So
here we are, the most cliche way to explain away most supernatural stuffs in science fiction: Aliens.
To be clear, we are not
talking about Xenomorphs from the science fiction Alien movie series, we are
talking about extraterrestrials, beings which originates from another planet,
or solar system, or even another galaxy. There is as of now, no hard concrete
evidence for the existence of aliens. Yet, the Drake equation tells us that it
is highly likely that there are aliens out there, due to the vast number of
stars out there and the discovery that exoplanets (planets outside our solar
system) are pretty common.
A lot of aliens in
popular science fiction are outlandish, like Superman being given so much power
in the comics, just because he is an alien. The strategy employed here will be
what Marvel did to Thor, cast gods as aliens. As Arthur C. Clark said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic.” Just think of what would our ancestor think of us if we were to go
back in time say five hundred years ago, before classical physics had started
and showed them cars, air planes, air conditioners, and whole library of books
and hours of music stored inside that little computer we call smart-phones.
With antibiotics to cure the common sickness, knowledge of modern science,
medicine, technology, we will seem like gods or angels to them.
With the pace of
technological progress improving at an exponential rate, it is not difficult to
imagine that we would be similarly surprised by a visit from our decedents just
100 years from now. The universe as we know it is 13.7 billion years old, with
our solar system at least five billion years old. There are plenty of time for
other beings to develop on other planets, build their civilisation and
transcend into technological godhood even before humans evolved. So really,
this is very real possibility being discussed here, even if the match later on
might not fulfil what Buddhism had said about gods, these aliens can be
classified as other humans, or asura too. Asura is sort of a titan, fallen
angel, lower class deities who had wars with the devas and had lost.
Here, we base the
technology of gods as aliens on possible future human technology eg.
Bioengineering, atomic manipulation, quantum-brain interfaces etc. I am not
going into ancient aliens hypothesis, which says aliens may have visited earth,
helped build civilisation, and then worshipped as gods. Although, roughly this
is what it would have mean if gods really are aliens, but the role of gods in
Buddhism is not as central as in most mythology, so I do not really mind if
ancient aliens turn out to be wrong. What I am going to focus on is the
possibility to fit the technology to gods as described and leave the possible
experimental verification or rejection to future space travellers.
First an introduction to
Drake equation.
The number of
civilisation in our Galaxy which we can communicate via radio signals equals
the product of the following factors:
●
The
rate at which our Galaxy produces stars per year
●
The
fraction of starts with planetary systems
●
The
average number of planets per star
●
The
fraction of earth-like planets (or planets suitable for life)
●
The
fraction of earth-like planets which life actually develops
●
The
fraction of planets which life develops of which intelligent civilisation arise
●
The
fraction of intelligent civilisations of which technological civilisation arise
(dolphins are intelligent too, but not technological)
●
Lifetime
of a civilisation in years
Most of these factors
are unknown and subject to estimations, with perhaps the biggest question is
how long can technological civilisation last? Some of the dangers for our
civilisation which we face now are nuclear war, global warming, global deadly
pandemic, maybe even artificial intelligence uprising! Some thinks that innate
aggression maybe the doom for intelligent species everywhere. This is where it
is useful to posit that the gods require virtue to become part of them so as to
preserve their civilisation.
Some had speculated that
other aliens had moved beyond the range of electromagnetic waves for
communication, just that we are so backwards technologically, they see our
attempts at communication is like lighting a fire, hoping the smoke can reach
the other side of the globe. It might be that they had evolved to go beyond the
electromagnetic waves and hide inside dark matter (of which we only know that
dark matter exerts gravitational effects on our galaxy, making it rotate fast
enough to preserve its shape, other than that data, we have no idea what dark
matter is, or can be), so they are effectively invisible to us.
Alright, so here are the
ten checklist to tick for our gods as aliens speculation.
1.
Spontaneous rebirth: I was thinking of cloning as a valid form of
spontaneous rebirth as they technically have no parents, or maybe have
genetically engineered DNA, but I was pointed out that the cloned cells need to
grow in a womb too, so it should be considered womb born even if the womb is an
artificial glass tube with fluid in it. So I will resort to spontaneous rebirth
of aliens as gods from the random radiation from Hawking radiation near a small
primordial black hole. It is kind of like Peter Quail’s dad, Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.
Ego did indeed call himself the celestial and have awesome god powers. These
first aliens would develop technology to harness the primordial black holes to
efficiently produce gods, then populate the rest of the universe using the
instant travel technology.
There is
another alternative, commonly ascribed to uber powered persons in science
fiction: manipulation of atoms and molecules with mind. Perhaps there are a few
you may have seen with this power in popular culture: Sandman, Hydroman the
enemies of Spiderman; Apocalypse, the enemy of the X-Men; Molecule Man in the
Marvel Universe, featured in Agents of Shield; Norma Cenva from the Prequels to
Dune [1] ; Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. With this power, one can
instantly repair one’s
body from any damage, if the power is extended to beyond one’s own body, it can
be used for destructive and creative purposes too. A simple spontaneous rebirth
is trivial to them. Technologically speaking, this power might not be too
outrageous after all. We now have brain wave scanning technology, so toys like
using the mind to Jedi force lift a ping pong ball is possible by connecting
the readings of brain waves to electronic components. We also have the
technology to manipulate individual atoms now, although right now it involves
highly expensive and sophisticated machinery, in time and with economic
incentive, it will shrink down and be linked to the brain wave controlled
controller.
