Plausibility of ancient extraterrestrials

[Thumpalumpacus]

Ooh, looks like someone just discovered von Daniken.

[Sicnoo0]

There is one specific document called Agastya Samhita that seems to have detailed instructions on how to build an electric battery, as well as how to use an electric battery to split water into its two constituent gasses, pranavaya and udanavaya. Would it have been difficult to correctly guess that there are 2 distinct elements that comprise water? I really can't get over the building a battery part. That seems like a clear sign of scientific knowledge

Then again, like Anomalocaris said, there were brilliant people in ancient times here and there.

[Anomalocaris]

There are a lot of pseudoscientific Hindu advocates who, after the revered ancient “wisdom” failed utterly to produce scientific enlightenment and became seen correctly as stuff consisting largely of ignorantly primitive mumbo jumbo, try to seize back the initiative by faking it and pretending somehow there was great wisdom that was just no understood.

This is not a particular dig against Hinduism. It is the same even in cultures that did produce the scientific enlightenment. Hence young earth creationists and various biblical apologists, to say nothing of our own resident advocate of the Koran knowing what it is like inside a black hole.

[AkiraTheViking]

I have an alternate explanation:  In the last 4500 years or so, humanity has been able to figure out a lot of things.  Perhaps the recent past isn't the first time around for humans - it's possible (although not yet demonstrated archaeologically) that an earlier iteration of Homo sapiens had accumulated a similar body of knowledge, and some of it made it into scriptures.

That sounds like mutant talk...

[Belacqua]

Hindu Atheism is literally Scientology with a different name because of copyright.

I'm surprised by this. I thought that Hindu atheism was pretty old. What I've heard of it is different from Scientology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_atheism

Is there a new branch which is like Scientology? Maybe there's a sect I haven't heard of.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The very same "gods" were described across multiple cultures all over the planet. You can find endless examples of gods that went by one name in one culture and by another name (in some cases an extremely similar name) in another culture.
I'm open to the idea that these beings helped advance human civilization.
Historical evidence suggests that multiple ancient cultures had advanced scientific knowledge rivaling (and in many cases exceeding) our modern scientific knowledge. I'm open to the idea that this was all thanks to these beings.
I'm open to the idea that these beings have been on our planet for thousands of years and have been documented by ancient cultures for as long as they've had a writing system.

I want to know what you guys think about the degree to which we can draw conclusions from the available historical records. I also want to know if it can be said that the historical evidence points to Hindu Atheism being a rational position to take.


The enormous collection of Vedic texts taken to be historical (as opposed to the purely mythological ones) seem to do a great job of telling the stories of these beings. These texts also do a great job of making highly quantitatively specific scientific claims that have been shown to be miraculously correct in modern times. 

Isn't there a vanishingly small probability of getting those measurements correct to such a fine level of precision by merely guessing?

Also, who prompted them to even make such guesses? 

Why were ancient people even talking about their home as a planet (by the way, Hindu scriptures correctly described Earth as a sphere) and talking about how old the planet is?

The flying machines that Hindu deities were said to have had are what really gets me. Sounds just like the UAPs we're seeing in recent years. The machines were described as being able to move in any direction while still facing in the same direction, like a helicopter. This is exactly like the UAPs that get described nowadays

Don't let your mind be so open that your brain falls out. A much more plausible explanation is that our ancestors weren't the dummies you think they were.

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

Ancient aliens are opium for the masses (all lies and hoaxes). There is a three-hour-long video on youtube debunking them, made by a former believer in ancient aliens, so I would advise you to look into it.





Btw couldn't this be moved into "Skepticism & Pseudoscience"?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Administrator Notice
Took Fake Messiah's very sound advice and moved this thread here from 'Atheism'.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You find it more plausible that some mystic force provided a random jot of information to an ancient people who had not one fucking thing to use that information on?

What about the vanishingly small probability of getting those measurements correct to such a fine level of precision by merely guessing?

Also, who prompted them to even make such guesses? 

Why were ancient people even talking about their home as a planet and talking about how old the planet is?

Why the fuck did they need that measurement? Most useless god gift ever.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I often wonder why people include the Egyptian pyramids in this ‘ancient aliens’ rubbish. Pyramids are the easiest structures to build, they’re inherently stable, and they were built long before Issac Newton invented gravity so the stones would have been easy to move about. No aliens needed.

Boru