What’s Wrong with the World

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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

"Like nothing I've ever seen."

What are we to make of the evidence released by the Pentagon of UFOs?

It may seem a strange question, but the facts force themselves upon the skeptic. The US military supplied the public, about 18 months ago, with three extraordinary videos; and permitted some of the principals involved in the events therein recorded, to authenticate certain details in interviews.

What it comes to this: US military has hard evidence of aerial propulsion, aerodynamics, and avionics well beyond anything in our own arsenal. These videos were recorded by veteran Navy and Air Force combat pilots, flying front-line aircraft, deploying front-line sensor technology, and maneuvering into engagement patterns in order to investigate. One retired pilot describes the acceleration of the object he observed as “like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

(I thought about adding a bunch of links, but that seems tedious.) I’ll give you one video, and one link, and let you readers poke around from there:

Let’s take this logically.

(A) If countries adversarial to America have access to tech at that level, we need to know about it ‒ pronto. The Pentagon thinks the Russians can deploy that kind of thing in the Pacific, or the Chinese in the Atlantic? Fine, that needs to be public knowledge.

(B) If the Pentagon, alone on earth, can deploy that kind of tech, if in other words what these videos reveal, amounts to some kind of black ops or skunk works program discovered by unsuspecting pilots ‒ well, again, out with it. This is a republic and information like that needs to be public knowledge.

Given the unlikelihood of (A) and (B) ‒ and the release of these videos themselves is suggestive of that unlikelihood ‒ we’re compelled to consider another possibility; namely, that the videos present us with technology from elsewhere. Where is anybody’s guess. Cue the X-Files music.

So to answer my question: what are we to make of this business? We are to make of it that we don’t know what to make of it. But that alone is a big step. On occasion, to open a question, to merely declare our inability to draw firm conclusions, comes to something of great significance.

At last we can say this at least, the old and haunting question of UFOs is an open question.

Comments (29)

I have long kept a very open mind about UFOs. Basically all my life, I have been saying "unidentified" means "we don't know", and that can cover an awful lot of territory, from other nations to aliens to who knows what. Don't know is don't know.

That said, I consider there to be very high implausibilities to the UFOs being aliens - on a similar order to the implausibilities Paul raises above. Just to pick a couple: the variety of different objects and seeming capabilities would seem to imply quite a large range of visiting aliens - perhaps of different races, or perhaps of different polities of the same race. But the sheer range of different capabilities seems to suggest a VAST array of very distinct technological possibilities that are well beyond what we are capable of. That is to say, an array that seems implausible unless the many different alien races don't trade technology with each other. But that, to me, seems very implausible, given that if WE are (barely) aware of them, they must surely be aware of each other, and yet there is not even a sign of an interstellar war between them. I would posit races not at war are going to want to trade, and there should be trend toward a leveling out of technology, at least to this extent: when scientists from one race hear that scientists from another race have cracked X problem, that gives them a great leg up on the notion that X can indeed be solved, and eventually they will do it.

Secondly, with that many different races or polities or groups, how is it that it is uniform among them ALL that they don't show themselves to us openly, but DO keep on running covert ops that show that they are there, sort of, at the edges? What possible interstellar motives would explain that strange willingness to sort of reveal themselves, but not clearly, that would be shared so equally by so many different players? Without even one player saying, "Nuts to the rest of you, we are going to (pick one:) (a) make slaves of those humans; (b) make allies of them; (c) make stew with them; (d) have fun revealing to them how stupid they are; (e) put them on a reality show and make billions off them as farce."

So, looking for a different alternative.

Hypothetical: let's say that the videos count as proof conclusive of the proverbial little green men (who are actual physical beings, not demons, angels, or bodiless intelligences interacting with our spacetime). Furthermore, suppose these green men are rational, morally accountable creatures.

If P(C) represents your subjective probability that historic orthodox Christianity is true, does P(C) increase or decrease in light of this information? Why or why not? I'm really curious.

My own answer: P(C) remains about the same because
(1) scripture doesn't preclude other life out there
(2) that God the Son became incarnate had assumed human nature concurrent with divine nature doesn't seem to preclude God the Son adding a third nature to the mix. (The hard step is going from divine nature to divine plus something else, right? After that, additional natures are gravy.)
(3) Even if one objects to (2), if the alien species is fallen, God could redeem that species in some other way than becoming incarnate right.

But contrary to this:
(1) creation accounts seem centered on man
(2) the end of time is also man-centric, and the rolling up of the heavens talked about in the NT, although poetic language, seems to suggest a cosmic-scale renewal, and not just a local renewal.

But contrary to my "but contrary" is that (1) & (2) could just be using poetic and/or phenomenological language too.

The size and scale of the universe is a non sequitur for me regarding P(C), btw. But the idea of morally accountable alien life elsewhere and elsewhen fascinates me.

On a literary note, I loved CS Lewis' take in his Space Trilogy, especially Perelandra (the best book in the trilogy IMHO).

(2) that God the Son became incarnate had assumed human nature concurrent with divine nature doesn't seem to preclude God the Son adding a third nature to the mix. (The hard step is going from divine nature to divine plus something else, right? After that, additional natures are gravy.)

Interestingly, St. Thomas Aquinas explicitly says that God's becoming incarnate by taking human nature does not (cannot) exhaust God's ability to take on a created nature. God could do it over and over.

My overall sense is that P(C) is slightly lower upon discovering rational corporeal free-will beings of an alien species "out there". My reason is somewhat involved, and not at all strong, but in essence: I believe that (given P(C)) since God created the universe in some order, it is both fitting and necessary that there be some ordering principle that regulates (i.e. orders) the interaction between the other race and us. But (I think) that neither natural law nor revelation clearly specifies what that ordering principle is. Hence we would be left in a (possibly) insoluble moral quandary that would constitute an insurmountable risk to our salvation (in not knowing what is the right thing to do). If there were such a danger to salvation, revelation should handle it for us, and it doesn't.

As I say, it's not a strong argument, has potential gaps in the premises. But I think it has a certain force, and for that reason I think it more probable that either there are no other intelligent non-terrestrial races out there, or that they are so far away that we will NEVER encounter them. I also think that C.S. Lewis's suggestion in Perelandra that once God had become incarnate in Jesus Christ, no other rational nature than "human" would be fitting for the universe has some plausibility to it. We do think of the Incarnation as the central event of all creation - more than one of the Fathers and Doctors say things like this. Indeed, St. Paul gives us reason for it: all creation groans, waiting for the completion of the redemption by Christ. I suppose that we could "discover" that St. Paul must have meant only that terrestrial creation was affected by Adam's sin, but that doesn't seem feasible either: are we going to discover that on Mars, or on a planet of another star, that all Nature treats us as nature did in the Garden of Eden? Not likely.

