5 Things I've noticed about... the show "Ancient Aliens"

Ever watch the show "Ancient Aliens", the History Channel show that claims that humans were visited by aliens in the past? Well I have, and there are some things that I have noticed about that show.

So here are five things I've noticed about the show "Ancient Aliens".

5. Their answer for everything is "Aliens".

According to the "experts" on that show, almost everything we have built in the ancient world was built by aliens.

It doesn't matter if it is a giant structure like the Great Pyramid of Giza, or some mundane but interesting object like the Baghdad Battery, or even something that was proven to be made in modern times, such as the Crystal Skulls, according to the experts on the show, they were all either built by aliens, or their construction was guided by aliens.

Heck, even our own existence is, according to them, the result of aliens messing with our genes a long time ago.

4. The "experts" have a "pics, or it didn't happen" type mentality.

All of the "experts" on that show apparently want exact details about how a megalithic structure was built, and if they don't have those exact details, they assume that aliens built it, not humans (where as with most scientists or archaeologists, it's the other way around).

This is somewhat similar to the phrase "pics, or it didn't happen" where when someone makes a claim on the internet that they did something pretty awesome, if someone is skeptical of the claim they will sometimes say "pics, or it didn't happen". Although some might argue that this is more of a reverse of that...

3. They get their facts way wrong.

Many of the "facts" that are presented on that show are just down right wrong. A great example of this would be many of the claims they make about Pumapunku that simply aren't true.

According to the show Pumapunku is 14,000 years old, when in fact it's closer to 1,500 years old. Also, according to show, the stone blocks at the site are basalt and granite. In fact the site was constructed using andesite and red sandstone.

2. The regular "experts" on the show are not experts in science or archaeology.

The show has regular guests on that claim to be experts in the field of ancient alien or astronaut theory. The problem with this is that not only is this not a legitimate scientific field, the regular guests on the show have no degrees in either science or archaeology.

Giorgio Tsoukalos doesn't have a degree in science or archaeology. Erich von Däniken, the person whom's book Chariots of the Gods? which the show is basically base upon, doesn't have a degree in science or archaeology either (or anything for that matter).

1. The whole theory that the show is base upon is racist.

One of the biggest criticisms of the theory itself (besides being nothing more than pseudoscience) is that it is in a way, racist.

The reason why the whole theory itself is accused of being racist isn't just because it's primary focus is on none European peoples, it's also because it asserts that people who are not as advanced technologically as what we are today are not capable of constructing massive, megalithic structures, simply because we would have a hard time constructing such structures with our technology. Some people would say that's pretty racist...

Gary McKinnon, threat to America, or another victim of conspiracy theories?

A British man by the name of Gary McKinnon, who ten years ago hacked into NASA and US military computers (apparently damaging some of them in the process) was spared from being extradited to the United States from the United Kingdom by United Kingdom Home Secretary Theresa May.

Now the reason cited for this isn't because the crimes he has been accused committing wasn't enough extradite him. The reason stated is because he has Asperger's syndrome (which is a mild form autism) and depression, and it has been determined that there is a high likely that if he were to be brought over here that he would most likely try to commit suicide.

Now many of you are probably asking why exactly did he hack into NASA and US military computers in the first place?

Well apparently back when he did this (which was about ten years ago) he was obsessed with UFOs and a alleged cover-up by our government, so he hacked into our government and military computers to find out any information about aliens that he believed the United States was covering up.

I have no doubt in my mind that Gary's autism caused him to become so obsessed with these UFO cover-up conspiracy theories that it caused him to do something that most people who do not have this neurological disorder, or any other type of neurological or mental disorder, would not do.

But, the existence of these conspiracy theories, and those who promote them, are also partially to blame as well.

Now most people don't take these UFO conspiracy theories that seriously. They might believe in it, but they usually don't obsessed with it to the point where they would commit a crime. Heck, I even once believed in them, but I never took it seriously enough to even buy a book on UFOs, much less do something that is as highly illegal as what Gary McKinnon is accused of doing (he admits to hacking into our computers, but not damaging them) but, if these conspiracy theories didn't exist then people who are like Gary who can become obsessed to the point where they have a great amount of difficulty controlling themselves and their actions, and thus they do stuff like this.

In my opinion this is another example of how destructive conspiracy theories can be, and how it can cause a person to rune their life.

The Slate article about this story

Gary's Wikipedia article

Ancient Aliens Debunked (The Movie)!

