One of my students shared a link on our class Facebook group that shows some examples of religious art that might represent ancient
encounters with alien astronauts.
Ancient astronaut theory – the view that aliens visited the Earth long ago and made contact with our ancestors, and may have been
responsible for the development of human technology, religion, or even human
life itself – is certainly intriguing. It’s easy to understand why an encounter
with a highly advanced alien race would have a profound impact on an ancient
civilisation, and how such beings or their technologies could be seen as
magical or even divine. Actually, we know that something similar has happened
in the case of cargo cults
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Hey if, you can mistake Prince Phillip
for a divine being, anything’s possible...
On the other hand, it’s safe to say that the ancient
astronaut theory is currently very much on the fringe: I can’t see it
appearing on your A level RS syllabus any time soon to compete with the views
of Freud and Marx on the origins of religion.
I’m a bit of a sci-fi geek, so I have a certain soft spot
for daft theories involving aliens and outer space. The connections between religion
and science fiction are interesting, but I think a much simpler explanation is
that religious art has influenced the depiction of aliens rather than vice
versa – certainly, it would be easier to show how science fiction has drawn
upon religious themes and imagery than that religion originated with a bunch of
pre-historic E.T.s visiting planet Earth.
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