Interestingly, many of the same issues arise if we play with the possibilities of discovering another intelligent race here on Earth already. Dolphins are extremely "intelligent", so much so that they do things that it is hard to say with any confidence "irrational animals can do that, by..." But to go beyond: if we are going to hypothetically allow for little green men from Mars (or beyond), why not allow for fairies, or pixies, etc - not as magical beings, but as mere terrestrial beings with a few abilities we don't share? Who (like the UFOs) have allowed us to notice them "around the edges", but not allowed definite proof. The deep sea still has plenty of secrets kept from us, science is not capable of saying what is or is not possible down there. And we all know that the fact that we haven't proven X exists is not proof that it doesn't. Logically, the hypothetical possibilities of UFOs representing intelligent races can't be completely different from hypothetical possibilities of other phenomena representing intelligent races.

(c) make stew with them

It's a cookbook!!!


Interestingly, St. Thomas Aquinas explicitly says that God's becoming incarnate by taking human nature does not (cannot) exhaust God's ability to take on a created nature. God could do it over and over.

Could you kindly point me to that reference?

Interestingly, many of the same issues arise if we play with the possibilities of discovering another intelligent race here on Earth already. Dolphins are extremely "intelligent", so much so that they do things that it is hard to say with any confidence "irrational animals can do that, by..." But to go beyond: if we are going to hypothetically allow for little green men from Mars (or beyond), why not allow for fairies, or pixies, etc - not as magical beings, but as mere terrestrial beings with a few abilities we don't share? Who (like the UFOs) have allowed us to notice them "around the edges", but not allowed definite proof. The deep sea still has plenty of secrets kept from us, science is not capable of saying what is or is not possible down there. And we all know that the fact that we haven't proven X exists is not proof that it doesn't. Logically, the hypothetical possibilities of UFOs representing intelligent races can't be completely different from hypothetical possibilities of other phenomena representing intelligent races.

This is an interesting point; it makes me realize that the issue isn't the existence of other fallen and morally accountable rational life out there, but simply other fallen rational morally accountable life anywhere,(regardless of location, e.g. in some forever-inaccessible galaxy far far away, or here on our planet.


I also think that C.S. Lewis's suggestion in Perelandra that once God had become incarnate in Jesus Christ, no other rational nature than "human" would be fitting for the universe has some plausibility to it. We do think of the Incarnation as the central event of all creation - more than one of the Fathers and Doctors say things like this. Indeed, St. Paul gives us reason for it: all creation groans, waiting for the completion of the redemption by Christ. I suppose that we could "discover" that St. Paul must have meant only that terrestrial creation was affected by Adam's sin, but that doesn't seem feasible either: are we going to discover that on Mars, or on a planet of another star, that all Nature treats us as nature did in the Garden of Eden? Not likely.

I find this quite reasonable --- not sure if true (no way possible to evaluate), but it aligns with my sensibilities.

There is something special about Man; we're not just an instance of a species that God happened to redeem yada yada yada, but there is a centrality to Man implied in scripture. It seems that God's taking on human form means something more than just that that was part of the plan of redemption.

Thanks for responding to my musings.

Given the unlikelihood of (A) and (B) ‒ and the release of these videos themselves is suggestive of that unlikelihood

I can see why the release might be an argument against B, but how is it an argument against A?

I can see why the release might be an argument against B, but how is it an argument against A?

Although it depends on an assumption, I think the point is that it's not just that the Pentagon (and, presumably, other agencies such as CIA have coordinated with them) cannot identify another foreign power which DOES have capabilities like the ones exhibited, it's that the information we have does not allow us to generate even a plausible hypothesis of some other nation having such capabilities. The Pentagon may have handed over its analysis of the _event_ - but the US Government is NOT handing over its entire cadre of analyses that show that nothing we DO know of the Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Brits, French, etc might possibly be the hints that they have these capabilities, but they must have made such an analysis to publish this.

The assumption is that our information gathering is good enough to detect at least hints of the advances in science and development that would be necessary, or (to say the same thing in reverse) nobody else's secrecy capacity is good enough, to keep even hints of the necessary advances from leaking out. Given that assumption, if none of our information and evaluation services can concoct a plausible hypothesis that "the Russians have demonstrated X-1, and X-10 is a possible advance from X-1 that could explain the speeds we are seeing...", then the conclusion of the US Government would be: either nobody else can do this stuff, or somebody else (here on Earth) is so advanced that not only they can run rings around our scientists and engineers, they can also run rings around our information gathering systems and analysts. If we accept the assumption indicated (that we would at least pick up hints), that leaves the first.

Why should we accept such an assumption? Because advances are not made in a complete vacuum, and advances of at least 3 generations beyond where we are now, without hints of generations 1 and 2, don't really make sense. How could a country who is adversarial to us NOT make use of generation 2 advances, well beyond our own abilities, to push their political position - why would they insist on waiting until they got yet another generation ahead of us and keep generations 1 and 2 utterly under wraps by not using them at all?

Another reason to publish: to get help from anyone else who might have some clues the US Gov. does not have, and who might hereby becomes concerned. If someone has clues that the Russians or the Chinese might have X capability, and has been relying on the US to counterbalance the Chinese as a power-center, that reliance might be shaky upon finding out that the US not only can't match X, they can't even come up with a plausible hypothesis on how the Chinese could have X.

Assuming these little green men exist, wouldn't they be millions or billions of light years away? In that case, isn't it physically impossible for them to reach Earth?

Assuming these little green men exist, wouldn't they be millions or billions of light years away? In that case, isn't it physically impossible for them to reach Earth?

Assuming their existence, there is no reason to also assume that they are any farther away than the nearer stars to us. The nearest star is a little more than 4 light years. That distance could well be traversed by a ship that has just barely slower-than-light speed, in not much more than 4 years. There is no theoretical reason to assume that speeds just below light speed cannot be reached.

Stars with plausibly inhabitable planets are within 50 light years. This distance could easily be traversed with a "generation" ship at speeds of only 1/4 to 1/2 of light speed.

Scientists are getting ever stronger indications that a drive mechanism that warps space around the ship can allow the ship-plus-space complex can translocate faster than light speed, effectively - that such things are physically possible. If that ever becomes more than just conceivable, but within reach of engineers, we could reach the nearer stars in times more like a few months or even a few days. Nor do we have any kind of a firm grasp on an upper limit to such methods: it might be possible that a very strong such engine that very strongly warps space COULD translocate a ship "millions or billions" of light years in a small enough space of time to be available to those little green men. And if they had longer lives (maybe, had not fallen and thus had MUCH longer lives), maybe a slower drive would not bother them like it would bother us.

I can see why the release might be an argument against B, but how is it an argument against A?

