In this explanation, everything pertains to actual literal events in the external world, not just the world of my mind. The nuclear confrontation in the beginning of the book is basically a religious conflict between states of different religious ideologies, something that has been going on for thousands of years. This merely typifies mankind's longheld individual and collective destructive nature and propensity to justify this with the belief that "God is one their side" and we are "good" and the other side is "bad" and "of the devil". In any conflict, people in general seem to feel justified in causing pain and suffering so long as they feel their ideology is more right than the other side. In seeming desperation to stem this violent warring madness, mankind reached a point in time when we attempted to remove "God" from our consciousness, as we subconsciously think a belief in "God" is the cause of our problems, but really it is our wrong ideas about "God" that are the problem. The physical disappearance of millions of people during the nuclear standoff pictures the time when Darwin first revealed his theory of evolution and the influence of people of faith, especially Christians in the Western world, began to disappear. The disappearance of people pictures the removal of the influence of people of faith in the world after the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species, shown as an abrupt removal of people for dramatic purposes in my fiction, but in real life it has actually been more of a slow process spanning almost two centuries. The idea that no judging "God" exists to condemn us seemed so freeing at first to the world, and even produced some initial improvements in social advancements (pictured by the social improvements the aliens promise) by throwing off oppressive ideas about God. In my story, the alien leader is analogous to Darwin, and all the alien followers could be likened to the human scientists who follow Darwin's ideas, which is pretty much all of them. Our scientists pretty much universally tell us that evolution is true and the only explanation for our origins and existence. The supernatural abilities of the aliens, such as reading thoughts and causing objects all around the world to levitate, are analogous to the seeming supernatural abilities our scientists have to prove that they are correct about their scientific theories. The proof is in the marvelous technologies scientists create based on scientific discovery. Doesn't technology seem supernatural sometimes? I mean even my cell phone seems like magic to me because I don't understand how it works. It's one thing to say the world is composed of atoms and molecules (which people can argue and debate about being true) and totally another to objectively prove you are right by creating atomic power plants and nuclear weapons (which only the ignorant would argue and debate against as proof of your belief). Centuries ago, the catholic church persecuted new scientific ideas because the church had a few scriptures that seemed to say the world was flat and the universe revolved around the earth. We all know the world is round and merely orbits the sun. Amazingly, an internet search on the words "flat earth" reveal there are still some groups who advocate the flat earth theory, but I think surely they must be joke organizations. But if not, it just goes to show how stubborn mankind can be when they believe "they are in the right about truth". So, in summary, in this explanation, I've shown you how the "aliens" picture our scientists, who have begun to unravel the mysteries of our origins and the natural world around us, especially since publication of Darwin's 1859 Origin of Species, and are beginning to win our trust (just as the aliens begin to win mankind's trust) because they can create amazing "supernatural" technologies that prove their ideas are true. Our scientists (ie the aliens in my story) have begun to merge science and faith, just as the alien leader Khur-ak does in the opening chapter when he explains the truth behind science and all the religions of the world. Of course, in the real world, not all scientific theories are true. I'm talking in general how science has cracked many previous mysteries about the natural world, and how in general scientists have proven themselves with the creation of technology that would have seemed magical to people of the past. So, when scientists tell us we evolved from more primitive forms, a part of us naturally believes it, or at least we should if we are logical at all. As I said before, evolution is an intuitive concept. Will we one day be able to create technology that will prove that we are evolving into "gods", just like how the aliens claim we are their evolutionary children and evolving into "gods" ourselves? Currently, not many human scientists come right out and say humans are evolving into some sort of supernatural god-like entity. But if evolution is true (as scientists believe) then isn't it logical that more highly advanced beings may exist and have interacted with ancient man in the past and created all our religions and beliefs about God? Any honest scientist that claims to believe in evolution would have to agree that this is at least possible. Otherwise, said scientist(s) are revealing their hypocrisy and don't really believe the theory of evolution as they claim. |