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Hawking fear of aliens

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Flickr: Doug Wheller11868-hawking
Renowned celebrity physicist Stephen Hawking is at the forefront of the search for extra-terrestrial life. But he warns against making contact with aliens as he fears they will be two-billion-years ‘more evolved’.

Time and again I am confronted with the view from young people that “Of course there are aliens out there. We can’t be the only ones.” This is a surprise to many of the older church folk in my acquaintance. However, CMI’s UFO authority, Gary Bates, indicates that in his experience belief in aliens can be found across all age groups—including churchgoers. Surveys estimate that more than 80% of Western peoples believe that ET is ‘out there somewhere’ which presumably encapsulates a lot of believers also.1 But many young folk in particular have been influenced by science fiction notions of aliens traversing the galaxy in their faster-than-light spaceships and advanced weaponry. And older folk are especially surprised to see that young people’s belief in extra-terrestrials often goes hand-in-hand with a morbid fear of what aliens will do to them.

Belief in aliens—and fear arising from that—is a logical outflow of our young people having been sold the idea that we are the result of evolution, not creation. Life evolved on Earth (the argument says), therefore elsewhere in the universe—billions of years older than our solar system according to evolutionary reckoning—it would surely have evolved there, too.2 As well-known Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) researcher Seth Shostak said when asked why he believed in the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials:

“To believe that they don’t exist requires positing that what’s happened on Earth is some sort of miracle. I find that premise a tougher sell than to think that intelligence is a fairly frequent development in a 14-billion-year-old cosmos.”3

Thus Shostak reveals he sees the miracle of Creation as ‘a tougher sell’ than neo-Darwinian notions that everything arose by itself. So he and the rest of the evolutionary fraternity sell us evolution instead— as ‘fact’. And by hawking evolution to a vulnerable public, they’re also hawking fear of aliens, too.

A recent article4 by the Australian National University’s Charley Lineweaver5 bears this out.

Referring to celebrity cosmologist Stephen Hawking’s involvement in Breakthrough Listen, a project which scans the heavens for signs of intelligent life,6 Lineweaver first sets the scene:

“Hawking wants us to listen, and not to talk—use our ears, not our mouth. He wants us to eavesdrop but not join the conversation. He wants us to keep our head low. … Hawking’s comments are motivated by a fear of what the aliens would do to us if they find us.”4

So, Stephen Hawking wants to find aliens, but most certainly warns against sending any messages to them (but as Lineweaver points out, celebrated public attempts have already been made by sending television broadcasts of the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the I Love Lucy show into space). Lineweaver then goes on to explain how Hawking’s fear of aliens is linked to belief in evolution2 and its chronology:

“The age distribution of Earth-like planets in the universe tells us that the average Earth-like planet is about 2 billion years older than our Earth. If life has formed on these other Earths, it has had, on average, 2 billion years longer to evolve than we have had. This is the fact that has Hawking worried. If you imagine that the pace of biological and technological evolution on these other Earths is about the same as it has been on our Earth, then alien civilisations are on average two billion years more advanced than we are. To put that time frame into perspective, two billion years ago, our ancestors on Earth were amoebas or parameciums — single-celled eukaryotes of some kind.”4 [Emphasis added.]

Little wonder then, that:

“Hawking says he worries that any aliens ‘will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria’.”4

When it comes to the fear stakes however, Lineweaver mentions a university colleague whose fear of aliens substantially exceeds Hawking’s:

“While discussing the value of searching for extraterrestrial intelligence SETI, a colleague told me that it was dangerous to even listen to aliens. He thought the message would be like a Trojan horse. If we let the message into our minds, it would kill us. It would be like sticking a virus-contaminated USB stick into your computer.”4

Now it’s probable that the older Christian folk in my acquaintance that I referred to at the start of this article would very likely laugh out loud at that dangerous-even-to-listen ‘Trojan horse’ comment. They might well see it and Hawking’s fear of aliens as examples of where “their thinking became futile” (Romans 1:22) and of stumbling about in “deep darkness” (Proverbs 4:19).

However, there is a sinister side to all this which is no laughing matter. One of the factors behind the high percentage of young people believing in the existence of aliens is ‘actual experience’. That is, a significant number of young people either know of someone who has had experience of aliens (described as visitation, or even abduction), or have even had their own first-hand experience—always said to be ‘real’, and often traumatic. Gary Bates’ book, Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection, includes hair-raising examples of such experiences.

