Hey there and welcome to the BigAppleSchool podcast. My name’s Sam
And today we’re asking what’s the craic about God versus aliens. So today we’re gonna look at who is God, we’re gonna think about aliens, aliens in pop culture and TV shows and films. Maybe a little bit of Star Wars, Star Trek for you guys out there, trakkies as you call yourselves. I must admit I’m a bit of one. We’re gonna talk about Area 51. Are.. is God real? Are aliens real? So, are you ready?
Are you sitting comfortably?
I’m sitting very comfortably, yes. No problem with my sitting position
For those who don’t know you – do you believe in God?
I do believe in God. And I have believed in God since I was a child, since I was very little. Even though my family was not religious as such, but still – I’m not sure exactly how, but I did believe in God even as a child and prayed, just from my own self and my own heart. So, yes. How about you?
I have believed in God since I was very young. I had an experience as a young boy and I entrusted in God. And I remember… I just thought of this strange and funny story – I remember going to a church service and being told ‘if you pray anything with faith, it’ll happen, you’ll get it’, so to say in God’s will. And I decided, I was very young, but I decided to go home and pray to God that he would make my teddies come alive.
And I thought if I just prayed… I believed so much
I’m eager to hear the result of this story
Well, it wasn’t in God’s will to make them alive
Well, I guess I’m not surprised
I think it was.. I don’t think it serves his purpose to do that
But it was in a childlike innocence – that’s what I thought I could do and could ask for
So Gary, who is God? This is a word that is everywhere, I mean, it’s even used as a swear word, it’s all over the place. But who is God? Cause I mean, God is just.. it means some higher being, doesn’t it?
Well, that’s what many people conceive God to be which is a rather weak idea about who God is. That’s kind of a minimum that often people have. But actually basing what I’m saying on the bible, which is actually coming from God, so that we know more than just supposing that maybe there’s some kind of a higher intelligence out there.
But.. so, based on that, God is a very great being and who is.. he is, in an absolute sense, he exists in an absolute way. We also exist, but we are quite dependent, okay? So that we are born, we come into the world, we need food, we need everything, right? And then we leave this life somewhat the way we came in. And so, that’s we exist also. But God exists in an absolute way.
And he is the source of all life, he’s spirit, he’s not material, so we’re not going to go to space and see him. And that would be foolish, because he’s spirit and not material. And so… but he’s also the source of all things that exist, material and not material. So.. that’s what, you know.. And he’s personal, that is to say he’s a being not like us, but he’s a being who is an individual that we can know and enter into a relationship with, talk to, for example, listen to..
So, anyway, that’s my.. What about you?
And how do you describe Jesus Christ? And how is he connected?
Well, Jesus Christ is God. He is.. he’s called the son of God, which means that he is also God, but he is God who will reveal himself or manifest himself – in Russian you might say ‘явить себя’ – that’s the Russian way of saying ‘to manifest himself, in a human form
I’ll take your word for this, with Russian words
Okay. I think they’re correct. And so he is God, but he is God in a bodily in a way, in a bodily way, so in a way that people could see him and know him, and listen to him, and he was totally a personal human being at the same time that he was also totally God, and that’s very hard to understand but that’s so.
And, so, he’s the way that God has revealed himself
His actions, his love – that’s the character of God
Right. Okay. So.. We’ve gonna to crucial questions there – I want to talk to you a little bit about.. So we’re on the side of aliens of course too, we’re speaking about God, but also aliens. And today I’m gonna play devil’s advocate and act for aliens, so I’m gonna fight against you a little bit
Okay, so… But, first of all, I wanna share a little bit about… We talked about Star Wars already, we mentioned it, Star Trek. And they’re still really popular today, they have been for ages – I guess 60-70s for those TV shows. And there are lots of other science fiction, films and TV shows – multitudes and multitudes, really. Star Trek, Star Wars – actually, my friend and I.. my good friend in Northern Ireland is a pastor and he loves to watch Star Trek
and a little bit of Star Wars too. No, it’s not to say he believes it, but he enjoys a little bit of that. And I must admit that I watch sometimes, and I watch with him. As I would say it’s good craic. I guess
Now I must admit that as far as Star Wars goes I’m a big fan of the earlier films from 70s-80s. Have you ever seen any of those?
