Craig Twining: UFO's, Trans-Dimensional Beings,The Nephilim, and Writing Science Fiction DMW#259

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Introducing Science Fiction, Life on Other Planets, and the Show

Science fiction writing and is there life on other planets? Let's talk to Craig Twining about it. Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between, broadcasting from an undisclosed location, Dead Men Walking starts now.

Well, hello, hello, hello.

Welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast.

I'm your host, Craig DeMoore.

You can find out more about us at dmwpodcast .com. As always, thanks for coming along on the ride. We have Craig Twining in studio with us today. How are you doing, Craig?

I am doing well. It's good to see you.

Good to see you. Good to be here.

We're going to talk about some cool stuff, science fiction, life on other planets, writing science fiction, but before we do, I want to tell you about a couple of our sponsors that I really need you guys to check out.

Writing Mission Eden and the Craft of First-Person Present Tense

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But now that the business is out of the way, sorry you had to sit through that, Craig.

Hey, that's all right. That's all right.

Usually I preload that, but when it's in studio, I kind of like to do it all at the same time. But man, I'm excited to have you in. So Craig, you've been on second time on the podcast.

It's the second time.

And I tell you what, I got a lot of good feedback on your first episode because you shared a lot of your testimony.

Oh, yeah.

And not only did I have random listeners from around the country messaging me, but a lot of people, even in our church, came up to me and said, I didn't know that about Craig. You go to church with him.

Our church has grown a lot.

It has.

And I should say we're members of Christ the Word in Sylvania, Ohio. And it's always funny to have someone in church come up and go, I didn't know that about Craig. And you go, oh, well, now you know.

That's right. That's right.

So yeah, very well receptive on the first episode. But we wanted to talk about something a little different here on this episode, didn't we?

Science fiction.

Yeah, because you're a science fiction author, Mission Eden, which I'm a few chapters into, which I wanted to ask before we get started. In the first couple of chapters, the character is written in almost in first person.

It's written in first person because I couldn't figure out a way to try to make you anticipate what was coming next.

OK.

I was trying to make it so that you were going through the experience as the protagonist.

Was.

Yes.

Yeah, because I noticed that because I've read a few books where it's first person, most probably fiction books. Is it called third? Is it third person?

If it's kind of written from like, yeah, there's a couple of omnipresent third person. There's several different ways you go about it. And I actually, when I started writing this book, I tried it from a couple of different perspectives.

Yeah.

And I just could not get it. And it just turned out that the first person present was the way to go.

Yeah.

Which is kind of, I think it's, I think maybe Hunger Games was written that way. So there's been a number of books lately that have been written like that.

OK.

So it's just kind of like a personal choice, easier for you to write that way.

Yes.

Easier.

Where'd you get the idea from for Mission Eden? And where can people get this book too?

They can get it on Amazon. It's just a self-published book, but it's on Amazon. Just look up Mission Eden by Craig Twining and it'll show up. I had the idea actually for quite a while, probably even 20 years.

It was, I always had this thought about. What would it be like if a spaceship from Earth actually made it to a planet where it was truly perfect?

OK.

I mean, truly perfect, where people were sinless.

OK.

How in the world would that be able to take place? And the thoughts just kept rolling around in my mind and I never really did anything with it. I just thought, oh, that's an interesting idea. Well, then, of course, you've had my cousin, Cary Neaton, who is a speculative fiction, sci-fi, Christian author.

And I was talking with him and he said, well, just write it.

Right.

And so it was a process. It took me probably a couple of years because I had that basic premise.

Yeah.

And then it's like, OK, well, how do you get to that point? And then how do you, how does, how would that work?

Yeah.

You know, trying to keep the biblical perspective in mind. Things like that wickedness can't dwell with righteousness. I mean, if there truly was a perfect society, how could you do that? And just the different ramifications.

And then how do you end the story? You know, there's just a lot of things going on. You know, you get, I get writer's block at some point and drop it. But then I finally pushed through it and got it. And I was happy with the results.

Yeah.

You know, I kind of saw some of those overtones. I just re-listened to C .S. Lewis's Space Trilogy a couple months ago. And there was kind of some, it's not the same premise by far, but it was kind of some hints of when he gets to the planet in the, you know, in the first and second book, they're kind of hinting towards, oh, well, we don't do that like humans do.

And you know what I mean? There's some of that like, yeah, in a different world, you can kind of explore what would it be like, like you said, either be in a perfect world or sinless world. And it's very interesting.

So yeah. So a couple of years then, or more than a couple of years, like from idea to publishing. I always like to know this.

Yeah.

