Critical thinking?, reductionism?- epistemology, anyone?http://shethought.com/2010/12/31/the-re ... -among-us/The reptilians walk among us!
By Simon Menanteau-Ledouble, on December 31st, 2010
Indeed, teach it! (Reptilian aliens lampooning creationism, on wearscience.comThe dawn of the reptilians (could be the title of a Hollywood blockbuster):Sometime, you don’t feel like half-assing around with lukewarm conspiracy theories. Sometime, you feel like slapping a pair of goggles on and going full-throttle into crazy-land. There you’ll probably meet David Icke, he has been living there so long, he probably opened a fricking camping or something…
The idea of reptilian humanoid is certainly not new by any stretch : early in the UFO phenomenon, saucers before the greys cemented their hegemony, reptilian visitors were quite popular inhabitant of the flying saucers such as in the account of 1967’s abductees Herbert Schirmer or a passage in Brad Steiger ‘Flying Saucers are hostile’ in the same year. More down to earth, it had been hypothesized, for example by no other than Carl Sagan, that, if not a fortuitous asteroidal encounter in the end of the cretaceous, a highly intelligent specie of dinosaur might have one day evolved that would fill our ecological niche. Troödon formossus that lived at this period and had one of the largest brain to body mass ratio of all dinosaurs, is a favorite candidate for such thought exercise such Dale Russel and Ron Séguin rather hopelessly anthropocentric effort published in 1982 : the dinosauroid. Of course, the mass media were not in rest leading to the creation of popular TV series including the ‘Land of the Lost’ that for three seasons, from 74 to 76, described the reptilian sleestacks, ancient descendants of the dinosaurs, and V, were the invaders were extraterrestrial reptiles adopting a human appearance as part of a conspiracy to take over the planet.
Interestingly, each of these two series seem to have inspired a current in reptoid ‘research’: John Rhodes of the ‘Reptoids research center’ started in the mid-90ies a series of article where he described the reptilians as of terran origin, a convergent line of evolution that produced an intelligent species of cave dwelling rather pacific creatures that only rarely interact with humanity, one could call it the ‘Sleestack version of reptoids’. Of course these creatures should have reached sentience millions of years before any of our ancestors thought of picking up any sharp stick and yet there are, for some reason, the one confined in caves. The reason for this colossal waste of a head-start are, as of yet, unexplained satisfactorily.
And then came David Icke.And then came David Icke whose paranoid depressing views seem more inspired by V’s visitors although, following the pattern of cross-pollination common to many crackpot theories, he seems quite happy to believe in just about any far-stretched story that is blown his way. Indeed, in David Icke’s world, the reptilians are invaders from the Draco constellation. Arrived on Earth, they establishing themselves at the center of the Hollow earth (the entrance is in Antarctica, apparently) and chilled-out for a while. Then, following a scenario inspired by Zecharia Sitchin, they jump-started the Babylonian civilization that came to worship them as gods, under the name of Anunnaki. Then, because it seems like it’s all any galactic traveler is about, they cross-breed with humans, inspiring the Biblical account of the Nephilim, a story we already heard from the Raëlian cult that itself plagiarized it from Jean Sendy. There was two offshoot of note of these breeding programs: the first one was the production of a human race destined to act as slave master, the Aryans (yes, these guys). The second was the establishment of lineage of individuals able to adopt a human guise upon consumption of human blood. These hybrids bloodlines were then able to acquire leadership position and slowly take over the control of the world, Charlemagne was such a reptilian agent, for example and so is the British royal family to these days as well as the Bushes and presumably any politician or head of state successful enough to be on the news. From this position of power, when not and indulging in child sacrifice and pedophilia (even if it should arguably be called bestiality), the Reptilian advance their agenda, basically, promoting the New world order so dear to the Far Right, as outlined, apparently, in the (well known hoax and best seller of anti-Semitic literature) protocol of the Elders of Zion. Also, the Reptilians come from the constellation Draco, but the Draco constellation from another dimension. So, when Satanists are summoning demons, they are actually bringing Reptilian from this dimension (the fourth one, if you were wondering). Add to that that peculiar British fascination for Lady Di’s death and the idea that the Holocaust apparently did not happen and you might begin to scratch the surface of David Icke’s world view.
At first, the reactions to these ideas were mixed, to say the least, and some people argued that ‘shape-shifting invaders that secretly rule the world’ was just a codename for ‘the Jews’. After all, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, while not objectively much more sensical, do have a certain credibility born of ancienity and familiarity and, certainly, Icke, between his interest into the ‘Aryan race’, his use of anti-Semitic material and his flirt with Holocaust denial, was quite suspicious. But, to these naysayers, Icke was prompt to offer a correction: he is not anti-Semitic and really meant actual, literal, invaders from outer-space that shape shift and secretly rule the world. The Jews are just working for them (world-wide conspiracy arguably is a busy business and sub-contracting is indispensible).
What about the evidences?Because Icke’s conspiracy has phagocyted so many conspiracionist and pseudo-scientific ideas, most of the evidences Icke can provide sound eerily familiar: He appropriated, for example, a lot of Sitchin’s discredited demonstration. Similarly, the proofs he offers for the secret control of the world by a shadow government of aliens are pretty much copy-pasted from similar conspiracy by the Jews or the Free-masons. The rare bit of truly original evidence offered by Icke and followers is a few poor quality videos in which the subject is described as displaying reptilian physical traits.
So, what should be the skeptical conclusion? Well, it is not possible to totally dismiss the ideas. In fact, many of this conspiracy ‘theories’ are, by nature, unfalsifiable as any absence of evidence is perceived as proof of the secrecy of the conspiracy; any contradictory evidence is but a plant, part of a cover-up by these all powerful illuminatis… So, yes, it is always possible that we all (but Icke and a few of what he terms ‘red robes’) are pawns, shepple, unable or unwilling of seeing the hidden truth. Yet, the default position should be that things are, actually, what they seem to be, that no hard proofs have been offered of the presence of these alien lizards simply because they are not here.
The videos, for starter, are pretty inconclusive. Why would these consummate liars suddenly let slip the mask? And, if this control is so flimsy, how come they are able to fool their entourage 24/7? Isn’t the idea of an artifact of video compression and pixellization much more likely?
As for the more general conspiracy… the world is complicated and messy. Facts are lying all over the place. By carefully selecting and cherry-picking what facts to present, one can tailor what they appear to say in an apparently coherent narrative, one of secrecy and secret conspiracies, a bit like, by cautiously selecting which monument to choose, one can appear to paint a pentagram on a metropolitan city grid: to me, the evidences are way insufficient to warrant seriously challenging the default position.
So what? (shape of a conclusion)This situation does put the skeptic (at least me) in an awkward position: On one hand, the utmost silliness of the idea, it’s joyous cooptation of the craziest most outlandish claims that the internet can offer, give to Icke’s ramblings an almost pythonesc quality that is quite comedic and a more than a little sympathic. Indeed it did inspire British writer Warren Ellis some rather funny pages for the comic Hellblazer (scroll down, true believer).
Yet, under this superficial crust of clownish make-up, there is the foul smell of the vilest of the vile, the equally joyous bedding of the most sewer smelling ideology of the far right. So, yeah, while we can laugh at the idea of people turning into humanoid reptile, let’s not forget what Ionesco had to say about people turning into Rhinoceros…
Warren Ellis' Hellblazer
