Ufology and Imagination

In many ways the study of UFOs has exemplified modernity’s conflicted relationship with the “Other.” In a transcendent sense, this alone qualifies ufology as having religious valences. But even in a more mundane sense, religion and ufology have been intertwined, because religious motives have so often been imputed to UFO witnesses, UFO investigators, and those who believe them. Yet although many in the UFO community struggled with mainstream science, they nevertheless tended (or intended) to use a scientific framework for understanding UFO phenomena. There was almost no room in the organized study of aerial anomalies for religion, which one theologically oriented ufologist candidly described as a “‘wart’ on what [ufology] hoped was a scientific hog.” 1 Indeed, at the 1992 abduction conference held at M.I.T., participants were very unwilling to “deal with the spiritual and religious issues” surrounding encounters. In part this rejection of religion stemmed from the contactee phenomenon, with its salvific pronouncements about the beneficent space brothers. To most people in the UFO movement, the contactees sounded like pathetic purveyors of a quasi-religious message clad in space-age garb. 

Indeed, most contactees were students of spiritualism and Theosophy who had adopted a mantle that was (at the very least) quasi-scientific and modern— the UFO phenomenon. The apparently hard-edged reality of UFOs, and the superior levels of technological achievement (and presumably of moral development) of the UFO operators, dovetailed nicely with preexisting worldviews that included infinitely wise spirit guides and Ascended Masters. The larger UFO myth did not originate in the teachings of Theosophy or spiritualism, however; it entered American consciousness as spontaneous personal experiences whose apparently real-world tangibility caused them to be reported as fact, retold as story, and eventually embraced as a veritable cultural myth. Its emergence as a modern myth, combined with the psychological and spiritual impact reported by many who had a UFO experience, helped to nudge the entire subject toward the realm of religion. But if you wanted to understand a real-world event, you turned to science, not to religion, because religion in the West was no longer the Great Legitimator, the arbiter of Truth and determiner of Reality. Being reported first as factual, real-world encounters, UFO phenomena were predisposed to being studied first from a materialistic rather than a metaphysical point of view. Thus the status of UFO reports as factual claims also accounts in part for the early rejection of religion as an interpretive framework for UFO studies. Nevertheless, religion continually intersected with UFO phenomena and those who were interested in them in a variety of ways. Donald Menzel, ufology’s first official scientific debunker, was frequently vexed by correspondents who wrote to him to report sightings but who refused to accept his prosaic explanations. Sometimes these correspondents would attempt to bolster their case by pointing out UFO-like phenomena described in the Bible. At other times they would simply offer biblically based barbs, as in the case of the man who, after some months’ correspondence with Menzel, wrote that he could “understand better now just why Jesus Christ gathered about him relatively unschooled men, instead of trying to convince the ‘learned’ of his day.”

A Concise History of Alien Encounters

Fore-word - Legitimate search for extraterrestrials aside, a lunatic (or a prophetic genius, if you believe so), has kick started a petition campaign to force the London natural history museum to allow DNA analysis of the skeletal remains of the so called "Goddess". The petition service is provided by 'ipetitions' and you can sign the petition  here. If the museum does go for the DNA testing, you'll finally be able to either do away with your 'Crosses' or laugh your ass off at Sitchin, at any rate it'll be an interesting exercise! 

In its most basic manifestation as an aerial anomaly the UFO was, to borrow a phrase from C. G. Jung, a “myth of things seen in the sky.” In its simplest form as night lights and anomalous daylight disks, it presented formidable challenges to the grassroots organizations of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s who were dedicated to solving the mystery. Ideas about crashed saucers and a government cover-up conspiracy added layers of complexity to the basic myth and siphoned time and energy away from study of the core phenomenon while, some felt, yielding little of concrete value in return. The notion of a cover-up provided the frustrated with a partial explanation for ufology’s otherwise slow progress in discovering more about the phenomenon. But the merit of conspiracy allegations and, as the years passed, their usefulness in advancing UFO research were subject to dispute. 2 After the closing of Project Blue Book, the entire public responsibility for UFO research fell to the UFO community. It only made sense that the priority for ufology from that point forward should be to find proof that UFOs were real rather than proof of conspiracy. But as ufologists well knew, proving UFO reality would be easier said than done. A major problem in studying UFOs and proving their existence was the ever-changing conception of just what might constitute irrefutable proof. Project Blue Book’s first director, Edward Ruppelt, pointed out that the UFO phenomenon had in fact exhibited in increasingly sophisticated ways that it was a physical phenomenon and not just an illusion.