Pretty much what Tony said: the absence of any speculation along those lines accompanying the video releases, suggests to me the absence of any evidence along those lines. I grant that it has more than a whiff of argument-from-silence to it, so that's why I put it as merely a suggestion. Tony's other point seems pretty strong as well: according to the best public information we have, neither the Chinese nor the Russian possess the wherewithal to sail a sustainable blue-water navy. Their naval assets, while formidable in this capacity, are largely confined to coastal defense. Deploying whole carrier groups and the like is not feasible for these nations (because, while Americans take it for granted, sailing a carrier group constitutes a colossal engineering, logistical and financial challenge). This technology on display in the videos is way beyond carrier groups.

Interestingly, St. Thomas Aquinas explicitly says that God's becoming incarnate by taking human nature does not (cannot) exhaust God's ability to take on a created nature. God could do it over and over.

Could you kindly point me to that reference?

Joe, he makes the point in Summa, Prima Pars, Q 3, A 7:

I answer that, What has power for one thing, and no more, has a power limited to one. Now the power of a Divine Person is infinite, nor can it be limited by any created thing. Hence it may not be said that a Divine Person so assumed one human nature as to be unable to assume another. For it would seem to follow from this that the Personality of the Divine Nature was so comprehended by one human nature as to be unable to assume another to its Personality; and this is impossible, for the Uncreated cannot be comprehended by any creature. Hence it is plain that, whether we consider the Divine Person in regard to His power, which is the principle of the union, or in regard to His Personality, which is the term of the union, it has to be said that the Divine Person, over and beyond the human nature which He has assumed, can assume another distinct human nature.

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4003.htm#article7

It is possible to play around with all sorts of hypothetical possibilities: that there is no other intelligent race, that there is only ONE other intelligent race; or that there are a great many. That all others did not fall, as did Adam, or that some did and some did not, or that all did. That of the races initiated, all are humanoid, or that some are, or that only those initiated after the Incarnation are humanoid. That God only saved man, or that God saved all that fell but not by an incarnation into their natures, or that He saved every race that fell through an incarnation joining himself to their natures.

I myself think that the details of man having to interact with a race that has never fallen would constitute such an impossible tension regarding due relations (and without revelation to resolve the tension) that the prospect lends itself to the conclusion that "it'll never happen", whether because there is no such other race, or because we are too far separated. The notion that a plenitude of races were created, and that all remained in their original grace but man, is both too awful a comparative for man to handle (without crushing shame) should we have to interact with them, and also seemingly implausible from the standpoint of known causes and "chance" (i.e. man's unforced free will). The notion that all fell is also seemingly implausible from the perspective of causes (as we know them) and free will. Or consider a hypothetical of our interacting with just one alien race, that race unfallen but clearly inferior to man insofar as nature alone provides (say, far inferior in natural intelligence), yet far above us in _results_ due to being confirmed in grace and without sin - but because of the Incarnation happening with human nature and not with theirs, they honor our race as raised in dignity above theirs: the mind boggles.

I have never read a plausible fictional hypothesis of our interacting with an alien race that had fallen and either had the promise of redemption but not yet accomplished, or had a redemption event like Jesus' Incarnation. I don't think writers take seriously a notion that a full account of man's interacting with such a race entails dealing with each other's need of and receiving redemption. (Most SF writers do not take sin and grace seriously anyway.) The few writers who take up man's religious sensibilities at all almost completely assume that the interactions would convince man that all his religion is a trash-heap, to be gotten over with the new evidence. But what if the evidence is "hey, your story of redemption is incredibly similar to ours"? What would materialist skeptics do with that?

Thanks for the Aquinas reference Tony.

Theologically, I don't think that (in the case of another fallen species somewhere) God would be forced logically to redeem them in the same way the human race was redeemed, via Incarnation/Resurrection. It would have to be a serious affair, but it wouldn't (I think) have to have the same specifics as our case.

I have never read a plausible fictional hypothesis of our interacting with an alien race that had fallen and either had the promise of redemption but not yet accomplished, or had a redemption event like Jesus' Incarnation. I don't think writers take seriously a notion that a full account of man's interacting with such a race entails dealing with each other's need of and receiving redemption. (Most SF writers do not take sin and grace seriously anyway.) The few writers who take up man's religious sensibilities at all almost completely assume that the interactions would convince man that all his religion is a trash-heap, to be gotten over with the new evidence. But what if the evidence is "hey, your story of redemption is incredibly similar to ours"? What would materialist skeptics do with that?

If I attempt a dime-store psychologization of materialist skeptics, I'd say that one of the motivations in finding rational life "out there" is that this other race would directly or indirectly show how backwater and troglodyte-ish yours and my views are.

(a) if the race has no religious views the skeptic could point and say "See! They have no religious views. Wouldn't God reveal Himself to them too?"

(b) if the race has religious views quite different from Christianity the skeptic could say that we need to learn from this race (and imply a ditching of historic Christianity), or he could apply the whole evolutionary view of religion to them too along with some fashionable neuroscientific views that religious thought is (wholly) reducible to brains and chemical states in brains.

(c) if the race has quasi-Christian or even Christian views (modified for the race of course), I'm not sure what the implication would be.

(Total tangent: I chuckle as I think about this, because recalling the 80s/90s when I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, it always struck me as odd that alien races and future humans seemed to suspiciously toe the leftist and materialist lines on most everything. I also chuckled at the utopianism in the series that, if only we'd let leftists run things, we too could live in Federation-like bliss.)

Overall for your other answers, I like the cut of your jib. Thanks for the replies so far.

Never mind Roswell, abductions, and all the other popular culture fluff (and in this category I include the contributions of astronauts Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper, even though one would have thought they'd be reliable). Considering the mass of impeccable evidence, available from a multitude of mainstream and reliable sources, it's remarkable that anyone still questions either that we are being visited from outside our solar system, or that our government is well aware of the matter. DOUBT AS TO EITHER OF THESE POINTS JUST ISN'T REASONABLE.

Below, I have tried to provide links for all materials cited. If necessary, I can email them to Lydia.

For instance, Cmdr. Edward P. Stafford wrote of his flying saucer incident in the October, 2004 issue of Naval History (not exactly a flying saucer magazine) https://www.usni.org/search/node/cosmic%20curiosity, published by the U.S. Naval Institute (hardly a flying saucer organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Naval_Institute. You can find a reproduction of the article here https://www.ufocasebook.com/navy1952ufoincident.html.

The flying saucer account of Cmdr. Stafford is unambiguous - either he was lying, or his air crewmen were lying, or they saw flying saucers. So what sort of man was Cmdr. Stafford?

