Admit it. The title of this post intrigues you. I know it would intrigue me.
I will share with you a funny story about one of my boys. For those of you who do not know me too well, I have three children. My daughter (30! 😳), and two boys (23, and 19).
My 23 year old is autistic. I have written about some of my experiences as an autism father elsewhere in this blog, but I am still fixing the links. If upon clicking on the link of a story that interests you the system tells you that the site is not available, it is a mistake. Please alert me about it and I will fix it.
Anyway, here’s a link about a dream that I had about being a dad of a young man with autism. The link works, and the post has the active links of a couple more posts, if only for you to get a better idea of where I am coming from. But I will say this: My son is a delightful young man with the soul of a child. Witty, very gentle and social, and smart as a whip. And, as you will read about very soon, he is also a wise young man.
He will also walk into traffic without giving it a second thought. Sigh. If you are a parent, I know you can relate.
The above paragraphs have the first block of information that you need in order to understand this post.
Now about the Ancient Aliens part…
I am very interested on UFOs/UAPs, Forteana and other strange topics in general. I am unapologetic about it, and I plan on writing a bit about my thoughts on these topics in a future post (and possibly talk about them in my podcast), but for now it suffices to say that these ideas intrigue me… a lot. I watch the TV shows, read the books, and with very few exceptions that I will not talk about (*cough* Skinwalker *cough* Ranch) I find them entertaining and good “food for thought”.
But I am not blind. I am a scientist after all, and even though I do state for the record that I think that some of these ideas warrant scientific study, I also maintain that these areas warrant *serious* scientific study. This is why I am unapologetic about my interest on this topics, from cryptozoology to UAPs. Any true scientist is a curious creature, and it is not the nature of science to dismiss any phenomena with the potential of having a reasonable explanation without at least looking into it, but as usual, I digress.
Here’s where the Ancient Aliens show enters this story.
The ancient aliens concept is a sound one that was even proposed by Carl Sagan himself at some point. The argument essentially goes like this: In the 4,600 million years spanning the history of our planet, if life, and especially technological life, is a common phenomenon in the universe, it is a virtual certainty that Earth has been visited by entities “not from here”. This is not fringe science, BTW. Also, statistically, these visits, if they ever happened, must likely took place in the distant past rather than in the relatively short time where humans have been around. This is also good science. Alas, as of today, there is not a single shred of hard evidence that supports that such an event has ever happened.
Before I forget, please know that I am not belittling or mocking the experiences that many people have claimed to have had in terms of strange phenomena. I am no one to judge and in fact, I have people close to me who have experienced strange things, people who have no reason to lie to me and who are not looking for any publicity. Alas, these experiences are beyond the grasp of scientific scrutiny. End of story.
Moving on, I find the Ancient Aliens concept quite fascinating. I have read a lot about it (the books with good science and the books with not-so-good science as well), and I was very excited when they announced the current TV show. The first few episodes were interesting indeed, but as the series advanced, In great part because they likely ran out of material, my enthusiasm for the show… diminished.
Gor the record, I know that “They” did not build the pyramids; I always did, as I give humankind more credit than that, but pretty soon it was evident that the philosophy of the show is that we were not smart enough to build the pyramids or stupid enough come up with the crusades on our own. I am sure that you get what I am trying to say.
Mind you, I still watch the show, most times for the giggle factor or when I am in the mood for a good eye-rolling, but from time to time, there’s an episode true to its roots, so I try to be “faithful”.
And the fact that I still watch the show is the link between the Ancient Aliens and my son.
Mind you, I have never talked about any of these interests of mine with him; I did not even know whether they were on his “radar”. Here’s what happened:
Some time ago I was watching Ancient Aliens, and my boy came to the living room.
“Papá, what are you watching?“
I said something in the lines of “Hey my man! I am watching Ancient Aliens!”
I kid you not, Reynaldo gave me the *most* judgmental look and said (emphasis HIS):
“Papá, I have three words for you: Bunch. Of. Baloney.“
‘Nuff said. Love that kid to pieces.
Papá and his very own Reality Check Officer 😊.
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The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the opinions and policies of my employer, my family, our dog (Ginger), or Charles Darwin.