I think the last movie – that’s gonna tell you something – the last movie that I saw in a theatre – I guess I don’t go to theatres to see movies, to watch movies – was Star Wars when it first came out
So you were like 4, right?
That’s correct, exactly, I was three
We’re gonna go with that. Three, right
Yes, that’s correct. My math is very bad
I liked it, sure. I mean, I wasn’t… I saw it at, what I would call a second-run theatre which means I paid.. I think I paid a dollar. Maybe it was 1981? Because it wouldn’t have been too fresh, but in any case. I was on the economy program
But yeah, I saw it and I liked it. You know, I wasn’t… I wasn’t terrificly..
You’re not a Star Wars fan?
I’m not a Star Wars guy as such. I mean, it’s okay. I know people love it.. And you really like it, so
I really.. well, I really liked the older ones. I remember the episode one, two and three came out in 1999 or 2000 or so, and I was quite disappointed even as I.. even as I still was quite young, but I was pretty disappointed, but Star Trek I must admit I’m into, it’s episodic TV show – a lot of… every 45-minute episode or so is different, different topic, different themes, but the same people.
And it’s quite sciency, I mean, more science and more solving problems. And actually it’s kind of like a.. I think it appeals to sciency people from the point of view because they’re solving problems and using science – not real science of course, but…
They’re using fake science
That’s the best kind of movies like that
In all of these you have the weird and wonderful aliens. So, speaking about aliens today – and you’ve got this supreme being aliens in Star Trek sometimes, who can control things and take the characters out and manipulate them. And you’ve got more humanoid characters, maybe with weird faces, different colored: green or brown or whatever, but they’re not quite the same as humans.
But, you know, they look.. they have two legs and two arms and they look very similar. I guess budget constraints for the TV show as well. But saying… I love Star Trek actually, I love Star Trek and still watch the older episodes and Star Wars too. Gary?
When I say the word ‘alien’, and I’m not saying you believe in aliens, but what do you imagine when I say the word ‘alien’?
Well, I imagine the things that I suppose everyone imagines – some kind of humanlike figure, but it might be made out of metal or something. And, you know, with narrow eyes and all of these kinds of things.
That would be how I would imagine them. But you know what I think about them?
Do you want me to get into this now? Or do you wanna…
Leave it for a little bit later.
I think of a kind of an octopus. I’ve got this from TV shows, right. But I think of a kind of an green octopus type thing, with big eyes and some people would maybe guess where I’ve got that from. But, yeah. But they’re different. Obviously there are different versions in pop culture of aliens, but
Do you love space? As a topic, to speak about space?
I like space. I’m interested in space. I’m not fanatic about space, but I’m interested in it, yes. Right.
Do you keep up to date with some information?
I try to, yeah. I try to stay up to date with things in general, including space, yes
Do you believe there’s a conspiracy theory that the Americans didn’t go to the moon? Do you believe they did?
I believe they did, yeah. I believe they did and I see no reason not to believe that they did.
There are a few ideas like the flag was moving in the wind
Oh yeah, that’s right. I..
I think there could be a couple of ways.. I’m not.. I’m not so keen into this, but, I mean, it could’ve been because it was moving, like it wasn’t fixed properly. Maybe it was solar flares, or solar wind, but..
But I do believe, I do believe. I found…
I remember watching it, you know, I’m old enough to remember watching it as it was happening on my black-and-white television
How did you feel at the time?
Well, that was exciting, that was interesting. I would’ve been.. I mean, that was in 1969, right?
I would’ve been 15 and it was very exciting. I certainly had no reason not to believe it.
It’s not all that difficult to imagine that somebody did it, it’s almost harder to imagine that no one has done it since then
Right? I mean, why has it been so long, you know
Well, actually they’re speaking about having a permanent base there
America, in fact - NASA again are talking about a permanent base there in the future, in the near future so
I t would be possible to do it. Strange, it’s interesting that it seems to be connected to politics, right? Only because the Chinese wanna go, and so all of a sudden it’s sort of…
Yeah, politics, money. I think it’s so expensive I guess
But.. I personally believe it happen to.
I don’t… I think it’s.. We can always find a reason sort of, a conspiracy theory that makes a lot of Youtube video, you know. You get a lot of hits, a lot of..