He served as technical advisor https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0821270/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr99 on the Pearl Harbor movie Tora, Tora, Tora. In the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_%28CV-6%29 on WWII aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, he is cited multiple times in the footnotes, because his book The Big E (see what Amazon reviewers have said about it here https://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Enterprise-Classics-Literature/dp/1557509980/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409185393&sr=8-1&keywords=the+big+e#cm_cr_dpwidget) is the definitive reference text on this ship. You can go also to Amazon.com and see what readers have written about his other works. One of them (Little Ship, Big War) can even be read for free at openlibrary.org https://openlibrary.org/search?q=little+ship%2C+big+war.

Would a man of this caliber concoct a flying saucer tale? Over his long and honorable career, there is no record of any conduct that would cast doubt on the excellent reputation he earned. And except for the one incident, he had nothing to do with UFOs.

As another example, there's Deke Slayton's account of his sighting, as an air force P-51 pilot, beginning at page 49 in his autobiography https://books.google.com/books?id=z8vl46GV2JYC&pg=PA51&dq=deke+slayton+ufo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjYptHMjNfLAhUM1R4KHeWgD8EQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=deke%20slayton%20ufo&f=false; there's also a youtube clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E_SFwrh8wo of him recalling the experience. He tells his story without embellishment. Major Slayton himself was noncommittal as to his encounter. And rightfully so, given what he thought he saw. Nevertheless, the narrative, taken as a whole, undeniably leans heavily toward the "exotic flying craft of unknown origin" explanation.

And how about the incident involving Guided Missile Cruiser USS Princeton and Lt. Cmdr. David Fravor, flying off of the carrier Nimitz (and, incidentally, commanding the Black Aces squadron at the time)?
https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDj9ZZQY2kA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCaruUtiPHo

Yet additionally, there's the O'Hare Airport sighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Airport_UFO_sighting.

These are only four out of thousands of incidents experienced by military and commercial pilots, crews, and radar operators, as reported in by reliable. The witnesses recount exotic flying craft performing evolutions beyond the capabilities of known vehicles - instantaneous acceleration from standstill to thousands of mph, 90 degree turns at extreme speed, etc. Many of these encounters involve both close and extended pilot and crew sightings, in combination with radar confirmation.

Of course there's radar malfunction and visual misidentification. But to this extent? At what point do such prosaic explanations stop being reasonable?

Actually, every ten or twenty years or so, some meticulous compiler (astronomy professor Allen Hynek, Leslie Kean, Richard Hall) publishes a new collection of such encounters. Dr. Hynek's https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL220669A/J._Allen_Hynek's and Leslie Kean's https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL3223003A/Leslie_Kean books both are also available for free at openlibrary.org.

And particularly as to Leslie Kean, she was a reporter for the Boston Globe. In 1999 a group of French flag officers and senior scientists issued the COMETA Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMETA, a UFO study concluding that some of them are extraterrestrial vehicles. Among the contributors were four-star General Bernard Norlain, former commander of the French Tactical Air Force and military counselor to the prime minister; General Denis Letty, an air force fighter pilot; and Andre Lebeau, former head of the National Center for Space Studies, the French equivalent of NASA – not to mention a three-star admiral, the national chief of police, and weapons engineers. Considering the credentials of such participants, Ms. Kean thought that the publication of this report would be an earthshaking development. Apparently, not so much.

But she was moved to look into the matter herself. The result was the book already linked above - UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record, an exhaustively researched account of some of the best UFO cases. Elsewhere http://www.msn.com/#.UD-CQFRZWUc Ms. Kean writes about one of the incidents from her book:

"As an example, Brig. Gen. Jose Periera of Brazil, commander of air force operations until 2005, reports on an 'array of UFOs' observed over his country in 1986. Two pilots chased one of the objects for 30 minutes. Numerous other pilots saw the objects. Radar recorded them. Six jets were scrambled from two Brazilian air force bases to pursue them. Some of the pilots made visual contact corresponding to radar registrations. Both military and commercial pilots were involved. Onboard as well as ground radar systems confirmed the presence of the objects.

“'We have the correlation of independent readings from different sources,' Periera writes. 'These data have nothing to do with human eyes. When, along with the radar, a pilot‘s pair of eyes sees that same thing, and then another pilot‘s, and so on, the incident has real credibility and stands on a solid foundation.'”

Any reasonable and objective person who considers the evidence for flying saucers must conclude that they are real.

"Flying saucers are real. Too many good men have seen them, that don't have hallucinations."
Eddie Rickenbacker

Curtis LeMay warns Barry Goldwater to shut up 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPFBg1NNUBU

Admiral Lord Hill Norton, former British CNO, doesn't suffer fools 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjwG388UP1M

Deke Slayton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E_SFwrh8wo 

Police from multiple jurisdictions successively track UFO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhdTs4UnL1g

Yet even though flying saucers must be real, nevertheless it seems very unlikely that we're ever going to learn what we really want to know about our visitors - where they're from, how they get here, why they come here, what they're like. And it's pointless to seek government disclosure or further investigation - though flying saucer enthusiasts invariably do anyway.

As to the reason for such futility, the government started getting these reports from pilots, crews, and radar operators by (at least) the late 1940's. It's inconceivable that they wouldn't have considered this to be a matter of the highest importance, and done everything they could to find out what was going on.
They had to have concluded that if this truly was technology, it would give the first finder an unassailable military superiority over everyone else. No more mutually assured destruction – instead it's we win, you lose.
This would make the matter one of national security.

And with matters of national security, you tell everyone else, friends and foes alike, as little as possible about what you do know, what you don't know, and what you want to know. You want to get as much of the information as you can, you want to get it before anyone else, and ideally, you don't want anyone else to get it at all.

You therefore investigate as secretly as possible, as assiduously as possible, and with every means at your disposal.

So of course the U.S. government took this in house, and never has disclosed, and never will disclose, anything it has discovered - if indeed there is anything to be discovered, and if in fact they have discovered anything. Probably there is some U.S. governmental unit, of which the public and most or all of the rest of the government are ignorant, that deals with the subject.

Now in this regard, provided above is a video of Goldwater himself recounting how Air Force Commanding General LeMay blew his top when the senator asked to see recovered extraterrestrial artifacts (Goldwater himself was a former jet fighter pilot and a general in the Air Force Reserve, and believed in flying saucers because many airmen and radar operators came to him with stories of encounters and trackings). What I didn't include was what LeMay is said to have confided to his biographer as he neared the end of life. Purportedly he complained that even though he was the very head of the air service, nevertheless the intelligence branches still refused to confide in him as to - and I quote - "planets of origin." The quality of evidence for the reliability of this anecdote does not reach that of everything else I have provided earlier in this thread. But it sure is consistent with LeMay's tantrum. And the implications are staggering. Earthshattering.

