The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer [103]
Firmage set fingers to keyboard and cranked out an ambitious 244-page manuscript. He titled it The Truth, since it includes his goal of convincing the “scientific establishment” of the reality of UFOs and such advanced technologies as zero-point energy from the vacuum of space, “propellantless propulsion” and “gravitational propulsion” for “greater-than-light” travel, “vacuum fluctuations” to alter “gravitational and inertial masses,” and other forms of alternative space propulsion systems.4 In fact, says Firmage, for thousands of years we humans have been “nudged” along our technological trajectory by periodic contact with advanced “teachers” willing to share their knowledge with us, the latest being in 1947 at Roswell, New Mexico. As he waxes poetic in his book:
Teachers have taught us
through the ages.
They are watching us now.
The Cosmos is their ocean
and they have been mindful
of our need to develop.5
To encourage further alien contact and technological development, Firmage invested $3 million into the founding of Project Kairos (Greek for “opportune moment”) to prepare humanity for future contacts. “Imagine that one day a new city is constructed somewhere on Earth, a ‘Universe City’, where a spacetime port is established as a centerpoint of interaction among Earth-dwellers and visitors from elsewhere,” Firmage fantasizes.6
“Why would a young, successful CEO risk his reputation on something this fantastic?” Firmage asked a reporter rhetorically. “Because I believe so much in this theory. And I am in a unique position to communicate an extremely important message. I have the money, credibility, scientific grounding and faith.”7
Faith is the operative word here. Joe Firmage loves science, but it is his faith that powers his beliefs. In considering the nature of the cosmos and life, we see my thesis of belief-dependent realism that beliefs come first and reasons for belief come second once again borne out in Firmage’s explanation that “there is one concept of which I am logically and totally convinced—which science has utterly failed to teach me directly—but which religion has long held and somewhat rationally explained in its internal structure: There can be no question that the Cosmos is the product of intent.” Intention implies agency, and an agent is a being, in this case a being outside our world who gives us meaning and hope: “It is in this concept of intended creation, or being, that the emotive feeling of meaning has a place for discussion within the mechanical laws of physics. The physicality of intention allows the physicist in me to incorporate an understanding of emotion into the laws that govern the universe.”8
The physicality of intention. This is the very embodiment of agenticity.
Interestingly, Firmage was raised Mormon, and one of the fundamental beliefs of the Mormon church is that its founder, Joseph Smith, was contacted by the angel Moroni, who directed him to the sacred golden tablets from which the Book of Mormon was written. In The Truth, Firmage explains that the revelation “was received by a man named Joseph Smith, whose descriptions of encounters with brilliant, white-clothed beings are almost indistinguishable from many modern-day accounts of first-hand encounters with ‘visitors.’”9 So, Joseph Smith had a close encounter of the third kind. And according to Firmage, Smith was by no means the first. Eighteen centuries earlier, St. John the Divine received his “revelation” from which the last book in the Bible was written, and shortly before that a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth encountered an intentional agent of the highest order. Before Jesus there was Moses and the burning bush, who spoke to him as “I am who I am.” From Moses to Jesus to St. John the Divine to Joseph Smith to Joseph Firmage—an unbroken lineage of mortal humans touched by alien agents.
Alien Agenticity
Over the years I have appeared