A New World If You Can Take It: God, Extraterrestrials, and the Evolution of Human Consciousness

For more than 60 years, the United States government, and other world governments, have told us there are no alien visitors to planet earth. Yet on the internet we can see press conference military testimony concerning "UFOs Disabling Our Nuclear Weapons" led by Robert Hastings, or Gary McKinnon's testimony about how he hacked into America's classified UFO documents (and the U.S. Government wants him extradited from England), or the testimony of Astronaut Roger Cooper concerning his UFO experiences. A serious question is: why does anyone still believe U.S. government denials about UFOs? Ordained pastor Rev. Michael Carter does not need more "proof" about alien visitations, nor does he wait for the American President to make an announcement. For several years Carter, like Whitley Strieber, author of "Communion," has experienced alien visitations in his bedroom. The question for Carter is not: do aliens exist? The question is: what does their existence mean for humanity, and for religion, because historically religion tries to answer the basic question, what is the purpose of human life? Carter says we need to consider the possibility that our religions, and our spiritual teachings, originated from contacts with off-world intelligences or Star Visitors." (p. 5) Carter is a Unitarian/Universalist pastor, and to say the least, he is going where no Unitarians have gone before him. Carter and I have been in conversation for many years about how theologically to interpret the UFO and alien presence. In the first chapter of "A New World If You Can Take It," Carter lists more than 40 biblical references that may suggest alien contact. But at the same time, Carter does not want to present a technological God, as in R.L. Dione's book "God Drives a Flying Saucer," which Carter reviews in chapter 3. Carter moves away from both the God of the Old Testament, who seems too violent to be a God of Love, and away from a too technological "Ancient Aliens" History Channel version of God, to a God who is the source of life in the Universe, what I would call a Holy Energy, who seeks a "transformation of consciousness" in humanity if the human race is to survive. Through a combination of ancient spiritual manuscripts, and some modern UFO contacts, Carter seeks to explore ways to achieve a space age spiritual transformation. This is the direction taken in chapter 7, "A Pleiadian Perspective," and chapter 8, "The Talmud of Jmmanuel." Traditional religious leaders, and UFO researchers alike, will raise questions about the authenticity of the sources used in chapters 7 and 8. These chapters need to be seen as "possibilities," waiting for further confirmation. But in an age in which our government is hiding so much UFO information, those trying to make sense of the religious issues we now face have to "make do" with the information that is available. Much of that information is speculative, or its' authenticity is difficult to confirm. In the mean time, what Carter has given us is a little bit of the late Harvard Professor John Mack's spiritual interpretation of UFO contacts, a bit of Shirley MacClaine's New Age Spirituality, and a lot of Michael Carter.

I have had a lifelong struggle between wanting to believe the stories in biblical and other religious texts, and disregarding them for lack of credibility...until now. This book makes sense of it all, providing a bigger picture -- a unifying bridge between blind faith and observable reality. Without this unification, humans appear doomed to remain confused and divided (and enslaved by divisive power structures), leading to our ultimate self-destruction via technology without hope. I am therefore grateful for the ideas presented in this book.

I fully expected that this would be speculative and it was but in a most interesting way as far as I was concerned. And I learned a lot to think about in the process.

This book answered all the questions I've had about the Bible and then some. I highly recommend this book to open-minded people. The contents of this book set my personal world on end for the better.

I like his first one better but this one is no waste of time. Good insight and great message throughout

I appreciate the author sharing more information about what he learned from his contactee experiences than his previous book. Very informative and a lot of good advise.

Very good book, a good read.

its good to read

Very good and the truth