Join us as we explore the intersection of the unexplained and the divine. We delve into Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) and the profound implications their existence could have on religious beliefs and faith. Drawing on recent whistleblower revelations, we discuss the hidden truths that governments may know about these mysterious occurrences.
Transcript
Waseem: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome back to Third Culture Convos, where third culture kids sit back, relax, and talk about global issues that affect third culture kids and how they identify and deal with being a part of this global world and not necessarily feeling at home in any one particular spot in it.
Welcome to the show. I’m here with Rashe. What’s up
Rashed: buddy? Hey, how’s it going everybody? I’m sure they
Waseem: said, I’m sure they said and so today’s topic is something that I, have been going down this, kind of rabbit hole about this topic. So one of the, there has been a bombshell interview that was released on Monday that hasn’t really been picked up by the By the big news, let’s say big news, let’s say.
So you know, a few, I think a few years ago there’s there were whistleblower protections that were put in place in the US government. And then those whistleblower protections led to whistle blowing. And one of the whistleblowers a former, like I think either military man or go like high government has access to this information.
His name’s. Gross, G R U S C H. He released, he was interviewed on an interview released on Monday where he, goes into detail about how the US and other governments are in and possession and are, aware of these UAPs and UAPs stand for unidentified anomalous phenomena.
And it stands for that. And you may have heard of them, and they may have, they’ve been called UFOs before, but they’re called UAPs now. And okay, Rashid, I’m gonna tell you a lot of interesting things that I’ve learned today to, start this conversation. First, why, please? Okay, so first yeah, let’s just go through the, brief.
So first and foremost the u f why are they rebranded as UAPs and not UFOs? Okay, we’re no longer called UFOs. So the reason why is that whenever let’s say military officials or space, people want to, like NASA and all those guys wanna go talk to senators and governors and stuff about things that they find.
And things of note and things to pay attention to if they come in with u f O. Like any key words like the word u f o, the word alien, the word, any of these words, the people on the they’re not going to get listened to. Partly because also senators and governors, if they go if they’re like, oh, we have UFOs in the sky that we need to get more information about their constituents will, will.
Laugh at them and it would hurt their, reelection things. So by changing the name, it changes the brand. It’s a new name, and it allows for them to start to, to talk about them and take them seriously. Within the contest of saying that UAPs could be from Russia, from China so that they don’t necessarily have to say that they’re hence the word unidentified, right?
And other things that he shared was the, that apparently Mussolini in 1930 something his forces find in Italy a a downed u a p. They, collected information gets to the Vatican. There are letters between the Vatican and the US government that. Show that the Vatican knows about it and that they’re in on this sort of massive coverup that the US has done over the last 80 years or so to so let’s say protect the population from this information using different methods.
Up to, and this is from the interview, not me, up to killing people so that they don’t share that infor information that they have. Muddying the waters by releasing both fake and real stuff so that people can’t and Which has led me to a lot of questions and I think the questions that we can, that we wanna discuss.
So first and foremost, it, the first question that came into my head was, what does Islam say about this? What does Christianity say about this? And as soon as I asked you that question right when we were talking about this your face cuz I don’t know if if the he Kate went, did that face where he was like, shit.
Yeah,
Rashed: exactly.
Waseem: Everyone knows what that face, I dunno. It’s I don’t know if they bring it up. And But within Islam, within Christianity they do, one of the things that they do bring up a lot is the unseen, right? So there are ghosts, there are demons, there are God, there are, there, there’s plenty of, room for of, for this, for the unseen, and I think probably more so in Islam than in Christianity.
I might be mistaken. Or maybe in the Abrahamic religions versus the, let’s say but even in the East, like there’s spirits, there are like there, there is plenty of the unseen. Where this unseen comes from is not necessar. Like you in today’s, even in today’s like religious say, More atheistic tendencies in the world now, right?
The, a lot of people talk about the death of religion and it’s, over and there’s no need for it and all that type of stuff. And, maybe even within religious circles, people less lean into the, to the. To the ghosts and the, demons and the possessions and, all that type of stuff.
Maybe people don’t lean into that stuff as much anymore. They might accept it, they may not, and everybody sits they might be ridiculed for accepting it, that, and that happens as well. But I just wonder how this entire, where like I’m playing a, thought experiment. Where how, would all of this information.
Let’s say it’s true. So hence the thought. Let’s assume that. Okay. Yeah. You know what? There are and they’re way more advanced and they’re out there and they’re, not just out there. They’re here too, and they’ve come, they visited and yada What does that do to like religion?
What does that do to
Rashed: See the thing is, that yeah you, touched on up upon a couple of things that Islamically speaking, at least it goes as far as like the gin, so the spirit world and all that kind of stuff, and the acceptance of the spirit world and how their people’s travel chronicles in the past and, like the ancient people like Islamic travelers and, thinkers.
