IT'S KIND OF FUNNY to be accused of being a believer in "UFOs" when I've never done anything except note the extreme improbability of them being from alien life from distant planets, at least based on current human concepts of physics and "the laws of nature." If they know something we don't, well, that might narrow the odds. Or they could just be smarter than us. Or maybe its done through some kind of psychokinesis that, due to the orthodoxy of science and polite academia, is forbidden to serious consideration. More about that in a minute.
I've repeatedly mocked the true faith of Carl Sagan that there must be billions and billions of planets with life on them, though the last article I saw on that that the other day was extremely pessimistic about that due to photosynthesis enabling light being a lot scarcer than previously noted. Which may be the limit that they think it is or it might be totally wrong because other lines of life elsewhere use an entirely different chemistry which we cannot imagine producing life. I've mocked Carl Sagan and his invention of what should be considered a pseudo-science because the scientific study of "exo-biology" in the absence of so much as a single sample of "other life" to study is entirely unable to fulfill the first and second requirements of the alleged requirements of science, observation and measurement. They do without those replacing fantasy for them and, yet, they get loads of funding to do such science.*
I have been, if anything, even more critical of the fantasies of the likes of Francis Crick who get by the extreme improbabilities calculated for the spontaneous assembly of the first organism in the theorized line of all known current life on Earth (a speculation I accept as a working basis for talking about this). They get by it by claiming that "first life" got here as teensy organisms on meteorites or, as Crick proposed, by an intentional experiment by the intelligent design of extra-terrestrials, adding layer upon layer of improbability on top of those already known and adding the ones of how did his deus ex machina of alien scientists come about through natural selection on some other, unknown planet. Atheists aren't nearly as smart as a group as we were all gulled into believing because so many of them have PhDs. Neither are people holding PhDs in a lot of cases. Not to mention that his proposal actually made him, a Darwinist of the most extreme materialistic type a hater of religion and all else not in line with his orthodoxy, a proponent of intelligent design, but one who was not terribly intelligent, himself.
My first question about that was who lives that long to do an experiment that would take so long (though we might just be dirt left in a test tube and they got their results billions and billions of years ago and left us to ourselves) or, more saliently, what funding agency would give such a loony research program that kind of funding?
This is a long way round to saying that though I've looked at the careful, controlled research into what is called "extrasensory perception" and noted that it is far, far better science than anything I'm aware of done and fully accepted by science as psychology, sociology or anthropology (or "exobiology" for that matter) and have used the refusal of the ideological atheism, scientism, materialism, "skepticism" to treat that research honestly and objectively, that has nothing whatever to do with UFOlogy, which I have never researched nor have I seen any actual scientific research into. The only thing common to that topic of interest and the one I wrote about, extensively as a study of the anti-scientific dishonesty of ideological materialism has to do with the same materialists being so two-faced on the topic. They like the talk about "alien life" that they like and the hate and deride the talk about it that they don't like. It's most interesting as an extreme example of the hypocrisy of the culture of materialistic, scientistic, atheism within and without science and as is a required position within respectable academic culture these days.
As for the released film footage, sure looks like there's something there to me, especially those recording the reaction of large groups of people with a lot to lose as they are seeing and recording what they're seeing. I wouldn't expect the heir of Carl Sagan, the equally annoying Neil deGrasse Tyson to do anything but uphold the old CSICOP line on that as he goes on the talk shows. He's got a professional interest in upholding that old line orthodoxy his teacher cashed in on before him. I also don't expect any talk show host to ask him embarrassing questions about the hypocrisy of his ideology for not slamming exobiology or the likes of Francis Crick for resorting to claiming life had to have been put here by the intelligent design of aliens or otherwise got here by even more improbable means than the conventional faith that it just, somehow happened. Even though in that case, how do they get away with pretending that the absence of subsequent spontaneous generation of life happening isn't a problem for the faith that random-chance did it all.
I will add that my skepticism about the controlled, scientific research into extrasensory perception isn't that they haven't fulfilled the highest requirements ever placed on any researchers into any area of human minds because they clearly have, it's because of possible problems with the use of statistical analysis in the behavioral and cognitive sciences, in general. I've only read enough into that to have questions about it, though almost all conventionally accepted science of that sort fails rather disastrously on other methodological bases even without those. As far as the conventional mathematical use of statistics by those in the study of "ESP" or "PSI" or whatever you want to call it, many eminent statisticians and mathematicians who have looked into that question going back to the time of Dr. Rhine have said that their use of probability and statistics is absolutely valid so I defer to the experts on that. It's a question of IF the use of those methods in the study of human minds and behavior is valid and that's not a question I'm aware anyone has answered. And if it has, then pretty much all of psychology and sociology will have to be scrapped, though they should be for those other lapses anyway.
* As I've noted recently, I have stopped using the scare quotes around science of that sort because if scientists are going to admit such junk to the canon of science, they are going to have to live with the consequences of skepticism by some of us along with the unthinking acceptance by the idiots of the media and in the general public.
Update: I need to get back to the weeds, here's what a materialist-scientistic-atheist who is also an obnoxious ideologue but who was forced into honesty about that said:
I used to believe it was simply a figment of the National Enquirer's weekly imagination that the Science Establishment would cover up evidence for the occult. But that was in the era B.C. -- Before the Committee. I refer to the "Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal" (CSICOP), of which I am a cofounder and on whose ruling Executive Council (generally called the Council) I served for some years.
I am still skeptical of the occult beliefs CSICOP was created to debunk. But I have changed my mind about the integrity of some of those who make a career of opposing occultism.
I now believe that if a flying saucer landed in the backyard of a leading anti-UFO spokesman, he might hide the incident from the public (for the public's own good, of course). He might swiftly convince himself that the landing was a hoax, a delusion or an "unfortunate" interpretation of mundane phenomena that could be explained away with "further research."
The irony of all this particularly distresses me since both in print and before a national television audience I have stated that the conspiratorial mentality of believers in occultism presents a real political danger in a voting democracy. Now I find that the very group I helped found has partially Justified this mentality.
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