It was probably a good two years, two to two and a half years. And I was my own editor, you know, so I would sit there and read it. And I was like, oh, I got to change this. And so I probably edited myself probably 20 times.

And then I had other people read the book. And I still remember after getting my author copy and sending it to people that they'd point out, oh, did you know you did this? Be like, I thought this thing was done already, you know?

And so, but yeah, the copy you have there, and it's been finalized now for a few years.

People don't realize how hard it is to write a good book. And it's a good book. It reads very easily too. Had you ever had any past authorship experience, or did you like English or grammar in high school or college, or like where did it come from to write a book?

I think probably from just reading myself, from personal reading. So when I was in high school, I did not read basically the books you were supposed to read in high school. I mean, you know, you had these English classes, and, you know, I really didn't get into them.

But actually 10 years or so out of high school, I thought, you know, I probably missed something by not going back and reading these books. And I actually, you know, I mean, it was reading people like Charles Dickens, you know, phenomenal author.

But then started, well, what about science fiction? What are some really good books that are out there? And I think the first one I picked up was Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which just blew me away.

Short book, but very interesting. Some of the things that he kind of maybe predicted or foresaw that are actually in place now, you know, that really kind of influenced my writing. I really enjoy his style of writing.

Star Trek, Apollo 11, and an Optimistic Vision of the Future

Yeah.

So wait, so in high school, you said you were reading, but not necessarily science fiction or the classics?

I really wasn't reading much at all.

Oh, not much at all. It was like after high school.

It was more after high school, yeah.

Yeah, see, I was more like, so I grew up reading a lot of classics, and my mom and dad read, well, mostly my mom read to us in homeschooling and things like that, and got us introduced to, like, abridged versions of the classics, which then interest you in the full version.

And then sometimes you're disappointed when you're like, oh, man, the full version's a lot better. I should have read that first and, you know. But as a third grader, it's really hard to read the original Pinocchio or Robin Hood, I think, sometimes.

It's a tough read.

Oh, yeah, sure.

But then in high school, I was more like, I loved reference stuff. I love stuff. I love quotes, reference. It's almost like if you could get me information in, like, tight little packets, that's what I gravitated towards.

But I was still reading fiction, nonfiction. You know, I always say I did my senior thesis on The Buying of Congress. It was a book this big, and my teacher went, why are you?

Why that one?

Can you just do it on, like, The Smashing Pumpkins or something that every other 12th grade kid, their favorite band or something? But I found that topic very interesting, like the fourth arm with the media and lobbyists and all that stuff, and it was kind of an underbelly.

And then really got into fiction probably after high school. Like, 20s was where I started exploring fiction.

So I've always been a science fiction fan. Now, actually, in high school, I did end up reading Dune, which just blew me away, but it took me probably three or four times before I could, you know, I'd read through a few pages, and I was like, I just don't get this.

Yeah.

And then you figure out he's just laid out this completely original world, or worlds, I should say, and this whole, I mean, it was everything. It was the political background. It was the economic.

Sure.

It was everything, and it just took my brain, I guess, a while to figure out what was going on. And once I did, it just opened that whole book up, and it was just a page turner for me.

Yeah, probably the biggest thing for the science fiction genre for me wasn't a book. It was, so I was born in 81. So Star Trek The Next Generation premiered in 87 to, like, 93. So I was right in that 10 to, like, 14-year-old range where I would go to my grandmother's.

My uncle, who's a few years older than me, was still living at home, and they had a, and my grandpa was one of the first people to have one of these little big dishes where you could get, like, satellite.

Yes, satellite. And, I mean, it was like you had to put a motor on it and turn it. It was nine foot across, right, in his yard. And they would get Star Trek and tape it on VHS, and then I would watch it over there with him, stay up late, you know, until 12, 1 in the morning, watching three, four episodes in a row.

And then from there going, he goes, you know, and I go, is this the only series? He goes, no, there's another series kind of before your time, you know. So then we went back and watched TOS, the original series.

Oh, yes, that's what I grew up on.

Then right into that, got hooked into DS9, which was the next one, right? So Star Trek was really my first foray into, oh, wow, this whole genre of science fiction. Not necessarily a book, but a series.

Right.

And then also really liking the idea of, like, an optimistic future. I'm not really, I'll watch a dystopian kind of.

Sure.

You know, right now I'm watching, what is it on Apple TV?

Silo.

So it's kind of more dystopian.

I've not seen that.

Yeah, they're all living in a huge, you know, 10 ,000 people in a silo, and there's radioactive stuff outside. No one goes outside, but are they being lied to? Is it really okay to go outside on Earth?

