Talk Deity to Me

*I run the risk of writing something that has been written before, but I plead innocent because I have not seen it with my own eyes.

Science is useful, important, and necessary, like religion. Like religion, it explains our origins and pinpoints our place in the the universe and in the larger scheme of things - evidence of behavior that seeks self-definition. It believes that communication with an intelligent life-form residing somewhere far from here is possible. Some scientifically-oriented minds even believe that these beings possess a wisdom that has exceeded ours, and that they can bring us to a new plain of human understanding; if it walks like a deity and talks like deity, then it must be a deity, even if they are called "aliens." According to Merriam-Webster's Online, the definition of the word "alien" is:

"1 a : belonging or relating to another person, place, or thing : STRANGE,"

"b : relating, belonging, or owing allegiance to another country or government : FOREIGN," or

"2 : differing in nature or character typically to the point of incompatibility."

News to Earth, these types of ideas are typical of religion, and if you were to compare them to religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the "Western religions," have to say about our understanding of Hashem, you would find that they were very similar.

For example, G-d is not of this world, meaning that He does not reside in it in the sense that we do; the world that He has created is a place that cannot contain Him in His purest form. The reason for this is because He is not physical but spiritual, or how philosophy renders it, metaphysical. Jewish teaching, however, has always said that people can make this world a vessel for G-d to reside in, allowing Him to make His Presence felt, by acting in proper moral ways. Definition 1b makes sense only when applying to other humans because of the arrangement, agreement, and bond of love that G-d has with humanity. Definition two is only true to a degree because even though the character and nature of G-d are essentially different than that of humans, we are compatible with Him. These are the parallels between belief in the existence of aliens and the belief in the existence of G-d.


Alienism

However, there is a fundamental difference; those who believe in aliens believe that they are a race, i.e., several, while people who believe in G-d believe that He is One, meaning both in the singular sense and in the sense that He is an inseparable being, and that any level of understanding what He is can only be done through the scope of complete unity. In light of this, we uncover that the belief in aliens actually begins to share more in common with polytheism, belief in many gods, than with monotheism, i.e., belief in G-d. So while it seems accurate at first glance to compare belief in aliens to belief in G-d, it seems more accurate to compare belief in aliens to belief in gods. Recall the post titled, "We Love Tom Cruise - Veneration of Culture," we saw that the images and beliefs in humanity's oldest deities get passed on from generation to generation in different forms; is it possible that aliens are scientific imagination's cutting edge gods? Furthermore, were the "ancients" yesterday finding in various deities what the "contemporaries" are finding in aliens today?

Let us take a little look at the Hebrew language's expression of such concepts. In Hebrew, the word "zar" means "strange" or "foreign," the exact same words in the definition for alien, meaning that "zar" also means "alien." In the Tanakh, the deities of the other nations were described by the adjective "zar," strange or foreign. In modern Hebrew, if something is "muzar," it is a strange or wierd thing, and a "zar" is a stranger. Also in the Torah is the phrase "avodah zarah," which means "strange" or "foreign worship," or in other words, "idolatry" or "polytheism." The word "chai" means life (Le-chayim! To life, or cheers!). A "chay zar" would then be a "strange life form," but in the modern Hebrew it refers to an alien in the sense of a green guy with bug-eyes. In the Hebrew language, and therefore in the Jewish mindset, there is a conceptual corellation between the worship of foreign gods and the belief in aliens. It therefore makes sense that the corellation is unintended because there is no way that three thousand years ago anybody would know that the people of the 21st century would believe in aliens, but rather it is a product of Judaism's similar response to both polytheism and to the preoccupation with aliens.

