The Wilkinson Thesis and Astro-theology

By Kashmir Szasz

Astro-theology is a field of study that is relatively new in the scholarly realm but which is oriented toward the development of a range of new ideas concerning the origins of religious beliefs and practices. The film “Zeitgeist” that was released a few years ago helped to popularize the idea of astro-theology in a way that it had not been before. The film itself, which was produced by the innovative economic and political thinker Peter Joseph, owed something of a debt to the work of the late Dorothy Murdoch, better known by the pseudonym of Acharya S, under which her works were published. Murdoch was a leading scholar of astro-theology who postulated that most of the world’s religious figures were mythological characters that were originally representations of astronomical entities such as the sun, moon, and stars. For example, Murdoch was most well-known for advancing the thesis that Jesus Christ was a mythical figure, and not an actual historical figure, and that many religious figures from the past such as Jesus, Moses, and Krishna were fictional mythological characters.

The thesis that has been advanced by George Wilkinson in his book, “Jesus, Is the Criminal from the Planet Uranus,” extends this argument further by suggesting that Jesus Christ was not merely a mythological character. He was a real, living being, but not one that originated from Earth. Instead, Jesus was an alien from another world, most likely the planet Uranus. One of the things that are the most interesting about the work of Wilkinson is the way in which he blends the study of religion and mythology with the study of the paranormal, the occult, and what might be called UFOology. Ideas of these kinds were widely prevalent in the ancient and medieval world, but have largely been pushed out of respectable discourse by the rise of modern scientism, which purports to explain everything in purely scientific terms, and doing so from the most skeptical and reductionist position.

However, such an interpretive approach to metaphysical phenomena leaves many gaps. The first difficulty that is associated with such an approach involves the way that it neglects the testimony of many, many, many people since time immemorial that have had spiritual experiences of different kinds, including visions of religious figures such as Jesus Christ. Many religious skeptics will point out the difficulties that are associated with traditional or orthodox religious beliefs. For example, skeptics of the orthodox narrative concerning the life of Jesus Christ will point to the contradictory nature of the stories of Jesus’ life that are found in the New Testament. Certainly, there is a wide range of mainstream scholars of the biblical text that are fully capable of pointing out these difficulties such as Bart Ehrman. Indeed, even many modern Christians recognize that many of the stories that are traditionally associated with their religion are fictional. Ehrman’s work has been endorsed by the Rev. Keith Ward of the Anglican Church, even though Ehrman, a former fundamentalist is now an atheist, and Ward remains a Christian theist.

Yet it is curious to note that the entire range of mainstream opinion on the subject of Christology, and a wide assortment of other religious matters, fails to recognize or acknowledge alternatives to the traditional narrative as well as to modern “liberal” scholarship or pure scientism with regard to theological questions. Wilkinson has attempted to venture into scholarly territory in which others will not venture. For this reason, Wilkinson’s work has yet to receive widespread acceptance just as Galileo’s work was not well-received in his own time, and modern germ theory was likewise met with wide ranging skepticism from the medical profession. The thesis that George Wilkinson had advanced is one that threatens the status quo on many different levels. Wilkinson has issued a challenged to orthodox Christians, liberal or revisionist Christians, and proponents of a reductionist scientism alike.

Certainly, others have postulated comparable ideas in the past. For example, during the 1980s when the so-called “New Age” movement was first developing some attention was given to the relationship between traditional religion, metaphysics, spiritualism, mysticism, astro-theology and UFOology. Shirley MacLaine, a well-known actress and the sister of Warren Beatty, courageously tried to bring such ideas into public discussion in a way that earned her much ridicule. However, a central thesis that was advanced by MacLaine in her work was the relationship between the material world and the occult, and between Earth and extraterrestrial life. However, George Wilkinson has taken these investigations many steps further in his effort to finally determine the real identity of Jesus Christ as an alien from the planet Uranus.

One common objection that is made to claims made by Wilkinson is that the planet Uranus is incapable of supporting life. However, the problem with such an objection is that its definition of “life” is very much limited to the ordinary human concept of what life is. In fact, life can be a kind of organic materials. But more importantly for these claims is the view of life as anything that possesses sentience and consciousness, and which is capable of what human beings call “thought.” One of the implications of modern physics is that there may be realms of existence in which ordinary physical laws as commonly understood do not apply. Consciousness studies likewise indicate that consciousness may transcend time and space as Carl Jung initially speculated. For these reasons, it naturally follows that Jesus could have been an extraterrestrial being that possessed a metaphysical consciousness, and constituted a form of life that was non-human but certainly organic nature.