or faster.

I'm not a fan of tinkering with the body at all. If they resolve the travel speed, tampering with nature won't be necessary. NASA is hunting for wormholes - that will do the trick. Einstein said wormholes should exist but I think they'd be invisible to the eye. When they find one, they have to figure out how to navigate through it, controlling coordinates of the time and place for their destination.

How do you know an extraterrestrial civilization isn't experimenting with that right now? Drones flying through our airspace accidentally poking in and out of portals in a desperate attempt to find the right one to get back home.

Oh dear,

Zanjan: Baha'i writings say that, one day, man will travel to the stars. I don't think we're mature enough to handle such advanced technology right now.

We need to focus on getting our own act straight. In fact, a few scientists have said the last thing we want to do is send out signals to let aliens know we exist. I see Carl Sagan in the next world looking a bit worried.

Zanjan: Back to existence here on earth. God has sorted the spirits of the created into their own kingdoms; all exist in the same world but not all are aware.

The spirit of the mineral exists but has no awareness, not even of itself. If you could speak to the rocks, telling them about plants, and they could answer you, they’d say plants don’t exist and neither do you.

The vegetable kingdom has a sensory life. Plants are aware of their own existence and the existence of plants near to them; but if you could tell them about animals, and they could answer, they’d say animals don’t exist. Likewise with animals – if you told them about man, they’d say ‘that’s an animal, man doesn’t exist’.

Yet all these creatures are living on the same plane all around them. The sentient creatures recognize all forms of life that are the same or lower degree than their own. In the kingdom of man, we’re like that too; we’re aware and recognize their traits and functions on this physical plane in relation to ourselves.

However, it happens we can’t see anything higher than that so we suppose the kingdom of God doesn’t exist. Yet here it is, all around us. All the souls who’ve passed on are around us - they’re not saying WE don’t exist. Their presence affects us one way or the other and those who are receptive can feel them.

So, we have to change our view to allow for the possibility of a higher existence than ours. This shouldn't be very difficult when we know that the Voice of God has come through to us over the ages, repeatedly conveying to us what reality is. If it were otherwise, that would never have happened.

GeraldtheGnome: Some mistakes were made on this forum, that includes the mistakes that were made in that video that I put on of course. Combat is not spelt with the letter k after all. No one has talked on this text based site except some people shown in videos on here. God is the Medieval name for the imaginary Hebrew god. Each religious god is made up.

There is no ocean of ignorance, I do however agree that there is quite a lot that is still unknown and most of that will remain unknown in the future. The word and should never be used at the front of a sentence. An American is anyone in The Americas. If anyone should be named God then it should be Morgan Freeman. Isn't he God anyway ? Telepathy is made up. The word and should never be after a comma. George King was an idiot. Supernatural Jesus is just a made up medieval English name for an imaginary Greek name for the same imaginary god. Revelators is still a spelling error. Back when the one that started up Zanjan's religion that mere mortal man started it up under a name that was not God. Look at the original text that was used by him for the name of the god that Zanjan now names God.

I will look up that name of that 'Explorer' and read it, I have to thank Zanjan for that. It is very possible that at least one extraterrestrial civilization is around in Space somewhere right now and it's also very possible that there is not even one of them. Maybe no one will ever know what the truth is about that. The Moon is not made of Cheese unless you think that Wallace and Gromit were really around in the past and went to Earth's Moon and it was made of Cheese and it's not made of quicksand either. I muck around in quicksand on an annual basis most of the time so I know what quicksand is like. The Moon does not have hollow chambers or a maximum security prison on it.

What are Spacechips ? It's writing, not writings and all of it literally can not say anything. Is a star fixed ? Does each one have its own planets ? Does each planet have its own life forms ? At least for the latter it is no. Each person that believes that a god comes somewhere beyond Earth's atmosphere does believe in an alien god. No one can prove that even one god is around somewhere right now and it's most likely that no one ever will but it still does not mean that there is not at least one god around somewhere right now, it's possible but then again it is possible that there every god is made up. How can anyone prove any of that ? No one can at the moment at least and it's most likely that no one ever will.

In Tasmania everyone is a relative, well not really, it's just a joke.

ghostgeek: Yes, getting to another star would be a big, big, big problem but no reason to be downhearted. People were dreaming of flying long before it became doable, so why not the same with interstellar travel.

ghostgeek: Seems there's one idea kicking around that's probably a punctured balloon but who knows:

Scientists have long dreamt of traveling through space without bulky rockets. Now NASA says that the EmDrive, a new propulsion system, might allow spaceships to travel without burning fuel, challenging centuries-old laws of physics.

The EmDrive, short for Electromagnetic Drive, is a radical new propulsion system with a pretty simple design that was first proposed nearly 20 years ago.

It is a metal cone with microwaves that bounce around inside its walls. When the microwaves hit the walls of the device, it produces thrust.

The kicker is that, unlike a rocket, the cone is totally closed off at both ends. ...

How does it work?

The truth is, no one seems to know. Not even the researchers at NASA, the American space agency who studied the drive, can give an explanation.

