Outlandish Beliefs

I am constantly staggered by the things that people believe.

Staggered.

Let’s start with something simple.

There is, even now, a ‘Flat Earth Society’. No, really. There is. Hopefully it is a jest. Hopefully these are people, like ‘Trekkies’, who are merely seeking a bit of fun out of life. (http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/)

No.

There are those who put forward the hypothesis that the Earth is, really, flat.

Terry Pratchett must be so proud that his ‘Discworld’ series is taken to heart so literally.

I wonder if the ‘Flat Earth’ people also suggest that there are four elephants...

Then there are those who tell us, hand on heart, that there is a ‘Twin Earth’ orbiting the Sun that, not unnaturally, hides it from us. This ‘other Earth’ will, it seems, ultimately cause our demise through some method known only to the believers in it.

It would appear that the origin of this was in Putnam’s ‘Thought Experiment’ that was taken rather too seriously by some people.

Fortunately, this idea seems to be taken a little less to heart.

Of course, the idea of someone having a notion and that notion being taken to an extreme belief system is not so far fetched.

Imagine aliens living in a volcano, perhaps several volcanoes, around the Earth.

To be perfectly honest with you I am not sure how these volcanic aliens fit into the scheme of things, only that we are all, it seems, thetans who have lived on alien worlds in the past and forgotten what we once were.

Fortunately, this information can be revealed to us if we deposit considerable sums in US Dollars into the bank vaults of the Scientology leadership.

Back in the late forties or very early fifties, L Ron Hubbard (the Father of Scientology) said, “You don’t get rich writing sci-fi novels at 5¢ a word. You only get rich by inventing a religion.” Which he did.

Amazing coincidence, that.

Neil deGrasse-Tyson, who is a noted Astrophysicist and one of the smartest men alive, tells us that a New Jersey Teacher instructed her class (did it HAVE to be a ‘her’?) that ‘evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah’s Ark carried dinosaurs’.

Now enter the First Amendment. This is a crock but, never mind, it goes like this:

“The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from Government interference. Freedom of expression consists of the rights to freedom of speech, press, assembly and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, and the implied rights of association and belief.  The Supreme Court interprets the extent of the protection afforded to these rights. The First Amendment has been interpreted by the Court as applying to the entire federal government even though it is only expressly applicable to Congress. Furthermore, the Court has interpreted, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as protecting the rights in the First Amendment from interference by state governments.”

This tells you that this teacher has the right to tell her class anything she likes even though it is not scientifically correct.

What will those children grow up to become? Bigots? Ignoramuses? Some sort of modern Luddite?

Fearsome.

There are so many more to choose from but I think I should like to finish up on my favourite.

Aliens.

Specifically, ‘Alien Abduction’, but we should never cover that on its own

Let’s start with the idea that aliens have, in fact, visited us.

Why?

Why would aliens come here?

Why would aliens spend vast fortunes travelling through interstellar space to just buzz us and then go away without contacting us?

The information about visiting aliens is withheld from us.  It appears that this secrecy is part of a Government conspiracy? Whose Government? It seems that most aliens conspire to visit the United States – those that abduct people anyway.

It is extraordinarily unlikely that the amount of people who would be involved in such a conspiracy could keep quiet over such a long period of time.

There is no conspiracy. We are too keen to develop and believe in conspiracy theories maybe as a result of watching ‘The X-Files’. The truth is out there but it may not be what you want to hear!

Perhaps aliens are aware that we Earthlings, specifically Americans, have a tendency to shoot first and then ask questions afterwards. Or is that more ‘Hollywood’?

The thing about these abductions, for me, is that most of them only seem to come to the light of day after hypnosis by an ‘expert’.

Apart from the idea that nearly all abductions are carried out in the dead of night when the brightness of their ship would seem to make them, the aliens, most likely to stand out and be noticed, why do they bring these people back?

Why double the risk of discovery?

The people that are ‘abducted’ seem to have no memory, until the hypnosis part, of what happened or why they were abducted. What is that all about? What profit would the aliens get from wiping the memory of the abductees?

All the items retrieved from abducted people have originated on Earth. There has been nothing retrieved that came from ‘out there’. Nothing.

How do we know this?

Because anything that came from another star system will, of necessity, contain different isotopes from anything here on Earth. It will be different.

This is why, if you are abducted, you should distract the aliens’ attention and grab an ashtray, or something, as a souvenir (idea courtesy of Neil deGrasse-Tyson who, as previously stated, is brilliant). Then it can be analysed and your story will be believed.

So far? Nothing. No souvenirs, no implanted and mysterious devices. Nothing.

Curiously, on a parallel note, there are people who specialise in restoring memories of childhood abuse. This is very dangerous. Very.

One poor fellow was jailed on this evidence for abusing his daughter – it was a false allegation that was only discovered after he had been in prison for some time. Then, of course, there are always the people who believe that there is no smoke without fire...

Now. Let’s just play with this for a moment.

Why don’t we get the ‘Alien Abduction’ specialists to hypnotise the people suspected of being abused as children? And, of course, vice versa.

Perhaps we should discover that there are hundreds of people who were abused by aliens...

Then we should see where the Mudd* sticks.

[*Samuel Mudd was implicated, falsely, in the murder of Abraham Lincoln. Even though he was found innocent and cleared of all charges in the conspiracy suspicion was heaped on him from the general population thereafter. Hence, “His name was Mudd” and “Mudd sticks”.]

And people think sci-fi is far-fetched. You only have to go out and stand in the garden for a while.