Discussed, like this is a discussion within Islamic history. It, I find my experience with Christianity in general, it’s not as big in scope. It’s acknowledged, it’s dis, but it’s not, I find that it’s not as discussed as much as it would’ve been in Islamic history and in Judaism as well.
There’s a lot of discussions in the Old Testament, especially, there’s a lot of discussions about. Like pseudo demons or, spirits. But that can also be attributed to the fact of the reality of where a lot of these stories come from. And a lot of the stories come from people hallucinating in the desert, for example.
Yeah. So it, could just be a fake hallucination, who knows? But I find in terms of the relationship between discussions of the unknown, Especially in the spirit world is a lot stronger within Judaism in Islam than it is in Christianity. As a whole, per se, but also depends on which Christianity you’re talking about.
I find. Yes, the Eastern part like, the orthodox part, like Greek Orthodox, like the different orthodoxies, they discuss it. There’s actually quite a few discussions and a lot of it comes from cultural history where they pre-Christian Cultures and peoples from the Orthodox type of traditions within Christianity, a lot of that was adopted from the pre-Christian type of narrative.
So that’s in terms of the unseen, that’s all I see. And, the thing too is that it’s not only, they’re not only Jin quote unquote Islamically speaking, they’re also created by God. Like they’re also a part
Waseem: of God’s creation. They yeah, They’re a part of God’s creation, right? Like the angels, like the, exactly.
Yeah. There aren’t really, are there, there’s no devils and like, you said there’s, gin which are made of fire angels which are made of light and humans, which are, made of, clean clay. Yeah. Made of clay. Yeah. And that that that’s the stuff that makes us.
And and, the big story in the, in Islamically was that ili Satan, so I think i’s name in English, is Satan. Satan. He he wa exhibited pride, like the first sin, exhibited pride, because when he, when they said bow to Adam and who’s made of clay, he all the angels bowed.
But then he said, Hey, you made me at a fire. And you made him outta Clay. I’m not a no, no thing made outta clay. Yeah. I’m I made
Rashed: outta fire. You made, he made me something that’s, greater than clay. So am I gonna bow down
Waseem: to it? I’m superior. And and even that story, like wh where does that story happens in Heavens, right?
So that Yeah. That where that’s where things are happening in heavens is obviously up in the sky. And so I can imagine. I can imagine a world where scholar Muslim scholars can actually I don’t think I actually think quite easily account for the for ETS and extra thresholds.
I, feel like it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch considering the the, breadth of. And also the, track record. Muslims always do this, right? Like when they some, a big scientific discovery. And this is I guess the, miracle of the kran you’ll say, so there’s a big scientific discovery and they’re like, oh, it’s written, it was written in the Koran.
Yeah. Yeah.
Rashed: They,
pull some random verse and say this, it’s been there, this
Waseem: is hard. Look it clearly, it says I made you from this, and how could he have known? And therefore it must be true. That type of that logical reasoning is, very common. And that could I, I feel see
Rashed: Here’s, something else.
We’re trying for that. Yeah, No, it’s true. It it’s not that difficult for, I think, within an Islamic mind to accept it, because within the narrative, there’s always this concept of, if anything ends up coming true that we didn’t know about before, it’s easy to attribute it back to say that it’s God’s creation.
God allowed it to happen. God did this with it. We just didn’t have the evidence up until now. Type of thing. Yes. There’s something else that that makes, that would make it easy for people to accept this U A P U F O thing is that there is a, people in the Koran that was discussed that apparently they have found evidence and that’s a people of ad, so like the, giants, the monstrous giant people, where they found evidence of these monstrous giant humans in parts of, Saudi, like in the desert in Saudi.
And, people accept it. And like they’re discussed quite a there’s, quite a few discussions that they’re mentioned in the put on et cetera. And, throughout years, scholars have accepted that, yet these people existed. We don’t know much about them, but we have now we have evidence of these people.
And before we found the e evidence of these people it was already mentioned in the put on. So it’s gotta be true. So yeah, there, that, that’s another element there is, there are many things that the Islamic mind is primed to just readily accept. There are other things that’s not readily primed to accept.
Yes. Or doesn’t wanna accept. Yeah, we can as, but one of the things is a huge discussion right now, but we won’t get into that. See, the thing for me is this, is that two things. So one, when you’re just talking about The different things that humans and the spirits and the angels, what they’re created from.
It automatically brought my mind to the show, his dark materials in the book series because of the big discussion about of, dust and what dust is and how there’s this big I’ve never heard of the show. Oh, you haven’t? Oh no. His dark materials is freaking amazing. I love the show. Okay. And it’s based on books by, by Philip Pullman.
And then it became into a show Lynn Manuel Miranda. He’s, a part of the, yeah, so like he has a small little part in the show. And do, people break
Waseem: out and dance? Is it a musical? No.
