Dear Folks: Here are some correction to mistakes I made in my
previous posting.
John Winston. johnfw@mlode.com

Subject: Space People A Long Time Ago.   Part 2.            Mar. 8, 2011.

  In order for the author to be considered to be fair he does give some
of the information out from the skeptics and debunkers.

  I will attempt to point these area out as we cover them in this
material.

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In his last published work, [11] Sitchin returned to the Book of G-nesis:
The sons of G-d saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and
they married any of them they chose The Nephilim were on the earth in
those days and also afterward when the sons of Go- went to the
daughters of men and had children by them.
They were the heroes of old, men of renown. [12]
Sitchin speculates that Noah, who with his family survived the flood,
might have been one of these heroes of old. If so, and if we are all
descended from him, then we all have alien DNA in our make-up!
Other believers in the idea that the -ods have left a genetic imprint on
the human r-ce include the followers of Rael (see FT142:6;168:6). (JW
Now I don't agree with a lot of teachings that this group puts out.
They have contactede people who are like J-hovah, a very jealous and
rough individual.  I don't want to be kicked around by that sort of
space people over again.) They believe the extraterrestrials responsible
for designing human beings were the Elohim, who, when returning
to check up on their creations, were mistaken for a-gels or g-ds. Rael,
whose original name was Claude Vorilhon, is an ex-racing driver who
leads a r-ligion officially recognised in the U-A which claims to be the
largest UFO re-igion in the world.
He tells of having a dramatic encounter with a humanoid being from
another planet at a volcano park in the center of France: This
extraterrestrial gave him a new detailed explanation of our origins and
information on how to organize our future.  (JW They didn't create all
the people on Earth but they did take a few Neanderthal beings and
modified them to make slaves to work in their gold mines of Africa.)
Rael accepted the mission given to him, to inform humanity of this
revolutionary message and to prepare the population to welcome
their Creators, the Elohim.
In every culture on Earth, a messenger is expected, whether it is the
Maitreya of the Buddhists, the Messiah of the J-ws, the Paraclete
of the Ch-istians, or any other name that has been given by the many
tribes around the world.
This expected messenger, like all the previous ones, isn't supposed
to please everyone, but to state what our Creators are expecting from
us. This is what Rael has been doing for more than 30 years.
The Raelian ch-rch is probably best known to the outside world for its
desire to restore the swastika as a reli-ious, rather than po-itical,
symbol, its claims about alien and human cloning and its liberal
teachings on s-xuality.
One of the FAQs on its website asks: I read in the papers that you
organize o-gies, is this true?

Despite the common thread the idea that the human rac- was visited
in ancient history by space-travellers the various popular versions differ
enormously. The contrast between, for instance, the work of Robert
Temple and David Icke could not be greater.
Temple's book The Sirius Mystery was published in 1975 and explores
the claim that the Dogon people of Mali have a tradition that Earth
was once visited by travellers from the star system of Sirius. These
alien visitors brought the human -ace higher knowledge, and the
legend explains the Dogon interest in, and seemingly advanced
knowledge of, astronomy (see FT140:309331). While Temple's work
has been challenged, his claims were relatively cautious ones and
have not spawned any form of reli-ious movement.

(JW Now we get into some of the explanations that cover the
skepic way of looking at things.)

By contrast, David Icke, the former professional goalkeeper and
television presenter who in 1991 told Terry Wogan that he was
the Son of G-d, has become synonymous with the extreme end of
extraterrestrial th-ology. Here, beliefs about alien visitors suggest
that they are not necessarily benign. Living underground, says Icke,
are communities of shape-shifting reptiles who are a malign force
in the world and manipulate the minds of the mass of the human
population via world leaders under their control. (See FT129:309331)
Predating Rael, Sitchin, Icke, von Daniken and others was George
King, founder of the Aetherius Society. The then-taxi driver contact
with alien life-forms can be dated precisely to a day early in 1954,
when out of the blue he heard the command, Prepare yourself.
You are to become the Voice of the Interplanetary Parliament. From
that day until his death in 1997 (obit. FT104:49), King became the
c-annel by which the alien intelligence identified as Mars Sector 6
communicated with the human ra-e.
Today, The Aetherius Society, which he founded, is a worldwide
organization with an avowedly altruistic agenda whose aim is to
help heal and uplift humanity through spi-itual action.
As the Society's literature puts it: Our world is accelerating into a
world of selfishness and materialistic hedonism causing an increase
in violence and t-rrorism around the world and a rapid depletion of
Earth's resources.
The solution is spiri-ual action, true dedicated tireless s-iritual action
for the many.
The Cosmic Masters, our spir-tual elders from other worlds, have come
again to help us in our time of need.
They come now to you, with compassion and desire to help. They come
with great hope, offering mystical tools of w-ite magic that can give
you the spirit-al power available only to advanced adepts centuries ago.
[14]

ACCORDING TO THE EVIDENCE

So, if the idea that contact with extraterrestrial beings explains many
ancient and modern rel-gious movements is widely believed in
some quarters, how plausible an explanation is it?
Have the prophets and seers who have reported what sound like alien
encounters really seen alien life forms, or have they and their followers
misinterpreted experiences perhaps hallucinations of a more mundane
kind?
Hard, verifiable evidence is scarce.

Sitchin challenged scientists to look for alien DNA in the 4,500-year-old
bones of Queen Puabi of Ur.
She was described as a g-ddess, he claimed, and might be close enough
in ancestry to the original space-travellers for their genetic input to be
identifiable. But even he accepted this might be a long shot and
emphasised the might be in his suggestion.
As for von Daniken since his claims were first published, several of the
pieces of his supposed evidence have been specifically debunked. His
own background, which includes a spell in a Swiss jail for fraud, has been
exposed and his credentials as a scholar challenged.
What is noticeable from his own writing is that while von Daniken
makes much of supposed scientific evidence, he has little grasp
of the science himself. For instance, he presents as an amazing and
significant fact that the area of the base of the Pyramid of Cheops divided
by twice its height gives us the figure Pi: 3.14159.
Here our slippery trickster has made a claim which is easy enough to
understand, but its refutation requires a higher level of mathematical
sophistication, which is all the better for letting the deception go
unnoticed! wrote Robert Sheaffer (JW  I've met this person and had him
on my TV show that I hosted called called Science Faction.  I would say
of him that he is a real skeptic.) in his essay Science or Charlatanism?
Other pieces of evidence adduced by von Vaniken have come under similar
attack. Famously, he claimed that a carving in Palenque, Mexico, showed
an ancient astronaut seated in a spacecraft the smoking gun that proved
the Maya, like ancient cultures all over the world, had been visited by
go-s from outer space. In 1977, the BBC's Horizon program broadcast an
episode called the The Case of the Ancient Astronauts, in which von
Daniken's theories were subjected to critcal scrutiny. The experts weren't
impressed: Geologist and Mayan expert Dr Ian Graham explained his view
of the figure on the Palenque Stone. Well I certainly don't see any need
to regard him as a spaceman, he said. I don't see any oxygen tubes. I see
a very characteristically drawn Maya face. The carving showed not an
alien visitor, but a celebrated Palenque ruler called Pakal.
Even the suggestion that there is an ancient airport in the South American
desert has proved to be misguided, according to the sceptics.
The precise purpose of these and other large-scale lines remains
mysterious, but they can be explained as the artwork of the Nazca people.

Part 2.

John Winston.  johnfw@mlode.com