Yeah. Maybe we should talk about that
What do we do? That’s right. We wouldn’t do that, right? That would be beneath us
Everyone would love it, everyone would love it. Do you think humans should explore space?
I think they should, I think they will anyway, sure. I mean, that’s natural, we’re explorers and we’re investigators, and we’re curious people and we’re going to do it and there’s no reason not to. It’s just.. I think maybe we have to keep our expectations quite humble
Right. It’s not so simple
No, it really isn’t. I mean, the fact that we went to the moon 50 years ago and only now we’re deciding that we’ve got the money and the reason and whatnot to try to do it again and that’s really close, I mean, it’s big. You can really… it’s close
And yet we can’t even really get anything going there
There’s.. From what I gather they’re aiming to go to the moon and use it as a kind of station to travel there
It sounds science fiction to me, to be honest. I mean, Mars, sorry, I didn’t.. I said the moon. To go to the moon and use it to go to Mars, but.. that kinda sounds science fiction to me to be honest, because..
Looking into this – Mars is kind of a really really harsh place where you’ll die pretty quickly
Yeah.. It kind of.. I found it kinda funny that people say – well we need to find another planet to live on, and so, how about Mars, you know. It’s -243 degrees
Not everywhere, that’s only in the worst places
… But anyway, I mean… yes
I mean, we could argue that it’s better to explore the ocean first
Well, we’re gonna explore everything, it’s not..
We can argue that it’s money, it’s people’s lives, but
Well it is those things, sure, it is.. And it’s.. If we thought it was important for some reason, there would be money to do it. I mean, there’s money to do.. Certainly, we got money from missiles, right, we got plenty of missiles: bombs, rockets
Hide it on, hide it up. Leave it up before they
Not even one missile, yes, I promise you
But yeah, but there’s money for what people think is important, but we don’t apparently think it’s all that important
Right. Priorities and stuff. So, you know, it depends on people’s priorities. What is Area 51? Have you heard of that?
Well, you may have to tell me about that
You should know this, you’re an American
Well, I am, and as a patriotic American I certainly should know. It’s one of finest areas anywhere I think. No, I don’t really even know... what is it? Is it where they supposedly have UFO in it or something?
It is supposedly.. People may correct me if I’m wrong, but this is like a secret air force base, or army base, for America, and they keep an alien there
Ah, they’ve an alien there
A UFO and probably an alien body, maybe a hundred, who knows
And they have it all there.. As I’m arguing for aliens
I guess I should promote that idea, you know, that maybe they have something. I mean, why not have something there? By the way, one of my teachers in school claimed to have seen a UFO
She.. well I must say I thought she was a great teacher, but she might have been a little bit screw loose, but
Okay. Well, I’m going to shock you there, Sam, by telling you that I think I saw in my day, I saw, I thought I saw a flying saucer. Myself.
It was truly, no screws loose
And you’re arguing against aliens today
I am arguing against, because I think that that was, in my case, I would say that it was probably a hallucination
And I was at the time, this was long ago, and before I became a Christian, I was rather involved the occult
And therefore I was kind of, what shall we say, I was dabbling. To dabble means that you kinda get involved in a light way in something, you’re dabbling. And I was dabbling not in the occult specifically, but it became that. And during that period of time I was driving home from work and I looked over my shoulder and low and because it was a busy highway
it was a busy highway, it was a busy like divided four-lane highway
Which means that if there were anything there, there would’ve been many people who saw it, not just me. But I saw it and I actually pulled over for the side of the road, okay, and just…
Yes, it was a good idea, yeah. If you’re hallucinating, highly recommended to, please, pull over to the side of the road. So, anyway, yeah. I think, though, that I was hallucinating, and actually, which is a strange thing to say about oneself, but well
So, arguing for aliens, what do you…
Arguing for aliens.. I mean, my high school, senior high school art teacher saw a flying saucer and she was pretty adamant, but, I mean, what could it be if it weren’t a flying saucer?
Well, I’m gonna tell you what I think.. I was talking with a friend of mine who was.. has a similar kind of history to me.. meaning that he was really involved in the occult, and then became a Christian – we were close friends and we became Christian at the same time.
