THe Night Luger

[ithacaartist]

Originally Posted by Curly1

+1 on the ancient astronauts theory, we aren't that smart w/o help to make those leaps IMO.

I beg to differ, Curly. It's not that our level of intelligence has increased. People 4,000 years ago were as intelligent as we are today. However, what's called the "body of knowledge" was rather small back then. Its growth, since, has been exponential--its rate of increase has been increasing. Notable exceptions, or voids, in the accumulation of knowledge were due to Catholicism and Islam. Arabia led the world in the development of mathematics, for example. With growth in the number and influence of Miuslims--whose Quran describes mathematics, working with numbers, as the devil's work--progress in mathematics stalled entirely, leaving off with mere algebra. Remember the dark ages? Thank the Christians for that. The church suppressed science, rationality, and anything else that threatened its free ride and power.

"Occam's razor" is a rule of thumb for figuring things our, basically, the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is the most likely solution. It's not even necessary to invoke visits from aliens. It has been thoroughly demonstrated that the techniques for laying out and constructing the pyramids needed nothing more than rudimentary levels, string-lines, levers and rollers. It's actually kind of insulting to insinuate that aliens were necessary for our progress in technology. It is immensely and needlessly more complicated to suggest that other life forms overcame almost unimaginable distances/time to seek us out, make their way to us, and give us the transistor and a handful of pyramids, go away, and never return (so far) don't you think? The claim that we weren't smart enough to figure out such things for ourselves would need LOTS of evidence to support it, while the evidence that we are intelligent, imaginative, and driven to discover and change the world around us is all-pervasive!

David Parker