Speaking of which, there have been developments reported recently in the mainstream news about possible major, major advances of our own in space travel. We may have made very significant progress toward actually rendering our solar system fully accessible (Em Drive and Cannae Drive). And God help us, we might even have started barely scratching at the very beginnings of la-la land - warp propulsion, for interstellar travel (Alcubierre Drive). At both levels, NASA itself is involved.

As to (merely) getting to and from our moon and fellow planets, the problem is one of bringing along sufficient fuel.  The only method we currently have for traveling in space is by exploding propellant to generate the requisite thrust, and we have to carry way too much propellant to cover a reasonable distance. But two different researchers, Guido Fetta (US) and Roger Shawyer (UK), inventors respectively of the Cannae and Em Drives, possibly have discovered that thrust can be achieved without having to ignite propellant - by using electrical energy to generate microwaves in a container of the right composition and shape. So use your battery to generate the microwaves to get you into space; and once in space, use solar power to recharge your battery.

By such means, not only can you just keep recharging and chugging along, but by continuously generating thrust, you will eventually build up to very high velocities. NASA's Dr. Harold White talks about reaching Mars in weeks - maybe even days - rather than the presently necessary months.

But even if one or both of the Cannae and Em drives turn out to be feasible, they're still only pushing you through space.  And, of course, proceeding thusly is not practical for interstellar travel, because of the vast distances between stars.

Here the problem is Special Relativity, which limits travel through space to the speed of light. The math and physics dictate that the faster the speed, the more energy required, and the greater mass increases, with infinite energy needed to achieve light speed, and mass likewise becoming infinite at this point - hence the restriction.

But then there's General Relativity, according to which there's no limit on the speed at which space itself can be distorted ("distorted" as in "warped" - hence sci fi's good old "warp drive").  And we do already know that space in fact can be warped - we've confirmed that the earth's gravity field distorts the immediately surrounding space. We even know that the distortion of space can occur at Faster Than Light speed; through the Hubble Telescope, we've tracked the red shifted galaxies traveling FTL, and apparently have determined that it's the space in which they reside that is expanding away from us at such velocity.

The three great astronautics pioneers were Tsiolkovsky, Goddard (as in Goddard Space Center), and Oberth (mentor to our dear Werner von Braun). Oberth took flying saucers seriously, and he didn't really have to be concerned about ridicule because, well, he was Oberth, the astronautics pioneer;.

Oberth thought that flying saucers indeed were traveling by warping space. As discussed above, we do know that space can be distorted by gravity. He posited that flying saucer propulsion systems employ some sort of gravity technology that stretches a ship's location point in space toward the desired destination; the stretching is continued until this point reaches the desired location, then the ship hops off, and lets the point snap back into place. Paul Hill, the P-47 designer and later NASA scientist, thought along these lines; he wrote a very technical book on the subject - Unconventional Flying Objects: a Scientific Analysis https://www.amazon.com/Unconventional-Flying-Objects-Scientific-Analysis/dp/1571740279/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1435958055&sr=1-2&keywords=unconventional+flying+objects.

Present day researchers still talk of warping space, but in different terms. Physicist Miguel Alcubierre has derived a set of solutions for the General Relativity field equations that involve "negative energy" and "negative mass" to effect the warping. The negative energy is to be used to enclose a ship in a space-time bubble, contract space in front of the bubble, and expand space behind the bubble. The enclosed ship thusly would "surf" the resultant space-time "wave" toward its destination.

But whereas actual (though extremely rudimentary) Em and Cannae prototypes actually have been built, Alcubierre propulsion is still so very very very theoretical and speculative. Not only do we have to provide somehow for manipulating negative energy and negative mass, we still have to establish that they even exist. Dr. Steven Lamoreaux heads a team at Yale that is working on this problem.

Regardless of what we still don't know, we do seem to be working our way to the planets.  Even, in fact, to the stars.

If I may interject a tangent to the current conversation: Do you believe it is consistent with God's nature that He should create intelligent life on some alien planet, allow an alien-specific Fall event or have that alien race be affected by Adam's fall (as all creation is fallen and awaiting redemption), but offer no plan or way of redemption for that alien race?

I shall confess a somewhat selfish reason for the question. I am doing some preliminary planning for NaNoWriMo, and as it turns out, I intend to write some science fiction/science fantasy. And the concept of an alien race that is fallen and has no Savior is (perhaps dangerously) fascinating to me.

Meta, everything we can see about God's goodness tells us he would come up with a redemptive solution for a fallen race of rational animals. I think it is inconsistent with what we know of him through revelation (though that knowing is limited) to suggest he might let such a race perish completely without redemption. As you hint, even considering it at length might be disturbingly fraught with problems.

The idea of "all creation" having fallen because of Adam, in spite of there being another race not fallen through their own sin, I find so difficult to assemble that to me it seems like a dead end idea. A better one might be that there God creates a Garden-of-Eden-type of affair locally around each and every race when he creates them and gifts them with grace, and it extends out (say) to their whole solar system, but not beyond. So the fall of one race does not directly impact the local conditions of another race in their original planet. Indeed, the interactions of one race fallen and another race unfallen, meeting in interstellar space - or in the unfallen race's home system - would be capable of great drama, if you are writing fiction.

So of course the U.S. government took this in house, and never has disclosed, and never will disclose, anything it has discovered - if indeed there is anything to be discovered, and if in fact they have discovered anything. Probably there is some U.S. governmental unit, of which the public and most or all of the rest of the government are ignorant, that deals with the subject.

Roger, because of the national security issues you point out, I would have thought that these very things you said would imply that the US Gov. would never come out and make available the stuff that the Pentagon is here making available. At the least, there would be a fixed and definitive rule "do not issue anything about ETs, even to the extent of "here's a puzzling event, we don't know what to make of it. Say nothing." I can't square that sort of obvious stance (if there really is a more-secret-than-anything organization with the Gov. whose job it is to handle all UFO and ET stuff) with the publication of these releases.

What do you propose is the reason the US Gov. has for supressing sure and definitive knowledge of a wide ET civilization, for 7 decades now? And what do you suppose is the reason the ETs would have for playing along with such a government policy (at least to the extent of making it easy for 99% of the population to go on thinking there's no good reason to believe in ETs)? It is this that makes me think that we need to be cautious in drawing conclusions.

Meta, everything we can see about God's goodness tells us he would come up with a redemptive solution for a fallen race of rational animals. I think it is inconsistent with what we know of him through revelation (though that knowing is limited) to suggest he might let such a race perish completely without redemption. As you hint, even considering it at length might be disturbingly fraught with problems.

I agree with this. It would really clash with the omnibenevolence of God.

