are aliens likely to exist or not?

[seeder]

So on that basis, is it more likely that he did in fact see a fiery chariot, or might he have been symbolic, allegorical or metaphorical? Why assume that UFOs, 3000 or more years ago, would have looked the same as the 1950s sci fi ideas associated with words like "silver disk"?

I dont assume a ufo should look like anything, the modern stereotype is a disk. (But even so we have reports of triangles/tubes/ etc etc

Ezekiel mentions a wheel within a wheel, and artists renderings tend to inevitably end up somewhat disc shaped as a result, going by the description given that is. Perhaps people should read all of Ezekiels book rather than just the selected and over quoted passages - to get a grip on how he explained everything else as well.

As with Nostradamus's writings, they are open to interpretation.

[seeder]

heres a passage about Ezekiel from a Christian website.

"In Ezekiel’s case, God used dramatic imagery to get his message across. For example, in chapter 37, Ezekiel was given a vision of a valley of dry bones. Step by step, sinew and flesh attached to these bones until they came to life as a vast army. Was it meant to be taken literally? Not in this case, because God told Ezekiel that the story was ‘symbolic’ of Israel’s restoration to their homeland (they were in exile at the time).

The so-called UFO that Ezekiel saw was no different. No one saw it except Ezekiel. He describes wheels, wings, and living creatures that looked like burning coals and moved like flashes of lightning. Above this strange contraption were a throne and a figure that looked like a man with a brilliant light surrounding him. But right at the very beginning of the passage (vs. 1) and at the end (vs. 28), Ezekiel unmistakably pronounces that it is a vision of God. In verse 17, the ‘vehicle’ is described as going in all directions at the same time, which a real vehicle cannot do. This description is a reference to the fact that God is everywhere at the same time (omnipresent) and that he is not constrained to our understanding. The vision of a man was probably that of the preincarnate Christ.

Many UFO believers claim they place great store in the biblical texts but only when it suits their purposes to do so. It is incredible how often people take a passage of Scripture completely out of context to prove a pet theory. Masquerading angels have also falsely concocted a pseudo-philosophy to closely parallel the texts for their own evil aims. The Bible has become ‘fair game’ for those with their own agenda. I recall an investigator at a UFO meeting glowingly using the passage in Ezekiel to say that ‘even the Bible mentions UFOs.’ When I challenged his comment, pointing out that nowhere does Ezekiel use the term ‘ship’, ‘craft’ or any other word to describe a vehicle of any sort, and when I made the more important point that the text clearly describes the thing as a vision from God, he replied, ‘Yeah, but it’s still a UFO.’

I didn’t say what he wanted to hear. He had already made his mind up and brought his outside ideas to the Bible. He wanted to believe that it is a UFO, despite the intent of the author and the actual words written. This misreading of the Bible is sadly common in UFOlogy.

Bottom of page here

http://creation.com/...-first-approach

Edited January 27, 2013 by seeder

[Crikey]

Needless to say, the Bible doesn't have a monopoly on UFO sightings and close encounters, as they're also found in virtually every ancient culture and scripture such as just these 3 examples. Not only have they left us with written accounts, but some civisations have also left us with carved images of what they saw-

[Dark Vortex]

I believe that they DO exist, and i would say a few theorys i have and/or heard. Our universe is ever expanding and has billions upon billions of galaxies with thousands of solar systems inside them, and people say that Earth is the ONLY planet with life. Yes, there is very intellegent life on other planets, yes they study us and maybe even test on us. hell, i've heard that they may have CREATED us. dinosaurs may have been a failed experiment, so they came back and wiped them out, they were getting too uncontrollable, and so they started over, using different methods and possibly some of their own DNA to make us. (prometheus is a good example of how) they made very mini versions of some of their first attempted creatures, like chickens (apparently they have a lot of the same genetic makeup as t-rex's) and now make trips back to see how this experiment is going, and if they have to pull the plug.

[Crikey]

...dinosaurs may have been a failed experiment, so they came back and wiped them out..

Yes it's quite possible-

"Sorry kiddo, you're on the way out"

And it's also possible that the writing is on the wall for humans too unless they stop wrecking the planet-

"The time has come for judging the dead.. and for destroying those who destroy the earth" (Revelation 11:18 )

Edited January 28, 2013 by Crikey

[Frank Merton]

Scary -- not the aliens but Medvedev.

[seeder]

Also and lastly; Russian prime minister Medvedev said that "aliens are among us"

I believe you will find Medvedev was taking the p***. Thats why he ALSO said the answers can be found in the MEN IN BLACK movie...

you didnt really think that he was serious did you?

