Page 43 - Extraterrestrials, Foreign and Domestic

Anthropic Fallacies

small number of scientists and military personnel were assembled
into a team and managed to keep the lid on the truth for all this
time. Believe me, it takes some getting used to, especially when
you are being exposed to all the political propaganda of
government agencies not in the know. Anyone on the team unable
to deal with the reality was removed and stationed in the Arctic or
South Pacific. And don’t look at me as a traitor: my mission to
protect this country remains intact; it has simply been redefined by
new conditions.”
Professor Heinzeit smiled at the visitors.
“Please try to understand. Your religious assumptions are taking
no greater a tumble than my scientific ones. We are both
inheritors of anthropocentric ideas ultimately dependent upon the
unique importance of humankind in the universe. In physics the
‘anthropic principle’ holds that the cosmos we observe is the way
it is—in its age, in the constants of its physical laws, and in its state
of expansion—because we are here to observe it; that is, the range
of possible universes is immediately limited to the actual universe
by our presence. Intelligent life, aware of itself in spacetime,
depends, in that view, on things being just as they are. But if other
sentient beings occupy other domains of a universe larger than the
boundaries of our perception, what then? Our principle is
fallacious: we might never have evolved on this planet, and alien
minds would have arrived with their own assumptions of self-
importance. Man would not have been the measure of all things;
creatures arising under rather different conditions would be using
their own yardsticks to determine the height of Everest and the
length of the Amazon.”
Upchurch shook his head.
“Sounds like doubletalk to me. God created the heavens and
earth, nothing else. One Adam, one Eve, one serpent. Jesus was
the son of man, not a Martian. God-fearing people are fighting the
abomination of flying saucers because we know who is behind
them: the Evil One. Aliens are fallen angels, just like Satan; their
presence here, at the millennium, is a sign of the final struggle to
come. By siding with these devils, the U.S. government has made
clear its allegiance. Bring on your bug-eyed monsters, sir: I will

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