Anyway, I was talking.. happened to be talking with him on Saturday, and he was telling me.. we were talking about these things actually that happened, and he said that he thinks that the idea of aliens is basically mythology for scientific culture
It’s like in an animistic culture, primitive culture. Gods would be just forces, sort of terrible forces: people were close to nature and so their idea of gods would be demons, they’re actually devils and something like that. The Greeks and Romans they were a political people, they were very high civilizations, and so their gods were people like them. They were like Greeks and Romans
But with all of the problems
And we’ve got superheroes today and stuff
Yeah, but now you’ve got aliens who are just a scientific version of a story that people want to believe in. And people want to believe in something, and aliens are simply are version of mythology.
I’ll just throw that out there
Okay, so. I mean, I can’t explain what my high school art teacher saw, I don’t.. She didn’t really describe a lot, just like a light in the sky, but she seemed pretty convinced, but we’ll leave it to people’s choice. Is God real?
God is definitely real. And..
Well, I say so because, I mean, the existence of everything in the order that it’s in. And the perfect order that it’s in is an evidence or proof, or of the existence of someone who created it.
I don’t think.. I don’t believe that what we see could possibly come from a giant chemistry experiment.
The big bang, right, so you just take a bunch of chemicals, a lot of energy and somehow it’s going to organize itself into anything other than pretty unorganized, slightly more organized until the energy runs out
Argument of aliens – I would say time as well, huge amount of time
Well, but time isn’t intelligence, time isn’t wisdom, time isn’t actual ability to make something from nothing. For example, to go from no life, like you think of the big bang, high energy, no life – tell me what’s gonna live in the big bang? Nothing. Okay. How do you get from that to even the most basic life? Which is really complex
Yeah, but then… But also someone believing in aliens might argue that there’s huge scale involved, there’s a little.. I mean, the earth is like a dust, a speck of dust
Yeah, well it is. It’s just as far as the scale.. but time doesn’t substitute, time isn’t worth in itself, time is just a measure. And it’s just a measure of change, right? It’s for us, we measure time by day and night
But maybe, if you imagine, maybe we would blow up.. I’m not suggesting blowing anything up, but
But if we blew up something really really big, and you got those tiny tiny fragments, couldn’t you find order in the tiny-tiny fragments?
Well, but the order would’ve had to have been there before, right? I mean, how does it.. How does it get to the least being ordered?
Maybe some bacteria comes and grows on it
Wait wait wait, where does the bacteria come from?
I mean, you realize how complex a bacteria is?
I guess they weren’t in the explosion
Well, no, they weren’t yeah. Bacteria don’t live at, you know, one degree above absolute highest possible temperature. Many times the energy of the sun. Is there any bacteria on the sun? No.
I don’t think so. I think we’ve ruled that out. So the whole idea that somehow we’re going to get to what we see, including and particularly life from simply a giant experiment making a god out of time as those.. just, I mean… if you extend nothing out for billions of years, it’s still nothing.
And what about… someone argue that light from suns, from many many many huge distances away, I mean, how could it, how could it be reaching earth if this.. life on the earth is still short, maybe ten thousand, so creators would say it’s only about ten thousand years or less. But how can light from millions or billions of light years away..
Then the God had to simply.. He simply.. I suppose you’d have to say that God would simply create them in such a way that the light was already here, basically it didn’t have to travel this distance. He didn’t have to initiate the travel of the distance, it was created with the actual its presence here – I mean, it was
And he has to be.. For there to be what we see, again, if you just start from the chaotic explosion, I mean, just blow anything up, I mean. I just didn’t invite anybody after…
A small thing, don’t hurt anyone
Just a small thing, right, yeah. I’m not encouraging anyone to blow anything up. And if you did, what would you do…
Start with your phone maybe
Right, let’s say you blow up your phone like people do on the internet to get views
That’s right. We’re not gonna do that, we’re not gonna talk about Area 51
Next time we’ll blow up your phone
Next time we’ll blow up my phone. We’ll blow up your phone first, okay?
Okay, I volunteer your phone for that job
So you reckon blowing things up doesn’t work?
Well. And here’s the problem. What I’ve noticed – I’m no explosion expert. But I have noticed that if you blow something, let’s say, we blow up your phone. Do you end up with something more organized than your phone or less organized than your phone?
