From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net> Subject:
UFO UpDate: Re: that ol' Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis Mime-Version:
1.0
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 00:29:32 -0600 (CST) To: UFO UpDates - Toronto
<updates@globalserve.net> From: Dennis <dstacy@texas.net>
[Dennis Stacy] Subject: Re: UFO UpDate: Re:
>From: Greg Sandow <gsandow@prodigy.net> To: "'UFO UpDates -
>Toronto'" <updates@globalserve.net> Subject: RE: UFO
UpDate: Re: >that ol' Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis Date: Fri, 7
Nov 1997 17:19:24 >-0500
Greg wrote,
>Dennis....forgive me, but what exactly is your logic?
Dennis responds,
Greg...Forgive me for asking the same of you. Did I catch you on a
bad hair day or what?
>You think some people who believe in the ETH also believe
other things you think are silly. So is this somehow the >fault of
anyone who believes the ETH? Or who's merely willing to entertain
it?
No, Greg, what I'm saying is that there is a range of options
one can take (or deny) in association with the adoption, promotion,
or merely entertainment of the ETH...and that they don't necessarily
follow. What's so hard to understand? Are you saying that they do? I
didn't think so.
>Is anyone interested in the ETH now somehow responsible for
denouncing any silliness even remotely associated >with it?
But of course. If you were a doctor, wouldn't you defend your
profession against demonstrable quacks? If a lawyer, journalist or
stockbroker against traitors to the trade, people who sully your own
profession? Of course you would. What's so illogical -- or difficult
to grasp -- about that? When people who you associate with --if only
in the public's perception -- do things that you don't agree with, or
blatantly embarrass you simply by association, I think you ought to
speak up and defend yourself. Or maybe you agree with the Coopers,
Lazars, Deans and Corsos of the field and think they aren't doing
anything detrimental to your pristine belief in ETH?
>Is ufology now expected to work the way white people think
African-American politics should? A black person >becomes vocal
about affirmative action and other civil rights issues -- and
suddenly white people ask her to >denounce Louis Farrakhan. Is
that the kind of ufological litmus test you have in mind?
No. See above. I would expect many people within the civil
rights movement, prominent African-American leaders included, to
denounce Farrakhan for what he is -- while at the same time promoting
their own point of view and distancing themselves from Farrakhan's.
Surely you're not arguing that we let the Farrakhans of our own field
hold forth without so much as a burp of indignation and/or criticism?
I didn't think so, but correct me if I'm wrong.
>And if you don't, what in Zeta Reticuli could your original
post have meant? "Yes, the ETH is fine, but look what >it's
spawned!" (I'm paraphrasing.) If you don't mean what I just
suggested, what DO you mean?
Pardon me, but I'm not sure what *you* mean here. I meant to
originally point out that the ETH, in and of itself, is fine as long
as it's constrained or confined to just that -- one theory among
several. It's when it gets out of hand, simply by its original
assumption or adoption, and then is used to account for everything
else associated with UFOs, but as yet unproved (advanced alien
technology=magic, for example), that I objected to. Is this illogical
on my part, or am I missing something? I didn't think so.
>>Even something like the Anthropic Principle has a Weak
vesion and a Strong one, in other words, variations on a
>>theme. If you can get orthodox ufology to adopt a
conservative ETH (*some* UFOs are alien spacecraft), I'm all
>>for you. That's what Stanton Friedman, for example, does in
public -- but he also associates the ETH with a >>worldwide
government coverup, a shadow organization known as MJ-12, and
plentiful crashes and retrievals of >>alien bodies near
Roswell.
>Strangely enough, he even thinks he has evidence. Stranger
still, that evidence -- no matter how it holds up in the >long run
-- isn't ridiculous on its face. He's free to make his arguments
(which, unless I somehow stumbled on a >private shipments of Crash
at Corona and Stan's MJ-12 book), he even dares to make in
public.
