FedoraHead said:
let's say your an alien race that has no word, history, or knowledge of violence, of wars. You watch us and see us fighting, see us killing. You know we can kill you, you (the alien) have no weapons cause it was never needed. So why would you land and risk being killed? Maybe better to watch from the sky, maybe taken one of us for study.
Ok hypothetically....
I would consider any beings capable of the technology that could propel them to alien worlds such as ours would also posess knowledge far superior to ours.
This knowledge would provide them with the logic, whatever their belief system, that they would need to defend themselves should they step into the unknown.
Also, being more advanced means they are likely to be an older species, i.e. in existence before humans, therefore
they have survived. Survival of any species is based not soley on procreation, but on the predation of other species, flora or fauna and avoiding predation. At the very least staying ahead of the competition.
By this I would assume that such advanced species would have at some point in it's evolution, been prey or predator, hunted or been hunted, even battled for resources with it's own kind or peers. This instinct may very well still be present and our only hope would be that advanced intelligence will promote peaceful intentions.
Ultimately Stephen hawkings may be right....if they want to plunder our planet, they will, with ease. They could find most of what they need on other planets and leave us alone..They may regard us as a species to be protected or studied, or merely an annoyance to be eliminated.
We could even be the resource for viable cross breeding or even just labour, or as food!
Truth is we just don't know.
I do firmly beleive that mankind has achieved all the amazing things people find impossibe and credit aliens for. We have lost many skills through the ages so it's easy for me to see how the pyramids were built by man, yet we have simply lost the know how today.
We seem to assume that mankind today is much smarter than earlier civilisations. Whilst that may be true to an extent as a whole, these civilisations are the very foundation of ours.
Necessity being the mother of invention has made us progress in leaps and bounds. War being responsible for some of our biggest advances. The more we advance the quicker we continue to advance.
But we don't need to build pyramids from huge stones today so, we simply forgot and lost that skill.
How many expert watchmakers are there today (allowing for current population increae)? Ever heard the phrase they don't make em like they used to?
Fire is one of the first things that advanced primitive man, yet most people today in reality could not start a fire without modern tools.
I am prety sure aliens didn't come to Earth, give primitive man some flint and teach him how to make fire and tools....they could have at least brought a Zippo and a Swiss Army Knife.