What a see-sawing bunch of rabbit trails!
ALIENS, I thought the subject was "A L I E N S!"
Some thoughts - and I've been studying this subject for a VERY long time:
First of all, IF there is life or intelligent life on other planets in our universe, it has nothing at all to do with the odds or the number of star systems and habitable planets. It has ONLY to do with whether or not God put it in other places. And that seems far from certain. Clearly, IF so, He has yet to let us know about them, nor has He clearly prepared us for any eventual contact. And perhaps either He one day will prepare and make us aware of them -
OR - they don't exist
OR He placed them so far away from us that we will never know of or encounter them - and so knowledge of them is practically unnecessary.
Next is the question of whether there ARE aliens and have they long been visiting us. The fact is that IF aliens exist and they are physical beings, utilizing physical craft subject to the physics and the constant danger presented by the vast billions of catastrophically dangerous and extremely fast moving array of objects inherent throughout the universe, then it is an absolute IMPOSSIBILITY that we have been visited by them. Because the physics and extraordinary number of dangerous objects moving at enormous speeds, from all directions make this impossible. The ability to travel at light speeds over the vast distances required would only make it FAR more and almost instantly, catastrophically dangerous. An aliens craft would be blown to smithereens not far out of the galactic garage - either by hitting an object or it hitting them. So the issue of whether they exist is separate from whether or not they have actually ever visited us. The first could be true or not. The latter, if they are physical entities using physical craft, would be impossible. Now, some want to argue aliens can use crafts that have metaphysical capabilities or that can take use worm-hole shortcuts, etc. But if they have metaphysical capabilities, then we are warping off into the unproven and unscientific - the world in which anything is possible but unproven, if tremendously unlikely.
Yes, if one studies up on what the significant number of CREDIBLE individuals that say they have been abducted, they are telling similar stories and they are NOT good. The aliens described sound dark, scary, evil, that come in the night and take them, do terrifying things to them, and typically produce great fear and anxiety in those having had such experiences. And the people I'm talking about are well-educated, good citizens, normal in every aspect (a far smaller percentage of those reporting such things, yet still representing very significant numbers of people). But they will swear to you that they have had - and often long had - these contact experiences. I think there are very good reasons to believe that they are being deceived by demons. And those that truly believe that who they are seeing are ACTUAL aliens, if they also believe that they have greater knowledge to teach us, enlighten us, etc - in other words, once someone believes they are TRULY aliens - THEN they are ripe for being deceived. Such experiences from credible people sound very much demonic.
Also, especially in Europe, there are organized groups that believe they have long been communicating with aliens. And what they say their communications are sounds very demonic, as many such groups have some type of end-time, rapture-like New Age beliefs that have come from the "aliens." These groups typically believe that these "much more advanced" aliens are here to lead us into a New Age that is to come. And suprisingly, many of them mix Biblical theology - especially from Revelation - with their beliefs. To me, this sounds very demonic. Remember the "Heaven's Gate" group (back in 1997
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s ... s_group%29) - these guys were all PhDs who believed a "mothership" following comet Hale-Bopp was coming to rapture them. These were very intelligent, well-educated and highly deceived people who all killed themselves to escape their eartly "shells" to "beam up" to the ship. True stuff! And there are many, many other such organized groups - also often incorporating occult elements.
Finally, especially since the 1940s, we have been inundated with media, book and movie tales of sci-fi, space travel and aliens. A large percentage of Americans not only believe aliens exist but that we are being visited by them. People, against the backdrop of this pop-culture, sci-fi, alien saturation see night after night of alien and UFO show on Discovery and History Channel (and many others), they cite the vast universe and number of galaxies, and they are prone to believing there absolutely "must be other life out there. The point is that whether or not end-time scenarios and schemes by the devil and his cohorts will utilize alien beliefs - perhaps where someone arrives that APPEARS to be an alien, who has "greater wisdom, incredible solutions, answers that earth longs for - well, I can see that as one POSSIBILITY. Why WOULDN'T the devil manipulate and utilize something so widely believed and ingrained in the culture for his deceptive motives, as alien beliefs - I can definitely see that as a possibility. I'm not saying that will definitely happen, but I am saying the prevalent belief in aliens and their visitations make the world ripe for such related deceptions. Any entity that can appear to be something that has supernatural abilities or ones beyond human knowledge and capability, could easily deceive the masses into believing that an "alien has finally arrived." All I'm really saying is that Satan has an enormous tool belt and he will exploit whatever naivete and false beliefs he thinks will be most effective for his purposes.