2.
Invisible, but can reveal themselves, or be seen via divine eye:
They might be invisible because they are living on another planet and only
reveal themselves when teleported here. Or the simplest option is to use an
invisibility cloak as described in the previous section. As to how each level of
gods can see the lower levels below them, but not higher, we can use different
levels of cloaking, the better levels of cloaking device would cloak more of
the electromagnetic wavelength compared to the lower levels ones the gods of
higher levels can see more of the electromagnetic spectrum compared to the
lower ones as well.
3.
Blissful, but not end of suffering: An alien Utopian economy lead
to the instant gratification of all material wishes. Not only they have the
instant gratification from the internet as we have now, they had eliminated
poverty, disease (consistent with living long), most other course form of
suffering. However, war apparently is not eliminated as it is recorded in the
suttas that wars happen between the devas and asuras (roughly speaking Titans,
they are god-like beings in terms of power, but more jealous and angry in
nature, so the fantasy equivalent of devils, demons and so forth). [2]
They also
should have the superior technology to create matter replicator as seen in Star
Trek. The matter replicator is an advanced form of 3D printer, wherein all
materials can be replicated, including food. So there is no longer any hunger,
thirst, clean water problems, etc. Yet of course, the gods are liable to die
and those who are not enlightened are still due to reborn and suffer.
4.
Long life: It would not be too difficult for a technologically
advanced race of aliens to develop life lengthening technology. If they are
biologically based, then we can speculate that they had mastered the cure for
cancer and even use telomerase for the purpose of making their cells immortal
in a controlled way, thus making them nearly immortal. They can also have nanorobots
which repairs their body whenever there is damage, so effectively making them
superfast healers like Wolverine. For the time slowing down effect, the next
chapter, relativity of time will deal with it.
5.
Many levels: The weakness of the alien as gods is that the
division of the levels are more arbitrary and fluid than hard lines of
division. Since if the best technology is available, why not make all gods live
the longest possible? Why separate the levels according to the levels of merits
they had obtained previously? One possible answer is from looking at our own
world, why have class division between rich and poor? Why must poor people die
if they happen to have no good access to expensive medicine required to cure
them? An ideological choice of capitalism and the believe in a just world
(people deserve what they get) is the answer. So if someone is poor, it is
because they were lazy, or have bad financial education and sense, or because
of their kamma. However, this does not mean the poor should not be helped.
Maybe the structure in heavens reflect the structure of our human world. If we
manage to one day switch to a communism based economy, which is no money,
robots do all the jobs and provide all the resources and humans just take what
they need and practise contentment, maybe the structure of heavens would be
more equalised as well.
6.
Superior powers, but limited knowledge: By definition,
technologically advanced aliens have superior technological powers over humans,
but their knowledge is likely to be limited by their own progress of scientific
findings as well. Their powers can also be genetically designed by their
mastery over genetic engineering. They might be able to even alter their genes
while still alive and give upgrades to themselves, including possibly
biological invisibility. Blissfulness which comes from physical beauty and
attraction would be no problem for these beings as well.
7.
Virtuous conduct needed to be reborn here: Looking at it
sociologically, an technologically advanced civilisation would risk destroying
itself if not all of the members are virtuous. If the gods as aliens has
mastered how to selectively select people for rebirth into their ranks, they
would naturally select those who had done good deeds to have the best chance of
maintaining harmony in their civilisation.
8.
Powers of instant travelling: This would assume the laws of
physics would allow instant travelling, or at least have exotic matter which
can stabilise wormholes. Technologically advanced aliens would have mastered
the technology until each of them would be able to wear a small device which
can open up wormholes or connect to existing wormholes and travel through it,
possibly either by making the wormhole temporarily big enough for the gods to go
through or by transmitting the body via quantum teleportation, with the
wormholes carrying the classical signals required to complete the
teleportation. There is an additional uncertainty if the mind can follow the
body in teleportation. Or if the destruction phase of teleportation means the
living being to be teleported dies and if no other mind gets into the newly
constructed body, that body would die too. So it is safer to bet on enlarging
wormholes. It may become like the old days of wired telephone network, with the
device acting like a mobile device, so that at any place, using the instant
travelling machine, one can choose to connect to any other place in the
universe and appear there.
