Religion

I Am an Alien from Mars

Can you help me pick a worldview?

I’m an alien who just arrived from Mars. Everyone keeps telling me their worldview, and I’d like to pick the one I think is true.

Some of the things I hear are pretty weird. But that’s okay. Some weird things really are true.

Strange but true

Example. In 1915, Einstein wrote his theory of general relativity. One consequence of the theory was the twin paradox: Take two identical twins. Leave one on earth. Send the other in a space ship travelling near the speed of light. When she returns to earth, the one that stayed on earth will actually be older. She will have experienced more time.

That’s really weird. I’d need some good evidence if I was going to believe something like that.

Ah, but there is evidence. Scientists synchronized two super-accurate clocks. They left one on the ground. They flew the other around the world in a fast jet. When they landed, the one that stayed on the ground was ahead. It had experienced more time! Not only that, but the exact amount of extra time Einstein’s equations had predicted.

Scientists did this many times, with different kinds of clocks. Einstein was weird, but he was right.

Now, I’m a skeptical alien. But if you show me evidence, I’ll believe you. Of course, for really weird things like Einstein’s theory, you’d better have really good evidence.

Your theory

So here’s your theory:

An uncreated, all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good, invisible, non-physical person created our universe. He let physics and chemistry and evolution take almost 14 billion years to evolve self-aware humans. They killed each other at whim for millions of years.

The invisible, all-good person had all knowledge and all power in the universe, and he loved the humans deeply, but he let them be tortured and killed by natural disasters, diseases, accidents, and genetic mutations. He still does, today.

After millions of years, the invisible, all-good person decided to step in. He told one tribe of humans they were special, and he loved them the best. He helped them slaughter rival tribes (including their children) but take the virgins for themselves.

The invisible, all-good person gave this tribe laws. Strict laws. They were forbidden from wearing clothes made of two different kinds of fabric. Gays should be put to death. Etc. Following these laws made the invisible person happy. If you broke a law, you could kill an animal to make him happy again.

Thousands of years later, the invisible person decided to do things differently. He had a new way for people to make him happy. And now, everyone had a chance to please him, not just this one tribe.

The invisible, non-physical person had a son, Jesus, with a young girl. When he grew up, Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine, made blind men see, and magically withered a fig tree. Then he let himself be captured, tortured, and killed. But later, Jesus came back from the dead, walked around, and flew off into the sky!

The new way to please the invisible person was to believe in this Jesus.

The invisible person loves everyone, but anyone who does not believe in Jesus—or never even hears of him—will be tortured in a place called “hell.” Forever.

Hmmmmm. Interesting theory

I hope I’ve got that right. I don’t want to misrepresent the majority of the people who hold to your idea. I know lots of them. When I checked with them, every sentence of my summary was something they really believed. Let me know if I’ve got it wrong.

Interesting theory. Amazingly, I’ve heard weirder ones.

But yours is pretty weird. I’m sorry but, if Einstein’s theory was a 9 on the weirdness scale, your theory is an 83,000 on the weirdness scale. You’re going to need a lot of evidence to convince me of that one, my friend!

I’m not saying I know for sure you’re wrong, I’m just saying . . . Look. There are thousands of theories out there. I’m just trying to pick the right one. Please give me some reason to pick yours.

What? You have no evidence? Not even a little?

Ummmmm . . . why do you believe all that, then?

Nevermind. Listen, I’d like to believe you. You seem like a nice person. You’re kind toward people, you give, you work hard.

But there are just too many theories out there. And if your theory has no evidence going for it—let alone the mountain of evidence I would need to believe such a weird theory—then I might just as well pick any other weird theory without evidence.

I heard of one about a “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” I could pick that one, since I like spaghetti.

But no. That one’s really weird, too, and has no evidence for it. I’ll probably just stick with what I do know, and wait for a theory to come along that has some evidence behind it. Some reason to believe. You know what I mean?

I hope you understand. I don’t mean to offend you. If you come up with some evidence, let me know. I’d love to hear about it. Really. Seriously, if you came up with some evidence, you’d immediately jump to the front of the line in my mind. You have no idea how ridiculous some of the other ideas I heard were!

As it is, though, there’s just no reason for me to believe your theory. And I’m not just going to believe any old theory I hear, without any evidence.

There’s enough that I do know from evidence for me to live quite a happy, fulfilling, and good life.

So that’s what I’m going to do. If you come up with evidence, I’ll be right here waiting for it. Have a nice day.

Oh, hey—do you like spaghetti? You might want to check out the Flying Spaghetti Monster religion. It sounds like a tasty idea, and it’s got just as much evidence going for it as your theory does. You might as well switch over. No harm done. And then you’d have an excuse to eat spaghetti every night!

Just a suggestion.