Plausibility of ancient extraterrestrials

[Sicnoo0]

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.

l'm very much okay with that explanation

[The Grand Nudger]

Ok I'm ready to come away from this with the following summary:
Aliens have never been here on Earth.
Any correct statement made in a religious text is due to the genius of ancient humans.

Am I still in the wrong or do I appear to have learned my lesson?

B-mine
Ding ding ding ding ding.

The corollary truth is that the many...many many many incorrect statements made in every religious text are, also, mans work. Not a gods. The upside to this, for the faithful, is that no god is as much of a bumpkin as man writes them to be.

[Anomalocaris]

Ok I'm ready to come away from this with the following summary:
Aliens have never been here on Earth.
Any correct statement made in a religious text is due to the genius of ancient humans.

Am I still in the wrong or do I appear to have learned my lesson?

You are wrong.   The statements in Religious texts were not correct.   The ancient were not geniuses who are able to divine facts well before sound method for determines these facts have been developed.   They were overreaching braggarts who presented wild guesses as received facts and use these to browbeat the gullible into submitting to their make belief “wisdom” 

The reason why there is even any question of these ancients being geniuses is their wild and wrong guesses were intentionally misrepresented  by modern people who have some emotional stake in not admitting cultures which developed modern science is superior to the cultures which didn’t.     

So instead of making up the difference by beefing up their own ability to do science,  these modern people chose to soothe their wounded pride by taking what modern scientists have learned and measured, pretend it was known all along in order to assert fraudulently their their favorite religious texts were in fact not a exhibit of the primitive ignorance and their “patrimony” are not at least in part a burdensome milestone of ancient misinformation, but rather somehow a uniquely enlightened blessing peculiar to their culture which did not manage to develop science  that yet gave them advanced knowledge ahead of modern science.

[Angrboda]

Not aliens. Travelers. Time travelers. Appointed by Biden.

[The Grand Nudger]

Who else?

[Sicnoo0]

If I'm understanding correctly, modern scholars with an emotional stake in the matter mistranslated the scriptures in order to fudge the numbers and make it look like the quantities were correct to a certain number of decimal places

[Sicnoo0]

Now that I think about it, guessing that Earth is a sphere isn't that impressive.

A sphere is a very natural guess that you can arrive at by mere intuition

[Anomalocaris]

If I'm understanding correctly, modern scholars with an emotional stake in the matter mistranslated the scriptures in order to fudge the numbers and make it look like the quantities were correct to a certain number of decimal places

Yes.

[The Grand Nudger]

Imagine if the earth being a sphere was the kind of thing we could only learn from the gods. Wouldn't make them smart (they can see it from their house, you see)...but it would suggest we were hella dumb.

[Anomalocaris]

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?

Very few people were actually exceptionally insightful.   For example Erastatenes was insightful enough to deduce the size of thr earth 2400 years ago.  We know he deduced it and didn’t guess it because he said how he deduced it, and we know from modern knowledge his method was sound.

But most of writers of ancient scriptures that made overreaching claims did in fact do nothing more than wildly guessed, or cribbed someone else’s wild guesses, in order to pretend they knew.   They don’t say what method they used for they had none.   So they always claim they heard it from a deity or some other being assumed to be even more authoritative.    Making it look like they knew let them pretend they are extraordinarily wise and therefore naturally deserve to leach off other people and boss everyone around.

The vanishingly small probability of getting these measurement correct by guessing means the guessers in fact almost never get it right or anywhere close to being right.   Hence the prevalence of the ludicrous stories as those found in Genesis and other similar ancient traditions. 

Many modern people however, have a vested interest in pretending the ancient guessers did get it right, either for sensationalism, or for the sake of pretecting some ancient cult to which they are partial.