Robert Ledingham writes:
I read with interest your comments on Dr Andrew Silverman’s associations with the ideas of author Nigel Kerner . I have to admit I was surprised at your comments on this matter as I have up to now found your Shroud blog intelligent and informative.
I am a long time believer in the authenticity of the Shroud and have listened to Dr. Silverman’s programs both on his own and with Mr. Kerner and I have to say I feel you may have been a victim of the same kind of antipathetic media bias that has dogged issues relating to the authenticity of the Shroud.Yes the alien phenomenon has been presented by the mainstream world media as something in the realms of total lunacy. But then the Shroud has suffered the same media consensus – the original carbon dating suggesting medieval fakery and other ‘successful’ attempts to copy it always seem to take center stage. As a result most of the general population assume the Shroud is not authentic. The same applies to the alien phenomenon despite the fact that world renowned scientists such as Professor Stephen Hawking and Dr. Michio Kaku have publicly stated their belief that the existence of alien life is almost certain and that there may well be life forms that are intelligent and could pose a threat to humanity.
Recently Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at SETI has said that after 50 years of looking for signals SETI is beginning to realize that the way our technology is advancing is probably a good indicator of how other civilizations at other locations in the universe would have progressed. Just as within a few hundred years of inventing radio we are on the point of inventing thinking machines then there is a strong likelihood that other civilizations would have done the same. These machines, says Shostak are the successors to natural life and we would be more likely to spot signals from them than the biological life that invented them. Stephen Hawking has recently suggested that the human race should move to a planet beyond our solar system to protect the future of our species. It is a short step to then envision the possibility that an electronic fingerprint of the equivalent of DNA in an extra terrestrial civilization may have been sent out into space via artificially intelligent probes equipped to survive deep space travel.
Early results from NASA’s Kepler Mission last year, involving a powerful new space observatory suggest that planets like Earth are far more common than previously thought. The figures suggest that our galaxy will contain 100 million habitable planets. Is it then likely that we are alone in the universe, would that not, in the light of this new information, be the silliest claim of all.
Last year there was an announcement at the Press Club in Washington where a group of top military Generals confirmed that they had seen what they could definitely identify as unidentified flying objects at nuclear installations. Astronauts such as Gordon Cooper and Ed Mitchell have testified to their witness of alien craft as indeed have seven thousand pilots and many other reliable witnesses.So before you dismiss out of hand the existence of alien forms that might indeed visit this planet as indeed many have dismissed the Shroud of Turin under similar media pressure, it would be well worth taking a look at Nigel Kerner’s well studied and intelligent look at the whole phenomenon. Don’t be put off by the title – he admits this is his publisher’s choice not his. Yes the whole alien subject is full of kooks, new age lunatics and opportunists looking to make a fast buck, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Take a look at what you are commenting on before you comment on it, or else resign yourself to being shaped by the media’s misrepresentations as so many ill-informed individuals are.
Thank you for your comment. To my way of thinking, there is a difference between “dismissing out of hand” and “accepting out of hand.” And from the evidence I see, which is slim to none, I found myself unable to accept the notion. There is a real difference between accepting the possibility of ET life, even intelligent life among what might be countless inhabitable planets (as I do) and claims of “Grey Aliens and The Harvesting of Souls.”
- Here is the podcast for anyone who wants to listen. Grey Aliens and The Harvesting Of Souls with Nigel Kerner – Paranormal Podcast 169 : PARANORMAL PODCAST NETWORK – JimHarold.com
- Here is a link to the book, Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls: The Conspiracy to Genetically Tamper with Humanity at Amazon
Thanks again.
This gray alien thing is lunacy and completely detrimental to the shroud. Isn’t Andrew Silverman a member of the Shroud Science Group?
Thanks for your reply Dan. I agree with you about the folly of accepting anything out of hand without a good critical look. But the equal folly lies in dismissal without giving something a chance.
