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Matthew Continetti joins today’s podcast, which features a conversation about aliens and God so deep that you may think we were high or drunk while recording it. We weren’t. Give a listen.
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Aliens as angelic beings is a serious hypothesis. About as serious as the hypothesis that there really are some unfriendly angels.
Not at all sure it’s a true hypothesis though. All’s I got is these preliminary reflections.
https://ricochet.com/962999/are-ufos-demonic-preliminary-reflections/
I enjoyed the discussion about whether there are things which truly exist, but which human beings are incapable of understanding or even perceiving. This cannot really be called “pre-modern” thinking, because it is clear to people of all times who are willing to draw some simple and obvious inferences from the natural world.
No matter what else we may believe about human beings, we can all agree that human beings are a species. We can also agree that in no other species have we observed an ability to know everything that humans know. (If you doubt it, call me when you have successfully taught calculus to an animal or a plant.) It is therefore improbable to the point of hubris to believe that human beings have the cognitive ability to understand or perceive every truth in the universe.
As Noah points out, it is natural to feel some discomfort with the fact that our cognition apparently has limits. But the universe is what it is, regardless of whether anyone feels uncomfortable about it.
As for belief in the existence of angels and demons, this should not be much of a stretch for theists or other believers in immaterial (i.e., spiritual) reality. Again to use an inference from the natural world, we can reasonably presume that there are animal and plant species on this planet of which we are, as yet, unaware. Why shouldn’t that presumption apply to spiritual reality as well?
Most people believe that everything is ultimately knowable. Just give science enough time, and it will find all of the answers. However, science has known for almost 100 years that human beings cannot know everything. Heisenberg showed this in the first half of the 20th century, when he realized that we can measure the position or speed of very small objects (like electrons), but not both. Being able to measure both at the same time is a fundamental of physics, which is the discipline that underpins all of science. He said we now know that we shall never know.
As James Burke said in his wonderful series, The Day the Universe Changed, Heisenberg also said, to look at the particles, you have to shine a light to see them and the light particles will hit them. So you could never be sure if the particles were where they were doing what they were doing naturally or because you hit them. There is nothing at the fundamental level of existence that you can see as it is because in seeing it, you do something to it. There is no true, basic reality to find beyond the one you yourself make by looking.
Hume showed it a good bit before that.