I.. Even if you have the humblest phone
I have a pretty humble phone
Well you’re a humble man and.. we appreciate that
I haven’t got a great laptop and I haven’t got fantastic phone, let’s just say it
Well, alright. I’m just telling you – whatever you start with that humble phone and you blow it up, you end up just with the bunch of chaotic pieces that also don’t do anything. You can’t call on it, you can’t watch picture on it, you can’t..
Yes, yes, imagine if you blew it up. If you think this is bad, imagine if you blew it up. So the idea is that when you explode something, you take it from something more organized to something less organized, it never goes the other direction. You never blow it up and it gets more organized.
So, let me ask. Are aliens…
I just say you gotta think here, people
I think aliens are a story, they’re a fairy tale for our age. It’s just like Zeus and he gods of.. the Norse gods and so forth – that was what people of that time projected..
But others will say – look at all the millions of planets around us
stars – billions and billions of stars
And on all of those – planets connected with some of those stars. Surely there’s gotta be a replication of life
Maybe another human species
It’s the same problem there, except that it just.. it never happened anywhere and.. Have you ever heard of Fermi’s paradox?
Okay. Well, you’re a scientific
Disappointed.. no. Fermi is a guy named.. He’s a scientist and he was involved in developing the atomic bomb, so he’s of that generation. And.. But he came up with an expression of this problem, okay. Now, he, being a scientist, and scientist of pretty good qualifications – and he just..
He threw this thought out there which is that if this whole.. if the universe is populated with these highly-intelligent alien creatures, why have they never reached us? Why have they never made contact? Why have they never found us? Right?
But we haven’t either, you could say
Well, but we’re kinda dumb, you see, that’s the whole thing
Well maybe they’re dumb too
Well, but see, the whole idea of like Elon Musk says, right, another great scientist of our age, right. He would say that, well, surely, given how huge the universe is, right, and if there’s.. Of course he supposes there’s no god, right? So therefore the same kind of processes like we see here, they’re somebody had to have gotten started much ahead of us, so they’re going to be way more advanced people, surely. Now that’s the last…
If you believe in the time and stuff
That’s right, if you believe in the whole time story, okay, which I don’t believe in. I believe that if you just extend the same processes in time, explosions still never produce anything but more chaos
Okay. But anyhow, so he.. so Fermi post this in sort of a classic form, that still troubles people, right? Is why, if there’s highly intelligent technologically advanced..
They get sucked into Jupiter or something
Something, yeah, but they’re really good, they’re really smart
Maybe there’s a nice place for them to visit and…
And we live in a really difficult place to find
I think that’s just the easy explanation is that they’re simply.. they’re not there
But.. that’s what I think – they’re not there
So, in summary, or at.. by way of kinda ending this talk
Would you like to visit.. if you could do it safely, would you like to visit another planet? And when I say, you know, ‘if you could do it safely’, cause there’s a lot of planets there that you couldn’t go near without being, you know, pff, turned to dust
That’s it, yeah. I would say that I wouldn’t live, I wouldn’t survive the trip, because it just takes.. I forgot how long it takes
Quite a while. Well.. but we’re thinking hypothetically, you’d say
Oh, hypothetically. Well..
if you could go there and you could go there safely, where would you like to visit?
Well, I mean, that would be fascinating to see the things, you know, to see any of it – even to just go up to the space would be, I’m sure, very amazing, just to orbit the earth would be very-very amazing, not..
Yeah. Honestly, I think I’d like.. I would be content to just go to the moon or to mars and look back at our planet. I mean, I watched the video of one of the guys.. space.. astronauts rather looking back, and he talked about his impression when he looked back at the earth, like this beautiful blue and green marble hanging in this dark veil and wow. I mean, the idea of just looking at the earth, honestly, I mean, there are beautiful planets out there, absolutely, but ours is pretty beautiful. At least from a distance, but…
It look good even close up, that’s to say
So, on the moon, I think. On the mood I’d be happy, my mind’s of a simple pleasure – on the moon…
Well I only want to go to the moon to look back at the earth
Man of humble… You have humble desires
So that was the craic about god versus aliens. We spoke about – do we believe in god, who he is, his character, his nature. A little bit about science fiction – I think I’m more of a fan than you by no stretch of imagination.
We described our version of aliens, we talked about UFOs and what we believe in regards. Well, we argued a little bit, we debated a little bit about the existence of god or aliens. So there you go, that was the craic about god versus aliens.
