Although the Dutch school official quoted in the story seems to think that it's genuine.
Uh, right. The crop formation of a pipe-smoking grey alien with dots coming out of its head.
I wonder what the Dutch school official has been smoking.
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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Is this supposed to be a spoof invoking Bob Dobbs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dobbs) or is it just a coincidence?
Suppose aliens did come to Earth. What would they do?
The answer would depend on a lot of things. First, would the aliens have studied human culture from afar before showing themselves? If not, there’s no chance at all that the first thing they would do would be to create a picture of the traditional human image of a “little green man” in a field. If they did, they would have some idea of how aliens are “expected” to act whether peacefully or not. I think it’s unlikely they would simply ignore these expectations; they would either deliberately follow or deliberately flout them.
They might flout them in order to impress upon people that they are real, exist independently of humans, and should be taken seriously. To me, that seems the most likely course. On the other hand, they might follow some of them (obviously they can’t follow all since some contradict others. For example, if they destroy the earth first thing they can’t do anything else). Conceivably this could even include making patterns of circles in corn and wheat fields. This would depend on the nature of their mission and also their opinion of humans.
1. They might simply do it for the humor. I might think that this would be a tempting prospect if I was an alien, but what I mean by that is it would be a tempting prospect for me. I have no conception of what an alien mind or an alien culture could be like. Their humor is likely to be wildly different from ours. Therefore, the very plausibility of this option is suspicious. On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine that any intelligent life form would have no appreciation for irony.
2. They might think we were less intelligent than them (especially if they focused on our stories of extraterrestrial beings more than other parts of our culture), and so act as expected either to reassure us or intimidate us. Note that even if we knew which was intended, that would not reveal the aliens’ ultimate intentions. They might want to establish peaceful, ongoing contact, but fear that we might harm them if we’re afraid of them. They also might want to reassure us so that we’d let our guard down and they could take over more easily. In either case, they would be likely to reveal themselves gradually, starting perhaps with pictures of themselves in fields.
3. On the other hand, they might think we were MORE intelligent than them and follow the script because we know best how aliens should behave. This one is unlikely, but I mention it for the sake of completeness.
4. They might simply be naive and think that drawing a picture of themselves (probably a highly stylized picture to fit our preconceived notions of aliens) in a field is a good way of apprising us of their presence, similar to the old idea of drawing a large geometric figure on the earth for the Martians to see.
So we can imagine scenarios in which such a figure might be real. The other factor to consider is the pipe with what appears to be smoke coming out of it. (Though if the picture is drawn by aliens we can’t discount the possibility that it’s something else entirely, perhaps something we can’t even imagine. Then, too, if the alien is stylized the pipe might also be, and the object’s resemblance to a European pipe could be sheer coincidence.) Would aliens smoke pipes that happen to look just like ours? That seems quite possible. The design of a tobacco pipe is pretty simple and almost inevitable given its purpose, with only a few likely variations. I think of the passage in Out of the Silent Planet where Ransom is surprised at how similar Malacandrian boats are to terrestrial boats, and only later asks himself what else a boat could be like. The aliens, of course, wouldn’t smoke tobaccco, but some other plant, or an animal or mineral product, that’s native to their planet. Nevertheless, I see no reason to boggle at the possibility that aliens might also enjoy burning certain substances and inhaling the smoke.
Their choice to draw that fact to our attention on a first contact is a much bigger problem. If the picture was put there with humorous intent, it’s easy to see how the pipe is excellent for that purpose. The humor comes from the contrast between the alien figure and the familiar (to us) accessory. In fact, if that’s the explanation, the pipe detail is likely to be completely made up. As I said, however, this explanation is a priori highly suspicious. It’s conceivable that the aliens thought the pipe would be more reassuring, if they were trying to reassure us. However, if their study of our culture was in-depth enough for them to know what the pipe would mean, you’d think they would also figure out that the pipe would simply make the picture more unbelievable. The most likely explanation for the pipe, then, seems to be that they didn’t think much about it from our perspective, but simply chose a pipe, for whatever reason, as a suitable emblem of their people.
There are many other considerations, of course, but this will do for a start. It’s interesting to think about.
Obviously, the pipe is their breathing apparatus 🙂
The Chicken