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Post by mongoose on Jul 17, 2008 21:00:01 GMT -5
If someone invades your territory, claiming to be of the same faith as you, and you know that your faith preaches/teaches/practices living at peace with all, do you believe them? I'm trying to think of examples from our history. I suppose the British invasion of Ireland would be one, or when Iraq and Iran went to war. Granted, Islam doesn't preach peace to the same extent that Christianity does, but I doubt that the Iranians considered the Iraqis to be true Muslims, and vice versus.
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Post by torainfor on Jul 17, 2008 22:36:39 GMT -5
I can't speak to the geo-political reasons England felt the need to invade Ireland on a regular basis, but I can say that England didn't think it was the same religion as Ireland. The first blow up, England was Catholic and Ireland was pagan. ("Oh, mighty twig!" Sorry, Veggie Tales flashback.) The second go-round, England was Anglican/sorta Protestant and Ireland was Catholic.
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Post by mongoose on Jul 18, 2008 1:30:17 GMT -5
If we're trying to figure out how we on earth would feel if invaded, we'd have to look at it from Ireland's perspective, as they were the people being conquered. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure the Irish, though Christian by the time of the first English invasion, did not believe the English to be Christian. Would you, as they steal your land and slaughter a third of your population and attempt to force you to abandon your culture and become "civilized?"
We in America have only experienced invasion once, that I know of, though we often invade other nations for reasons more or less just. I wonder how we would feel if a militarily superior foe landed on our shores and began to occupy. What would we do? What would history say of them? Of us? Would we be like Afghanistan under the invasion of the Russians, or like North Viet Nam under the invasion of the U.S.? I somehow doubt that we would cave as easily as Iraq did under invasion by the U.S. but I continue to wonder.
In terms of science fiction, whenever there's an alien invasion the humans of Earth are so courageous and un-daunted, willing to fight to the death of the last man rather than submit to rule by outsiders, and always come up with an innovative solution to the problem within the first few days of the crisis. I have yet to hear of, view, or read a story in which the initial alien invasion/occupation is successful, and the earthlings are forced into an underground, low intensity conflict struggle to regain their freedom or kick out the aliens. I'd like to see that, as well as some of these other ideas that have been posted.
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Jul 18, 2008 7:28:26 GMT -5
As we've noted, our planet has already seen multiple invasions and conquests--by humans against humans. My guess is that each reaction we've seen played out in our history would be possible in an alien invasion scenario--depending on how the invaders carried out the invasion.
I think of the Welsh and their fierce resistance and nationalism against the English in the Middle Ages. What a pesky group they were to the English. The Scots were like this, too. Perhaps in an alien invasion, we would be the thorn in the aliens' side.
Then on the other extreme you've got the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as has been mentioned. The invaders were so thorough and militarily superior that the whole thing was over in a week. That would be possible in an alien invasion of Earth, I'd think.
You've got the European conquest of the native populations of North America. That was a long, slow conquest. This might be a pretty good indicator of an alien invasion because different tribes resisted differently based on their own traditions, etc. The natives made some adaptations to use the invaders' own technology against them and sometimes even helped the invaders against other native populations. The end result for Earth's population might be "reservations" and the other outcomes we see here, but there was much fierce pride exhibited by the native populations before that end was achieved.
The Vietnam example is a good one: you may conquer us in face-to-face conflicts, so we'll not offer those for you. We know this land better than you. We'll pop up and strike you in ways that nullify your superior armaments and technology.
We've got the conquests at the close of the Old Testament period. Almost all foreign powers were greater than Israel. If anyone wanted to invade and conquer, they could--especially when the people were living in idolatry. Sometimes the people were killed, sometimes they were enslaved, sometimes they were transplanted to foreign lands. They were virtually always at the mercy of these greater powers during this period.
The modern conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq is interesting in this discussion. The native populations and power structures were defeated relatively quickly. But in the pause after the main fighting ended, foreign fighters flooded in to oppose the invaders and occupiers. I wonder if that would happen in an alien invasion scenario. Maybe Earth's population would be defeated quickly, but then freedom fighters from other worlds might show up to throw off the invaders.
I guess my point is that any historical pattern we've seen in invasions would be possible in an alien invasion situation. There might be others, too, unprecedented in our history. But I think we've got enough striking models to work with in our own history that the novelist of such a story would not have nothing to draw from.
