An Alien View Of Our World
By JOHN YOUNG
(Author’s Note: I recently received an interesting communication from another planet. I was able to translate it after having traveled into the future and borrowed a universal translator from Capt. James Kirk of the starship USS Enterprise. The document is about a report regarding conditions on Earth composed by a recent traveler from another galaxy.
(The document in my possession is evidently a letter of rejection of the traveler’s report, written by a newspaper editor on that distant planet. Clearly the editors on that planet go into much more detail than editors on the Earth when they reject a submission.)
+ + +
Thank you for your interesting contribution. Unfortunately I am unable to publish it, because our readers would find it too far removed from reality. In particular, the characters in your story engage in contradictory behavior — to such an extent that it becomes ridiculous, even as fiction. I’ll give some examples.
Your story, set on a planet that you call Earth, is about intelligent beings and their activities. However, their ideas and actions are so irrational that they could not possibly come from intelligent beings. I’ll take some instances from your story.
One thing on which the inhabitants of this imaginary planet pride themselves is their tolerance: They claim to be open to diverse viewpoints and to believe in democracy. But those who are particularly loud in their demand for tolerance proceed to act in a way completely contrary to their alleged principles, refusing to engage in rational argumentation and instead engaging in personal attacks and even threatening those who disagree with them with legal prosecution.
The same people in your story praise democracy, but act in an undemocratic manner to their opponents. It is really incredible that rational beings on any planet could act in such an irrational manner!
The intellectual elite on this imaginary planet of yours seem to be among the least intelligent. For instance, their scientific data point clearly to an intelligent Creator, yet they persist in making the absurd claim that everything came about by chance. Logically that involves effects that have no cause.
Often they not only reject a Creator, but want to suppress those who think otherwise. Clearly, this is not rational behavior, nor is it in accord with the democracy and tolerance that these people espouse.
You represent the Earth dwellers as being kind and compassionate and show them to be shocked at cruelty, with a particular revulsion at cruelty to children. Yet on the next page you describe legislation permitting the killing of unborn members of the species, even when this involves tearing children to pieces without even giving them painkillers.
This is even more fantastic in view of what you say about the attitude of Earth people to motherhood and to the practice of medicine. Mothers are presented as having a wonderful love for their children, even to the point of sacrificing their own lives for those of their offspring; yet a significant percentage of mothers are shown as having their babies killed before birth.
Also, medicine is presented as a noble science, with its practitioners devoted to the welfare of their patients; yet some of these doctors get high incomes for killing babies, some of this income being paid by governments, using revenue extracted from the people.
A child in this society is shown to gain wonderful benefits from having both a mother and a father as it grows to maturity, with scientific studies verifying these benefits. Yet the law in many places promotes the practice of two men or two women raising a child, thus depriving the child of these advantages.
While your story shows many contradictions in the activities of this strange people, the most blatant contradictions seem to be in regard to sexuality. Their science shows that the two sexes are biologically fixed and are complementary to each other, but this evidence is often ignored. It is claimed instead that there are any number of variations, even more than fifty.
Yet while a bewildering fluidity is claimed, that claim is flatly contradicted by another claim. For it is also said that homosexuals among the population are “made that way.” This is compared to the race a person belongs to and which is biologically fixed, not depending on the personal preferences of the individual.
The claim that homosexuals are “made that way” is then given as the justification for laws banning counselors from helping a person who wants to move away from his homosexual inclinations.
So your society has laws banning individuals from getting professional help in changing their “orientation,” and contradictory laws insisting that individuals be treated according to the “orientation” that they choose for themselves and which they can change if they want to.
There is commendable outrage at the sexual mistreatment of women and children, with prison terms for offenders. But in your next chapter you describe recent laws prescribing that either sex can use the bathrooms previously reserved for one sex. Legislators who could not see that this would inevitably lead to further sexual assaults would have to be almost totally devoid of common sense.
You seem to imply that the people in general are wiser than their rulers, but this raises the question of why the less wise are chosen for positions that require exceptional practical wisdom. It is as if there were a number of candidates for the position of captain of a spaceship, and a less capable person was chosen instead of a more capable one. While the people seem well aware of the importance of choosing the most capable in other areas of life they choose the less capable for guiding the whole society. This doesn’t make sense.
Readers of science fiction are prepared to accept improbabilities, even impossibilities; but there are limits. Indeed, The Visible Man is one of our famous science-fiction stories, although everyone knows that a visible man is an impossibility. But there are limits to the suspension of disbelief, and your story far exceeds those limits. So, regrettably, I must decline to publish it.
+ + +
(John Young is a graduate of the Aquinas Academy in Sydney, Australia, and has taught philosophy in four seminaries. His book The Scope of Philosophy was published by Gracewing Publishers in England in 2010. He has been a frequent contributor to The Wanderer on theological issues since 1977.)