[the dalek killer]

i'd say it is a certainty

because we know life can survive in amazing extremes and from what we can tell the universe is infinite

saying earth is the only planet with life is like saying the room is a great movie

[seeder]

sorry for that also thanks for the heads up! in fact frankly I thought he was serious,because he was not the first politician that talks about aliens, for instance;

Ex-China Foreign Ministry Official says Extraterrestrials live among us

hence I believed him, but I never knew he was a kidder, I think he should be a comedian, not prime minister

Thats a very refreshing attitude to acknowledge a small error made, thanks! Most will either fade away and not post the same thread again... or argue that they are right! You're one of the few who stayed and was open to new info!

[sslama]

There is lots of proof. For example....

UFO's in ancient history. The painting “The Madonna with Saint Giovannino” and dates back to around the 15th century…..you can see the spaceship. There are hundreds of anicent pieces of art.

The Book of Ezekiel talks about an encounter with a strange flying object made of metal that was in the shape of a wheel. Inside were four living creatures that looked like humans. It’s hard to ignore this evidence.

In 1977 the Big Ear radio telescope picked up an odd signal. Big Ear used numbers and letters to tell the strength of a signal, 0 being meaningless noise and Z being a strong radio signal. Dr. Jerry R. Ehman, who was studying the data from the telescope was shocked when a radio signal clocking in at ‘6EQUJ5’ came from a seemingly empty spot in space. The transmission lasted 37 seconds and came from the Sagittarius constellation. Even more interesting is the fact that the nearest star in that specific direction is 220 million light years away. In other words, the signal came from an empty spot in space. It is also interesting to note that the signal had all the characteristics of an interstellar broadcast.

We cannot possibly know all the answers. And like they say in sports “There is always someone bigger, faster and stronger….

[Sweetpumper]

UFO's in ancient history.

You should start a thread on that subject.

[PersonFromPorlock]

Well, if materialism is true and life is a natural phenomenon, then aliens are as likely anywhere else as we are here. We're somebody else's aliens, after all.

What's interesting is that for virtually any set of entering arguments, the Drake equation always resolves for the universe being packed with technological species. And they aren't there.

Which is really interesting. Divine creation, anyone?

[seeder]

Well, if materialism is true and life is a natural phenomenon, then aliens are as likely anywhere else as we are here. We're somebody else's aliens, after all.

What's interesting is that for virtually any set of entering arguments, the Drake equation always resolves for the universe being packed with technological species. And they aren't there.

Which is really interesting. Divine creation, anyone?

It can also be useful to note that Drakes equation is on a bit of shaky ground

http://en.wikipedia....ation#Criticism

Also, we just dont have the tech ability to 'know' where any aliens may be. If the entire universe was 'just' the size of a football pitch, we havent even seen point (god knows what) of a very very very minute fraction of a fraction of a millimeter. Or even thousands of times less than that. Or billions of times less than that

Its a big old place...is space!

.

Edited January 28, 2013 by seeder

[seeder]

You should start a thread on that subject.

[Capt Amerika]

My opinion.....

Yes Aliens exist on other planets and yes some have mastered space travel etc.

However..........

I do not believe they have visited Earth, and considering the vastness of the Universe i highly doubt our civilization will last long enough for us to get lucky and bump into one of those civilizations before we become extinct.

We cant get our crap together long enough on this planet to even start branching out which is something that is going to be required if we plan on surviving as a species. We must inhabit a minimum of two worlds to ensure our survival.

So in conclusion, Aliens Yes, chances of ever meeting one, 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

(so, there IS a chance )

[Capt Amerika]

It can also be useful to note that Drakes equation is on a bit of shaky ground

http://en.wikipedia....ation#Criticism

Also, we just dont have the tech ability to 'know' where any aliens may be. If the entire universe was 'just' the size of a football pitch, we havent even seen point (god knows what) of a very very very minute fraction of a fraction of a millimeter. Or even thousands of times less than that. Or billions of times less than that

Its a big old place...is space!

.

While i like the spirit behind Drakes equation i always found it to be pretty much useless because of the parameters that cant be figured.

But as a basic guideline it definitely does show that even inputting preposterous numbers would indicate the chance of intelligent life being almost virtually guaranteed somewhere.

[mike72]

I believe we are not alone in this vast universe. There has to be other planets with advanced life. Are we being visited? Its hard to say. I have seen videos and read stories that can not be dismissed But then there are so many hoaxes out there. Until they show themselves to us, i will believe we haven't been visited because of the distance of space travel.

[psyche101]

Hardly, hardly.....This statement is no more accurate than a person shuts their eyes and claim light doesn't exist.

If someone completely shut the door on the possibility at every twists and turns, It impossible for anything to get through. Not for the lack of trying, though.

You took that seriously?

Seriously?

[psyche101]

There is lots of proof. For example....

Actually, no there is not. The examples you have provided have been adressed previously. Perhaps a refresher might be in order.

UFO's in ancient history. The painting “The Madonna with Saint Giovannino” and dates back to around the 15th century…..you can see the spaceship. There are hundreds of anicent pieces of art.