Rashed: But there’s this whole thing like concept of dust and how dust is basically the, source of creation of everything. But the, yeah, fair enough. The, emporium, they’re the this, these and, there’s layers of realities. There’s layers of different worlds, and they’re all on these different strands and how they can help people have the ability to go between different worlds.
But the problem is, like there’s the big authority that wants to keep this in check and there’s this theory of this big angel. That’s supposedly trying to keep this from everybody in order to maintain order throughout the world. But then McEvoy his character is Israel. He’s basically trying to Expose the lie and get to this angel and destroy it.
And create a new world type of thing. So that’s one thing that it took me to my, brain to that where there’s all these different type of narratives where it’s just like creation has this thing, this little spark. And obviously Islamically speaking, the spark would be God’s will, like God’s doing of something to make something happen and become and be.
So that was the one thing that my brain went to. And the second thing that it went to was It, would be within the realm generally speaking of if these UFOs and UAPs exist, Islamically speaking, it has to be put in the context of God created it. Or God had some kind of hand in it. And, yesterday, last night I was watching this show where this telescope was put up back in 1989 to go and study this star that was found.
And when they started doing calculations on its age, they started, they realized that it was older than what they believed the universe to be. So they believed the universe at this time was 13 billion years old, plus. Point three billions or whatever, and they were starting to calculate that this actual star MATHUSLA was older than that by about 2 billion years.
And they’re like how can that be? And I’m sitting there watching a show and I’m going maybe that was the bang. Maybe that star was the bang. And it’s just doing its thing. Maybe that star is God, I don’t know. Maybe we have the manifestation of God as a star now. Who knows? But So Islamically speaking within that kind of context, there’s a lot of room for discussion for those type of things.
It’s not a taboo subject.
Waseem: No. No. And, it’s not you, I probably, the taboo that I, I imagine this exists a bit more in Christianity and less so in, Like both Judaism, Islam, and others is, the mystical, right? So William James like to, to talks a lot about this in, all of his books, right?
Where he talks about looks into mysticism, looks into the mystical and that, and there’s plenty of room and belief for that. And when you tie, there was a, there’s a famous quote, right? If, you got technology. From let’s say a hundred thousand or a million years in the future, and it appeared to us today it w it would be indistinguishable for magic, right?
If you took a, if you took a cell phone right? Or a, radio even and, go back a thousand years ago and pull out a radio, it’s that’s a magic box. And that the, human mind has. Sort of space for magic has space for the, mystical, the unseen and re religion provided or provides a framework to make sense of it.
And let’s say certain religions are let’s say better placed in order to to, converse with or to play with or to, sit with the I ideas of extra, terrestrials in the in the case that evidence like irrefutable evidence appears that says, Yo, here it is. Like here’s the body.
Here’s the body. Yeah. Here’s the, saucer, the flying saucer. Fun fact. Yeah, because,
Rashed: cause within Judaism, Kabbala and within Islam, Sufism are very, well developed strands of. Of, of mysticism thought. Yeah. Yeah. Like the mysticism within Islam and Judaism is extremely well developed compared, I don’t know what happened with Christianity.
It’s almost like it became monastic where it’s became like a, where it’s you want to do that? Go, and be a monk. Yeah. Don’t do it in the real world. Where within, the, within Jewish traditions or like within Jewish cultural traditions in, life, in society, and Islamic societies.
It was within the regular world. Not so much today, but there’s a history of it where it existed with the non mystic. Mystic type of, reality. Yeah. Of, of
Waseem: religion. There were limitations, I think like that. Yeah. At least with Roman Catholicism also because of you, sometimes you do your history or you are defined by what you are trying to, what you are the anti of.
And the anti Roman Catholicism or anti Catholicism at the time, I think were, was paganism and, Paganism had a lot of obviously mystical like mystical experience, the shamans and all that type of stuff. And so that, and it was borderline
Rashed: witchcraft and we’re not dealing with the witchcraft well,
Waseem: and yeah.
Yeah. And that so then you have to stamp that out even out of your own tradition so that you can differentiate yourself from the other side. Yeah. And so that, probably is I mean I think, I don’t know, maybe not probably, but theoretically would be a reason why they would distance themselves from that theoretically.
Rashed: And I would say that it’s really a Roman Catholic specifically when I’m talking about is Yeah. Is like within Roman Catholicism. And, it’s what it ended up controlling in terms of territory and, where it became popular religions. It’s a lot more it’s, a lot more restricted within those type of realms than the eastern traditions, cuz the eastern traditions are readily accepting of, mystical type of, philosophies.
Yes. Yeah. Historically it’s been, it’s yeah. Much more accepting
Waseem: the shaman was the beginning and even Islamically. We have in Islamically the, story of miraj the, ascent to heaven. The prophet said to heaven, that is generally so for Muslim for, Muslims, let’s say, or believing Muslims you, believe that, right?