But there’s a problem with these ‘visitations’—the aliens are not who they say they are. E.g., there’s not a shred of evidence to support claims of non-human-built spaceships entering and leaving Earth’s precinct, despite decades of around-the-clock radar and other high-tech monitoring by NASA and the like. In fact, Gary Bates has revealed secular endorsements of his view, such as TV’s UFO expert, Nick Redfern. See UFOs are not extraterrestrial!

Discovering who the ‘aliens’ really are

Photo: Gary Bates11868-Joe-Gary
Joe Jordan (left) with CMI’s resident UFO authority, Gary Bates. They have on occasion teamed up at Roswell.

There are some people like UFO researcher Joe Jordan, who are now wise as to who the ‘aliens’ actually are. Joe is the National Research Director for MUFON in South Korea. The Mutual UFO Network is the world’s largest clearing house for UFO investigations and reports. Joe came upon something hugely significant. When trying to figure out what was really happening to people who were claiming to be abducted by aliens, he discovered that ‘abductions’ were being halted by people who called out in the name of Christ. What’s more, people who professed to be practising born-again Christians seemed to be generally immune from such experiences. He soon noticed that many in MUFON were already aware of this, but were ignoring it because it did not fit their belief that such experiences were of an extraterrestrial nature. After being led to a Bible study as part of his research to find out what it was about Christians that “aliens didn’t like”, Joe realized that he was ultimately dealing with a spiritual phenomenon and not an extraterrestrial one—and became a Christian.7

Other people who have also realized the real identity of the ‘aliens’ include Guy Malone who had also experienced alleged ‘alien abductions’. When exposed to the Gospel of Christ, the ‘abduction’ episodes ceased. Guy realized that what he had experienced were in fact spiritual encounters of the ‘ungodly’ kind—fallen angels masquerading as glorious ‘space brothers’.7

Perhaps then for the older generation generally, with its higher proportion of professing Christians compared to younger generations, the concept of ‘alien visitation’ is alien to them because they’ve been sheltered from it by the dominance of Christianity in their era. But for the younger generation, being schooled in evolution opens them to being vulnerable from multiple angles. As we’ve seen from the comments of Stephen Hawking and others, evolutionary teaching predisposes people to belief in the possible existence of aliens—and the concomitant fears arising from that. More fundamentally, evolutionary schooling lessens the likelihood of someone believing in God, therefore depriving them of the ability to clothe themselves in Christ and the demonstrated protection that affords from demonic visitation.

Ideas have consequences. Hawking evolution on to our young people is really doing them an immense disservice, to put it mildly. Thankfully, however, there are abundant creationist resources on this website and beyond to replace in the minds of young people any fear of aliens with the fear of the Lord—“the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10).

As this article ‘goes to press’, Gary Bates and his film crew have just finished filming CMI’s new movie The Alien Intrusion. Gary has ‘chilling’ interviews with several ‘experiencers’ as they reveal the power of the name of Jesus Christ to halt these experiences in their track. For more information and to support this ground-breaking film see ALIEN INTRUSION

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Published: 28 February 2017

References and notes

  1. Bates, G., and Cosner, L., UFOlogy: the world’s fastest-growing ‘scientific’ religion?, 2016; creation.com/ufology. Return to text.
  2. Catchpoole, D., and Bates, G., ET needed evolution, 2016; creation.com/et-evolution. Return to text.
  3. DiGregorio, B., Interview: The alien hunter, New Scientist 199(2674):42–43, September 2008; newscientist.com. Return to text.
  4. Lineweaver, C., ‘If we find ET, don’t talk to it’, says the man who wants to find ET, abc.net.au, accessed February 2017. Return to text.
  5. Charley Lineweaver is a researcher at the School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Research School of Earth Sciences at Australian National University, and is a vocal proponent of evolution. Return to text.
  6. Devlin, H., Stephen Hawking warns against seeking out aliens in new film: Beware responding to signals from far off stars, physicist tells viewers in Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places—a virtual journey across the cosmos, theguardian.com, accessed February 2017. Return to text.
  7. Bates, G., Reaching out at Roswell, 2009; creation.com/roswell-outreach. Return to text.