The idea of "all creation" having fallen because of Adam, in spite of there being another race not fallen through their own sin, I find so difficult to assemble that to me it seems like a dead end idea. A better one might be that there God creates a Garden-of-Eden-type of affair locally around each and every race when he creates them and gifts them with grace, and it extends out (say) to their whole solar system, but not beyond. So the fall of one race does not directly impact the local conditions of another race in their original planet. Indeed, the interactions of one race fallen and another race unfallen, meeting in interstellar space - or in the unfallen race's home system - would be capable of great drama, if you are writing fiction.

For fun, I'll note that In the Space Trilogy of CS Lewis, "locally" meant planet-wide. Earth was fallen and "blockaded" by the evil angels, while Venus was pristine and to be a battleground for a possible new fall.


Tony, sorry to be a pest, but if what you're referring to is Mr. Cella's video, please post the link itself here, so I can copy and paste it. Because of my old computer, I can't play the video as Mr. Cella provided it.

By the way, what I posted was a quickly updated piece that I first wrote a few years ago, and have since occasionally revised. For instance, I originally had such exalted hopes for the Em and Cannae drives, but they seem to have turned out to be busts. I was salivating at the thought of my nieces and nephew literally living in an interplanetary society. Now, for what it's worth, I indeed do think our capabilities are actually far greater than what is publicly known. I think we already have a (secret) space force, that we've been based on the moon for a while, and that we're even out in the solar system. But I don't have a damned bit of reliable evidence.

What do people think about the possibility that some of these encounters are not purely physical encounters of two different species (man and the proverbial little green men) but are encounters of man with, say, the demonic?

My own gut instinct is that it seems reasonably possible. I've read various Christian accounts of alien visitations, abductions, etc ending immediately when one calls upon the name of Jesus. This sort of thing gives me bad memories of the nutty charismatic stuff I saw in my Christian schooling, but, I don't have reason to doubt to fundamental reliability of these peoples' accounts and such. Stuff like this makes me wonder how "spiritual" these encounters are vs physical.

(BTW, there is a famous story about Jimmy Carter, soon after taking the office of president, weeping at whatever he was debriefed on regarding UFOs.)

If the more pedestrian reality is that we are being visited by aliens and such utilizing technology to bridge the vast interstellar distances, it would be an interesting fact; it wouldn't change all the evidence for the NT reliability, and the person and work of Jesus, especially the Resurrection. I say this so that my evidentialist membership won't be revoked.

Tony, I have considerable reservations about the possibility of an unfallen intelligent race existing in our universe. One may raise an eyebrow at trying to be realistic in science fiction, but a significant personal motivation for the book is trying to see how God would create a universe with multiple intelligent species. A possibly blasphemous endeavor, given His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts, but He has also revealed himself in measure, and I believe the endeavor is still worth undertaking.

First, I see no reason to interpret Romans 8:22 when it says "all/the whole creation groans" as "all/the whole terrestrial creation." If we do find unfallen alien life out there, then it will not be a terribly far leap, but it is still a leap I would rather not take if I have no reason to.

Second, we know created beings are 0 for 2 when it comes to not falling. There are the fallen angels, and the fallen humans. One may reasonably argue there is something about created beings that makes them prone to falling without creator intervention. Even we speculate that human-made AI would be predisposed to rebellion against us.

(Tangentally, the fallen angels are an example of intelligent beings which God has not provided a means of salvation. The fallen angels are fallen forever, to be destroyed on the last day. Combined with my own Reformed leanings, I see no reason God could not create an intelligent alien race without plans for redemption. If the fallen angels are forever our enemies on this side of eternity in the spiritual realm, perhaps there are fallen space orcs who are forever our enemies on this side of eternity in the physical realm.)

I would also disagree with your assertion that fallen/unfallen interaction would make for good drama. Perhaps my own literary chops are too weak, but I think there are some insuperable boundaries that would suggest if there is unfallen life out there, any interaction would have to be so managed by the providence of God it would limit what could happen. The only example of unfallen and fallen life interacting was the Risen Lord before He ascended, and what we know of that is very limited. The gospels never record someone trying to punch Jesus after he rose from the dead.

As a primary example, we know unfallen life cannot die. Regardless of whether you see Adam's fall bringing death to all humans or to all animal life, unfallen humanity was not going to die. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume an unfallen alien species as unable to die. But fallen life carries around many ways to die. Virus, diseases, cancers on one hand, and knives, guns, and fists on the other. What happens if I sneeze on unfallen alien life? What happens if I level an AR-15 at unfallen life and pull the trigger?

Also, consider space limitations. Whatever biology they have for reproduction, the rate of reproduction would have to be limited by the space on the planet (or planets, if we grant space travel). Either that, or God would have to routinely intervene and make their planet larger as their population grew.

Joe, I see no reason to rule out that some encounters with "alien" life might be demonic. If Satan can pretend to be an angel of light, surely the demons of Hell can do the less difficult disguise of pretending to be from outer space.

Roger, here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/wxVRg7LLaQA

First, I see no reason to interpret Romans 8:22 when it says "all/the whole creation groans" as "all/the whole terrestrial creation."

I see no reason either - as long as we don't have encounters with unfallen races of rational physical beings. But if we either DO have such encounters, or hypothesize them for fiction, then we would want to re-consider how to take Romans 8:22.

Second, we know created beings are 0 for 2 when it comes to not falling. There are the fallen angels, and the fallen humans.

True, but it's a little more complicated than that: According to St. Thomas (following the lead of Dionysius), each angel is a distinct species. So there are far more than 2 species, and far more than 2 fallen species. We don't really have any sort of certainty on the number of angel species or how many of them fell, but the references I have seen in the Fathers and Doctors (to the extent I can recall) suggest that the unfallen angels outnumber the fallen. Perhaps greatly, though I seem to also remember hearing that the fallen are 1/3 of the whole - perhaps as a reference to Revelation which has 1/3 of the stars being swept from the sky? In any case, there are many, may angel species that did not fall, so as an aggregate, the ratio isn't 0 to N.

Tangentally, the fallen angels are an example of intelligent beings which God has not provided a means of salvation.

I don't know what the Reformed theology says about angels, but I know what St. Thomas said: because angels are not rational animals (they having no corporeal or physical aspect at all - hence my use of the qualifying notion of rational animals, i.e. having physical bodies), they are not subjects of change the way humans are. Further, their intellects do not operate the way ours do, discursively, from thought to thought to thought, moving from premises to conclusions. Instead, they apprehend both the principles and all conclusions that follow from them all as one act of intellect. Further, (also unlike humans) the fallen ones saw clearly all the necessary consequences of their acts, and in choosing the act they became unalterably fixed in those decisions. There is no repentance possible to angelic natures, and this alone explains why God has not designed a redemption for them.

The fallen angels are fallen forever, to be destroyed on the last day.