No, like the earlier explanation, what we are seeing here is iconography. A Common theme.

But this is not the only peculiarity of the painting: for example, to the upper left we see the Nativity Star with three other small stars, or perhaps flames.A very similar detail is present in the Madonna of the Book (1480) by Sandro Botticelli

These particulars - three stars, a luminous cloud - tell us that this painting follows an ancient iconography, an austere and rigid way for interpreting not only sacred subjects but city life itself, which had been preached by Fra' (Brother) Girolamo Savonarola, and precisely in the Florence of the end of the 15-th century. After the Medici family had been driven out, Florence declared the Republic, which Savonarola oriented in a teocratic fashion, exerting a pervasive surveillance of the people and their ways (nowadays we could draw a parallel with the Islam fundamentalists of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran Republic), even to the point of the "vanity bonfires", where game cards, dices, wigs and fineries together with trinkets and baubles, books considered obscene and even pictures and precious objects were gathered and set on fire.

Savonarola's preachings greatly influenced works of art of the period and several artists, for example Sandro Botticelli, reneged their own preceding works as heathen, and set to represent mystical subjects in a "purer", but also more rigid, archaic and didascalic style.

The religious symbology which we find in this Madonna is therefore in line with this older iconography that in the Florence of the humanism and Neo-Platonism had been lost. The three stars, for example, appear often in the paintings of the previous century, and especially in the byzantine icons of the Madonna; often, they were painted on her veil, on the shoulders and forehead; other times they are replaced by three rays; they always represent the "threefold virginity" of the Madonna, i.e., before, during, and after the virgin birth. The three stars, in the same meaning, are also found on the coat of arms of the Oratorian order of Saint Filippo Neri (hence, also called "Filippini"), who are particularly devout to the Madonna.

LINK

The Book of Ezekiel talks about an encounter with a strange flying object made of metal that was in the shape of a wheel. Inside were four living creatures that looked like humans. It’s hard to ignore this evidence.

Well you seem to do a fine job of ignoring any explanations of this fantasy.

Yet what is the significance of the wheels? As noted in the Anchor Bible’s commentary on Ezekiel, wheels before the invention of spokes were small solid disks with large axles. The large axle would have the appearance of a wheel within a wheel. While the wheels of chariots and most other vehicles of Ezekiel’s time had spokes, wheeled stands used within the temple often used the small old-fashioned wheels of earlier days. That the rims of the wheels were full of eyes again evokes the supernatural. The wheels are more metaphor than mechanical detail. So the wheels were yet another reference to temple imagery and holiness and were not flying saucers.

Solid wheels with large hubs on a chariot before the invention of spokes (from a panel depicting chariots Ur, Mesopotamia, ca. 2500 BCE).

However, to those who see Ezekiel’s vision as a UFO sighting, the phrase “a wheel within a wheel” suggests machinery. The wheel within a wheel is rendered as a “wheel in the middle of a wheel” in the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, the word in Hebrew being tavek, meaning “to sever” or a bisection, in other words “in the center of.” In his 1970 book Chariots of the Gods? Erich von Daniken wrote (p. 56): “Ezekiel says that each wheel was in the middle of another. An optical illusion! To our present way of thinking what he saw was one of those special vehicles the Americans use in the desert and swampy terrain.”

LINK

In 1977 the Big Ear radio telescope picked up an odd signal. Big Ear used numbers and letters to tell the strength of a signal, 0 being meaningless noise and Z being a strong radio signal. Dr. Jerry R. Ehman, who was studying the data from the telescope was shocked when a radio signal clocking in at ‘6EQUJ5’ came from a seemingly empty spot in space. The transmission lasted 37 seconds and came from the Sagittarius constellation. Even more interesting is the fact that the nearest star in that specific direction is 220 million light years away. In other words, the signal came from an empty spot in space. It is also interesting to note that the signal had all the characteristics of an interstellar broadcast.

The WOW! Signal. A great maybe. Nothing to hang your hat on. The fact that it seems to have come from an empty spot in space is not exactly encouraging. But I agree, our best possible to date with regards to the ETH.

We cannot possibly know all the answers. And like they say in sports “There is always someone bigger, faster and stronger….

No worries, as we can see from the extraordinary interpretations of early art pieces, if we do not have answers, someone will come along and make some up! Many people think they are "interpreting" for these poor savages, with not an ounce of knowledge about the heavy influences of religion.

[NiteMarcher]

Aliens are the truth. But a whole lot of things about them are not told us. Hence for today we are ignorant about kinda issues like this. In time I believe we will find out such truths.

Usually they don't visit us, in fact lots of aliens already live among us in forms of normal human beings (sometimes, an old man or an old woman or a child) and we don't perceive the existence of them.

