The idea that Jesus was a super alien is something I've heard before. I suspect that pseudoscientific alien explanations for life's apparent mysteries will replace the witches and angels explanations of the past.

Carl Sagan in his book "A Daemon-Haunted World" explains that in the past people thought they were being sexually molested by evil spirits, but now they think it's by aliens.

A much simpler explanation for the miracles of Jesus than that he was some super alien or Son of God is that the stories were fictional.

An afterlife is testable. All research to date suggests that there is none. Anecdotal evidence (claims of resurrected people walking into Jerusalem in the New Testament, for example) is not convincing.

I wonder how long it will be before some disgruntled former religious person sues his former church for failure to fulfill their promises. The church promised him that if he were faithful he would be better off in the afterlife. If the church cannot demonstrate that anyone's afterlife is improved or even that an afterlife exists, then the former member may succeed in convincing the court that all his financial contributions should be reimbursed to him.

Houdini, the great escape artist, insisted that he would come back to Earth to prove there is an afterlife, if there was one. If anyone could do it, he probably could. He never did come back, so either there is no afterlife, or it was too hard for him to escape from.

• Where did the word super alien come from? - yanniru - February 16, 2001 - 22:17 UTC