As I understand it, many other Christian view of it is that they will remain in Hell forever.

would also disagree with your assertion that fallen/unfallen interaction would make for good drama. Perhaps my own literary chops are too weak, but I think there are some insuperable boundaries that would suggest if there is unfallen life out there, any interaction would have to be so managed by the providence of God it would limit what could happen.

Roger, I tend to think much the same thing - it's one of the reasons I just don't think that there really are such unfallen races of beings with physical bodies. (There are the unfallen angels, and their interactions with men, but presumably God does manage those interactions closely.) But for the purposes of a story, one can choose to focus on some aspects of the truth and leave out other aspects: almost all science fiction entails just this sort of thing. All historical fiction requires it specifically: what happens if we change ONE detail of what happened in the past, leaving all the rest unchanged?) Hence a writer could choose to avoid some troublesome details, leaving them out of the picture.

The only example of unfallen and fallen life interacting was the Risen Lord before He ascended, and what we know of that is very limited.

Well, there's humans and unfallen angels, but angels are not corporeal beings, they are wholly spiritual, so they don't exactly count. At least not the same way.

it is reasonable to assume an unfallen alien species as unable to die. But fallen life carries around many ways to die. Virus, diseases, cancers on one hand, and knives, guns, and fists on the other. What happens if I sneeze on unfallen alien life? What happens if I level an AR-15 at unfallen life and pull the trigger?

I agree that unfallen man had no death in the picture. My understanding of it was that God's gift to Adam and Eve was two-fold: that (a) their bodies were wholly subject and obedient to their wills, and thus were not disposed to illness or any interior cause of death; and (b) that God had so arranged the rest of nature (NOT groaning) that it too was wholly subject to man's good, and thus there would be no exterior causes of illness of death either - no accidents, no disasters, no germs affecting them adversely, etc. (These gifts, together with sanctifying grace, are taken as constituting the state of "Original Justice" according to Catholic theology.) Precisely on account of the possibility of the AR-15 question you raise, I tend to think God would not permit our coming into range of an alien unfallen race - but an author need not handle it this way. C.S. Lewis's stories are surely fine versions that one can hypothesize for the sake of the story.

Also, consider space limitations. Whatever biology they have for reproduction, the rate of reproduction would have to be limited by the space on the planet (or planets,

Like C.S. Lewis indicates, ANY assumption of an unfallen race of rational animals seems to require also the assumption of either some kind of divine influence on the generation of children, or simply a clearly finite plan of life for the race before an eschaton in which they enter into eternity. Being rational and unclouded by sin, one can happily assume that they will regulate births so as to not exceed resources available.

William Tenn (the pseudonym of Philip Klass) is considered the father of science fiction satire. His short story "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi!" is a sort of tribute to famed humorist Sholem Aleichem (Fiddler on the Roof). Below is a link to the story, followed by a selection of excerpts.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/202356/on-venus-have-we-got-a-rabbi

"Almost all the Jews on Venus are Ashkenazim—people whose ancestors
emigrated from Eastern Europe to America before the Holocaust and who
didn’t return to Israel after the Ingathering—but there are at least
three kinds of Ashkenazim, and only our kind, the Levittown
Ashkenazim, call Rabbi Smallman the Great Rabbi of Venus. The
Williamsburg Ashkenazim, and there are a lot more of them than there
are of us, the black-gabardined Ashkenazim who shake and pray and
shake and pray, they call Rabbi Smallman the lox-and-bagels rabbi. And
on the other hand, the Miami Ashkenazim, the rich all-rightniks who
live in the big IBM Burrow, to them a rabbi is a girl who hasn’t yet
gotten married and is trying to do something intellectual with
herself."


"Our tradition, now, it’s hundreds of years old, ever since the Jews
began emigrating into space, that a Levittown bride must come from
another planet..."


"It’s not that there’s antisemitism on Venus—who would ever dream of
saying such a thing? When the Viceroy announces five times a week that
the reason Venus has an unfavorable balance of trade with other
planets is that the Jews are importing too much kosher food: That’s
not antisemitism, that’s pure economic analysis. And when his
Minister of the Interior sets up a quota for the number of Jews in
each burrow and says you can only move from one place to another if
you have special permission: That also is not antisemitism,
obviously, it’s efficient administration. What I say is, why upset a
government so friendly to the Jews?

"There’s another thing I don’t like about Neozionism; and it’s hard to
say it out loud, especially to a stranger. This business about going
back to Israel. Where else does a Jew belong but in that particular
land? Right? Well, I don’t know, maybe. We started out there with
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. No good. So the first time we came back was
with Moses, and that lasted for a while—until the Babylonians threw us
out. Then we came back under Zerubbabel, and we stayed there for 500
years—until Titus burned the Temple and the Romans made us leave
again. Two thousand years of wandering around the world with nothing
more to show for it than Maimonides and Spinoza, Marx and Einstein,
Freud and Chagall, and we said, enough is enough, back to Israel. So
back we went with Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann and the rest of them.
For a couple of centuries we did all right, we only had to worry about
40 million Arabs who wanted to kill us, but that’s not enough
excitement for what God Himself, Blessed be His Name, called on Mount
Sinai a 'stiff-necked people.' We have to get into an argument—in the
middle of the Interplanetary Crisis—with Brazil and Argentina.

"My feeling, I don’t know about the rest of the Jews, but I’m getting
tired. If no, is no. If out, is out. If goodbye, is goodbye.

"That’s not the way the Neozionists see it. They feel we’ve had our
rest. Time for another round. 'Let the Third Exile end in our
lifetimes. Let the Knesset be rebuilt in our age. Israel for the
Jews!'

"Good enough. Don’t we still say, after all the wine, 'Next year in
Jerusalem?' Who can argue? Except for the one small thing they
overlooked, as you know: Israel and Jerusalem these days aren’t even
for human beings. The Council of Eleven Nations Terrestrial wants no
trouble with the Vegans over a sliver of land like Israel, not in
these times with what’s going on in the galaxy: If both sides in the
Vegan Civil War are going to claim the place as holy territory because
the men they call the founders of their religions once walked in it,
let the bivalves have it, says the Council, let them fight it out
between themselves.

"And I, Milchik the TV man, I for one see nothing strange in a bunch
of Vegan bivalves basing their religion on the life and legend of a
particular Jew like Moshe Dayan and wanting to chop up any other Jews
who try to return to the land of their ancestors. In the first place,
it’s happened to us before: To a Jew such an attitude should by now
begin to make sense. Where is it written that a Dayanist should like
Dayan’s relatives? In the second place, how many Jews protested 50
years ago when the other side, the Vegan Omayyads, claimed all human
Mohammedans were guilty of sacrilege and expelled them from Jerusalem?
Not, I’ll admit, that such a protest would have been as noticeable as
a ripple in a saucer of tea…

"Well, the first Interstellar Neozionist Conference is organized, and
it’s supposed to meet in Basel, Switzerland, so that, I suppose,
history can have a chance to repeat itself. And right away the
Dayanist Vegans hear about it and they protest to the council. Are
Vegans honored guests of Earth, or aren’t they? Their religion is
being mocked, they claim, and they even kill a few Jews to show how
aggravated they are. Of course, the Jews are accused of inciting a
pogrom, and it’s announced that in the interests of law and order, not
to mention peace and security, no Jewish entrance visas will be
honored in spaceports anywhere on Earth. Fair is fair."


