Being, Ontology, and Angelic Aliens

I woke this morning with the question of Angelic Aliens on my mind. It is an unfortunate yet all too common occurrence that we do not work out the implications of our most strongly held beliefs. I am not going to let that happen to me. I will crack the nut we call the question of Angelic Aliens, or at least lead other thinkers, whose intellects are more powerful than mine, down the right path toward knowledge.

Let’s start with the facts, what we already know about Aliens. Their bodies are skinny and hairless. Their heads are too large for their bodies. Except for their large bright eyes, their ears, noses, and mouths are underdeveloped. They have no genitalia. They are always naked. They seem cuddly or icky depending upon our mood.

As thinkers do we not owe it to ourselves to generate preliminary hypotheses and make some preliminary inferences about these beings? Are our statements, “The Truth Is Out There”, “I Want to Believe”, and “My Belief Is Faith Based”, merely idle slogans or are they the calls to action we claim them to be? Are we hypocrites and shirkers or are we thinkers who are not afraid to follow the Truth wherever it might lead us?

I will hazard some inferences. Beings without genitalia reproduce using advanced biotechnology (they no longer have need for the old in and out). Beings with underdeveloped sensory organs use brain implants to stimulate sensation, pleasure, and happiness. Brain implants also explain why they are always naked. The implants regulate their body temperatures at all times and in any kind of weather. As for the big eyes, we know the eyes are the windows to the soul. Aliens have big eyes so that they may show off their souls to the more voyeuristic of us.

I freely admit I have opened myself to the Michael Jackson Fallacy in my conjectures and arguments. Aliens could merely be the victims of awful plastic surgery. We are exposed to the most extreme cases, Aliens banished from their mother planets because they just don’t look right at all.

Let us leave our scientific hypotheses behind for the moment and turn toward other issues for the liberal arts. A few preliminary questions and remarks will elucidate the enormity and immediacy of the issues.

When a Space Alien lands in a country, is that Alien an illegal alien? If they want to permanently reside in a country, what is the naturalization process for them.

What about all this reproduction without sex? What does scripture have to say about it? If a human wants to marry an Alien, should we allow it? Are Alien stem cells appropriate for stem cell research?

Do we need yet another category for our gender studies, the neuter, that is? Since Aliens are so darned smart, shouldn’t we create affirmative action programs for humans for all the cool jobs, such as CEO, so that Aliens don’t completely take over all those jobs and start running the country?

Should we allow Aliens to attend our elite colleges just so they can go to the keggers, for we know they will get perfect scores on their SAT’s and make a mockery of our current knowledge in the classrooms?

Should we create new States for them to live in, States neither blue nor red, but something like yellow or orange? How many electoral votes will they be allowed since they are already privileged?

Should we introduce Alien advanced neurological technology to humans? If we implant happiness do-dads in everyone’s brain, who is going to whine on the blogosphere?

Should we allow Aliens to run around naked all the time? Is this not pornographic? What will be the effect on our children?

Are Aliens evolved or intelligently designed? Do they become Angels when they die if they have been good and devout believers? If they are banished to Hell after they die, are they not smart enough to outwit Satan and make a Paradise of it? And what’s so great about Heaven to Aliens since they already have it so good no matter where they go?

Aliens call into question all our most entrenched beliefs, even about Being itself. Aliens assault all our conceptions about philosophy, politics, economics, theology, science, and culture. Of course, there will always be those who want to stick their heads in the sand and say, “this is not really happening.” Real thinkers will not do this. What appear as conundrums and paradoxes to many, will appear as opportunities to those in the vanguard of thinking. Nothing has been lost yet, but all might be lost if we in the vanguard do not prepare ourselves for a future that seems as alien to us as the Aliens that inhabit it.

The time to think is now. The time to act is later. “Never make a decision unless you have to,” is still relevant operating procedure, but let’s not depend on that entirely.

I know what many of you in the intellectual vanguard are saying, “Lynn, this is like a big pop quiz on material we never covered in class. And we have not even started to discuss the Angelic part.”

To which I reply, “welcome to my world, the world of reality on the frontier of human thought.”