Ancient Aliens is one of the most popular shows on the History Channel. It is also one of the most controversial television shows as well, not only for the fact that it is accused of promoting pseudoscience and pseudo-history, and that many of the claims made are the result poor research and false assumptions, and it has even been called deceptive.

In this the new online documentary about the show, internet talk show and podcast host Chris White shows how many of the claims made on "Ancient Aliens" are not true, and are either the result of not doing proper scientific and archeological research, or are outright false:

Also, please feel free to go to the Ancient Aliens Debunked website and find out more information.

Also, for further reading, please go to the Ancient Aliens Debunked page on Illuminutti.com.

Embarrassing Conspiracy Theories: Ancient Aliens Cover-up

Ever since the History Channel show "Ancient Aliens" premiered, many of the people who are interviewed on the show (mind you they tend to be the same people) assert that not only were we visited by extraterrestrials in the past, but that historians and archaeologist, along with the government, are covering up the evidence.

The belief is, is that the leadership within historian and archaeologist community, along with the government, is hiding this knowledge of ancient extraterrestrial visitation in order to keep the status quo, and to prevent chaos from what might happen if it was revealed that certain histories in many peoples' religions were in fact false.

While some people might question their beliefs if such information did come out, many people would try re-work their beliefs to fit this new information, or they would reject this information outright and claim it to be itself a part of a conspiracy to destroy Christianity. Just take a look at how evolution is viewed in this country. Some people have accepted it, some reject it, and most have work evolution their beliefs, which tends to be called theological evolution.

Many ancient alien "experts" also assert that fear by threats of ruining someone's career is what is mainly used to keep such information suppressed, and that some historians and archaeologists careers have been ruined already, because they would not give up on their belief that aliens visited the planet in the past.

Most historians and archaeologists who's careers have been ruined, didn't get them ruined because they publicly stated that aliens visited us in the past. Their careers were ruined because they wouldn't give up on a theory that has been discredited and proven to be completely untrue. This doesn't just apply to historians and archaeologists who believe in ancient alien visitation, it applies to anything in archaeology that's been disproved.

Besides the fact that evidence they present on that show about ancient alien visitation is highly speculative at best, and is usually completely false due to a profound misunderstanding by people who don't understand history and don't know what they are talking about, they also present no evidence that information about ancient aliens either exists, or is being suppressed at all.

Now I won't say that aliens never visited us in our past, because there is no evidence to support that we never were visited at all in the distant past, but, there is also no evidence to support that we have been visited by aliens in the past either.

Thrive: The Failure

Several months ago a conspiracy theory laden movie called "Thrive" premiered on the internet. One of the biggest claims that they made was that there were these designs for machines that could generate unlimited amounts of energy out of nothing. Basically, these were free energy machines. A week after the premier of this movie, I decided to send the website an email concerning these so called free energy machines. What I asked them for was blue prints and instructions on how to build one of these machines, what type of materials I should use to build such a machine, and a video of one being built until it's fully functional.

I assumed that because the free energy device, and the conspiracy theory that a small group of individuals were basically controlling the world and trying to suppress such technology, that they would be more then happy to show someone, like myself, how to build such a device.

The only email I ever received from them, so far, was an automated message basically telling me how to download the movie, and links to help promote the movie.

Apparently to the makers of this movie, it's more important to promote the movie it self, and the conspiracy theories within it, rather then to provide the actual proof that one of the devices it promotes, can be built.

On this part, and on so many others, Thrive has failed.

Most of the conspiracy theories and pseudo-sciences in this movie has either been debunked a long time ago, and even at the very best, are logically flawed, and with no real evidence what so ever to support the conspiracy theories and pseudo-science that is promoted in the film. In fact, several people who were interviewed in the film are now distancing themselves from the movie, and even denouncing it and it's creator, Foster Gamble, because of the conspiracy theories and pseudo-science that was promoted in the movie, and that they were mis-lead about what the film was truly about.

The movie also seems to have failed in the conspiracy theorist world as well. There isn't much talked about much among conspiracy theorist circles, unless they have very similar conspiracy theory beliefs to the Thrive movement itself. In fact some conspiracy theorists even believe that it's a dis-information movie. I've actually seen one such accusation myself from a member of the Zeitgeist movement, who accused it of being a dis-information movie created by the government and Scientology...

I speculate the reason why some conspiracy theorists believe this is a dis-information movie is because not only of some of the weird stuff it promotes, and sometimes even weirder people it attracts, but also because Foster Gamble was once an heir to Procter & Gamble, and because of this, some conspiracy theorists are just going to naturally believe that it must be a dis-information movie created by someone involved in a multi-national corporation.

