Extraterrestrial life

"Some contend that encountering a highly advanced civilization - even one whose technology is essentially comprehensible to us - would produce a traumatic cultural shock effect on man by divesting him of his smug ethnocentrism and shattering the delusion that he is the center of the universe. Carl Jung summed up this position when he wrote of contact with advanced extra terrestrial life that the "reins would be torn from our hands and we would, as a tearful old medicine man once said to me, find ourselves without dreams...we would find out intellectual and spiritual aspirations so outmoded as to leave us completely paralyzed. I personally dont accept this position, but its one thats widely held and cant be summarily dismissed."

"Man knows at last that he is alone in the indifferent immensity of the universe, whence which he has emerged by chance."

"Across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts of the jungle - intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic - regard this Earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely draw their plans against us..."

"Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul."

"Why would a vastly superior race bother to harm or destroy us? If an intelligent ant suddenly traced a message in the sand at my feet reading, "I am sentient,; lets talk things over," I doubt very much that I would rush to grind him under my heel. Even if they werent super intelligent, though, but merely more advanced than mankind, I would tend to lean more toward benevolence, or at least indifference, theory. Since its most unlikely that we would be visited from within our own solar system, any society capable of transversing light-years of space would have to have an extremely high degree of control over matter and energy. Therefore, what possible motivation for hostility would they have? To steal our gold or oil or coal? Its hard to think of any nasty intention that would justify the long and arduous journey from another star."

"I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?"

"As all regions below are replenished with living creatures... so may the heavens above be replenished with beings whose nature we do not understand. He that shall well consider the strange and wonderful nature of life and the frame of the Animals, will think nothing beyond the possibility of nature, nothing too hard for the omnipotent power of God. And as the Planets remain in their orbs, so may any other bodies subsist at any distance from the earth, and much more may beings, who have sufficient power of self motion, move whether they will, and continue in any regions of the heavens whatever, there to enjoy the society of one another, and by their messengers or Angels to rule the earth and convers with the remotest regions. Thus may the whole heavens or any part thereof whatever be the habitation of the Blessed, and at the same time the earth be subject to their dominion. And to have thus the liberty and dominion of the whole heavens and the choice of the happiest places for abode seems a greater happiness than to be confined to any one place whatever."

"But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited? … Are we or they Lords of the World? … And how are all things made for man?"

"Star Trek offers an almost infinite number of exciting Science Fiction stories, thoroughly practical for television? How? Astronomers put it this way:"

"They stared at each other, man and alien, or more correctly alien and alien—for this is what they were to each other. Alien meaning different, alien meaning unknown."

"Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of flying saucers. While we need not give credence to these stories, they allow our imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space would judge us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct. They would observe that for death planning we spend billions to create engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally, they would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our planet. Our visitors from outer space could be forgiven if they reported home that our planet is inhabited by a race of insane men whose future is bleak and uncertain."

"If, for example, tomorrow an expedition of Martians came to us here and one said ‘I want to be baptised!’, what would happen? Martians, right? Green, with long noses and big ears, like in children’s drawings? When the Lord shows us the way, who are we to say, ‘No, Lord, it is not prudent! No, lets do it this way’. Who are we to close doors?"