And so it's more dystopian. But I really like the optimistic part of what Star Trek, even the original and the subsequent series, kind of presented.

So I grew up on the original series.

Okay.

And it was, so my, I don't know, my like and my fascination with science fiction was actually twofold. So when I was five years old, the Apollo 11 mission happened.

Yeah.

It was the same time that Star Trek was actually probably just going off the air, but it was, had been picked up in syndication. But, you know, I would watch how the reruns. And then when Apollo 11 happened, that was the only television that my mom, she actually sat me down.

I was five years old and she said, you need to watch this. That was the only television that I was ever told I had to watch. And to see a man from Earth actually walking on the moon was just fascinating.

And then it just, that coupled with Star Trek, you know, it just opened up that possibility in my mind, the imagination that, you know, mankind could travel to other planets. And there were, you know, multiple civilizations out there.

It was fascinating. You know, when you think about all of the things that technology-wise that Star Trek introduced that have actually kind of come to reality at some point, it almost makes you wonder.

I've heard that Gene Roddenberry, the creator, was in the military. And I always wondered like, what did he see in the military that, you know, he kind of put the little egg, Easter egg out there in Star Trek, just to say, you know, guys are working on stuff like this.

Well, they had technical advisors that worked high up in the government, CIA and some other, NASA would advise on those shows. You know, and we've seen a lot of the little trinkets from the 80s now become everyday life, iPads and things like that.

Exactly.

They're working on a hypo spray right now to where you won't have to pierce the skin with a needle.

Right.

You know, they came up with a cloaking device. Are you kidding? You know, that stuff was just, you know.

Scripture, Creation, and the Question of Extraterrestrial Life

All right.

So from a young age, it was like you were into space travel. Because I know, I mean, you got like telescopes and, you know, all that stuff and constellations. You're always looking out into the stars.

So there was kind of a little bit of an obsession even as a young kid.

Yes.

And then into teens and adults.

Yes.

And my parents, you know, they encouraged it. You know, my dad bought me a model rocket and we would shoot that off in the, you know, they would let me stay up if there was like a lunar eclipse and, you know, and watch it.

They were just, they were very supportive.

Yeah.

You know what's crazy when I go back and watch Next Generation is how the subliminal social issues went like right over my head.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Because if you look at it.

There was a lot of them.

It's very liberal, kind of the stuff they're pushing. I mean, they were dealing with same sex stuff. They were dealing with abortion. They were dealing with cloning, all these like weird ethical questions.

And usually they took the liberal side of it when I go back and watch it. But at the same time, it was very entertaining just to watch that and go, what could be possible?

Yes.

And then even, you know, my brother has always been really into life on other planets, kind of the spiritual side of like Bigfoot. Is he real? Is it spiritual? Like, you know, trans-dimensional stuff and aliens and what are UFOs and these unidentifiable, we call them something else now, right?

UPI.

UARs. UPIs.

Unidentified aerial UAPs.

UAPs.

That's what it is.

That's what we're supposed to call them now. That kind of stuff's always been interesting to me, but the biggest one, which I really think everyone's talking about the last two, three years is like life on other planets.

I mean,.

Think about the last two years of just like press releases and the government talking about stuff. Obviously social media is always talking about it, but we've been getting briefed on all kinds of weird stuff.

Almost like they're trying to prepare, I wouldn't even say the country, but even the world population for some type of reveal.

Right.

And then I've always said, even as a young kid and thinking about it, like how does life on other planets align with my biblical worldview and things.

Like that?

Like, what are your thoughts on that?

Have you ever, I mean,.

If you're obsessed with that kind of stuff,.

You know,.

Science fiction and stuff like that, we're both believers. Like, where do you land on that?

Well, so it's interesting. So you're right.

I mean,.

The last few years, it seems like every astronomical discovery,.

You know,.

Hey,.

We found this planet orbiting such and such star and we believe that it has.

Water.

You know what? And you know,.

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Any,.

Any planet out there discovered or whatever, that might have water would be the,.

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In the Arctic that there's,.

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Having written a sci-fi book that, the more I study scripture, the more I don't think. Humanoid, humanoid life, humanoid alien life exists on another planet.

Yeah.

And I,.

I based that on several things. First of all, in the Genesis account and in Genesis one, when God creates the heavens and the earth, that's it. It's the heavens and it's the earth. There's two categories.

One,.

And then the other. And so,.

You know,.

If you look at the seven or the six day creation timeframe and when God resting on the seventh,.

But if you look at that,.

There's really only one day, the fourth day that God creates the sun,.

Moon,.