[ https://www.trtworld.com/in-depth/can-emdrive-make-space-travel-possible-without-fuel-242023 ]

Some German scientists reckon it doesn't work but who wants to listen to them.

ghostgeek: Are plants aware of animals? Try walking through a thicket of bramble and you'll soon get your answer. Those nasty thorns the plants grow aren't intended to ward off other plants.

ghostgeek: And then there are those plants that make a meal of animals:

ghostgeek: But what about a truly gargantuan intelligence? One that could create universes to order. Would we be justified in calling it a god?

ghostgeek: Could we distinguish ultra-advanced aliens from gods? I know; it sounds like a preposterous question, but hear me out.

Sci-fi classics, such as Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, explore precisely this idea, that highly advanced alien intelligences would be essentially indistinguishable from gods. This is not news, really, as it has already happened right here on Earth a few centuries ago.

When Europeans first arrived in the Americas, some natives took them to be gods. They looked and dressed strangely, had huge, powerful vessels that could travel vast distances, their origin was uncertain and they could kill from a great distance with weapons of fire. They could do things unimaginable to the natives, far away from their reality.

In our case, "they" would be able to do things we couldn't dream of, such as dematerializing and teleporting to the other side of a wall or, possibly, the other side of the galaxy. They might be able to create new life forms in seconds, or read our minds. ...

It may be, as books and movies like Men In Black have fantasized, that they are here and we can't see them. They may even control, or at least influence our lives, invisible but active, like spirits or fairies. Thinking this way, the boundary between the real and the magical, or the real and ( gasp! ) the supernatural, does blur. After all, if we we don't really know all of the laws of nature, it may well be that what is deemed supernatural today will be deemed natural tomorrow. These are tricky waters in which to tread!

Could there be a link, then, between what so many call the supernatural and the existence of beings out there that are perfectly natural but so beyond our comprehension as to be indistinguishable from supernatural entities?

[ https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2012/05/23/153270190/of-alien-intelligence-the-supernatural-and-divinity ]

Zanjan: Ghost: “Try walking through a thicket of bramble and you'll soon get your answer.”

That’s not too hard to explain. Plants, being aware of each other, know when one of them is being damaged and dies. They send out chemical signals for communication and some of that chemistry from the plant’s foliage and root system minimizes injury. It’s a successful defense - from what, they don’t need to know, only that it works.

Plants with a rougher exterior tended to survive longer; they know what parts are being damaged and will respond to that. The defense mechanism has to protect that part.

In the rose family, that part was the flower – when that’s destroyed, there’s no hip so this was a priority. From here, we don’t know exactly what occurred; something assisted the plant to grow thorns - everything from tiny, furry- looking slivers to a few viciously curved spikes that look like axes. All came out winners.

What we do know is that great evolutionary leaps happen after a serious global disaster. The genus rose appeared between 70-35 million years ago. I gather the new appearance of thorns weren’t a response to being trampled by dinosaurs.
A plant senses that it has better success when it shapes itself or flower, or chemistry a certain way.

The Venus Fly Trap is something of a mystery to me. During adaption, was it originally responding to attack? I can see how the Pitcher Plant became an opportunist by sucking nutrition out of anything that fell into the well, which fills with rainwater. However, there are parasitic plants that live in trees and have water reservoirs in the center that make a safe home for tiny tree frogs and their babies.

We can’t prove plants are aware of animals. However, we can safely say that it only appears that way due to environmental effects, like vibrations. OTH, if we look at what plants can do for animals, then we have evidence of a higher intelligence.

Zanjan: Yes, we already have Alien intelligence here. Look how long it took humans to figure out how smart dogs and Apes could be. That was because we didn't have good training techniques or people willing to spend the time on them, other than on horses.

People were cruel to animals, saying they couldn't feel pain, despite their screams when injured. Some would even laugh at their misery. It's not difficult to see that real intelligence made its home elsewhere.

I'm thinking that any extraterrestrials would be far more mature than us; they'd believe in God, kindness, honesty, justice and peace.

Zanjan: Think about why, for hundreds of thousands of years, mankind had nothing more than the spear. Then we learned agriculture and sat on that for a few thousand years, plus thousands of years more to learn architecture and simple industry.

What a life it must have been where you were born, raised, and died all in the same place while holding the same job your whole life, the jobs your parents had. Nothing much new ever happened unless it was a natural disaster or inundation of foreign invaders.

Suddenly, in less than 100 years, we went from horse and buggy to walking on the moon! I don't think I need to list all the amazing inventions in just this one small chunk of time. Tech wasn't the only thing that changed our lifestyles - dramatic social upheavals, mass human migrations, education, changed roles of men and women etc. These were world-changing events.

Why now? Why so fast? Why global? Where else are we headed? What could have caused this unprecedented mighty bloom of knowledge and responsibility?

Yet, you ask "Where is God?"

ghostgeek: Knowledge is growing exponentially:

In 1982, futurist and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller estimated that up until 1900, human knowledge doubled approximately every century, but by 1945 it was doubling every 25 years. And by 1982, it was doubling every 12-13 months. In retrospect, this may sound a little quaint since experts now estimate that by 2020, human knowledge will double every 12 hours.

[ https://www.cio.com/article/219940/thriving-in-a-world-of-knowledge-half-life.html ]

ghostgeek: So the human race is growing more knowledgeable at an ever increasing rate? This, it seems to me, implies we're creating a gargantuan hive mind, one not dissimilar to the nests of the social insects. So what happens when this hive mind knows everything there is to know? Will we be elevated to godhood?