I never said or suggested that Friedman wasn't entitled to make
any argument of which he was enamored. What I suggested was that
Friedman's own passionate advocacy of the ETH might have resulted in
his being something less than an impartial observer (and reporter) of
the UFO scene. If you want to accept Friedman's books, including his
inclusion of Gerald Anderson's long discredited Roswell testimony, as
reflective of UFO reality and the ETH, then I certainly don't want to
stand in your way. (And obviously couldn't even if I wanted to.)
>What exactly is the problem here? Are we all supposed to
think that only a lunatic would believe what Stan does? >And that
therefore the ETH is gravely polluted each time he opens his
vociferous mouth?
No, see the above, and how did you arrive at this assumption
anyway?
>>All I was pointing out is that it doesn't work that
way. Before you know it, all sorts of paths are leading into the
>>briar patch, each proponent of which believes the evidence
for same follows "logically" from the fact that we're >>being
visited not just once or sporadically, but daily and routinely by
extraterrestrials. You don't need to play six >>degrees of
Bacon to see that this is so. One or two will do just as well in this
instance.
>No way. Not at all. Silliness. Take Stan Friedman. His
MJ-12 and Roswell work doesn't proceed logically from his >embrace
of the ETH. See my remarks above. He thinks he has separate evidence
for MJ-12 and Roswell. You think >he's SO dumb that his ETH belief
leaves him open for anything? Why doesn't he believe in jars of human
body >parts?
If properly prodded, for all I know he does believe in body
parts. Why don't you ask him? But who are you to say that "his MJ-12
and Roswell work doesn't proceed logically from his embrace of the
ETH"? Do you know something that I don't, that maybe Friedman was
merely hovering on the verge of objectivity and/or agnosticism before
he just chanced to look into Roswell and MJ-12? Then I've got some
theories I would like to promote about the origins of Tchaikovsky's
Piano Concerto Numero Uno, one of which is that the latter was
actually present at, and survived, the battle of the Alamo.
The fact is that Friedman's vigorous and militant adoption of
the ETH causes him to see its (imagined and implied) consequences
everywhere, even when the evidedence is lacking, hence his continued
waffling about the testimony of one Gerald Anderson. But maybe GA and
the ETH aren't one and the same -- which is what I've been saying all
along. Or maybe you still support GA's account of what happened at
Roswell because you read it in one of Friedman's books and therefore
it must be the truth, the absolute truth, and nothing but the
truth.
>>Mike Davis's article is approximately 75 pages long. I
think there might be one paragraph in it that contains the
>>word extraterrestrial, or maybe as many as three or four. The
article is about the history and nature of the solar >>system.
UFOs aren't on his mind, one way or the other. Branch out and read
it. You might like it -- or you might >>not. But at least you
would know what you are referring to.
>Silly me, relying on your summary. I thought your point was
to stress, based on Davis's theorizing, how rare life >might be in
this vast universe of ours.
You're right, silly Greg, my comments did emphasize how rare
life might be in the universe. Now do you want to read the original
article for yourself or not? If you can't afford to buy a copy of The
Anomalist 5 from me (and thereby support same, which you've
previously praised on this list), which I seriously doubt, then Jerry
Clark can send you a Xerox of same. Failing that, I'll make a copy
myself.
>>You should know better, Greg. Sagan may have ended up
like a Menzel, but he certainly didn't start out as one. >>Or
maybe you've forgotten his and Thornton Page's UFOs: A Scientific
Debate. If so, you can pick up a nice cheap >>hardback edition
of same at your local Barnes & Noble. James McDonald got almost
75 pages in same, probably his >>largest exposure to a popular
audience. The book was the result of a UFO symposium held by the
American >>Association for the Advancement of Science, which
Sagan was instrumental in organizing. There's some dispute as
>>to how instrumental his role in saving Blue Book records was,
but he certainly wasn't in favor of their >>destruction.
>Sagan's own comments in the symposium -- which, oddly
enough, I've read -- strike me as slippery. But then, that's merely
my judgement.
