Friday, March 13, 2009

When memes collide

First Christian UFO-alien symposium





The aliens may indeed be fallen angels.

The very first Christian symposium on aliens will address this idea July 3-5, organized by Guy Malone, author and co-founder of Alien Resistence - an organization that studies Biblical ideas on the UFO and alien abduction phenomena.

Malone's "In a Nutshell" web page at alienresistence.org walks readers through a quick explanation - citting Biblical chapter and verse.

"The Bible contains relevant information about what many believe to be a recent phenomenon, that neither most modern churches, nor most modern ufologists, are well informed about," Malone says on his web site.


Scoff if you must, but I think one would be foolish to casually dismiss the mythological similarities between "angels" and "aliens." I tend to doubt that either label reflects a genuine understanding of the archetypal contact experience; perhaps we are all blind men examining different parts of the same elephant.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think the real meme here is that Aliens are something nebulous and undefinable.

I'm a proponent of the simplest explanation; flesh and blood creatures from somewhere "out there". No big mystery, just another species along the way. Grasping at straws to define them to me at least is akin to mud wrestling with pop culture coffee talk. Its fun to experiment with potential explanations for the phenomenon but its disingenuous to discount what we do know vs whimsical Mckenna style head trips.

Henry Baum said...

Where'd that painting come from? Curious.

Mac said...

@Anon.

Its fun to experiment with potential explanations for the phenomenon but its disingenuous to discount what we do know vs whimsical Mckenna style head trips.

Yeah, but we *don't* know if we are, in fact, dealing with extraterrestrials.

@Henry

It came from an art exhibit about religion and aliens, if I'm not mistaken. I blogged the story in (I think) late 2007.

Anonymous said...

One can expect anything from these religious crackpots.
One could also consider ufology as another form of religion. To me at least there are a lot of similarities.

Anonymous said...

I reviewed several related links and webpages about this event, and all I can say is:

Oh, boy. Pure, 100% crazytime disinfotainment.

I guess this sort of thing was inevitable, but the central problem with this "Ancient of Days--First Christian Symposium on Aliens" is that nearly every scheduled speaker has a book and/or DVD's to sell that present the ufo phenomenon and "aliens" through the biased lens of a conservative, Christian fundamentalist or "born-again" creationist perspective, and as a kind of demonic threat to "the faithful." This is an effort to suggest these presenters "know" what they're talking about, but is actually a weirdly illusory and deceptive form of bizarre spiritual propaganda based on false premises. (For example, one of the speakers, Joe Jordan, a MUFON state section director for Brevard County, Florida, claims you can stop an “alien abduction” by invoking and asking Jesus Christ for help. That’s such a relief to know.)

It attempts to take one narrow and regressive belief system, fundamentalist Christianity, and imposes a kind of involuted commercial "new age" spin on an actual phenenoma which it absurdly circumscribes or defines and tries to set up as a scary "straw man" ("aliens" = "fallen angels") in order to both ignore objective, factual analysis of still poorly understood phenomena and fraudulently attempts to bind it to and reinforce a dualistic "good vs. evil" binary pantheon of ancient archetypal stereotypes based on unsubstantiated fabled beliefs.

The solipsistic interpretation that ufo's and "alien contact" or close encounters represent anti-Christian or Satanic forces intent on manipulating and deluding humans to do their will and against "God" is really a kind of delimiting, narcissistic sophistry, and sadly lacking in both logic and rationality.

I guess this new breed of evangelical cowboys think they need to employ the imaginary, paranoiac threat of evil alien indians to draw their proscribed ecclesiastical wagons into an even more tightly-wound ourobourosian circle of fabricated rapture. Pat Condell could have a field day with this risible bullshit.

The listed presenters on the symposium schedule nearly all appear to perceive and want you to pay them to be proselytized with their rather unfounded religious viewpoints about the "real" meaning, nature, and implications of "aliens," as "fallen angels" from an end-times perspective or "Revelations"-style orientation, which is a quite disturbing and misguided view.

Enochian "fallen angels" from the book of Genesis in the Christian tradition are generally believed to be minions of Satan, of course, and this kind of symposium merely perjoratively confuses the real issues and blindly suggests without any supportable fact a presumed understanding and dark definition of ufo phenomena from a pre-existing spirtual tradition or false belief construct as somehow relevant to comprehending our times and the real world, and ufo phenomena and the possibility of non-human intelligence as existential and subversive dangers, when in fact this is merely an enfeebled continuation of mythic anthropocentric fears that tries to co-opt and integrate UFO phenomena into faith-based concerns.

Although I'm betting the show will be a sell-out, in more ways than one, I pity the fools who may buy into this kind of miasmic crapola from these sleazy, self-promoting religious-right Elmer Gantry wannabees. Vallee was prescient in predicting the adoption of ufo and alien themes into cultish, fascistic variants of religious belief.

When memes collide, indeed. I guess now I'll have to be dragged off to hell by the evil angelic aliens for speaking my mind and lack of faith. Whatever.