Page 25 - june_july_2009.qxd

May 2010_june_july_2009.qxd 31/05/2010 6:15 PM Page 25 Are aliens and angels the same thing? 25 Are aliens and angels the same thing? By DAVID CHARBONNEAU I believe Arthur I. Barrett of Kamloops when he says he saw a flying saucer. I just don’t know what it means. In his letter to the Daily News, Mr. Barrett describes seeing the space ship hovering above his car as he returned from Ashcroft. After trying to outrun it, the saucer “turned red with sparks flying off its outer shell.” He realizes how incredible his experience sounds but he is willing to undergo tests to verify his account. Mr. Barrett is understandably reluctant to share is astonishing experience but he was encouraged to do so after the famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking warned against contact with extraterrestrial life. Hawking said a visit by extraterrestrials to Earth would be like Christopher Columbus arriving in the Americas, “which didn’t turn out very well for the native Americans.” I have never seen spacecraft but I have never been to the moon either. I can’t discount someone else’s experiences just because they are not my own. Too many reputable witnesses such as professional observers, police officers, airplane pilots, and ordinary honest people have risked ridicule by sharing their experiences. If these reputable observers are to be building site for any hidden people who might believed, Hawking’s warnings are too late. be on or under the land. If the land hadn’t been CHECK OUT THE ALL NEW They’re already here. No sense closing heaven’s declared elf-free, all sorts of bad things could ‘X’ ZONE MERCHANDISE gateways now. have happened on the job including broken AT Not just a few observers but billions of limbs and wrecked equipment. earthlings believe extraterrestrials are already Although fewer Americans and living in their communities, disguised as Canadians believe in aliens walking the streets humans, according to a survey. The percentage than Asians, a large number believe in of believers is highest in India and China lowest extraterrestrial spiritual beings. A Gallup poll in Europe with North America in the middle. revealed that 78 per cent of Americans believe The results of the survey were met with in angels and 70 per cent in the devil. the expected guffaws from skeptics. “Were the The survey didn’t reveal whether respondents drunk?” said Susan Clancy, a respondents think angels and aliens are the psychology professor at Harvard University and same. I suspect not. Belief in alien visitors is the author of Abducted: How People Come to more aligned with a scientific view of Believe They Were Kidnapped By Aliens. Her technology and space ships whereas angels and explanation is that we are manipulated by religion seem to go together. popular stories, what she calls “cultural scripts,” Extraterrestrials have been visiting the in movies and TV. Indeed, the aliens-among-us earth for thousands of years and often they were story in the popular TV series called “V” both spiritual and flesh and blood. The Bible proposes that seemingly ordinary people are reports that Jacob wrestled with a being www. actually lizard-like aliens in disguise. described as a man in one place (Genesis xzonestore. I think it’s the other way around. 32:24), God in another (Genesis 32:28) and Popular stories are influenced by culture rather angel in yet another place (Hosea 12:4). The com than gullible people being persuaded by stories. two wrestled all night but Jacob was not Anand Mahadevan, a Toronto-based novelist overcome. It seems that aliens of Jacob’s day who grew up in India, explains: “The notion did not possess superhuman strength. HIGH: Confessions Of An that a being with the great powers of a godhead I wrestle with the meaning of alien can move in the guise of humans or animals is encounters and the inexplicable supernatural International Drug Smuggler already available in the mythology and religion world. Do we share our world with angels, of the region.” He adds that there is nothing elves, aliens and demons? Is the curtain of irrational about Indian physicists who compute everyday existence occasionally pulled aside so lunar eclipses but pray that the demons Rahu that a chosen few catch a glimpse of other and Ketu will stop swallowing the moon. beings who are all around us? I wish I knew. The reason why few Europeans report that aliens walk among us may be because they The ‘X’ Zone Radio Show believe in elves, gnomes, trolls, fairies, and other “hidden people” instead. Laugh if you with want to but in Iceland it’s a serious business as Rob McConnell Alcoa found out when they planned to build an aluminum smelter there. First they had to www.xzoneradiotv.com www.brianodea.com employ a government expert to scour the