Jeff
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Post by Spokane Flyboy on Jul 18, 2008 15:56:26 GMT -5
I have yet to hear of, view, or read a story in which the initial alien invasion/occupation is successful, and the earthlings are forced into an underground, low intensity conflict struggle to regain their freedom or kick out the aliens. I'd like to see that, as well as some of these other ideas that have been posted. As much as I hate to bring it up, this was sort of touched by Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth. I hate to bring it up both for it's Scientology viewpoint and for the movie that was rather painful to sit through, but it does deal with an alien invasion that reduces humanity to small tribal groups to the point that all history of the great civilizations of humankind are nothing but myths and legends to the tribes. I also, at one point, had scrawling of scenes, as well as an initial journal entry from a fictional character, from such a setting where alien invaders had taken humanity by surprise and forced them into hiding in make shift underground city structures. They were almost like archeologies. The premise was that humanity had finally done what was once thought impossible, became a world government and they had all agreed to disarm, destroyed all their tanks, all their fighters and bombers, all their naval fleets, etc. And the plans for such devices destroyed. There would be no one to fight anymore. Then comes an alien force that really isn't that far superior to us other than on the front of space travel who takes advantage of humanities newly created weakness (after all, they'd been spying and probing us for centuries looking for one to exploit until this one cropped up). This idea was actually sparked in my head by an argument I had with someone who believed the world would be a safer, friendlier place if the US didn't have a military.
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Post by scintor on Jul 18, 2008 20:16:09 GMT -5
I can think of several other outcomes from history. Both the Manchurian and the Mongolian invasions od China led to them just taking over for the ruling Chinese Emperor and eventually becoming more or less culturally absorbed by the Chinese. Same thing happened to the Normans that conquered England and Sicily.
Simular to this is just taking off the top layer of the aristocracy and replacing them with your own people and just leaving everything to be run as buisness as usual.
Something that is not common now but was very common in antiquity was the tributary state. If a national army was defeated, the ruilers would offer a ransome to get the conquering army to leave and pay annual sums to keep them from attacking again.
Then you have the Brittish system in which they would set up one minority population as the ruling group because they can only maintain power with Brittish help.
Another historical system that is no longer seen much, but was once very common was parallel governments. Often in outlying and frontier areas, you would have settlements from several peoples within the same area. Each settlement would be loyal to their own people, and would be considered part of that nation. Such arrangements could last for centuries.
Well, that's all I can think of for now
Scincerely,
Scintor@aol.com
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Post by newburydave on Jul 19, 2008 17:42:32 GMT -5
I think that we need to get the theology about Aliens straight before we go off making stories. First there is the question of are the aliens fallen creatures like we are ? This has some far reaching implications: 1) If they are as the result of Adam's sin then they would be as corrupt and warlike as we are. (Remember war is one of the primary results of the sin nature. The violence that filled the earth was the reason for Noah's flood and the first visit of Nemesis ;D) If they are fallen in Adam then evangelization would be mandated by the atonement since those who partake of the curse of Adam's sin have need of the remedy for Adam's sin. So tally ho to galactic missions activities. And I suppose the evil alien invasion thing has some credence. 2) If they are not fallen (as I assume in my universe) then they are potentially a remnant of the original pure creation and they would not be hostile or warlike. This is C.S.Lewis' Perelandra option or the "The Day the World Stood Still" scenario. Unless the effects of the fall on earth had dire consequences on other planets or the fallen angels were able to tempt them to evil like Lucifer did with Adam and Eve (which introduces another level of complexity) this would kind of make an invasion not an invasion as we would know it from our bloody sin cursed history. This is a plot issue that I am wrestling with in my Guardianship Universe. A couple of my races are definitely warriors with a warrior tradition. How do I explain that in non-fallen races? 3) And most troubling to my tiny mind is the assertion that earth is not the center of God's universal Plans. Jesus came and died on earth to seek his Bride from us. I don't know how an alien centric universe would square with the gospel accounts and the millennial accounts like the New Jerusalem. The whole alien centric idea strikes me as sort of a more materialistic evolutionary based way of thinking. As I said I am struggling with some of these issues myself in creating my Guardianship Universe so I don't have any dogmatic answers. But do think that we need to answer these questions explicitly before we go off imagineering too far into the night.
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Post by Divides the Waters on Jul 19, 2008 19:47:25 GMT -5
This is a plot issue that I am wrestling with in my Guardianship Universe. A couple of my races are definitely warriors with a warrior tradition. How do I explain that in non-fallen races? Easy. You need warriors to counter warlike activity. If only creatures of violence knew how to make war, then soon they would rule the universe. (There's a lesson in there somewhere.) I don't pretend to know what goes on in the spiritual realm as far as battles go, but I imagine that similar rules apply. I highly doubt that unfallen angelic beings simply sit by and watch while fallen ones do their nasty business.