Like yes, totally. That’s what happened. And like it wasn’t just a mystical experience too. It was an actual physical experience. It was real, it’s a belief to be real. It’s, yeah. Yeah. And, often that is what is re that is used as a point of ridicule for by like the other side, right?
The anti the, anti Muslims or the and, but. But then going back to that quote of right, like even a future technology, an advanced technology will be seen as magic. Does it open up the, oh wow. I just does it open up the door to, to explaining historical legend and myth with et Right?
Because once you have the per once you see it, right? Or it’s there and okay, no, it’s been there. We’ve been hiding it. Sorry, cat’s outta the bag, right? Then does, do you go back and you go, whoa, okay, now the pyramids make sense. Okay, now this makes sense that, oh, wow. So they’ve been explaining things to us like now, like all of these, like the, ascent makes sense.
The, descent like, makes sense. So then the, all of this kind of stuff comes into play and this is truly, this the, space of science fiction in the sense that’s like literally the show that you just talked about is a show, based off a book that I’m also watching that almost sounds exactly the same.
So I’m, watching I, read a book by Hugh Hai years ago called silo. And, it’s it was awesome. And like I think the, history of the book was that the guy wrote like a, the first, like an epilogue and then the epilogue got it was just a little chapter and it got so popular that he got a book deal.
So he wrote then the book, and then he wrote three books and and, now the show. And the, i don’t wanna burn anything cuz it’s absolutely awesome and every, and it that’s why the book was really awesome too, is that every chapter there was like another twist similar to Game of Thrones.
And, but the premise is, that human beings are in a are live in a silo underground. Nobody, the earth is un is, not like habitable. They only got like one screen that like shows the earth as being inhabitable and they live in this silo underneath the ground where everybody like, like everybody lives in the silo and it’s all levels down the ladder and everybody’s got a job and there is a, there are various departments that run the whole place.
Rashed: It’s it’s corporatism under. EJ abk, everyone has
Waseem: a role. Everyone’s got their role that they do and like I, I highly recommend it cuz I absolutely love this type of stuff. And, you might too. But I, it’s sim similar also to the, to, to Battlestar Galactic. And, it’s the same you know what happens when, the diversity of humanity whittled down to one place and that’s all that’s left.
And you got the engineers and then you got the like creatives and you got the leaders and you got the like everybody with their qualities and they come together and then they’re. And it brings, existential questions to about like, why do we exist? Not how do we exist, but why do we exist?
What’s the point of us con continuing to breathe and to be here? And that question usually is the realm of religion. The why. And here’s the thing.
Rashed: And here, so this, brings me to something else. The why, the huge why question. So let’s just say hypothetically speaking ETS exist and they’re in some far off galaxy on some other planet, somewhere else, and they’re, they look different than us.
They have different makeup, whatever it is, and all that kind of stuff. And they don’t, let’s just say they don’t need oxygen to breathe. They need CO2 to breathe part maybe could be a reason why they don’t come to earth, because there’s too much oxygen in the air and they can,
Waseem: and they’ll die. And that’s poison to them.
Yeah.
Rashed: It’s poison. Absolute poison to them. Yeah. It does pose a problem to religion and a sense of saying if, why aren’t they ever discussed in our religious text then? Like, why? There’s no, mention of them anywhere. For example, like the dinosaurs, there’s no mention of them.
But there’s so much evidence of dinosaurs existing on earth. There’s so much evidence on earth when they do scientific testing of the different time periods of earth that existed. And they, have all the different like the, crossroads of where, time periods ended and, a new time period began.
And then within that they had, they say these sets of dinosaurs lived in this time period, but they didn’t live in this time period because they died off, or whatever it is in this new dinosaur develop There’s always these type of questions. So then how it, almost is as if I mean I guess the one answer could be if that is true, that is irrelevant to our reality here in a sense of everything that is discussed in terms of like religious law and religious guidance and, religious history and, people’s histories within a religious context and development of.
Of the Earth and creation and everything and, Earth in general and how it’s developed. What’s happened in that far off place in the galaxy is, it irrelevant to what’s happening here? And, those religious texts that are here are only relevant for our lives here as human beings in relation to the world that in which we live.
But at the same time, it’s almost as if, but wouldn’t, someone feel slightly cheated? At some point to be like, we are made to sound so special within the religious texts. But then there’s, could be, and then, but then there could be this other evidence of this other thing where if it’s religiously speaking, that had to be created by the same God.
What, about them? Why, are we as special? Like it, it’s, it creates a huge dilemma in the in, in. Being able to understand the relationship between the two, if in or it, not even the two. How
Waseem: many others are there? No you can imagine a, an intergalactic An intergalactic, I mean like a Star Trek type of there’s a whole bunch of ’em and they’re they, have United Nations, let’s say where, they sit down and chat about those pesky little humans and, how are we gonna stop them from killing themselves because they just seem to constantly try to kill themselves, right?