Another corellation between deities and aliens is the fact that they are so dang appealing, specifically to look at. Aliens look "cool," which is why kids draw them and why people hang their posters up. The deities also look cool, which is undeniably the reason that people were so drawn to them - it is our physical nature as human beings that drew us to gaze our eyes upon them. They are romantic and exotic, and sometimes appeal to our anger, fear, or lust (or all three). The belief in aliens also comes with fear; people believe that aliens want to probe us, to take us away from our homes in the middle night when nobody else can help us. If the aliens are gods, then they are demonic gods, gods that want to harm us - they are "devils." Apparentally, devils can come both from the center of the earth and from the expanse of the sky - but G-d has no physical point of origin, no location, and no destination, He simply is. The ancients believed in deities and the "contemporaries" believe in aliens, time evolving the gods into vastly different beings - but the G-d is not subject to time; what was once true is always true. G-d is appealing, but not appealing in the same way as the deities or the aliens. He cannot be looked at, and therefore His beauty cannot be appreciated by the eyes. He cannot be touched, and therefore He cannot be appreciated by the body. He is not limited to the human imagination, and experiencing G-d, communicating with Him, is felt through living and is both a deeply personal, communal, and ultimately, a universal experience.

If the Jews rejected polytheism, and certain forms of polytheism recycle themselves throughout the ages in different forms, then it only makes sense that Jews would also perpetually reject their contemporary manifestations as they popped up. Suffice it to say that "zar" is never a word that is associated with the belief in Hashem anywhere throughout the Tanakh, Talmud, nor in any rabbinical or philosophical Jewish works; rather, belief in G-d is the norm of human existence. The word "strange" or "foreign" usually comes with connotations of unwantedness, and in some cases negativity. If the same word is used both for deities and for aliens, and if we have already established a philosophical parallel between them, then it would make sense to say that both concepts, polytheism and belief in aliens, are different ways of looking for the same thing - expressions of subjective philosophy.

"What does a philosophy of subjectivism have to do with both dieties and with aliens," you may ask? The answer is that each society believed in dieties that emphasized (and venerated) certain values, whatever values that they deemed important, values that were related to the physical world around them. In doing so, their philosophies and theologies were necessarily as subjective as their particular physical environment. Similarly, the belief in aliens venerates beings that come from other worlds, other solar systems even, and if those beings have civilizations more advanced than ours and teach us their values, then our values are placed into the realm of subjectivity, which leads to relativism. The fact is that aliens have not arrived here yet, but those people who anticipate them await a sort of "Messianic Age" if you will, not that one that establishes a belief in G-d that unites all humanity, but rather, an age that seeks to liberate people from absolute truth. Human liberation from absolute truth, which brings chaos, is the reason why Judaism has always rejected the subjectivity of the gods, and it is the same reason why Judaism today rejects other modes of relativist thought. The transformation of science into a religion, with aliens being cast as gods, is an example of this other-world-oriented attempt to liberate humanity from absolute truth.

The word "chai" means life (Le-chayim! To life, or cheers!). A "chay zar" would then be a "strange life form," but in the modern Hebrew it refers to an alien in the sense of a green guy with bug-eyes. In the Hebrew language, and therefore in the Jewish mindset, there is a conceptual corellation between the worship of foreign gods and the belief in aliens. It is strange to note that the corellation is unintended because there is no way that three thousand years ago anybody would know that the people of the 21st century would believe in aliens, but rather it is a product of Judaism's similar response to both polytheism and to the preoccupation with aliens. If the Jews rejected polytheism, and certain forms of polytheism recycle themselves throughout the ages in different forms, then it only makes sense that Jews would also perpetually reject their contemporary manifestations as they popped up. Suffice it to say that "zar" is never a word that is associated with the belief in Hashem anywhere throughout the Tanakh, Talmud, nor in any rabbinical or philosophical Jewish works; rather, belief in G-d is the norm of human existence.

Throughout all human history, deities have come and deities have gone, but G-d has remained a constant; not exotic but captivating, not exacting but expecting, invisible but imaginable, incomparable to anything that we know of, yet we were made in His likeness.

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* Note: Deities, aliens, demons, vampires, dragons, morbid creatures, and other mythical creatures are all different expressions of these human tendencies. If you pay attention, you will see that sexuality and/or violence is something that they all have in common.