Since the late 1940s, more and more UFO-mythologies emerged, promising to answer metaphysical and religious questions by technological means. Aliens where thought to hover nearby to bring a new world order and Jesus, his siblings and angels where crammed in flying saucers and wrapped in space suits to be proclaimed as extraterrestrials.
But as UFO-sightings continued to fail to bring up any scientific evidence, UFO-mythologies turned to our past for purported "evidence" of our increasingly mysterious and outright hostile space brothers. Authors such as Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin (1920 - 2010) became prominent and rich in offering pseudo-scientific "proof" for extraterrestrial contacts in old cultures in what came to be called "PaleoSETI".
With the new Alien movie "Prometheus", Ridley Scott not only used respective narratives, but also supported them, voicing his doubts about evolutionary theory in this German interview, pointing out that intelligent designers from outer spaces could have formed humanity. And in one of the promotional clips to "Prometheus", the promise that PaleoSETI could answer religious questions is, well, enacted.
As I got a heated debate on my German scilog about upcoming Annunaki Aliens invading Earth from Nibiru, according to PaleoSETI-interpretations of Sumerian findings by the Z. Sitchin, I asked Dr. Michael Heiser for an interview - which I will post here today in English and in a German translation in a couple of days on scilogs.de.
Mike Heiser is a scholar in the fields of biblical studies and the ancient Near East. He earned the M.A. and Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and Semitic Languages at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004. Mike has also earned an M.A. in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania (major fields: Ancient Israel and Egyptology). His UFO Religions blog discusses how the belief in aliens shapes modern religious worldviews. But he is best known for his critique of the ancient astronaut theories of Zecharia Sitchin and his paranormal thriller, The Facade, which intertwines many of his interests.
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1. Mike, according to Zecharia Sitchin, our planet and species has been visited and exploited by extraterrestrians called annunnaki forming early civilizations and the mythology of Sumer. Given the lack of scientific evidence - why do people still believe in these narratives?
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They believe them for several reasons. Most basic is the impulse toward believing that there is some greater intelligence than ourselves, somewhere. Many people who reject traditional theism gravitate toward ancient astronauts because it offers a superior intelligence that, to their thinking, is consistent with a naturalistic worldview (i.e., it does not require belief in the supernatural). Others try to redefine traditional theism, or Judaism, or Christianity in terms of ancient astronauts. Many people feel compelled by mysteries from the ancient world that are not addressed by traditional religions, such as how megalithic structures were built, or anomalous artifacts that don't see to fit the mainstream narrative about history. These people are ill-equipped to investigate these areas through scholarly resources, or just don't care about doing so. They tend to be conspiratorial in their thinking -- that science either doesn't have an answer or won't give the world the answer to such mysteries because it would upset the mainstream guild of which they are a part.
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2. But then, our major religions are built on mythological traditions, too. Given the fact that you are an expert in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Semitic Languages - is science "disenchanting" our worldviews?
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I doubt it. In the post-modern era, I think science is actually helping to re-enchant the world for many people. Positing other dimensions exist because of equations, or talking about quantum realities because of certain theorems, or making it sound like we understand chaos hardly disenchants the world or worldviews. If anything, uncertainty and alternate realities fire the imagination. Science doesn't have everything in a box, including some of the most important ideas about reality. That makes many people wonder if the "new" view of the universe that is in certain ways transcending or out-stripping science might actually be made more comprehensible by pre-scientific ideas and symbols. In this regard, a worthwhile academic discussion of religious trends in this direction is Christopher Partridge's The Re-Enchantment of the West (vols 1, 2) and Gordon Lynch's The New Spirituality: An Introduction to Progressive Belief in the Twenty-first Century.
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3. In Germany, the planet "Nibiru" assumed by Sitchin is playing a major role in some apocalyptic scenarios concerning the end of a Mayan calendar circle in 2012. Did Sitchin write about this topic?
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This is more of a connection made by Sitchin acolytes. Sitchin himself predicted the return of nibiru in 2090.
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4. Your homepage is pointing out many flawed translations and outright faults of the bestselling Sitchin. After many years of work - do you think that people accepted your scientific arguments even if it meant risking their emotional preferences and worldviews?
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The site takes hundreds of thousands of hits every year, so I'd like to hope at least a small percentage see through Sitchin's nonsense. I do get emails from time to time from people (or parents and grandparents) thanking me for the site, as it helped steer them away from the nonsense. (I actually received one while writing this reply!).
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Mike, thanks for the interview - and for your important activities!
"Nibiru" and the Annunaki may indeed be nonsense, folklore, or myth. However, the description of the phenomena in Ezekiel 1:1-28 is so close to sightings of "UFOs" beginning in the 1950s that one wonders if what Ezekiel saw was what credible witnesses, including trained observers such as military and civilian pilots and law enforcement personnel have seen versions of. Note that 3 of the four "faces" that Ezekiel saw are apex predators: the lion, the eagle, and man. The other could be said to be an apex herbivore, the bull, worshipped in Crete for its strength. It occurred to me while reading Ezekiel's account that the three living creatures may have been insignia on a helmet, the face of the "man" being the actual living creature in the apparatus that "flew" always straight forward, i.e., at right angles, as a jetpack or manuevering unit with rocket thrusters might. Of course, this is all conjecture, and must remain so until definitive proof of extraterrestrial visitation has been obtained. However, the repeated mention of the "four living creatures" in the Bible must mean something, as must the legends of the Hopi about "star people" and the legends of the Annunaki. Are they simply myths? Possibly, but there is enough repetition among widely separated cultures to suggest that there is something unexplained, as the almost universal flood myths suggest.
Im sorry Terry but saying that because the bible mentions things that can be thought of as alien really means nothing. I mean, you have a book full of scientific inaccuracies, written by men who obviously didn't understand the world we live in, what they see, so i would not believe anything they saw, as they also claim to have seen miracles that never happened as well. You cannot use a fiction book as any form of evidence. That would be like me quoting Stephen King to argue that raising the dead may be possible.
I think people seeing UFOs and aliens comes from two things, # 1 our eyes and mind playing tricks on us, and #2 our desire for aliens to visit us and to be the ones who see it.
As I'm sure you know, there is no evidence that life exists everywhere, I do however believe it most likely does, but the same lack of evidence that they even exists means we have even less evidence they have ever visited earth.
I think the UFO phenomena in humans and religion really do go hand in hand because its a desire to extend reality to help explain the unexplainable, and people are more than willing to take advantage of peoples of peoples willingness to believe in things like aliens or gods.
TV networks know the same thing, shows like Ancient Aliens, UFO Hunters, etc are exploit peoples curiosities for what they don't think can be explained (yet, logic and reason tend to explain it).
The Ezekiel description is actually not close at all to UFO descriptions. Scholars of ancient near eastern iconography have known for some time what Ezekiel saw, since all the elements of the vision are preserved in iconography. Additionally, the symbolism and orientation of the creatures is quite in line with Babylonian zodiacal "science". The purpose of the imagery is a clear, consistent theological polemic. See the links below:
http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2008/08/ezekiels-vision-why-it-wasnt-a-flying-saucer-part-1/
http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2008/08/ezekiels-vision-why-it-wasnt-a-flying-saucer-part-1/