Granted,
such a busy telephone network of wormholes is sure to be hard to maintain or
even be set up in the first place, so maybe a deeper look into the speculative
non-locality of quantum gravity can help. In George Musser’s Spooky Action at a Distance, he surveyed some
ideas about non-locality found in some quantum gravity formulation. First off,
there is the conflict between general relativity and quantum physics about the
fundamental structure of space and time, are spacetime fundamental with nothing
else making them, or are they emergent from smaller units of fundamental
stuffs? Loop quantum gravity uses loops as the fundamental component from which
space time can emerge. Their loops are not situated in space or time, events
can happen on the loops. It is the relationship between the loops, which ones
are adjacent to another which makes the connection between events becomes the
relationship normally described in space and time. So while most connection
serves to produce the spacetime structure we normally see, there can be
connections between loops which in spacetime terms are far away from each
other. This might be the way for these technologically advanced beings to use
these connections to travel instantly. All these are pretty speculative
however, without any picture of how quantum gravity works, we cannot even begin
to address if such kind of travel is possible in that theory or if possible how
to do it. Wormholes seems much more concrete in comparison especially with some
possible hope that exotic matter can be produced after all [3] .
Another
possibility is that the mind is not anchored to a physical body and a location
in space and time, thus the information inside the mind is free to roam around
the universe, if one can learn astral travel or meditate until that stage, or
evolved to an advanced intelligence stage which shows that this is possible. If
so, then quantum teleportation can proceed instantaneously, using the mind as
the carrier of the classical information needed to the target location.
9.
Luminous light shining forth from them: This can be fulfilled by
bioluminescence, with genetic engineering mastered, this is no problem. The
intensity of the light can be made such that it is dependent on how much merit
the being had done in the past life as a sort of reward for them.
Alternatively, they can be assigned wardrobes which has LED lights attached to
it as a reward for their wholesome deeds.
10.
One for each world: So far this is the biggest stumbling block for
the strength of positing that gods are aliens. The main strength of assuming
gods are aliens is that the universe is so vast, surely some civilisation of
aliens has achieved technological superiority and somehow fulfil our list of
gods criterion. If each solar system has to have their own set of gods, then
the most natural aliens to form gods would be aliens from other planets of the
solar system. While so far we have some hope for Mars having ancient lifeforms
when it was habitable in the past and for the moon of Saturn called Europa to
have aliens forming in an ocean of methane [4] , we have no positive confirmation that life began
elsewhere in our solar system yet. Even if it did, it is unlikely that they
will be able to become technologically superior aliens to be known as gods,
seeing as only earth is within the habitable zone of the solar system, so there
is little chance for aliens from other places in the solar system to evolve
into complex, intelligent, technological civilisations.
However, we
can speculate that if other aliens develop elsewhere proceed to develop into
technological gods, they might easily colonise the whole galaxy and even
universe with their powers of instant travelling and superior knowledge. With
their long life and existing in a slower rate of time passage, they might even
view the process of evolution and formation of civilisation of humans as a
hobby or experiment!
Comments on
Agganna sutta if gods are aliens: there are speculations that life comes from
outer space, so if this possibility turns out true, we may accept Agganna sutta
after all and map gods as single celled alien lifeforms. A quick mapping to the
ten characteristics above:
1.
Spontaneous rebirth: Cell division
2.
Invisible, but can reveal themselves, or be seen via divine eye:
too small to be seen, may have some superbrain in their small cells to project
holograms when want to be seen.
3.
Blissful, but not end of suffering: No pain receptor in the cells?
4.
Long life: override the biological pathway for cell death.
5.
Many levels: Many levels of evolutions to become humans, mapping
the evolution closest to single celled as highest gods.
6.
Superior powers, but limited knowledge: The superbrain in the
cells allows them to have superior technological powers.
7.
Virtuous conduct needed to be reborn here: No comment.
8.
Powers of instant travelling: The wormhole need not open so big
for the gods to travel through.
9.
Luminous light shining forth from them: Bioluminescence, also they
are so small, light passes though them easily.
10.
One for each world: Somehow, via the process of asteroid
travelling across the stars, single celled lifeforms seeds the world, or they
deliberately do this with their instant travelling powers.
Potential
experimental verification: If we ever meet an alien some day, then we may
compare their characteristics with the gods. Many Buddhists speculates that
aliens will be of the human level in terms of the 31 realms of existence, that
they do not always feel blissful, but can feel suffering and happiness in a
mixture measure much like us. Or the universe may really be empty of aliens
except for us, thus gods are not aliens, to verify this however we need to
visit every star and every planet and collect the whole information in one
place. If instant travelling is not invented, the task is futile and there can
always be someone who can keep the hope of aliens existing alive.
To recap,
here are some of the scores of likelihood for aliens as gods, this is entirely
personal score, so feel free to assign your own score. Score is from 0-100, 0
means impossible, 100 means sure to happen. The score is evaluated as if we
find aliens some day, how likely they are to have or obtain these
characteristics?
1.
Spontaneous rebirth: 79%
2.
Invisible, but can reveal themselves, or be seen via divine eye:
99%
3.
Blissful, but not end of suffering: 98%
4.
Long life: 99%
5.
Many levels: 89%
6.
Superior powers, but limited knowledge: 99%
7.
Virtuous conduct needed to be reborn here: 89%
8.
Powers of instant travelling: 69%
9.
Luminous light shining forth from them: 99%
10.
One for each world: 50%
Total possibility (product of all ten scores
after converting them to probabilities): 20.32%. Possible, but it is rather a
continuous range of life than a discrete one. Also this assumes technology of
instant travelling and spontaneous rebirth, no small feat.
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