Man so, possibly, I think possibly that there, there is that, but I, think where it does tie. Is and, like I a big role or a big function of religion whether it was meant or not is, it provides a story where we can place context around our lives. And it gives us context.
Islamically right there is no reference to dinosaurs, but there is Like there is a reference to, time in the sense that like there’ll be for example, one example is the, profits that are mentioned, like profits and messengers that are mentioned in the quan and stuff.
And there’s like a set number. But then there’s also a verse that says, some of them we told you about and some of them we didn’t tell you about. Which is which means, and like now it’s up for estimates. So there are people that may have, that are sanctioned prophets. From God that we don’t know about.
And so when you look at history and you, point to a person and and I feel like almost the point of that is that when you then point to a person that isn’t amongst the, let’s say, Abrahamic tradition of of prophets, you cannot like the, you can’t remove the, possibility that the same God sent.
The message to that person, just because you don’t, that person isn’t listed on your list. Do you know what I mean?
Rashed: Yeah. I just want to make a quick first, for some who may not know the difference between a prophet and a messenger in Islamic terms. A prophet is a, is an individual who was sent to a people as guidance.
But what makes a mess? But a messenger is both a prophet and a messenger. And the difference is a messenger is a person who was sent with a book. Yeah, so a prophet could be a leader but doesn’t have an actual book. Whereas a messenger is a leader as a prophet, but actually has a, phys has a quote unquote physical book of actual guidance in rules and laws and it’s legislation, I guess you can say. Yeah. And that’s interesting that you say that because one discussion that has, that I have found to be quite large within that context of. Canceling out one, accepting another prophet or messenger is Buddha.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s, there’s been a, there’s been a huge discussion about, him as what was, is he considered a prophet within, like the Islamic realm or not in terms of his message and, also if they say somewhat say, yeah, he was, but then was he a messenger now because can you accept his book?
Because there are contradictions between the book that is attributed to Buddha. To what the Islamic
Waseem: God is. Yeah, That’s the one that, oh in university religious classes, Islamic, this, they talk about this. They talk specifically and they use Buddha as the example because Islamically, there, there are others.
Another one is, the the dinosaurs. With the dinosaurs. There is a big period of time, I think, cuz like the earth. The, this was always interesting growing up, right? So I would listen to these stories and these myths and I, but believing them like, very literally growing up.
And now I go look back at them as a, result of ki and I go, okay, I they, allowed for things, so they allowed for, dinosaurs because the earth, even though God creates the earth, And he creates land. He creates everything, seven days and everything like that. And then he creates Adam in the heavens and he does all that stuff.
There is no timeline between when the earth is made and when Adam is made. And so in that time, and there is a reference to the earth being covered in like, demons, like G the gin lived on the earth, right? Like the gin were the, thing on the earth and the people and the thing.
And so all of that timeframe you can. Allow for the discovery of the Jurassic Age the, discovery of the
Rashed: Here’s the thing too as well. Like even still the earth was created in, X amount of days, whatever, but even still, between each day, quote unquote, each time period there is no, measurement of time between the two either.
Yeah. Yeah, I, I see what you’re saying in terms of Islam within the Islamic narrative or the Konic narrative there is room for the, in between of the different time periods, but I guess no one’s really it’s not even,
Waseem: it’s not really been flushed out fully, but even time, right?
Like time itself okay. One of the other thing, time itself is a, Is an illusion that or is a thing that arises due to our, the way that we experience the present, right? So we live under the, like we live under the confused notion that the present arises from the past. And that isn’t necessarily true because the, the.
past actually comes up from the present. It’s the other way around because when you think about the present and you, existing, right? You look around, you look at your Like you look at your feet, you look at your hands, and then you, look at me and that I have a head.
And so you assume that you have a head and you assume that you, yourself exist in behind the li the kind of nub of nose that you could see off the front of your, eyes. And so you assume that you have a head just because everybody else is gone. One and, you look in a mirror and then you can see.
And so you assume that’s where yourself exists. But then in general, like you were living in the moments of those things happening and you lock onto, like you think that a series of events lead to this event, but it’s actually this event that has given rise to the history of events because it’s from this moment where you recall those events and whatever that, like whatever electro magnetic process that happens in the, mechanical function of your brain.
It all arises from, there. I know. It’s real trippy. Oh, I know cuz
Rashed: like you but you still can’t deny the fact that you Yeah. It’s still counterintuitive. The, present is a result of
Waseem: the past. How do you know that? Which is, that’s my, see don’t, answer that question, but that’s the question.