And the stars.

Yeah.

And what are they created for? They're created for the earth. Everything that God created was for the benefit of the earth.

Yeah.

You know,.

Every other day deals with life on the earth. And so in, in there are other, there are other difficulties from a scriptural standpoint, if there were life on other planets.

Sure.

So we would agree that the fall, Adam's fall was universal.

Yeah.

That it affected the entire universe. So if you could imagine that there was life on another planet and it was going along perfectly fine. And then all of a sudden Adam falls on this planet.

Right.

What happens?

Well,.

Then it's, it would have, it should have a universal effect. So you can imagine,.

You know,.

An alien walking around and all of a sudden, he gets this murderous impulse to go kill his fellow alien. And he's like, where did that come from?

You know,.

I mean,.

Because up until that time, it would have been perfect.

Yeah.

But then Adam's fall and,.

You know,.

And so then you also have to think if that's the case, if Adam's sin then affected the entire universe. And if there were other beings out there, then what would, what would Christ's sacrifice do for them?

Christ had, Hebrews tells us that Christ had to be made like his brothers. So he was made like us.

Yeah.

He wasn't made like,.

You know,.

A being that would encompass multiple civilizations. He had to be made human.

Right.

You know,.

He wasn't made Vulcan or he wasn't made human. And then he had to be made Vulcan. And then he had to be made Romulan. And then he had to be made Klingon. It was human and human only. So that would also limit,.

You know,.

The human race to those who were being saved. If there were other populations out there of alien beings.

Yeah.

By logic, then they would be condemned to hell.

I,.

I kind of feel like there is a big push by the secular community to want to have some type of other life out there. Cause they're always framing things like,.

Oh,.

There could have been water there. We think there's water. It's like, we have not discovered in the little very section, little parts of the universe that we've even looked. We haven't discovered water anywhere.

No,.

It's just a bunch of theories.

Well,.

I think Mars had water at one time.

Really? I mean,.

We can't even go back to the moon because supposedly you can't get through the Van Allen radiation belt. Like what,.

You know what I mean?

You went to the moon on a Game Boy technology. Now you're going to tell me, you know what happened 10 billion years ago on Mars,.

Right?

Exactly.

But also,.

So they're always pushing towards that. And then I saw, I can't remember the guy's name, but he, he was talking about, and he's a, he's a secular physicist, but he said, just the mere numbers of if, if we truly believe the earth is 14 billion or the universe is 14 billion years.

Old.

And I would dispute that number, but going off what he's saying, he's saying we should have had someone here by now,.

Just,.

Just if there was intelligent life out there, it's the time travel problem,.

Right?

That's why they think you can't travel back in time because someone would have at some point, cause you have an infinite future, So you could, if you can travel back in time, we should have,.

You know,.

You could pick any time to travel back to, we should have seen that by now. And he was saying that there couldn't be other life just because of the, the sheer numbers of there's so many planets and galaxies,.

You know,.

Times the time that it takes, we should have seen something by now,.

You know,.

And we can't rely on us looking,.

I,.

You know,.

I think someone said, I heard an example and this kind of puts it into perspective. If you, if the observable universe was the oceans on the earth, just think of all the water, how deep it is miles and miles deep out,.

You know,.

Trillions of gallons. If that represented the sea-able universe, we've looked at about a hot tub. We've, we've taken out a hot tub and put it on land. And that's what we've looked at in the universe.

So I'm not saying it's not a big, big place,.

But it's also really,.

You ever think about like how they say the universe is still expanding.

You go,.

Well,.

What the heck's on the other side of the universe?

Right.

You know,.

What's on the other side of nothing.

What does it mean when the Bible says that God stretched out the heavens?

You know,.

It seems like they are still being stretched.

Yeah.

You know, it's,.

It's very interesting.

I talked to Dr. Hugh Ross,.

Who is,.

He's old earth, but he's not evolutionary. He believes in a six day creation, but he thinks each day was about a billion and a half years. He had a very interesting perspective on that too.

That,.

That basically the six days of, of God working is him being active in, in the universe in reality. And then the seventh day resting is we're in the seventh day right now. And that's him putting all natural law, physics, thermodynamics in motion and going,.

Okay,.

I've, I've created this reality.

Now,.

Now it runs like a finely tuned clock. It was just a fun thought experiment.

So I would,.

I would,.

I actually disagree with Hugh Ross.

I,.

I think that the,.

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My opinion is that the, the literal six day creation is the way to take it, because I think that's the way the Bible actually puts it.

You know,.

Even when God gives the 10 commandments to the Israelites,.

He said,.