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Post by myrthman on Jul 19, 2008 20:41:46 GMT -5
Three scriptures are coming to mind right now:
1. "Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34, AMP)
2. "And from the days of John the Baptist until the present time, the kingdom of heaven has endured violent assault, and violent men seize it by force [as a precious prize--a share in the heavenly kingdom is sought with most ardent zeal and intense exertion]." (Matthew 11:12, AMP)
3. For [even the whole] creation (all nature) waits expectantly and longs earnestly for God's sons to be made known [waits for the revealing, the disclosing of their sonship]. (Romans 8:19, AMP)
And then there's John's vision of Christ in the first chapter of Revelation. Not a cuddly pink (or brown) baby in a manger!
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." I've always understood "earth" to include more than just the rock and magma beneath our feet but anything and everything in the physical realm, which would include Sol, its planets and asteroids, and anything beyond. If it didn't, we could theoretically build a spaceship and fly it to a perfect place in the universe where Heaven is. That is definitely not a grace-by-faith theology; it's an entirely possible, albeit improbable, method of achieving Heaven by works. The Bible is clear that this is not possible.
Therefore, since the "earth" includes all nebulae, stars, and planets that we know about and those we don't, all of it is cursed as a result of Adam's sin. No matter how beautiful and spectacular photographs by the Hubble Telescope of distant space objects are, they are still beautiful and spectacular photographs of creation in a fallen state. Imagine what it was like before Adam fell! Anyway, cursed planets demand cursed inhabitants, at least for the sake of our story ideas (I don't know where I stand on the issue IRL; the Bible is not explicit either way). Those cursed inhabitants would need a Redeemer just like the ones that live on Terra Firma. Sounds like a good reason to head to the stars (or for them to head our way)!
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Post by Divides the Waters on Jul 20, 2008 0:48:09 GMT -5
Actually, if I remember correctly, Paul says that man's sin brought death to the cosmos (original Greek), and that all of creation groans and travails in pain. So your interpretation is legit there, Myrthman.
The notion of having unfallen beings meeting fallen ones is still intriguing, though; I've thought it would be interesting to do a story about a planet where man is not welcome, because he brings death wherever he goes. Not in the traditional self-hating PC sense of war and death, but just the natural side effects of the original curse. It would be kind of like bringing someone with the ebola virus into a clean room....
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Post by mongoose on Jul 20, 2008 16:49:38 GMT -5
If nothing else, the alien-centric thing can get us mentally off of ourselves. I forget the psychological term for it (nation-centric?), but we tend to think we're all that, we're favored by God, we're his new chosen people, the center of the universe, whatever. We're pretty egotistical, and that egotism focuses around our culture, or our nationality, or our denomination, or whatever group we consider ourselves a part of.
How does it feel to back off and take a subordinate position or a back seat to someone else? What if America were not the superpower? What if the Earth were not the most advanced, whether technologically, psychologically, morally, mentally, or whatever? It changes things and puts them in perspective, and that's why I want to read such stories. Not stories of other people being persecuted or downtrodden, but stories of us having to submit to superior forces and deal with occupation thereby.
To make it believable, those forces would have to be from off world just because of how militarily superior the U.S. currently is.
I believe there are genetic and cultural reasons that this has become the case, and will remain so into the future. I heard from a reliable source that studies have shown a correlation between the greater number of people with the risk taking gene, and a greater number of people with ADHD here in America than in Europe, or something to that effect. It makes sense. After all, it takes a willingness to risk your life to pick up and move to a frontier when you could be assured a continued life as a peasant or whatever in the mother country. Those with the gene to do so are more likely to take that risk, and thus their children. America has succeeded technologically, militarily, economically etc. because its people take risks.
That taking of risks was such a common characteristic that it became a stereotype that we adopted for ourselves. In Jules Vern's novel "Around The World In 80 Days" (great speculative fiction author, IMHO) his lead character, a brit, comments derisively on the yanky pre-disposition to take unnecessary risks. As a result of one of those risks the train is able to jump a narrow canyon with a broken bridge, or some such.
So the tendency to take risks is built into our culture and our genes. We take those risks in war against opponents who play it safe, and we prevail. That is why I can't believe a story of China, Russia, or some other nation with the risk taking tendency posing a credible military threat to us. We need aliens who don't give up and go away as soon as we destroy a couple of their mother ships for that threat.
If the aliens are a peaceful people coming to evangelize us, God having worked out some kind of redemption for them in their own galaxy or whatever, we're faced with the same necessity of recognizing our relative lack of greatness. No longer has God chosen us alone, singled us out for some kind of special treatment. We are just one of many of His chosen peoples. I think it would require a sort of increased humility to give that any serious consideration, and humility is called for by God while egotism is despised.
