Alien Intrusion Page 12

  You may have noticed that I am a little cautious in celebrating these supposedly irrefutable evidences of extrasolar planets. For a planet’s sun to be affected, its mass must be of a size similar to Jupiter. Some are even calculated to be 200 times that size. For this reason, there is considerable debate as to whether they are actually planets at all. It is reasoned that, due to their enormous mass, they are more likely to be small suns, such as brown dwarf stars. Even if they are planets, they are likely to be gas giants like our own Jupiter, and incapable of supporting life for that reason.

  Because they are so large, there is too much gravity (inhabitants would be crushed by the enormous pressure — this is why size matters). There are other problems for the ETH and existence of intelligent alien life on these worlds. Many are too close to the heat of their sun to be able to support life, and many others are presumably known because their highly elliptical orbits affect their star in a detectable manner. These irregular orbits would lead to huge variations in temperature (similar to the effect on Mercury — see earlier).

  Until recently, the nearest presumed extrasolar planet was thought to be about 15 light-years (about 26,000 times the distance between our sun and Pluto) away in the direction of the constellation Aquarius. Its star is Gliese 876, a dim red dwarf (much larger than the earth) with only about one-third the mass of our sun, and about one-eightieth the sun’s brightness. The planet is believed to be about twice the mass of Jupiter and probably a gas giant also. In 2006, observations from the Hubble telescope led astronomers to believe that an even closer planet existed. It is called Epsilon Eridani and is believed to be only 10.5 light years from earth. However, its mass is one and a half times the mass of Jupiter. These alleged planets would be incapable of supporting any life as we know it.[44]

  Some may argue that these extrasolar objects may indeed support life — but to quote a line from Star Trek’s Doctor McCoy — “not life as we know it.” This is not a strong argument for the proponents of the ETH because it would be reasonable to assume that supposed visitors to our own planet need to be capable of surviving in Earth’s environment. So they would need to be visitors from planets with Earth-like conditions, but no such planets have been observed anywhere. Thus, it would be necessary for the aliens to travel in spacecraft built to replicate their home planet’s conditions and insulate them from the effects of the earth’s environment. Presumably, such a major undertaking to visit Earth would necessitate an extended stay — many years at least. So this would suggest even more amazing technologies to sustain these conditions for so long.

  There is, of course, no good reason why extrasolar planets should not exist, and some may well be discovered to be “rocky” planets like those in our own solar system. However, the likely distances of these objects from the earth make the ETH an unlikely proposition, even if they were inhabited, due to the problems in traveling such immense distances. To date, no habitable planets, within or outside of our solar system, have been observed. Unfortunately for the advocates of the ETH, our search for life on other planets is revealing that the earth itself appears to be a unique place indeed.

  Did ancient man know the truth?

  UFOlogists often turn to the Bible because it demonstrates insightful knowledge about our universe. This knowledge seems impossible if the Bible was written by ancient men who lacked the skills of modern science and technology. One possible explanation is that a being, or beings, with superior knowledge imparted information to mankind in the distant past. One amazing instance of “modern science” in the Bible is a passage written by a man called Job. Talking about God, whom he believed was his Creator, Job writes:

  He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing (Job 26:7; NKJV).

  Job obviously would have known that you cannot “hang” something on “nothing.” Yet, this verse, written around 2000bc, correctly describes the earth as being suspended in space, almost 4,000 years before manned space flight provided the first eyewitness view. This scientific insight is easy to explain if the passage was inspired by an outside intelligence.

  Looking at this with an open mind, there are two possible sources of the knowledge. Job may have been communicating with an advanced extraterrestrial that he mistook for God. Or, as the straightforward reading of the text suggests, Job was indeed dealing with a supernatural intelligence, such as a divine Creator.

  This is not an isolated science passage in the Bible. To explain their existence, some subscribers to the ETH believe that ancient extraterrestrial astronauts visited the earth many millennia ago (as they are still presumed to be doing today), which gave rise to our beliefs, values, and religions. But as many commentators have noted, it is primarily the Bible and the Christian religion that have received special attention from all quarters. This focus suggests that there may be a kernel of truth in there somewhere, but who was right — the original authors who believed they were hearing from a supernatural intelligence, or the modern re-interpreters of the texts, who base their conclusions on modern experiences?

  This ancient astronaut theme was promoted to its fullest by Erich Von Däniken in his best-selling book Chariots of the Gods (1968). (We will review his beliefs later in this book.) He even founded an “Ancient Astronaut Society,” which has several thousand adherents to his view of the history of the world.

  Another passage that indicates “outside knowledge” was imparted to biblical authors is found in a book ascribed to the prophet Isaiah. This passage describes the handiwork of Isaiah’s purported Creator:

  It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in (Isa. 40:22; NKJV).

