Subject: RE: UFO UpDate: Re: that ol' Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 17:19:24
-0500
Dennis....forgive me,
but what exactly is your logic?
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?
Is anyone interested in the ETH now somehow responsible for
denouncing any silliness even remotely associated with it? 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?
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?
>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.
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?
>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?
>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 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.
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.
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.
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