It should also be noted that many people, both skeptics and supporters, see many similarities between Zeitgeist and Thrive, in that they both promote conspiracy theories, that they promote the belief that a group of elites are controlling the world through the banking system, that advanced technology will solve the world's ills, and that we must change our way of thinking. The only real differences between the two are that Zeitgeist doesn't promote UFO conspiracy theories, and Thrive doesn't promote Christ myth conspiracy theories.

Also, many supporters of Thrive are, or were, members of the Zeitgeist movement. Some skeptics and debunkers have even referred to Thrive as "Zeitgeist 2.0".

The fact remains is that Thrive has not made any real impact anywhere. In fact, if it wasn't for a couple of fellow skeptics and debunkers, who created the Thrive Debunked blog, I would never have even heard of Thrive in the first place, because there just aren't that many people talking about it, besides maybe a few people who to seriously believe in some pretty weird stuff.

Pseudo... Television

Ten years ago if you watched The Learning Channel, you could actually learn something from that television channel. Ten years ago if you watched the History Channel, you would actual see some real history lessons on that channel. Now if you get something useful and thought expanding from either channel, you've caught them on a special day.

It seems like so many channels that once presented actual stuff that's worth learning about, is now presenting mostly pseudo-science and conspiracy theories.

Where once crap like this mostly only showed on SyFy, is now quickly taking over networks who's original purpose was to show real science, and real history.

Now it seems that all these channels show either "reality" shows, or shows containing fringe science that a legit scientist would not touch with a ten foot poll.

Every one of these science networks is guilty of this, from shows about psychics, ghost hunting, UFOs, conspiracy theories, cryptozoology, the Apocalypse, pseudo-history, ancient aliens, and the list just goes on and on and on...

And The History Channel is the worst offender of them all, because just about everything I listed above, is on it's main line-up, or shown in re-runs.

In fact, finding a show on that channel with real history on it is about as rare as finding music on MTV (or what's called music, since many people don't consider it to be music).

I blame us, the people for this, since these networks give us what we want instead of what we need, and what we need is to expand our minds in the right direction.

Yes, I know that history and science are boring to some people, but I've always felt that real history and real science, once you've started to really learn the stuff, is allot more interesting then the fake stuff that's pedaled as being real.

Thrive: The Debunking

Last week I saw a trailer for a new documentary called "Thrive: What on Earth will it take" by Foster Gamble .

The trailer starts out fine at first, but within 30 seconds it goes from asking a perfectly legitimate question of whether or not humans can thrive, to pseudo-science, and eventually conspiracy theories.

First, they talk about some secret "code" and "hidden" designs in ancient art work concerning the torus, and how it keeps showing up in so many ancient sites around the world.

This of course means nothing other then different cultures thousands of years ago interacted with each, picking up the pattern from one another, and reproducing it. It has nothing to do with some secret ancient codes (not exactly a secret either since it's right out in public).

While this part raised a red flag to me, I wasn't ready to outright to dismiss it as being nothing more then BS.

Then goes into UFOs, and that the government is covering up the truth about them, and that they have crashed alien space craft.

This raised a few more red flags for me, as that is nothing more then an unproven and probably untrue conspiracy theory, and I felt it was going way off of what I thought this documentary was going to be about.

But again, I was not about to dismiss this documentary as being nothing more then BS.

Then they talked about crop circles being communications from aliens.

This is when I dismissed this documentary as being nothing but BS.

Crop circles, even the very complex ones, are in fact man made. There are multiple websites and videos showing how they can be made in only a few hours, using some rope and a 2x4.

Then they go into where they claim that machines can be built, using the torus design, that can produce unlimited energy.

I won't actually outright say is impossible, but most scientists in the field of physics agree that a machine that could produce unlimited energy (no matter what the design is) is so highly improbable that it is considered to be outright impossible to build.

Then it goes down hill from there.

They then begin making claims that this technology is being suppressed (along with knowledge about UFOs) by large corporations (banks, oil, energy, pharmaceutics) and the government (which is implied is controlled by large corporations) and implies that these corporations are responsible for all the troubles in the world today.

And of course they tell you to "connect the dots", something that many conspiracy theorists do in order to try to prove their conspiracy theories when they have a lack of real evidence (which is almost always).

In my personal opinion, you should not waste your time, or money, on this documentary, but if you do actually wish to see what I am actually talking, here is a link the trailer to the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OibqdwHyZxk

And if you wish to read a much more in-depth debunking of this documentary, please click on the link below:

http://thrivedebunked.wordpress.com/