  The word circle has been translated from the original Hebrew word khug, which may be translated “sphere.” (Interestingly, the German word kugel means “ball, sphere, or globe.”) This reference to a circular or spherical Earth is another one of those seemingly inexplicable biblical passages (it is often presumed that ancient man could not have known such things).

  Photo of Earth from space.

  Also, we alluded to another passage earlier about “stretching” the heavens, which would account for the redshifting of starlight.

  The Bible contains 66 books by 44 different authors, separated by great distances and as much as two thousand years. Yet, amazingly, they all write accounts of their interaction with God, similarly acknowledging Him to be an Almighty Creator just as the prophet Isaiah did. The Bible also claims that it is the inspired (Greek — “God-breathed”) Word of the Creator himself (2 Tim. 3:16), and that no words of prophecy came about by human will but by God as men were “moved” by His Spirit (2 Pet. 1:20–21).

  History has shown many Bible prophesies to be true, such as Isaiah’s prophecy that a Persian king would arise with the name of Cyrus — around 150 years before the event occurred. The Bible has also been confirmed by numerous archaeological discoveries, such as the unearthing of a huge capital of the Hittites. These were an ancient people mentioned only in the Bible, but presumed to be a myth because no physical evidence had been found. As a result of these findings, the Bible has often been called the “most accurate history book in the world.” Is it any wonder that it has come in for so much attention from all quarters? It is historically accurate yet contains so many seemingly unscientific supernatural references.

  To many people, it seems apparent that the authors of the Bible must have had “outside help” from ET. But how could any mortal creature — terrestrial or extraterrestrial — predict the future? UFOlogists have not adequately explained how ancient astronauts could do this unless they could travel through time in some capacity, as some have suggested. But even if UFOs were interdimensional, it does not necessarily follow that they could go backward and forward in time. The absence of time-travel visitors (“tourists from tomorrow”) suggests that time travel is not a reality, now or in the future. This truly lies in the re
alm of science fiction, and the space brothers do not claim to be time travelers, anyway. The only plausible explanation for the accuracy of the Bible’s predictions and insights is that they were foretold by someone with the capability of seeing outside our time and space. This is consistent with the notion of a greater intelligence who is located outside of our realm but who also possesses intimate knowledge of the construction of the universe — a supernatural being.

  Intelligent design in the universe?

  Biblical insights show that the authors knew more about their universe than they should have. If ETs have been overseeing mankind’s development, then the ETs must have come from somewhere: either they are the product of evolution or they were created by other aliens — or by a supernatural Creator.

  Evolution of ETs on habitable planets requires that order come from disorder, by itself. But that is not known to happen in the real world. Our universe shows incredible evidence of design. The planets move with absolute precision, so much so that space scientists can plan with amazing accuracy a spacecraft’s rendezvous with a planet years in advance. Although known by ancient civilizations, this clockwork accuracy has recently been confirmed among the stars and galaxies.[45] All the planets in our system orbit the sun in the same direction. Their speed is such that they are held in their orbits by the force of gravity. Without orbital motion, they would be pulled in toward the sun. Too fast and the planets move farther away — too slow and they are pulled in closer. The stability and shape of their orbits also means that they do not get so close as to exert overt gravitational influences on one another.[46] It is believed that a huge dust cloud — around 9.4 billion miles (15 billion km) in diameter —coalesced into our solar system by itself, forming moons and planets with precise orbits and speeds.

  It requires great faith to believe that such perfection arises out of a cosmic accident like the big bang. The existence of such precision, order, and design suggests the miraculous work of a supremely wise and intelligent being who created this order and revealed some of the details to ancient people. Is that an unreasonable hypothesis? Many religious UFO buffs believe that the universe was designed by a Creator, but they reinterpret the Bible as a revelation about technological superbeings (e.g., angels and “Jesus”) on a mission for the Creator. In most cases, however, this “creator of aliens” used evolution as his creative process, and his messengers are trying to help mankind’s evolution.

  In contrast, the traditional biblical view holds that the Creator God made the universe and everything in it supernaturally and near-instantaneously. As we have mentioned, there are thousands of eminently qualified scientists who believe this also. Some are the “world’s best” in their fields of expertise. One such scientist is Dr. Stuart Burgess, a design engineer at Bristol University. He has won several industry awards, including awards for his work on spacecraft design for the European Space Agency. He is well qualified to comment on “design.” He believes that there must be a supernatural explanation to the universe:

  There is a popular misconception that science has shown that miracles do not happen and cannot happen. This is why modern scientists argue that the biblical creation account is not a valid theory of origins… . However, science has not proved that miracles do not happen. Science simply shows how things work when miracles are not in operation. One of the useful aspects of scientific understanding is that it actually helps to identify when a miracle has taken place.