That I, that you asked, like, how do you actually know that? How do you know that you don’t, like, how do you know that you’re not in a, like a matrix, right? Where it’s all just been uploaded and it’s not actually coming from the past that, oh,
video1309132248: I
Rashed: said this last night, I said, when I was watching that whole show about, the star and everything, I’m like, whatever, just in a matrix, and this is all a computer generated crap.
And then my roommate’s yeah, but then why? Why would there. People being rich, and there’s millionaires and billionaires, and there’s other people who have, who are dying and their suffering. It’s did that guy pay more money for a better hookup
Waseem: than you did? Yeah. What? That you, is it you play the dance?
I think in, east in some eastern philosophies. The, Like the universe is, playing a really long game with itself, where it’s hiding from itself. Like it’s hiding from itself, and then it finds itself and then it gets bored that it found itself. And so it goes back into hiding and forgets that it went into hiding.
And it just goes through the cycle of, finding itself and hiding from itself and finding similar to a dog chasing its own tail. And that the, universe is a dog just chasing its own tail. Boying, winging like Tom and Jared. And, yeah. So that’s, it’s interesting that we got, we went into this place and talking about the, science fiction, the mystical and my, what I wonder.
I really, I do. How much of our sort of third culture experience lends to our ability to have this conversation and to entertain these ideas and our third culture kids more my big question is, our third culture kids more, inclined to, to play with these ideas and or to, to.
Without, let’s say fear or or maybe with more wonder off veneration than dismissal. Due to the na, due to their nature of being from everywhere and nowhere and being at home, everywhere and nowhere, like due, due to the looseness of what home is to a third culture kid. Yeah, I think.
Rashed: I think there is if we’re gonna talk in a general sense because of that reality, yes. I would say that’s a third culture kid would be more open to the discussion. But at the same time you, don’t, everyone has their own sensibilities and, concerns about what life is. And some people, there’s concern about making money and, doing their thing and they don’t care about what’s outside.
So I, I’m, yes and no. It’s, for me it’s, a tough question to answer, but I think if you’re gonna take it from the standpoint of someone who is super religious, let’s say like someone who is like Muslim and they’re super religious and, I think we think on that context, there’ll be more readily open to.
Accept it, because then everything always comes back down to the fact if God willed it, then it’s real, then it fits and it’s allowed and it fits within that. But if you’re more skeptical of religion, even still you, you won’t even, you won’t rationalize it within the religious context.
You’ll end up if, you’re skeptical of religion, you’re more on the scientific side, so then you’re gonna rationalize it within science.
Waseem: Yeah, You’re gonna, you’re gonna look for some sort of worldview to provide a narrative where it allows you to exist and continue to make sense.
Because once you, yeah. Because in the same way that when a comet comes and it just blows everything up, or a meteoric lands and it just takes everything out the, it’s similar in that, in to that intellectually. And unless you have the a, a sort of a net to be able to catch that meteor or to limit the damage, let’s say or even integrate it into your, worldview, then you’re gonna really be in trouble.
And I feel like that’s the the, strength that is the, maybe the function. Of a religious worldview of, religion which is to provide a greater context that exists beyond your individual life. To allow for things that you’re gonna find to help you make decisions when it comes to your life and what you wanna do.
And, it, so it gives you the great another thing that, that religion does, even in, in teaching through myth and through story, is it teaches values. So the when you, look at the story we talked about earlier of Satan an aise exhibiting pride that is The lesson to young people who hear that story that pride is a sin and thinking that you’re better than others is the sin. And so don’t, and so humble yourself because we are all, we all should be humbled in front of God, right? And and so that, that is the value that is taught through the story.
Or one of the values that is thought through the story and other stories like it, and that. That tradition teaches young people and keeps that value alive. And so religion is a big picture story. And and again, the difference between, like I think you, you, said it clearly is that if you, had something like in Catholicism where there’s not room for that there, they would run into more trouble with that type of with these outside things and would be let’s say.
Encouraged to either silence it or ignore it or to put it aside in order to, maintain their worldview. Because there, it’s, there isn’t room. It’s not as fluid. Let’s say. I have a crazy thought. Ooh. Like all the others were saying that we just had right now. Okay.
Rashed: What if the UAPs or the UFOs or whatever they are gin
Waseem: That would fly?
That would totally fly. Especially if they could go invisible. Yeah, because that’s the whole that’s thein. They’re so invisible. There’s they’re, them, but they’re invisible at the same, they’re among us, right? Like they’re among us. Like Islamically, the Jin are among us.
Like they’re not they, live here, but they live in an unseen world. So they live in ano in another, let’s say in another in a or different realm, or a different layer or a parallel universe. Yeah. They live in a different layer. Yeah. Like the
Rashed: metaverse thing. It’s it’s a thing. Yeah, Like the metaverse thing is not that farfetched dish sonically speaking either.
Waseem: No That’s probably where we’re gonna meet. They need to put their thing. I’ll meet for our thing. I’ll meet I’ll see you guys in, in augmented reality. Yeah. So it’s not that crazy.
