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Why creation and evolution can go togetherA god could have created life in any way he saw fit, why does it need to be like turning on a light switch? I think that if there is a God, creation was the outcome, evolution being his method of creation. You can't just click your fingers and a painting makes itself on a canvas, you have to have a method, you need to turn one thing into another.
This is a comment I put up on youtube, I thought it was worth sharing.
As for "reproducing after their kind", "kinds" of animals are a human construct, used to classify animals so we can distinguish one from the other, in reality, all animals are related in some way.

Entrails of Christianity, a TestimonyThis testimony is another late-night endeavor. I am more cognitively active at night, though uncertain why. That is to say, I am unsure why I think better when I'm oppressing the desire to sleep. Aided by the hum of modern classic emanating from my MP3 player through chords to my ears where they stimulate my drums and likewise my mental processes, I've noticed it is between ten at night and one in the morning when I am the most expressive. Thus in retrospect I am not surprised that I irrationally vented to a near-stranger on the internet a few nights prior to composing this testimony. Our conversation had begun relatively mild. She is an atheist, I am a young-earth creationist. Being familiar with my work on deviantART and recognizing me to be creationist after reading my frequent musings pertaining to creationism and evolutionism, she mentioned this to me and we began modestly debating subjects pertaining to our opposing worldviews. She was asking most of the questions,

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Ultimate Pet Peeve: Humanoid Space Aliens

by ~DeinonychusEmpire, Sep 1, 2012, 10:47:26 PM
Journals / Personal

I'm not saying it isn't possible, that there could be an alien species superficially resembling humans somewhere among the stars. What I'm saying is the concept of humanoid space aliens is far too overplayed in popular culture, and why that is so is what annoys me.

Browsing the internet once I found an interesting article, another one of those "Top 10" lists. The article concerned top 10 things in the media that western culture generally accepted to suspend disbelief for. On the list was "humanoid space aliens." I only shook my head. Not me!

The Yautja from the Predator franchise, the Na'vi from Avatar, virtually every sapient creature in Star Wars, the creatures from Battle: Los Angeles, the insectoid-humanoid creatures from District 9 and to a degree even the creatures from Cowboys & Aliens... The list goes on. Fresh on the list is a movie I just rented from Amazon.com, Battleship. Sorry to spoil the movie for everyone who hasn't seen it yet, but the space aliens are humanoids. Being the senseless sci-fi action CGI-fest the trailers couldn't help but reveal Battleship to be, I didn't expect much story-wise and could enjoy the movie for what it was... With the exception of the humanoid space aliens, which prevented me from giving the movie a higher rating than I did.

Why am I peeved by humanoid space aliens? Let's pause here and give them an acronym so that I don't need to spell it out every time the term comes up in this rant. Why am I peeved by HSA's? The reasons are simple and blunt:

A) It gets old quick, when every new sci-fi space movie features humanoid aliens the predictability goes up. Predictability is not good friends with originality. Somebody shoot me now, I'm starting to sound like a film critic.
B) As aforementioned, I'm not saying that HSA's couldn't exist. The simple fact is that humans have a preconception that, to be sapient a creature must look and act like us. That's naive. We cannot fathom what strange entities could exist among the stars. To function enslaved to the ideology that the human form equals sapience is extremely limiting on our imagination and has a negative affect on popular culture (as explained in reason A).

I'm a biology and paleontology enthusiast. I am also an astrobiology enthusiast. And being the rogue creationist that I am, I tend to think outside of the box. I don't think, "Okay, for alien life to exist the only possible candidates are Goldilocks planets that can sustain life very much similar to our own here on Earth." I think, "Life on Earth adheres to certain natural laws to exist. Is it possible that extraterrestrial life could exist on other planets and require different sets of natural laws to survive?" Why must space aliens look like us and live on planets like ours? Why can't there be giant electromagnetic life forms that feed on friction and regurgitate electromagnetic pulses? Why can't there be iron-based life forms composed of special atomic particles that enable them to shapeshift at will into virtually anything? When you open your mind and free it from any limitations, literally anything becomes possible. But no, we're stuck with things like Twi'leks and the Na'vi (more appropriately referred to as blue furries) because mainstream human imagination in modern popular culture is plagued by nonsensical preconceptions regarding extraterrestrial life.

I want to do something about this issue.

~DeinonychusEpire

25 Comments

Ultimate Pet Peeve: Humanoid Space Aliensby ~DeinonychusEmpire

Journals / Personal

~MrCreator3000 Sep 7, 2012

I know what you mean about this. It is quite annoying how many aliens on TV or in films look like us, although it's not impossible, like you say. I think it could be that, in films where the aliens are a force of good, them having a humanoid shape helps us to relate to them more.

~Elec-Squid Sep 4, 2012

Where did you the list of things that western culture suspends disbelief of?

~DeinonychusEmpire Sep 4, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

It was a while ago, try Googling similar Top 10 lists and you might find it or something like it.

~RoFlo-Felorez Sep 4, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

i think where a lot of the ideas come from is that we have a limited sense of what intelligent extraterrestrial life could be like, if we think of sentient creatures we often think they must be humanoid to some degree with flares of alien mystery that makes them not human, if they werent sentient we would imagine them to be similar to earth's creatures but in ways that they should be somewhat believable, otherwise when its thrown into wild proportions without explanation we tend to not believe it could exist, its all about making the audience believe it COULD happen

another way to think about it is how much your audience knows about, look at me for examle: i design all my dragons based on evolution, biology, and possible varieties of reptilian anatomy, but whenever i try to explain why my ideas to others, they slowly begin to understand why my dragons arent just big, bat-winged, fire breathing, horn headed, snake bodied, spear tailed, magical monsters that we all grew up with. instead they begin to see, with the explanations i give, why my wyverns look like big repto-birds, why my western dragons look like carnivorous ornithopods with keels, and why my serpents look more like low slung hexapodal theropods, it just takes some wild imagination with educating the audience about WHY they could be real

that being said, i think if you keep trying to help your viewers understand where you're coming from with your ideas, they'll begin to see that just maybe those creatures you described really could exist

~DeinonychusEmpire Sep 4, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Good philosophy!

~RoFlo-Felorez Sep 4, 2012 Hobbyist Digital Artist

it works more often than you think

~Trexking Sep 2, 2012

Well originally, with Star Wars and Star Trek, they didn't have CGI so they had to make do with costumes. In fact, even now, it's still hard to make a believable alien. That's why aliens tend to have more diversity in video games, like Halo for instance.

~DeinonychusEmpire Sep 2, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

You'd think with the introduction of CGI the film industry would start leaning more towards originality... But no, Battle: Los Angeles and Battleship still had humanoids.

*Ikechi1 Sep 2, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

I think some of the best media non humanoid aliens would have to be the Elcor from the Mass Effect Series and the Daleks from Doctor Who, neither of them are humanoid at all.

~DeinonychusEmpire Sep 2, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Yeah, I failed to mention in this rant that I specifically like certain films for their portrayal of non-humanoid space aliens. E.g. Skyline and Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds.

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Ultimate Pet Peeve: Humanoid Space Aliensby ~DeinonychusEmpire

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