UFOs: The Atlantis Hypothetical

There’s a lot of interesting sightings and anecdotal accounts of UFOs. I’m a Gemini which means I have a split personality. Part of me wants to believe, the other part is a hard nosed skeptic (which means I think astrology is hokum).

Both Dan Aykroyd and Sammy Hagar (the lyrics of the Van Halen song to which I linked are according to him something real he experienced) are examples of names of notable talented folks who I think sincerely believe in the “alien” hypothesis.

Fundamentalist Christians argue the aliens if they exist are demons. New Age folks might argue Jesus and the other world religious deities are some kind of super advanced beings, or aliens. And some apparently believe in a truth in between (like what I noted when I wrote about “cosmic religions“). Even the fervent atheist Richard Dawkins admitted life on Earth could have been seeded by aliens to evolve pursuant to the principles of Darwin’s evolution.

The problem, as I see it, is the aliens, if they exist, are far enough advanced technologically, that if we try to “catch” them, they are destined to win in a game of cat and mouse, leaving those of us who want smoking gun evidence of proof falling short, destined to speculate.

So I will speculate, with thought experiments. Here’s one: The Atlantis hypothetical. Maybe they aren’t from “out there,” but from here. They are us. No. Not time travelers. Look at the best evidence of how long human beings have existed in their evolved Cro-Magnon form. And contrast that with how long we have recorded history. Recorded history is about 6000 years old. Now of course, I don’t believe the world began then. Rather, science proves the Earth billions of years old, humanity millions of years, and Cro-Magnons hundreds of thousands of years.

Think of how much progress humanity has made the last two hundred years. Think further of how stagnation in progress can occur for long periods of time with short bursts of rapid periods of growth (even exponential growth as IT is currently undergoing).

If a meteor or nuclear catastrophe struck it’s possible for humanity to be wiped out entirely. It’s also possible for a fraction of humanity to remain, that could eventually over time repopulate. No. I don’t believe in the ridiculousness of the literal story of Noah’s Ark where — what was it — less than a dozen were left to repopulate the Earth.

But a larger truth of a small number left after a great catastrophe? Sure that’s possible. If over 99% of the population were wiped out today, the less than one percent that could number in the hundreds of thousands or even millions could potentially survive and over time repopulate back to billions. But the key question would be who would survive and under what conditions? The knowledge oriented folks could be wiped out and the indigenous left to survive for however many years until those interested in knowledge had to learn or relearn everything all over again.

(And it depends on what knowledge. The Amish aren’t stupid. In fact, I imagine they posses a great deal of knowledge that would be useful to the rest of us if the lights ever went out. However, I don’t get the sense that they care about studying the STEM fields which they don’t plan on incorporating into their day to day life.)

But what if a very smaller number of folks who accumulated knowledge survived in an isolated geographic place, while the larger masses of what was left were the ones who became fruitful and multiplied. The humans who possessed knowledge took that spark and turned it into a secret controlled flame, while keeping their population under control, much like advanced society is doing today.

But, for some reason, the knowledge folks kept to themselves and didn’t try to spread or conquer. Rather, they felt more comfortable advancing and observing with their small but controlled population. Perhaps they would intervene only if needed to prevent something like nuclear destruction (as has been purported).

Just some thoughts.

(And yes I understand the way I wrote this post is unique to me, but the ideas are a hodgepodge of what many others have anticipated.)