To my mind Nigel Kerner’s book, is, as I mentioned in my original comment, leagues apart from the highly speculative and often fantastical books written on this much maligned subject. Yes ‘Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls’ sounds like a title straight out of the worst kind of B-Movie science fiction and if you just go on the title you could be forgiven for raising your eyebrows in sardonic disbelief. However, as I also mentioned, he points out in his interview that the title was his publisher’s choice not his own.
The Grey alien phenomenon has been witnessed by tens of thousands of reliable witnesses, indeed Harvard Professor of psychology John Mack was convinced of their existence and wrote a book about his work on the subject. From all accounts these entities are emotionless and robotic. Thus I do not think it is so far out for Kerner to suggest that they may well be artificially intelligent probes sent by advanced civilisations at other locations in the universe to explore viable alternatives for life on other planets. Who knows perhaps through advances in technology their creators may well have destroyed their own planet (as we ourselves are doing now) and have sent DNA samples out with these probes to explore alternatives elsewhere.
We are moving that way ourselves, trans-humanism is the buzz phrase of the moment, virtual realities, virtual worlds, artificial intelligence, supplementation of human faculties via implanted computer chips. In one of Kerner’s articles he talks about Ray Kurzweil’s and Kevin Warwick’s suggestions that we download our entire identities into virtual representations of ourselves and live on forever in data format.
Horrifying that this might be to me and I would imagine to you also, this is not so far out as to be impossible. As far as I understand it Kerner is suggesting that if these alien visitors exist and if they are indeed a form of artificial intelligence, they may well contain a virtual format of their creators’ knowledge and biological prospectus with a view to finding continuance for both. Just as Kurzweil and Warwick and even Hawking are suggesting we ourselves do.
What I like about Kerner’s suggestion is that he is of the opinion that we have a component that is non-programmable, and he calls that a ‘soul’, a non-atomic line of connection to the quantum reality that existed prior to the Big Bang, a reality that we might term ‘God.’ He postulates that the origins for the order that makes for living systems in an otherwise chaotic and disordered universe governed by the second law of thermodynamics which inevitably breaks things up into greater and greater states of disorder with time, originates from this prior state of perfect order. These artificially intelligent entities do not have this line of connection, they are artificially created of the universe and the information they carry is essentially subject to the breaking down momentums of the second law. They detect there is something about us that they do not have and cannot know and has a magic ingredient that makes for order and continuance. Thus they seek to bridge their programs into us in an attempt to ride on our faculty for continuance beyond the physical. Kerner feels this quest is impossible as you cannot bridge into a non-physical quantum via physical means, but they cannot know this as they cannot know anything non physical.
There is so much to this and you’d really have to read the book to tie it all together but it is a remarkable thesis. Kerner quotes several texts from the Nag Hammadi codex to suggest convincingly that Christ himself warned his apostles about an alien threat and instructed them on how to deal with it. Gnostics refer to these entities as the archons. He also puts forward the possibility that the temptation of Christ in which he was shown the cities of the world may have taken place at the only vantage point from which it is possible to see the cities of the world – up in space. So who then was ‘Satan’ he asks. He sees Christ’s example and his triumph as reflected in the record of his resurrection recorded on the Shroud of Turin as a recipe to beat anything thrown at us by an artificial alien resource.
All this might still sound outlandish, it did to me before I listened to a couple of interviews and then read the book. Those with open, expansive outlooks can accept the possibility of that which is beyond the ordinary and the everyday. Christ’s miracles, the Shroud of Turin, the visions of Bernadette are amongst such things, as indeed are what may well be their opposite – namely technological ‘miracle’ makers which are in fact no miracle makers at all just products of a highly advanced technology that we ourselves are now beginning to develop in our own terms. Kerner makes what is to my mind a crucial distinction between seeking eternal life of the spirit promised by Christ and seeking an immortality of the physical promised by trans-humanism and perhaps actuated by these uninvited visitors. Even if this is a metaphor for the value systems of the modern world it has great meaning and certainly does not deserve the mockery it has garnered.