Rashed: No, it’s not. Within a, it’s and, I could totally, and like even I, can even
Waseem: see I could picture that sermon like a lot of a
Rashed: lot of religions out of the, in some continent.
Like I can see Hinduism getting on board with that kind of thing as well. I can see No,
Waseem: yeah, like saying like I told you, so I told you. So there’s, so much
Rashed: room within religions that have developed in the inner subcontinent, at least for this type of, Unseen world. Yeah. It’s a
Waseem: real thing.
And I, think also within, within sort of native religions, right? Whatever. My glasses huge’s big time. Big time.
Rashed: It’s huge. There’s so much reverence of the spirits and, the ancestors and, how they relate to the earth and the land and life and how they guide people.
How, the spirits and the ancestors guide people today in their lives. And there’s always this reverence back to them, to the spirits and respect and all that kind of stuff.
Waseem: Yeah. So I, and I think a big part of today’s worldview let’s say the modern worldview sort of outside of that is that it comes from the enlightenment, principles and a big part of that was the mechanical view of the world and.
And and that it has been the sort of the overall like paint brush, that, that has been paint painted all over the world. And, that’s what, We carry. And I think now that sort of new windows open either through the, extraterrestrials, the other worldly things or the internal like mushroom LED journeys, the internal, the the internal quest for enlightenment.
Let’s just say please, let’s call an Ls D Quest. Let’s, yeah, let’s just call that. But those internal, the internal like thing or the external stuff has now opened doors, let’s say, or open windows into the, how short. It has been since the enlightenment. Like how little time that ha that, that, worldview has had to be tested by reality.
And you look at Judaism, you look at like Hinduism you look at even Hinduism it’s a very big word. Judaism is a very big word to describe a lot of different things. But they’re ancient for a reason, right? They’re ancient because they have been able to, Even though it’s only 5,000 years, it’s only 5,000, but it’s been able to.
Take in to absorb, to adjust to changing realities around it. And it’s, it hasn’t gone anywhere. And that is the test of a of the test of a religious worldview. Because let’s say if it’s all built around let’s say example some stories where it’s all built around one divine figure, that person’s alive, then that person dies, then the thing falls apart.
Because it was all like the world. It was not made to like last longer than 20, 30, 40, 50 years, however long that person lived. Because it just wasn’t strong enough. And then, and that’s how we measure, like today, let’s say we measure the the strength of a religion is okay, how long did it last?
I, like I’ve heard that if it’s old, then. There’s gotta be something there, right? Yeah. Zoroastrian, there’s gotta be something there that makes it last this long that has allowed it to last this long. Despite all of these things and then maybe with the enlightenment we are seeing the, like maybe the, inherent drawbacks of the mechanical worldview.
And it just doesn’t last, right? Then it gets hit because even the technologies, like ET technology is w in the case that there are like civilizations and stuff and they’re able to break the speed of light. For example, like we we know scientifically that you cannot break the speed of light, right?
Because you can’t break that thing. But then they do, right? Because they use some other technology that we don’t, we’re unaware of entirely. Anti-gravity, dark matter, yada, yada, yada. We
Rashed: have no idea Bulking technology like in Star
Waseem: Trek. Yeah, exactly. All that like crazy stuff that like, they’re like, there’s no way, or they jump through portals to land in, and all this type of worm stuff.
That Worm Oh yeah. Wormholes. And so we had no idea about that stuff. And then that puts a big hole in our scientific understanding, our mechanical understanding of the universe because we break it all down into parts and bits and pieces. But even the whole issue with that then even already, is that once we got into the quantum levels of of, reality, We, all of the rules for the physical world go, out the window, right?
And then you’re in real you’re in dire straits. Like you’re in real trouble because now you’re trying to, explain things according to probability and not according to like probabilities and statistics and not according to like where they are. Like something can be in two or three different spots at the same time.
And. That’s wild. And like you I this, one always blows my mind. This is one of my favorite like bits of, is that I if you look at the size of a, of an atom, And you look at the distance between the, nucleus of the atom and the electron going around, and you extrapolate that into a larger thing.
So you could see that amount of space between the electron and the atom is huge, right? It’s I can’t remember the, story, but it’s a big huge, space. And we are made up of atoms, right? Adams put together. But if a majority of atoms and or if atoms are made up of space, Like mostly space.
And how do you have stuff? Like how do you have physical matter? If ev, if if the ground piece is all space? Yeah. It’s and, that one, all, that one I can’t wrap my head around that one. Like that, that one is is like one of those things where oh man, you really you need a serious imagination, like Einstein level imagination to begin to like, A understand that and then B starts to toy with it. And just say okay, obviously we’d like to say obviously of course you do. You gotta be a little weird.
