ETs and Blaming it all on Religion

Do you belive in UFOs? Extra-terretrials and all that sorta stuff? You don't? Well, I am an agnost when it comes to belief in ETs. I am an atheist when it comes to belief in a God but an agnost when as regards ETs; one has to admit that ETs are infinitely more plausible than God.

However, you must have noticed how you are more likely to be thought out of your mind if you believe in ETs rather than if you believed in God. I can't say it better than George Carlin does in his book, 'When will Jesus bring the Pork Chops?' where he marvels at this paradox where we are willing to believe in virgin births, resurrections, angels, demons and talking snakes while at the same time we think that anyone who thinks that there could be intelligent life out there amongst the billions of stars, several of them with a reasonable chance of having orbiting planets similar to our own capable of nurturing life, is positively cuckoo. However I go a little further than Carlin, I have a theory as to why this may be.

Let's think this through. Why wouldn't an ET life-form capable of inter-stellar travel (or capable of the deception that it must have taken for them to elude detection in this solar system itself, right under our noses) choose not to make open diplomatic, or worse, belligerent contact with the human race which they must have by now recognised as being capable of significant intelligent self-determination (well, atleast some of us, some of the time). Clearly they must be technologically superior to us, so it cannot be for any fear of our technological might.

It could be something like in Star Trek, where other 'Warp-Drive' capable species make contact with other civilizations only after they become warp capable themselves, so as not to artificially distort the intellectual development of the species. Well, that would be a noble thing to do. Yet, applying yardsticks derived from our own history, I don't consider that a good enough reason. Come on, the Spaniards, didn't just arrive in America and lay wait hiding in the bushes, twiddling thumbs till the Injuns managed to work out gunpowder for themselves. No, they just unloaded the barrels of gunpowder they had in the holds of their ship and blew the Injuns to smithereens. Ofcourse, one must mention that they did try to baptise as many Injuns as possible before they blew their brains out, but there were only so many Injuns willing to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and saviour who will deliver their souls that were just about to be dispatched from their bodies unto him, in a few seconds. No, on prelimnary analysis, there doesn't seem to be reason enough for not making contact.

On the other hand, lets look at reasons that are compellingly in favour of making contact.
a) In quest of adventure and knowledge that is sure to come from such an exchange.
b) The access to some of the resources on the planet, even if it be through conquest.

These are no brainers. If we came across a technologically inferior civilization sitting on top of something economically useful to us, we'll just take it by force. That's what we have been doing since time immemorial. That's what we still do (think Iraq). Its probably the strongest motivational force driving such expeditions.

Yet why is it that the ETs only choose to reveal themselves in rare and priveleged encounters to John Lennon (taking care to wait till he was high before showing up)? Why wouldn't they just advertise their coming for all to see. Well, again, history may offer us a clue here.

There was a third motivational force "to seek out new life and new civilizations" that our ancestors (and Star Trek buffs) were quite taken with.

3) A drive to spread the word of Our Lord, the one True God to the savages.

Hm...well, I don't see too many ET funded missions to whatever deity it is that they worship. Interesting. This possibly means one of two things:

a) They don't have any idea about religion. They are quite perplexed by the phenomenon that is religion that is prevalent among the humans they are trying to understand and are thus apprehensive of somehow infecting themselves by open contact with us.

b) They do have religious ideas of their own but find the ones prevalent in our lands more compelling. Thus they are afraid that their religions may be swept away and replaced by our own.

In effect, both the above points can be combined into one: Fear of our 'earthly' God!

However, we are again missing the glaringly obvious possibility. Lets say that one fine day, the President of the United States is visited by an ET from galaxy far-far away from a species that doesn't have any seminal idea of God, hails from an egalitarian society built on simple, rational laws free from the excesses that religion forces on it. A society of free thinkers and innovators who won't go about toiling in a mundane, boring and gruelling work regime under exploitative super rich elite who work them and give little back in return for the services rendered, on the hope that there is a better, eternal afterlife that awaits them provided they suffer in obedience and virtue. A world without neocons, theocons, Republicans, saffron brigades, moral police,evangelicals, missionaries, Taliban and Freidmanites. A society that would be demonstrative of everything against what the fabric of human civilization on earth is built on and yet is the one capable of interstellar travel. A truly superior working model of civilization.

Come on! How many ways would you react if you were a conservative, God fearing, gun-toting, homophobic, capitalist President? How would you react if you were an Ayotollah, a Taliban supremo or Jerry Fallwell ( or Pat Robertson)?

Thus, the net inference is that religion and its figureheads are most likely the ones keeping us from meeting our visitors from beyond.