UFOs and Intelligent Design

Today I got done with my final exams for my college classes, was hanging around, when I heard that MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) was doing some sort of lecture on campus. I figured, why not? Maybe they had some evidence that would shake my view of the world… Eh… maybe not. At the very least, I should be open minded, right?

So I went. It was a lecture by a Native American named Rainbow Eagle.

Before I continue, I feel I need to make the following disclaimer, because I’ll essentially be calling the man an ignunt fool.

Rainbow Eagle, you have a great personality. You are a very nice person. Very friendly. Humble. And you have a really awesome name. I wish I’d been named something like… Rainbow Jelly Fish… or… Sparkling Eagle.

So, we saw a video of some guy speaking in Spanish (with English voice-overs) about how apparently their belief (which has allegedly been verified by science) is that humans were planted here some 12,000 years ago by aliens. That’s 6,000 more years than the young earth creationists think we’ve been here. Not too bad.

And then, the guy in the video started talking about… wait for it… wait for it…

Quantum Mechanics!

What a surprise. And you know those words that New Age gurus use so much when talking about quantum mechanics? Vibration, frequency, energy? Yup. All those words were there.

See, we can only experience certain frequencies, but some people can experience other frequencies, and therefore see into parallel universes.

…!

When the video ended, I asked “is our species the only species to have been ‘planted’ here?” Seems like a good question to ask. Why would only humans be planted?

He was very confused by the question. He asked me “do you mean, are we the only specie to have been planted here?”

…!

This takes both scientific and grammatical ignorance. He didn’t really have an answer for that, anyway.

And it moved on…

He said that there were four races originally planted here. Not only that, but these original races were different colours. Native Americans used to be red. Blacks used to be blue. Asians used to be green. And whites used to be… transparent. That’s right. Transparent.

No. I have no idea how he knows this.

Rainbow Eagle presented us with three theories of the origin of humans.

1. Aliens put us here to mine gold for them, until we rebelled. So, they genetically programmed us with loyalty to them so that we’d think of them as gods.
2. Aliens came and helped humans develop technology, so we worshiped them because we thought that that was a very nice thing to do.
3. Evolution.

I have no idea how he came up with 1 and 2, but he said that number 3 was right out. Well what do you expect? His understanding of evolution was that it is “Man-to-ape. Somehow an ape stood up, lost its hair, got more brainpower, or whatever all that technical stuff is.” No, we shared a common ancestor with the apes. That common ancestor may have been very ape-like. He’s completely leaving out mutation and natural selection in this over-simplified “explanation”.

“Now we know what the problem with evolution is.”

Some woman in the room piped up, “missing link!”

Here I was thinking I was just in a room full of UFO enthusiasts. When did I end up in a room full of cdesign proponentsists?

Missing links. A perfectly valid argument… if used before the 1920s.

I raised my hand again. I’m pretty sure I was starting to annoy the people in the room because I was talking about (gasp!) actual science!

“What about Homo erectus, Australopithicus afarensis, Homo neanderthalensis?”

“Well, those show that there was an evolutionary trail leading up to us, but then you suddenly have fully formed humans out of nowhere!”

…!

“Why do we share 99% of our genome with the chimps?”

No answer.

After this lecture, he told me that he would try to fit it all together to fit his theories. This is part of the scientific method. When new evidence arises, you see if you can modify your theories to fit it. If not, you have to accept that your theory, no matter how fond you are of it, is useless and it’s back to the drawing board.

But something tells me that he’s just going to cling to it. I mean, what’s more attractive than having your ancestors come from the stars?

How about this…

Way, way, way back when, a self-replicating molecule formed. And just because certain configurations of self-replicating molecules were better at making more copies of themselves than others, selection pressure was applied to it to create a remarkable diversity of wonderful life. Among these lifeforms are humans like you, and me, who were able to write poetry, music, make art. But even better, we are able to think and create science to accurately understand how we came to be.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Charles Robert Darwin