Rashed: Because
then that brings like, so format of that and there’s space between the core building blocks.
If, there’s the core building blocks of things. Is part of it is like a massive amount of space, literally in our world. Then you’re like what’s happening with the other one then? Is it the same type of stuff going on? Like then? Then now your brain starts going fricking, yeah. Yeah.
Waseem: And have you found way to go through and then do we exist on multiple planes at the same time and all of that like strength theory, like you can keep going and then you can pick up a science fiction book and suddenly it looks like a science book.
Quantum physics. Yeah. Yeah. The hell is going on. Yeah, Then you start going into all of these things and really Then the only answer I, I like, I feel, is to go to religion and then what’s the lesson? Humble yourself. You don’t know shit son. Don’t, think that you are the master of the universe just cuz you, you like, don’t fall under that, mistake, that problem, that don’t do the same as of least.
Don’t do the same as Satan. Don’t be like that. That’s the whole lesson. And so then I feel like it actually makes you an if you’re coming from anywhere but a, Roman Catholic, a Catholicism worldview, it actually makes you more religious. Like it, it’ll be like, okay, thanks for that.
God. Thanks that lesson. I need that now. Like, I definitely need to humble myself in front, in, in front of this this information. And so that’s where, that’s so interesting, right? That’s that I, think that distinction between, because so much of what we get when it comes when, I think the world talks about religion is they’re talking about Catholicism, right?
When they’re, like, when they’re talking. At least in the West, I feel like it’s that it’s the, end of religion as we know it is that they’re not necessarily taking into account Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, like , all of these like religions that Are different.
Like they’re they hold a lot of similarities in terms of, but they’re also different in terms of how they view the, world, the unseen world how they accept the existence of the unseen world ancestors, spirits, so on and so forth. And the, even the mirror of that within you, right?
Like the mirror of everything outside within you. It’s deep stuff. It’s deep stuff.
Rashed: I just wanted to make a point when, if we’re gonna go back, just for context sake I’m reading something here quickly about ili and just for context of those who don’t know much about him there’s an original version of his story where he was Azazel.
So one of the high ranking angels before his downfall. So if anyone’s listening and, they’d wanted to have some kind of connection between the story of abl if they know nothing about it, Ezzo is a starting point. And Is
Waseem: Azazel is in,
Rashed: in, in Zalo was one of the high ranking angels who ended up being associated with the devil’s because of his, pride.
Okay. Basically, I’ll just give you a quick thing. He, was appointed by God to obliterate the original disin disobedient inhabitants of Earth. The dinosaurs who were replaced with humans as more obedient creatures
Waseem: see the dinosaurs, they didn’t listen too much.
Rashed: And then it goes into, after he objected to God’s decision to create a successor Khalifa he was punished by being relegated and casted onto Earth as a shaan.
And then things change, and then there’s different stories of, and then he’s created from fire and all that kind of stuff. And that’s, we get into the Islamic
Waseem: context. That’s my, point is that there’s a lot of this right, that you can pull from that, that, that would, allow you to, actually accept.
So I guess my argument here is that if there is et. Evidence that comes to play. Then it’s not necessarily the death of religion. It is it, may be the death of some religions. It might be the death of the non, or let’s say the, religion of science. Let’s say the, like that religion the religion that, that, that has arisen that we that we don’t like remember that mantra, right?
We follow the silence, follow the science, like that religion. It might be a downfall of that one because that’s gonna be tough to, explain. Maybe or maybe not. That’s a different conversation. But I don’t think it’s necessarily the death of all religion. I think. The religion, has been able to withstand a, like a lot of changes throughout history and especially the, long ones.
Yeah, actually, and you know what, even for Scientology doesn’t sound crazy. Yeah. Oh, that’s huge for Scientology. Yeah. That’d be like all over it. They’d be like, man, I told you actually I didn’t tell you I wasn’t allowed to. But that’s what we say from day one.
Please. Thank you very much, everybody for enjoying Oh, Before
Rashed: Before we close, there’s also the possibility I’m, yeah. Outside of religious realms, is that all of these unidentified objects, UAPs and everything like that, are just military expeditions and experiments with technology. So there’s that
Waseem: possibility as well.
It’s you skeptic.
Thanks for listening. I hope you got something out of this. It’s really interesting how the. I, all of this stuff is really interesting. I hope it keeps your, mind open with wonder and and excitement. Let us know what you think in the comments. Do you think that ua that the possible existence of UAPs equals the end of religion?
Or is there room for religion, or there’s absolutely no way there are UAPs, man. What are you talking about? Just stick to the word UFOs and aliens, please. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks a lot. If you like this episode, like subscribe, ship, share, write subscribers, share, and like subscribe
Rashed: and
Waseem: share.
There we go. Yeah. And we’ll see you. We’ll tune in next week for, another episode. Peace. Peace guys.
Rashed: Bye.