Simple visual sightings, prone to human error, had been followed by instrumented sightings such as radar returns, followed shortly thereafter by simultaneous radar and visual sightings, multiple-witness sightings, and reports of ground traces found after sightings. But though each increase in the complexity of the reports was important, ufologists were still left with just that: reports. What was wanted was “something you could get your teeth into,” not just anecdotal data. The failure of UFOs to “make predictable appearances at convenient times and places,” to fly into a laboratory “for a physical and a chemical checkup,” meant different things to different people. To the skeptics, it meant that UFOs were not a scientific problem because there was no physical, tangible evidence for the scientist to study. Ufologists pointed out, in response, that if scientists were to wait until they could personally see a UFO or its remains before they began to take a serious interest in them, ufology could be at a standstill for another fifty years. “If we had waited until we ‘captured’ an electron,” wrote one interested scientist, “we would never even have suspected that they exist!” To the ufologist, the fact that the evidence for UFO reality ultimately came down to various kinds of sighting reports meant that UFOs presented a “new kind of scientific puzzle” that might have to be studied in a slightly different manner. Jacques Vallee shared other scientists’ mistrust of a “simple report” as constituting adequate proof of the existence of UFOs. He argued, however, that the data contained in many individual reports could be useful if studied and analyzed cumulatively with a view toward apprehending the phenomenon for what it was in itself, without prejudice toward making it appear to be something recognizable and ordinary. Thus, as ufology approached its silver anniversary it had a clear goal in mind: to prove that UFOs were real phenomena deserving of serious scientific funding and study.

The Life Hypothesis: UFOs and Extraterrestrials

Are we Quantum leaping in the wrong direction?

Do unidentified flying objects (UFOs) really exist? They most certainly do! No doubt about it: Many flying objects have not yet been identified. Have any formerly unidentified flying objects been convincingly shown to be alien spaceships? They most certainly have not. It is ironic that UFO has become synonymous with alien spaceship, because, if an object had been identified as an alien spaceship, it would no longer be an “unidentified” flying object! Furthermore, sightings that turn out to be stray lights are not sightings of “objects.” And although these lights may be moving, they are certainly not “flying.” For these reasons, it has been suggested that unidentified flying object (UFO) be replaced by unexplained aerial appearance (UAA), since the latter term does not put into people’s minds preconceived notions that should not be there. On June 24, 1947, nine unidentifiable moving objects in the sky were observed by Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot flying near the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. Mr. Arnold reported that the objects were flying “like a saucer skipping over water”— a flying saucer. 

What happened shortly thereafter added to the mystery. Nine days later, in a New Mexico desert, an object was observed to fall out of the sky and land. Rumors began to circulate that the object might have been one of these flying saucers. The mystery was heightened five days later when the U.S. Army Air Force roped off the area. Rumors began to spread that the bodies of four extraterrestrial beings (ETs) had been found in the wreckage. Rumors also spread that the government had sealed off the area so that it could remove the wreckage and bodies and cover up the existence of aliens. (For the record, the suspicious object that crashed in New Mexico in 1947 eventually proved to be a weather balloon.) Identification of a flying object— or any other object— requires sufficient information about that object. Many objects appearing in the sky are viewed from a great distance, for a relatively short time, and only occasionally, thus making identification difficult if not impossible. Even objects observed by large numbers of people for prolonged periods can be misjudged. For example, a full Moon appears larger near the horizon than when it is high in the sky. If you look at the Moon through a tube when it is near the horizon, it appears no larger than when it is overhead. This optical illusion is known as the “Moon illusion.” One possible reason the Moon looks larger when it is near the horizon is that it is near objects we’re used to seeing.