Alien Souls: One with Eight Arms and One in Three Persons

"If evolution really works," asked the comedian Milton Berle, "how come mothers have only two hands?" Evolution does work. It has produced a mother with as many as eight arms. God was having fun! This mother also has as many as fifty outfits in her wardrobe and, rather unlike human females, can change outfits in less than a second! She is a colour-changing spectacle. That creature is, of course, the octopus. If you are a male reader do not get too smug, for, as we will see, the octopus shows up human males in particular.

The octopus turns conventional wisdom on its head. Its body is attached to its head which is attached to its limb. We will see that the octopus turns much of human "wisdom" on its head too. So, you don't have to visit another planet to meet an alien soul with eight arms, three hearts, blue-green blood and a strange wisdom. A rock pool will do it. Since they tend to be solitary creatures there is no collective noun for them, but an oddity of octopuses might work!

We may pride ourselves in being the pinnacle of creation, but perhaps, if we let him, God would speak to us through the lowly position and upside down nature of the octopus. The octopus has features that are superior to ours. For instance, its eye does not have a blind spot. Perhaps our minds have blind spots that are not present in the minds of octopuses. We will see that there is an apparent foolishness about the octopus that, on closer examination, exposes the "wisdom" of humans. If we are prepared to take advice from a mollusc, it can point us towards both the most dangerous organism to humans and the foolhardiest organism in the world. Prepare to be astonished! As we will see, humans cozy up to organisms that are far more dangerous than coronaviruses.

This is going to stick in the throat of some, particularly those with pride issues, but this book suggests that when you consider the alien wisdom of the octopus and that God turns human wisdom upside down especially in Christ and him crucified, then the octopus is, in some faint respects, created more in the image of God than humans!