[PEN-L:33443] extra terrestrial interventions.

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I am disappointed by Melvin's contribution - Re: [PEN-L:33437] Re: Rael:
"atheist, non-profit, spiritual organisation", 

but I suppose it has the merit of illustrating another extra-terrestrial
explanation for the human race and human history. And in a sense all
religious creationist ideas, old or new, are extra-terrestrial.

My stance is that the realm of ideology is important in human society but
that it is fundamentally dependent on the economic base. To invert that
relationship is unwise, IMHO.

I was therefore suggesting that that are economic reasons why an
organisation like that of Rael should emerge and announce the first
cloned human being. 

I would also suggest that the Enuma Elish of ancient Babylon cannot be
understood without reference to the economic material factors that
created ancient Babylon out of the Sumerian society, and the role of
ritual and belief in maintaining the productive relations, that sustained
such a belief system.

As for Zecharia Sitchin, whom I had not encountered
before, there are numerous individuals who reinterpret previous
historical evidence without rigorous reference to serious academic
arguments.

This is the lead review on the Amazon site, despite the fact that Amazon
has a commercial interest in selling the book:


> Amazon.com Zecharia Sitchen's The 12th Planet
> is the starting point on a quest that spans six books and 20 years worth
> of ancient aliens, genetic manipulation, and scrutiny of linguistic
> minutiae. If we trust Sitchen's translation abilities, we must be
> prepared for the imminent return of an alien race who created us some
> 3,600 years ago. The 12th Planet is perhaps the best written of Sitchin's
> Earth Chronicles series; full of example after example of ancient
> Sumerian passages, astronomical observations, archaeological finds, and
> technological coincidences supporting his theories. The price we pay for
> all this evidence is a bit of a dry read at times, but the ideas Sitchin
> proposes are more than scintillating enough to make up for the overtly
> scholastic tone of his text. --Brian Patterson
>
> Book Description Over the years, startling evidence has been unearthed,
> challenging established notions of the origins of Earth and life on it,
> and suggests the existence of a superior race of beings who once
> inhabited our world. The product of thirty years of intensive research,
> THE 12TH PLANET is the first book in Zecharia Sitchin's prophetic Earth
> Chronicles series -- a revolutionary body of work that offers
> indisputable documentary proof of humanity's extraterrestrial
> forefathers.Travelers from the stars, they arrived eons ago, and planted
> the genetic seed that would ultimately blossom into a remarkable
> species...called Man.


Amazon also carries the following review which is not even academically
rigorous, and is from someone who sympathises with this sort of work,
called Christopher D Wojcik's

> hold your horses October 24, 2002 This book
> was entertaining, but Sitchin expouses far too many "theories"
> for one work and presents them as fact. I enjoyed this book, and it does
> make sense if you take what he says at face value. I have a difficult
> time believing these unsourced speculations though. Here we have an
> author who presents his information as if he is 100% right and everyone
> else is wrong, and that's always a red flag.
>
> I don't even want to begin discussing the speculations presented here,
> there are too many to list.
>
> The interesting thing: say Sitchin is right about 10% of the ideas he
> presents here. Should 10% of what he says be proven true, a re-write of
> ancient history would have to be undertaken. Perhaps this is what the
> author had in mind when writing "The 12th Planet"... bombard
> the reader with an informational overload and hope that one or two things
> turn out correct.
>
> Discriminating readers need to take what he says with a grain of salt and
> do some of their own research. If you're not too picky about what or who
> you believe, you'll love this. I will read another in this series because
> I was very entertained by "The 12th Planet", but I was not
> persuaded by his argument.

                              
I am therefore surprised that Melvin takes the opportunity of the
announcement by the Rael organisation of a cloned human as an opportunity
to praise apparently without reservation another advocate of
extra-terrestrial intervention: 

> It is Zecharia Sitchin, whose
> nine books are impeccably researched with breath taking source notes that
> has provided evidence of modern man's non-earth origins.

> Zecharia Sitchin asserts visitors
> from the 12th planet reorganized mankind in two ways, roughly 400,000
> years ago. This date generally correspond with modern research using the
> mitochondria of DNA peculiar to female to trace the emergence of the
> women called Eve to Africa 350,000 years ago. 

The two main period of consideration for an out of Africa theory are
about 1 million years ago and about 100,000 years ago. While there is
some latitude in these dates, a date of 400,000 years ago does not tally
with current scientific consensus about the parameters of the debate and
fails to demonstrate a degree of rigor in linking hypothesis with
evidence.

> In the language of the Marxist
> doctrine, this means that man's evolutionary advance - his qualitative
> emergence to homo-sapien-sapien, did not take place on the basis of the
> discovery of fire or under the impact of environment - population shifts
> driven by climate changes, or as described by the great Frederick Engels
> in his fragment, "The role Labor Played in the transition from Ape
> to Man," but by injecting into the man a qualitative new genetic
> substance, producing an evolutionary leap in the environment that is man.


I see no reason to imply that Engels's broad outline is a doctrine, when
the struggle for material survival infuses the whole amassed history of
evolution. But certainly an extraterrestrial intervention theory, of
whatever sort, is inimical to the sort of evolutionary approach that
Engels described, in a way that punctuated evolution is not.


> Zecharia Sitchin asserts that the
> "Gods" or more accurately the "Lords" and
> "Masters" or Nefilim - "those who fell from above,"
> came to earth seeking gold. This gold was sought for several reasons,
> including its inherent quality as a conductor of electrical current and
> as particles to buttress the outer atmosphere of the 12th planet.

> Depending on ones point of view,
> the above tends to serve as an explanation of why Gold emerged in human
> culture as a "valuable" substance before the rise of commodity
> production and exchange or before the emergence of value in the commodity
> form. 


Extraordinary to give credence to such an explanation of such a largely
useless metal as gold, when there is a very clear explanation in Marx,
linking the emergence of gold and other substances, to the development of
commodity exchange. 

Engels dated the law of value back at least 7,000 years. A broadly
marxist approach is not invalidated by evidence that certain commodities,
eg flint tools, are now known to have been produced systematically in
certain areas of the world as long as 1/2 million years ago presumably
for barter.

The basic question is whether you believe that prehumans could have been
intelligent. They were. We do not need to despise them, or to project
onto some superhuman entities, superhuman intelligense. Prehumans needed
to be intelligent to survive and reproduce in a society in which most of
us would have perished. As indeed all hominid species except one have
perished. The struggle for survival is precarious.

This strange tale of visits by UFO's to a French journalist in 1974, or
the literal meaning of ancient Babylonian or Sumerian texts, are
indistinguishable as afar as I can see, from historical idealism, for all
the concreteness of their metaphors. They are a Deus ex machina. Which is
what all creation myths are.

The problem is a variant of the wider problem. Is the athropic
perspective on the universe and human history just an artefact arising
from the fact that we are looking back and regard our position as
self-evidently uniquely privileged? Or do we think that there was some
sort of predestiny, guided by God, gods, or extra-terrestials, or Fate,
that has brought history to its present point?

For once I would rather address a real material question that Bush is
posing: should the cloning of human beings be banned? This is our
society: we should reappropriate it from forces that claim to be more
intelligent than ordinary men and women, whether they are the owners of
capital, high priests, or extra-terrestrials.  

Chris Burford

London