A parable about aliens....

Once upon a time there were some alien beings. They decided to create a world and to create some little beings in it too. So they did.

Most of the little beings in that world came to the conclusion that some type of alien beings must have created it. For it was pretty obvious that they did not create themselves and that the world could not on its own either. But they disagreed with each other about things and so on. There were some people who thought that the world was all there was. They seemed to like denying the obvious. Some of them even denied their own existence. The alien beings observed all this and said, "That's interesting. And I wonder how we can convince those weird ones that we exist?"

Another said, "Well, yes, it all is quite interesting."

The first said, "Well, let's choose some of the little beings, make them think that we exist and then move our world around some for them. We'll let them know what we think of all the silliness, too."

The other said, "Okay. They are silly. But I kind of like these lil' things, if we get rid of that."

So they got a group of creatures and made them believe that they existed. One alien said, "It's a little odd that we have to make them believe something so obvious." The selected group of creatures began to know the world better than others and became more intelligent.

Other groups of creatures in the world began to imitate some of the same things that they said and did. They picked up on and told some of the same sort of stories that the selected group did. This combined with their own knowledge of the world and so they sort of acted like the selected group too.

The second alien creator said, "How about we select some more of these things and enlist the lil' things help? That way, the process can continue but we can get started on a new world." The other replied, "Why not, I kind of like these lil' things too." So then the second one did some things in their little world. This time he stirred the creatures up quite a bit. So they scurried around wondering at the signs about things. Eventually, the story of the aliens made it through all of the little world.

But as everyone had more and more knowledge the creatures gained more power over the little world. They kept fighting among themselves. Then they were about to destroy the whole place one day.

The aliens saw it, well in advance. So the aliens put the lil' creatures who believed that they existed in the new world they had made and threw the old one the fire place.

One alien said to another, "Those ones who did not believe we existed, that was odd."

The other replied, "Yes, the more extreme the signs of our actions written about for them, the more they wrote it off as a false account. Although, we did not exactly break our world or create something new in it, just moving some things and changing them around.

Yet, the less extreme signs we left for them they said were just part of the world we made. I wonder if they were expecting us to use a lil' space ship to visit them?"

The first replied, "No....they seemed to want to live as they wanted to live and not by our design. That was it. No amount of signs we gave or visitations ever changed a rebellious will. Nor did they change each other's rebellious wills, in the end."

Then he got the old world out of the fire place and set it next to the new so that those in the new world could be reminded of it. Those in the new saw it and told a story about how there were once some creatures who rebelled against their creators.