Talk:Chidhood's End

1. This looks like it's been copied from somewhere else, and I'm not convinced that the copyright owner has given their permission to use it in this way. Could the person who added this material please clarify this. This is the major reason I moved the content here.
2. We avoid adding authorship of material in Wikipedia articles, so we'll have to remove the "By Daniel".
3. It's written as one person's take on the novel, and thus needs to read more neutrally and we should also leave out the somewhat idiosyncratic view on our supposedly post-Christian society.

--Robert Merkel

Removed content below:

Cmmentary on Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End"

                                            by Daniel

              Imagine one day waking up to the news that huge flying saucers have positioned
           themselves above every major city in the world. Later that day, you and your astonished
          friends and family shudder to discover that every radio and television station in the world
         has been co-opted by the aliens in the spacecrafts and the following message is repeated
         over and over in all the worlds languages. "We are not here to harm you, we are friendly, we
           want to help you, protect you and guide you. We will not allow you to destroy yourselves.
          Warfare will no longer be allowed." The message goes on, but that's the gist of how Arthur
          C. Clarke in his book "Childhood's End" envisioned how contact would begin between the
                                         aliens and earth. 

              Clarke goes on to tell how the aliens use their powers to stop warfare; how they
            communicated to the earth through one man, the head of the United Nations; how the
             friendly space men took upon themselves the re-education of the planet through the
           co-opted radio and television frequencies. The aliens revealed. how they had helped to
         engineer the evolutionary development of the race, and how throughout our history they had
             worked through chosen vessels like Moses, Gautama, Confucius, Baha lai, Jesus,
             Mohamed and many others to try and steer the human race down paths of survival.
             Unfortunately, according to the aliens, all these enlightened teachers soon had their
         teachings corrupted and turned into religion. That's why they, our space brothers, were here;
              to correct our misunderstanding and to help us in our evolutionary development.

         Clark's writes that the aliens had revealed themselves in order to help the human race take
            the next big step in it's evolutionary progress. This next stage, as Clarke imagined it,
           involved the youth of the world metamorphosing into a universal mind and floating off the
         planet like a butterfly into another dimension. This coincided with the end of the ability of the
         race to procreate itself --the adults were left behind to grow old and just die off, thus the title
          of the book: "Childhood's End" Clarke, like many today, really believe that the human race
         is headed for a great evolutionary leap and that it could actually occur along the lines that he
         fictionalized in his book. Clarke wrote, that after the initial coming in their flying saucers, that
         it took decades before the aliens could actually reveal themselves personally to the people
         of earth. They first had to re-educate the planet and especially de-mystify the devil--because
         the funny thing was, that when the friendly space brothers finally did reveal themselves to the
         earth they looked like the spittin' image of the devil himself, or at least, how the old Christian
                     artists had painted the devil--with horns, cloven feet, and a tail! 

          Now Clarke envisioned it taking decades of re-education by the aliens in order to get the
         people to the point where the aliens could reveal themselves without freaking everybody out
            of their minds. However, Clarke wrote this back in the 1950s, and didn't anticipate the
            stupendous progress made in public education and the media towards demystifying
         religion and softening the minds of the masses to accept a demonic intrusion of Earth as a
          "Close Encounter Of The Third Kind".Today the entire western world is in a post-Christian
           era . It does have a Christian veneer, but underlying that is the new western paradigm of
           evolution with it's befuddled logic and a mind-set that is wide open to receive the great
           evolutionary deception of our friendly space brothers. They are ready to receive the the   Devil himself!