They don't disclose themselves in order to the world order continues without any problem. In other words due to aliens should control and monitor the world, they live among us by hiding their own existences. It's really important that you know that there are two realities: seemings (animals and us, short; material life) and invisibles (others and inner powers). God is the main transcendent power that rules these two realities. We experience this world with the conscious (or we might say this world is the world of the conscious), other reality is related to the unconscious (or, it can be said that other reality is the world of the spirit). Human is the total of these two creations.

Also and lastly; Russian prime minister Medvedev said that "aliens are among us"

Here's the MIB russian documentary in which he is referring too.

http://youtu.be/CrjXmDlAYzo

[DONTEATUS]

You should start a thread on that subject.

Too Funny Sweetpumper !

Remember to keep your Country Music by your side always !

Oh ! And I forgot the tape above post 72 Wow All I can say is Even the Russian like a good Book deal !

Edited January 29, 2013 by DONTEATUS

[Verloc]

@OnereaderOne: Timetravel, in the way you are referring to or as in "Back to the future" would not be possible.

The universe is expanding agree? so if you are at the edge of the expansion you are in the future in relative position to the earth, if you were then to travel at the speed of light towards the center of the universe you would, in essence, be travelling back in time and vica versa. But keep in mind, that while you are travelling stars are born and destroyd, civilizations rise and fall with the rotation of their planets, comets/asteroids hit planets and extinguish life, sun's go supernova etc. and all these things are happening eveywhere in the universe simultaneously.

Since the expansion started all these things have been happening, so to say that you can, for instance, go back to the beginning of our planet's creation and change something, whatever that may be, is impossible as it has already happened.The earth is no longer in the position, relative to the universe expansion bubble, it was when it emerged as a planet.

There may be cycles of civilizations on a planet that repeat themselves, but everything that has happened, has happened, theres no way to literally go back in time and change anything.The earth ofcourse does not travel at the speed of light, so it will always stay in its relative position in the galaxy/universe untill influenced by cosmic events.

This is my opinion mind you, care to refute it?

[psyche101]

@OnereaderOne: Timetravel, in the way you are referring to or as in "Back to the future" would not be possible.

The universe is expanding agree? so if you are at the edge of the expansion you are in the future in relative position to the earth, if you were then to travel at the speed of light towards the center of the universe you would, in essence, be travelling back in time and vica versa. But keep in mind, that while you are travelling stars are born and destroyd, civilizations rise and fall with the rotation of their planets, comets/asteroids hit planets and extinguish life, sun's go supernova etc. and all these things are happening eveywhere in the universe simultaneously.

Since the expansion started all these things have been happening, so to say that you can, for instance, go back to the beginning of our planet's creation and change something, whatever that may be, is impossible as it has already happened.The earth is no longer in the position, relative to the universe expansion bubble, it was when it emerged as a planet.

There may be cycles of civilizations on a planet that repeat themselves, but everything that has happened, has happened, theres no way to literally go back in time and change anything.The earth ofcourse does not travel at the speed of light, so it will always stay in its relative position in the galaxy/universe untill influenced by cosmic events.

This is my opinion mind you, care to refute it?

The rolling film paradox Nice to see someone discuss it, and understand it!

However, that does not prevent travel as far as I can see, it simply does not change history. If I am reading it wrong, could I ask you to extrapolate please.

Here is some food for thought. What if one "time travels" to a point in the past where space does not exist yet. I wonder what we would encounter. Not before the big bang mind you, but say maybe 10 billions kilometers in fornt of the expansion border. I wonder what we might find?

[Space Commander Travis]

I am very pleased to see the notion of Time travel being considered seriously and not just denied out of hand, as usually happens with any kind of 'out of the box' thinking, although I still can't help thinking that a spacecraft from (perhaps) another planet in the solar System might not be a more straightforward suggestion, on the much-abused principle of the Razor of the good William of Ockham, since we know that space travel (at sublight speeds, at any rate) is in fact possible, and that spacecraft can in fact exist, since we've made some ourselves ....

Anyway, on the subject of Time travel, I think the idea that what was in the past has already happened, and so that can't be altered, but that you could go back an watch it, seems entirely reasonable. That might mean that someone could go back to any given place and any given point in time, but they wouldn't be able to change history (e.g. they wouldn't be able to assassinate some major figure in history), since, if they went back to that point in Time, then they were already there at that time. It wouldn't be as if they weren't there before, they were all along. Anyway, it's an interesting subject for discussion, isn't it, even if it need not replace ET ...

[Frank Merton]

Not before the big bang mind you, but say maybe 10 billions kilometers in fornt of the expansion border. I wonder what we might find?

Um, there is no "expansion border." Either the universe we live in is infinite or it curves in on itself (perhaps in a fifth dimension, but it has been shown that this is not necessary -- that the four we have could curve in).