  Burgess adds:

  The origin of the Universe is a prime example of where natural processes cannot possibly account for what has happened. This is because the creation of the Universe involved physical matter appearing from nothing. Therefore, any theory of origins must take into account that the ultimate origin of the Universe involved a miraculous act. The Bible clearly teaches that the creation of the initial space, time, and matter was a miracle… . The consistency between the Bible and scientific principles is also demonstrated by the fact that many scientists, past and present, have had no difficulty in accepting the supernatural creation account.[47]

  Burgess, who admits to being a Christian, seeks a rational connection between the design and purpose he observes in the universe and his personal belief in a Creator God. Can he prove such an idea? No. Nonetheless, is his idea any more fantastic than the belief that non-demonstrable aliens, traveling in physics-defying spacecraft, are overcoming mathematically impossible distances to visit our planet, even though our planet would have been impossible to observe from their distant home in the first place? Anyone who tries to combine this fantastic claim with the incalculable odds that a finely tuned universe came into existence by itself must also be a strongly religious person like Dr. Burgess.

  Each new discovery has shown that the universe is a much “weirder” place than most people imagined or predicted. In one sense, it is almost too incomprehensible to imagine, yet it does exist — it is a reality that we are part of.

  Finely tuned for life — the anthropic principle

  Copernicus taught us that the sun did not revolve around the earth (a mistaken medieval view known as geocentrism — interestingly, this view did not come from the Bible, as some think, but from Greek and Egyptian sources). The neo — or modern — Copernican view also teaches that there is no “special” place anywhere in the universe.[48] However, observation of our position in the universe would indicate that we are, indeed, in a special place. Our galaxy is at least somewhere near the center of the universe.

  Astrophysicist Dr. Russell Humphreys has written extensively on this. A major review of his work concludes:

  The odds for the earth having such a unique position in the cosmos by accident are less than one in a trillion. The problem for big-bang theorists is that they suppose the cosmos was not created but happened by accident — by chance, natural processes. Such naturalistic processes could not have put us at a unique center, so atheistic cosmologists have sought other explanations, without notable success so far.

  Over the last few decades, astronomers have discovered that the redshifts of the galaxies are not evenly distributed but are “quantized,” i.e., they tend to fall into distinct groups. This means that the distances to the galaxies also fall into groups, with each group of galaxies forming a conceptual spherical shell [like the layers of an onion]. The shells turn out to be about a million light-years apart.

  It is remarkable that the shells are all concentric and all centered on our home galaxy, the Milky Way. If they weren’t, we would not see groups of redshifts. Russell Humphreys shows that groups would only be distinct from each other if our viewing location were less than a million light-years (a trivial distance on the scale of the universe) from the center.[49]

  A well-known concept in astronomy, first coined in 1974, is the “anthropic principle.” This is the idea that the entire universe is finely tuned for life — human life in fact. The word “anthropic” comes from the Greek word anthropos for “human being.” One website explains it thus:

  The fact that the universe is “just right” for life is well known to physical scientists. In particular, the physical laws and constants appear to be exquisitely and uniquely fine-tuned to permit not only stars planets and galaxies to exist, but ourselves, too. It’s been called the universe’s “Goldilocks factor,” because it is all astonishingly “just right.”[50]

  Moreover, if the universe were not so finely tuned and had even marginally different properties, it would be so different that life as we know it would not exist, and therefore we would not be around to ask the question of why the universe is special in the first place.

  Astronomer Donald DeYoung also comments:

  For any principle of science to be acceptable, there must be experimental results with general validity. The Anthropic Principle which states that the universe is especially suited for the well-being of mankind, is one such assumption. As just one of hundreds of examples, consider the tides that the moon causes on earth. If the moon was closer to the earth, tides would be
greatly increased. Ocean waves could sweep across the continents. The seas themselves might heat to the boiling point from the resulting friction. On the other hand, a more distant moon would reduce the tides. Marine life would be endangered by the resulting preponderance of stagnant water. Mankind would also be in trouble because the oxygen in the air we breathe is replenished by marine plants. We can conclude that the moon is in the “correct” position for man’s well-being. Even such details as the mass of protons and the strength of gravity have values that give stability to the universe and thus reinforce the Anthropic Principle… . The Anthropic Principle is a powerful argument that the universe was designed.[51]

  There are hundreds of examples where this is shown to be true, and without going into extensive detail, here are just a few that lend themselves to the idea that the universe is especially designed for life on Earth.

  • Stars and their distance from the earth

  Our neighboring stars in our Milky Way galaxy are nicely spaced apart so that they produce just enough light to be seen, but are not so close that they overwhelm us with dangerous radiation or gravitational forces. On the other hand, if they were farther away, the night sky would be considerably darker, and the stars would not be so useful as navigational aids and markers for the seasons, which mankind has used for many centuries.