Greg, slippery they may have been. So what? The man organized
the symposium, thus giving McDonald a public platform, something
Menzel would never have done. I only mentioned the book and the
symposium because you equated Sagan with the "likes" of Menzel --
without any qualifiers. I simply supplied a qualifier. Would you
rather I hadn't?
>If mainstream science didn't embrace UFOs in the '70s,
despite Hynek and McDonald, what chance do ufologists, >however
scientifically conservative, have of bringing science around now? As
I remember the "scientific debate" >hosted by Sagan and Page, the
non-believers (if you'll allow me to characterize them that way)
don't really address >the points made by the believers. That's all
too typical of the way science has handled, or not handled, this
problem.
>>Similarly, who convinced mainstream science that there
was nothing to UFOs? After all, if UFOs are as >>physically
prevalent as everyone seems to think they are, you would think that
enough scientists would have seen >>or been abducted by them
now to the extent that they wouldn't believe anything the Air Force
said, no matter what >>it said. Obviously, not enough of them
have yet had a personal experience to turn the tide. But who knows?
Maybe >>critical mass is just around the corner.
>You've got to be kidding. Here we have David Pritchard, one
of the few openly sympathetic scientists, begging me >a couple of
years ago not to mention his name in mainstream media, for fear of
getting him in huge trouble with the >MIT physics department, and
with his federal grants for mainstream research. More recently, he
told a TV >interviewer (who didn't use it in the show she
produced) that the heat from skeptical colleagues was very hard to
>bear.
Greg, again we appreciate the problem, but this won't wash. In
case you haven't noticed, Pritchard's name appears quite prominently
as one of the editors of (and contributors to) "Alien Discussions."
He was also featured and interviewed in C. D. B. Bryan's big book (if
I have the name right) about abductions. His involvement in UFO
research, in other words, is hardly any media secret, let alone one
closely guarded from his MIT colleagues. I appreciate your
description of the situation, but it just isn't the case. Sorry.
>Logic is not the issue here. Mainstream science carries a
huge prejudice against UFOs (and against parapsychology >too, for
that matter; see Jeffrey Mishlove's The Roots of Consciousness for
documented chapter and verse). And if >you ask me what the problem
really is, I'd say denial. I'd say that, in fact, even if UFOs turn
out to be nothing >more than scraps of my long white hair floating
in the breeze. The whole question of alien visits has our culture in
>a tizzy. Hardly anyone can face it squarely, scientists and
ufologists both included.
This is a nice bit of effluvium, Greg, but are you seriously
suggesting that ufologists can't squarely confront the "whole issue
of alien visits [which] has our culture in a tizzy"? They've
been actively promoting it for something like a half century, and you
say they can't get quite squared away about it? What kind of logic is
this? Did it ever occur to you that one reason why society might be
in such a tizzy is because ufologists have extrapolated the original
ETH beyond all bounds of decency and common sense?
>Come to think of it, that also explains the excesses of
ufology. The prospect of alien visits makes us so crazy that >lots
of people, attempting to deal with the question, stop making sense.
Although, if you pin me to the wall, I'll take >the better
ufologists over the scientists, anytime. Whether or not I agree with
Stan's conclusions on MJ-12, I >challenge you to compare Stan's
work on it with SETI astronomer Frank Drake's reasons why
interstellar travel is >impossible (and, therefore, aliens will
never visit us). Stan comes off as an apostle of sweet reason, and
Drake, by >contrast, as a frightened idiot.
>Greg Sandow
Greg, the above is so boundlessly beyond belief (or stupidity)
on your part as to beg credibility.
I'm a working writer and so are you. But if neither of us has
anything else better to do with our time, I'll gladly accept your
"challenge to compare Stan's work on [MJ-12] with SETI
astronomer Frank Drake," having already admitted previously on this
post that I'm no particular fan of Drake's work and conclusions.
Let me also add that you're comparing apples and oranges here.
But if you really and seriously want to adopt the voice of Friedman's
"apostle of sweet reason" as your own, then so be it.
