What if God was an alien?

On this piece of terrain embedded in cyberspace and entitled my world, I have looked at philosophy and religion from a variety of perspectives. Apart from Buddhism, I have also blogged quite a bit about Christianity and have approached and looked at it from different angles.

There is of course the traditional Biblical view through a literal and figurative lens. I have also offered and proposed an innovative and progressive reading to revive and modernize Christianity; there are philosophical interpretations by thinkers like Hegel, Kant, and Kierkegaard; there is the political and historical dimension, including viewing religion as opium of and for the masses, and finally, I have also discussed the gnostic interpretation of the Bible, which, simply put, puts religion on its head.

Today, I shall be even more daring and controversial and will add more twist and fire to the absurdity running through this blog by speculating that God may be an alien entity. 

Thinking outside the box is something that comes to me naturally so when this unconventional idea in question came to me, I knew I had to explore it to some extent. Like many ideas, it did not come out of a vacuum, but it was inspired and stimulated by my recent viewing of the documentary Unacknowledged by Michael Mazzola, which is for the most part focused on the work and ideas of Steven M. Greer.

Before delving deeper into the subject matter and before encountering and facing resistance and objections, and, more importantly, before you stop reading or feel tempted to unfollow me on social media and / or my blog, I would like to give an explanatory preamble here.

Some months ago – in the pre-Covid-19 era of little to no physical distancing - I went to an astrophysics talk. It was on Black Matter and Black Holes and included other equally occult and esoteric matters, such as time-worms, bending the space-time curvature, string theory, and, everyone’s favourite, quantum mechanics.

There was a point at the lecture where I felt a wave of panic surge over my whole body. There were these scientists in front of me who talked about bizarre events that made no sense whatsoever. In fact, the thought crossed my mind that they must have been out of their minds. Schrödinger should have used his time to feed and play with his cat instead of eternally trapping it in a box within the nether world or no man’s (or no pet’s) land, that ominous threshold between life and death, and not necessarily interchangeably so.

But indeed, I was being presented with science and scientific facts. Einstein was right, and he told us so a hundred years ago. Many of his own scientific community in the lecture hall must have felt similar waves of panic as myself, and they must have thought this mathematical genius was in fact a lunatic. The German words of weltfremd (literally estranged from the world) and verrückt (crazy but in the sense of being displaced or removed from reality) come to mind. It took us only a century to set our doubts aside and prove Einstein right once and for all, at least for the time being.

Without doubt, the topic of aliens hits a raw nerve in our modern world. We often dismiss it in equal measure as madness and nonsense. We discredit those who claim to have had sightings and make fun of anyone who was allegedly abducted. And I am not one to give them credence either, neither shall I groundlessly vilify or ridicule them. 

I shall remain skeptical of such claims but perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree. There are things that we do not understand, and that science cannot or refuses to explain. As an example, I myself am a strong believer in psychic phenomena (prophetic dreams, Tarot cards, otherworldly signs, synchronicity, and serendipity). People have the right and freedom to refute them, but that does not make them less true.

I am also aware that there are many who are not honest nor genuine and under the guise of the supernatural, they merely try to control and take advantage of others to their own – often financial – benefit. In other words, they either do not believe what they preach – and religion has far too many examples of this – or they embrace so many clichés and stereotypes that they lose credibility – the crystal ball, the incense, and abundant pearls and necklaces or other kinds of hippie vibes that create more resistance in the already doubtful and suspicious person. It would be like scientists never taking off their white lab coats, which only serves to cast doubt onto their credentials and their level of self-confidence, not to say their level of sanity.

And let us end this preamble with a growing trend that has put things into perspective. I was surprised when a renowned astrophysicist like Stephen Hawking started talking about aliens in a serious tone and manner. This had been a taboo topic for decades, and science was only used to discredit, and worse, ridicule those who spoke about or believed in extraterrestrial life and visits. The belief of aliens had been delegated to and firmly grounded within the fantasy genre of books and movies; suddenly and out of the blue, a celebrated scientist was warning us about a potential threat and / or invasion from outer space. I could not believe my ears or eyes for that matter.

Yet why would it not be possible? We have this ego-centric earth-centered view that we are the only living and breathing creatures in the universe, but why should there not be other types of life out there? Considering the vastness of our ever-expanding universe, it would be statistically possible if not feasible that alien life could exist elsewhere. The same way quantum mechanics put into doubt and made us question scientific facts and truths, why should it not be possible that aliens exist?

The Netflix documentary Unacknowledged made me doubt my own preconceived and dismissive notions about aliens and extraterrestrial life. Although not everyone or everything in the show seemed credible, there were scientists and intellectuals among them who may have been onto something. Couple that with Stephen Hawking’s interest in the matter, and my pendulum moved from only if hell freezes over to potentially possible. At least, it would be warranted enough to listen to and perhaps consider and reflect upon those ideas.

That night as I was falling sleep, I was startled with the following thought: What if God was an alien? What if he was not a supernatural spiritual being but rather a technologically advanced one? What if he, an extraterrestrial being, one day decided to contact planet earth and humanity?

Let us look at the New Testament for instance. He might have come down to Earth and chosen a woman to bear him his son, not unlike Zeus and other Greek deities who would physically come down and have offspring with mortals. Mary’s conception could have occurred not through physical consumption but through alien technology. Instead of the enigmatic, problematic, and cumbersome contraption of the Holy Spirit sent as a missionary and go-between, this would be an alien who impregnated a human female with a simple touch. Hence, Mary would still be a virgin at that moment.

Their son would be like Hercules, half-mortal, half-god. The feats that Jesus would produce would not be miracles, but they were demonstrations of his many superpowers. He could walk on water by controlling and manipulating gravity; he could heal the sick and the blind with a mere touch; he could revive the dead. These powers were then given to him via alien knowledge and technology.

The Romans were afraid of him personally and not so much of his ideas. They saw Jesus as a military threat who could galvanize and weaponize the people. They crucified him, but then he reappeared because he could not physically die, being half alien. He left our planet to reunite with his father who lived up in the skies or in a far way and distant part of the galaxy or universe.

What is deemed spiritual knowledge would be transmitted through alien visits and technology, the same way in The Matrix skills and information could be downloaded within seconds. This would also explain St. Paul getting kicked off his donkey and an illiterate businessman being able to write spiritual verses. They were visited not by angels but by aliens who imbued them with knowledge or enlightenment.

And perhaps, there were other aliens among us. I know that I am entering ancient astronaut theory right now that has been debunked by science, but I have always wondered why Krishna was blue and looked like he had just stepped out of the movie Avatar. 

What if the Greek did not have the level of imagination that we ascribe to them but that they were describing their reality of aliens descending from the skies with powerful weapons like lightning bolts, tridents, and forceful hammers? How did the Egyptians build those astounding pyramids, and why do their gods resemble aliens?

We only need to look at the description of the Christian rapture, and it seems more like an alien abduction than God taking people back to the heavenly realm. And there is our constant obsession with the sky. We pray upwards and we believe that God dwells in the skies above, and that heaven, our eternal home, is up there as well. Incidentally, in the German language, we use the same word for sky and heaven: Himmel. What if the god that we look up to is indeed an alien and that we are praying for the second coming hoping to be revisited by this same entity?