How To: Make Crop Circles or Are Aliens Among Us?

Does this video prove that otherworldly intelligent life has visited Earth?

No. It does not prove anything other than there are designs 'etched' onto the surface of a field.

Does the video immediately above prove that otherworldly intelligent life hasn't visited Earth? Yeah, you saw it coming; no, it proves nothing more than humans are able to 'etch' designs in a field of grain.

For nearly as many years as humans have been walking the Earth and looking at the sky overhead, they've been wondering about the unknown above. That's just what humans do; when we're not looking for food or protecting our young, we wonder about stuff. When we stop wondering and start trying to provide solid proof of our beliefs, that's when we get into trouble.

I blame the media! Once upon a time, there was this thing called scientific evidence—the stand-by argument was that if it couldn't be proven as fact, it didn't really exist. Hence the Science vs. Religion Throwdown of the ages. If you pay attention, you'll notice that science (as it's currently presented in the media) is largely an exploration of theories and possibilities. I'm not saying that "what ifs" and "maybes" don't have a high value, I'm saying it's not right to feed the general public a big, steaming bowl of random thought stew and call it a confirmation of truth.

Here are some curated statements about the above videos, followed by small doses of logic.

"These aren't random circles in a field. These are intricate, perfectly designed messages."

There are computer programs that can read scanned, hand-drawn pictures and create millimeter-accurate templates for embroidery. It's not magic or space aliens, it's mathematics calculated by a human-created tool.

"Crop circles all contain messages and there are different ways to interpret them."

Yes, and there are people who claim to predict the future by 'reading' the wrinkles on a persons hand; ask ten different teenagers to name a good song; let your second cousin pick your favorite color. There are as many ways to perceive a thing—any thing—as there are people. I personally see cartoon lions in the floral print on my toss pillows. I guarantee my pillows prove nothing about extraterrestrials.

"The reason crop circles are a relatively modern phenomenon is because 'they' have been waiting for us to evolve enough to understand the messages."

OR.... maybe the people with the skills, time and inclination to draw in grains didn't have convenient reference to the Carl Sagan-composed outbound contact messages until 2001? Just spit-balling here, but I've never drawn a physical representation of an object (in a field or otherwise) before I knew what I was drawing.

"Why would aliens want to come to this planet anyway?"

Why not?

It's downright silly to assume we're the only life in the universe (and beyond), but I do have an issue with the constant underestimation of human ability. I also take exception to the folks who vehemently refuse to even consider the possibility of "God" but who are emphatic about happily ascribing Godlike traits to 'aliens', who are apparently cool enough to exist without the same proofs demanded of any religious deity. I love crop circles, but again, to base an assignment of creation to a more advanced and distant life form based on the artistic inclusion of information readily available to the public and/or perpetuated by popular culture, seems a bit naive.

"People deny the proof [that crop circles are produced by an advanced alien life form] before their own eyes."

"The News of the World video in no way achieves real crop circles. Their circle was oblong and broke all the stems of the corn. And they did it during the day."

It's no different to assert crop circles as PROOF of contact than it is to assert humans being able to create them as PROOF that aliens didn't. On a horticultural note; different plants behave differently under different circumstances (temperature, humidity, soil composition etc.,) and at different times of year. Just because a scheduled performance for reporters isn't spot on, doesn't mean that more planning, better crop selection and a more skilled crew couldn't recreate the Mona Lisa in a night.

On a final note (for now), while you're watching all of the science shows that explore the countless possibilities of what may or may not be alien/extraterrestrial/space baby contact with Earth, please remember that metaphor, simile and analogy are not modern human concepts of the mid 20th century. Maybe the angel that descended from the sky on a shield of glimmering fire was a divine messenger from God, maybe it was an extraterrestrial on a spaceship, maybe it was just an unusual bird carrying a scrap of metal. Maybe.

Comments are appreciated - speak your mind below!