Of course, nobody asks these "ancient alien" clowns the blindingly obvious question:
Why in the bowels of hell would they WANT to build these statues?
They're an advanced species, for crissakes...what do they need with a bunch of gloomy statues of weird faces with some wearing hats, all staring into the sunset?
What can we do? Ancient and new aliens, Elvis killed Kennedy, Hitler built the pyramids (taken from Slow Horses) , the earth is 6000 years old, etc, etc. We have been praying to the choir. Honestly, I prefer to pay attention to health fads or the design of better scientific trials and the publishing of no effect results. People that believe in the crap I listed are the unpersuadables, it’s quite pointless to spend energy. I also suspect it has more to do with mental illness than with rational thought
Are you familiar with the role of Christian Theosophy in early alien contact narratives? Erich von Däniken inherited George Adamski's pseudohistory. Really, "Ancient Aliens" should be seen as theosophical religious programming.
This topic reminds me of the frequent claim that humans originated on some other planet. The most recent example of ths line of thought is the Ganymede Hypothesis by Theodore Holden.
You’ve got an uphill battle. What you’re doing is fighting racism itself. “How could those funnny little brown people have built something this titanic?” They built it all right, and they didn’t need metal to do it.
The argument from the metaphysical crowd against debunking is this :"don't you have a sense of wonder about the world? Why are you always concerned with believing in hard evidence, when there are other things beyond us?"
I have a sense of curiosity, but that leads me to wanting to know more by discovering information I've not heard of yet. What does a "sense of wonder" even mean? Is it just believing whatever nonsense crosses my path because it sounds delightful?
Ancient Aliens is, as you point out, nothing more than entertainment which is driven by ratings, which translates into money, which is valued in America more than just about anything else. Unless and until we start to value education and critical thinking more than entertainment, there will continue to be this mindless garbage that passes for entertainment.
I loved Ancient Aliens Debunked - I serioiusly think I knew my wife was for me when we both decided it was our favorite film that we saw in 2020! Man, it was hard to find it on YouTube, the algorithm did not really want you to find it back then. I also saw a documentary almost 20 years back that had interviews with a Latino rancher in New Mexico who heard a helicopter take away his cattle and then drop it. I have tried to find that documentary, but I can't even figure-out what it was called.
The opening of La Dolce Vita has an excellent sequence with a humanoid (Jesus) levitating over Rome via an antigravity device (helicopter) on the way to the Pope. But the best documentary on levitating heads is “Zardoz”, which features hairy bald muscular Sean Connery in a red mankini and giant flying head at the beginning.
Interesting piece, and I'd also like to visit Easter Island one day.
Carl Sagan's 'Pale Blue Dot' shows the astonishing vastness of the universe, and that light-speed is just not enough, and any alien life (whatever that may be) that wanted to visit earth in whatever capacity, would need to be incredibly technologically superior to a point where you would have to wonder why they would bother with us.
I'd be interested in any thoughts you have on the origin of human consciousness, and whether any ancient peoples may have had a differing mindset to modern humans. I'm thinking of Julian Jaynes, who would claim the Moai are a vestige of the ancient, bicameral mind (and e.g., the Egyptians and the pyramids), which I find a fascinating theory, that also helps explain belief in gods and religion, but I'm no expert, and just don't know.
But aren't these ancient statues and monuments extraordinary? Can you imagine the thinking behind the organization and structure of a society that focuses on the construction of huge, stone pyramid tombs? Or Moai statues?
Of course, nobody asks these "ancient alien" clowns the blindingly obvious question:
Why in the bowels of hell would they WANT to build these statues?
They're an advanced species, for crissakes...what do they need with a bunch of gloomy statues of weird faces with some wearing hats, all staring into the sunset?
What can we do? Ancient and new aliens, Elvis killed Kennedy, Hitler built the pyramids (taken from Slow Horses) , the earth is 6000 years old, etc, etc. We have been praying to the choir. Honestly, I prefer to pay attention to health fads or the design of better scientific trials and the publishing of no effect results. People that believe in the crap I listed are the unpersuadables, it’s quite pointless to spend energy. I also suspect it has more to do with mental illness than with rational thought
Are you familiar with the role of Christian Theosophy in early alien contact narratives? Erich von Däniken inherited George Adamski's pseudohistory. Really, "Ancient Aliens" should be seen as theosophical religious programming.
We need to do this open debate with so many more topics. So many “issues” today are based on beliefs that are essentially forbidden to question.
This topic reminds me of the frequent claim that humans originated on some other planet. The most recent example of ths line of thought is the Ganymede Hypothesis by Theodore Holden.
https://www.amazon.com/Ganymede-Hypothesis-Theodore-Holden-ebook/dp/B0CHG6LJQK/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=ganymede+hypothesis&qid=1694140839&s=books&sr=1-1
You’ve got an uphill battle. What you’re doing is fighting racism itself. “How could those funnny little brown people have built something this titanic?” They built it all right, and they didn’t need metal to do it.
The argument from the metaphysical crowd against debunking is this :"don't you have a sense of wonder about the world? Why are you always concerned with believing in hard evidence, when there are other things beyond us?"
I have a sense of curiosity, but that leads me to wanting to know more by discovering information I've not heard of yet. What does a "sense of wonder" even mean? Is it just believing whatever nonsense crosses my path because it sounds delightful?
Ancient Aliens is, as you point out, nothing more than entertainment which is driven by ratings, which translates into money, which is valued in America more than just about anything else. Unless and until we start to value education and critical thinking more than entertainment, there will continue to be this mindless garbage that passes for entertainment.
I loved Ancient Aliens Debunked - I serioiusly think I knew my wife was for me when we both decided it was our favorite film that we saw in 2020! Man, it was hard to find it on YouTube, the algorithm did not really want you to find it back then. I also saw a documentary almost 20 years back that had interviews with a Latino rancher in New Mexico who heard a helicopter take away his cattle and then drop it. I have tried to find that documentary, but I can't even figure-out what it was called.
The opening of La Dolce Vita has an excellent sequence with a humanoid (Jesus) levitating over Rome via an antigravity device (helicopter) on the way to the Pope. But the best documentary on levitating heads is “Zardoz”, which features hairy bald muscular Sean Connery in a red mankini and giant flying head at the beginning.
Interesting piece, and I'd also like to visit Easter Island one day.
Carl Sagan's 'Pale Blue Dot' shows the astonishing vastness of the universe, and that light-speed is just not enough, and any alien life (whatever that may be) that wanted to visit earth in whatever capacity, would need to be incredibly technologically superior to a point where you would have to wonder why they would bother with us.
I'd be interested in any thoughts you have on the origin of human consciousness, and whether any ancient peoples may have had a differing mindset to modern humans. I'm thinking of Julian Jaynes, who would claim the Moai are a vestige of the ancient, bicameral mind (and e.g., the Egyptians and the pyramids), which I find a fascinating theory, that also helps explain belief in gods and religion, but I'm no expert, and just don't know.
But aren't these ancient statues and monuments extraordinary? Can you imagine the thinking behind the organization and structure of a society that focuses on the construction of huge, stone pyramid tombs? Or Moai statues?
Fascinating.