An evangelist from a very successful movement in Africa (I'm talking tens of thousands of people in any one of his many churches that he's planted around the world) told us a story of a time he spent with God once. God told him to go outside the camp, and he obeyed. Then he was instructed to bend down and draw a stick figure in the sand, and he obeyed. Next, he had to stand up and rub out the figure with his foot. God said to him, "Just as you did with that stick figure, I will do with you the moment you take credit for what I've done here."
Let us be careful not to take credit for what God has done, and not to assume that he will continue to give us whatever favor He has up to this point (genes and culture aside.)
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Post by newburydave on Jul 20, 2008 18:29:54 GMT -5
Mongoose
From what I have read the Chinese are the culture in the world who are the most like we US Americans. I think that they could take us now that they have the same weapons tech that we do. They almost did during the Korean war with hardly any weapons, just a lot of people and gritty self sacrifice. Remember it was the Chinese who were the only force in the history of the US that made the US Marines have to (ahem) attack in a different direction.
It seems to me that my questions about fallen vs un-fallen races remains unanswered. If alien races are moral beings then how can they be condemned under the condemnation of Adam.
In Lewis Perelandra trilogy (the original Christian Sci Fi I think) the Martians were un-fallen but their planet was blasted to a ruin by the actions of the Angel of Earth (Lucifer/Satan), The Venusians were still in Eden and just coming up to temptation. The protagonist helped the Venusian Eve resist temptation so they didn't fall.
I just can't get over all the statements and allegory in the Gospels and the Revelation that speak of the human saints from earth being the ones chosen to be the Bride of Christ. We are made in the image and glory of God after all just as Eve was made in the image and glory of man.
And just what is wrong after all with a human centric universe. Human carnal pride can find something to prostitute into an excuse to be proud over anything. Redemption delivers us from pride it doesn't grind us in the mud.
In my Guardianship universe I have the Alien races acknowledge mans primacy as deliverers through which the Universe "which groans and travails together with us" will finally be delivered. The Ya fearing races take the place of a sort of fleshly angels or friends of the bride.
Rom 8:18-23 (NLT) (18) Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later. (19) For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who His children really are. (20) Against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope, (21) the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. (22) For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (23) And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as His adopted children, including the new bodies He has promised us.
Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. I know the greek word is Cosmos but that has been prostituted by Sagan to mean the universe. The Greek word cosmos means this worlds corrupt world system, it has more to do with the cultural context of Satan dominated paganism than with anything extraterrestrial.
As I said I think we need to work out a coherent systematic theology about the Alien races relation to Humanity and Adam's curse.
It is hinted at in scripture but doesn't seem to be clear in proof text form.
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Post by Spokane Flyboy on Jul 21, 2008 22:44:39 GMT -5
I would say given the battles over resources and territory that even animals display, aliens with far more intelligence and reasoning likely could fall into the same trap. They need something, we're in the way. I believe Adam's curse affected all of creation. There's the bit about serpents will strike our heals that God told Adam after the fall, and then there is that in Genesis 9 about fear and dread falling on the animals in regard to us and that an accounting would be required even of the animals for the shedding of human blood. Those are a few references that just show how much the fall has come to distort the world as God had originally created it and how much all of creation was affected.
Though I will say it would be a boon to find extraterrestrials who come preaching about a messianic figure who died for their sins and preached all the things Jesus did.
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Post by Divides the Waters on Jul 21, 2008 23:00:31 GMT -5
Wow ... you just came up with a fascinating idea. What if the main problem facing Christians wasn't the idea of aliens existing, but accepting the idea that they might have their own Messiah? Imagine all the factions that would develop: There would be those that claimed that Christ came once and only once, and that that should be enough. There are those who would claim that since Christ came to save mankind, then the aliens must be irredeemable. There would be those who would insist that the aliens, with their gospel message, must be demons. There would be those who would claim that the aliens had the only way, and that the message of Christ was the one that was polluted or misinterpreted. There would be those who had been looking to the aliens themselves for salvation, who wouldn't know what to make of the idea that they had a divine being of their own. The list goes on and on.
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Post by newburydave on Jul 28, 2008 18:35:16 GMT -5
Uh guys...
I know we are the odd-balls who write Speculative Fiction; but I thought that one of the ground rules was that we only write stuff that lines up with the Bible.
How exactly would we work other alien messiah's into the mix and keep a Biblical base.
I mean Jesus was slain once for all time and his atonement is sufficient for all sinners.
I know that the speculation part is fun, but where does this touch on the Scriptures?
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