"I look around and I remember the promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob—'I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven”—and I think
to myself, 'A promise is a promise, but even a promise can go too far.
The stars by themselves are more than enough, but when each star has
maybe 10, 20 planets…'

"By this time, me and my whole family, we’re living in what used to be
the kitchen of our apartment. My brother and his family, it’s a big
family, they should live and be well, they’re living in the dining
room. In what my wife, Silvia, calls the parlor, there’s the
wonder-working rabbi from Procyon XII and his entire court—plus, in
one corner of the parlor, there’s the correspondent from the Jewish
Sentinel of Melbourne, Australia, and his wife, and their dog, an
Afghan. In the bedrooms—listen, why should I go on? In the bedrooms,
there are crowds and arguments and cooking smells that I don’t even
want to know about.

"Enough already? No, I am sorry to tell you, not enough.

"One day I go into the bathroom. A man is entitled once in a while to
go into the bathroom of his own apartment? It’s nature, no? And there
in the bathtub, I see three creatures, each as long as my arm and as
thick as my head. They look like three brown pillows, all wrinkled and
twisted, with some big gray spots on this side and on that side, and
out of each gray spot is growing a short gray tentacle. I didn’t know
what they were, giant cockroaches maybe, or some kind of plant that
the delegates living with us brought along as food, but when they
moved I let out a yell.

"My son, Aaron David, came running into the bathroom. 'What’s the matter, Papa?'

"I point to the brown pillows. They had some sort of ladder
arrangement set up in the bathtub with small shelves in different
places and they were climbing up and down, up and down. 'What’s the
matter, you want to know, when I see things like that in my bathroom?'

“'Oh, them. They’re the Bulbas.'

“'Bulbas?'

“'Three of the delegates from the fourth planet of the star Rigel. The
other three delegates are down the corridor in the Guttenplans’
bathroom.'

“'Delegates? You mean they’re Jewish?' I stared at them. 'They don’t
look Jewish.'

"Aaron David rolled his eyes up to the ceiling of the bathroom. 'Papa,
you’re so old-fashioned! You yourself told me that the blue Jews from
Aldebaran show how adaptable our people are.'

“'You should pardon me,' I said. 'You and your adaptable. A Jew can be
blue—I don’t say I like it, but who am I to argue with somebody else’s
color scheme?—and a Jew can be tall or short. He can even be deaf from
birth like those Jews from Canopus, Sirius, wherever they come from.
But a Jew has to have arms and legs. He has to have a face with eyes,
a nose, a mouth. It seems to me that’s not too much to ask.'

“'So their mouths are not exactly like our mouths,' Aaron David said
excitedly. 'Is that a crime? Is that any reason to show prejudice?'”

I'm also reminded of another religious science fiction short story that I read long ago, and still find particularly moving, though I am not myself a Christian. I don't recall the title or name of the author.

The protagonist is captain of an enormous alien ship. His race learned of their world’s coming destruction in time to build the vessel, and escaped to search the galaxy for a new home. Initially they had seen the journey as a great adventure, but having long failed to find a suitable planet for themselves, they have become despondent, and sick in spirit.

They discover what turns out to be Earth, and view it at first with great hope. The ship is placed in a geosynchronous parking orbit, and the captain leads a patrol down to conduct sustainability tests. To their despair, they determine conditions on Earth to be unsuitable.

They come upon a scene that turns out to be the Nativity. Mary, being who she is, knows who they are without requiring explanation, and comprehends their plight. She tells them that God has in fact sent them as a sign of man’s deliverance, and that just as He is giving humanity a Savior, so likewise will He provide for them.

As to the sign, their orbiting ship is the Star of Bethlehem.

Roger, how about you carry your commenting talent to some other thread? No disrespect but my view of commenters in part hinges on their wide commentary. I've followed some of your links with mixed results.

Well Paul, I have gone off on some tangents, but I didn't see the harm. Anyway, of course, your blog, your rules. Though you might at least have given me credit for the quality and depth of my initial flying saucers/exotic propulsion contribution on this thread. I contend that the piece is well organized (though I did make a few cutting and pasting errors), thoroughly researched, and very informative. I further contend that it provides quite a bit about these matters that people who are interested would want to know, but probably don't.

Now, later down in the thread, I did note that I originally wrote my presentation a few years ago, with occasional subsequent updates and revisions. So, I guess a few of the links indeed have gone bad, and I apologize. However, I've provided enough background so that anyone who's interested can locate the intended source. As Mr. Universe said, "Can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere."

And all love to my fellow commenters, but I have to say, you can forget it. The aliens are Jewish. Orthodox Jewish. Or at the very least, Noahides. They know that God is a monohylic Lifesaver, not a ternary Certs Mint. Our bible says so, and we got here first (on this planet, anyway). Although I admit (and here I'm being completely serious), that Shroud is a doozy - as Pinchas (Phinn) Lapide would probably have agreed.

You all feel free to continue the discussion, but don't bother addressing me. I'm gone. I think you'll manage.

Isn't anyone going to mention James Blish's, A case of Conscience?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Case_of_Conscience

I thought of that right off, Chicken, but frankly I never much liked it. It's been a thousand years since I read it, though, and maybe I would think differently now, but for what it's worth, I always thought that he brought a completely unnecessary un-Catholic mysticism into the story. It wasn't his science that was the problem, it was his religion.

Why not view these things as a form of deception. Honestly, I think Jacques Valle put the “nuts and bolts” interpretation of these things to bed a long time ago. There are tons of things that do not add up about their capabilities, like breaking the laws of physics.

History is replete with supernatural beings that present themselves in the guise of their cultural time period. The phenomena is wider than just aerial phenomenon as well. I would give it an interdimensional supernatural Interpretation if it isn’t a skunk works deception.

I am happy to see Jacques Vallee's name mentioned above. PLEASE read his several books on this matter. Vallee briefly in the 60's entertained the aliens and UFO's hypothesis: beings from other planets. But he did years of very meticulous, scientific research; and his conclusions were that the details do not support that conclusion. He absolutely affirmed that there are real sightings; but that much of the data shows this phenomena to be beyond what science alone, hard science, can explain. He lamented the dismissive attitude of scientists for the most part; and then governmental/military muddying of the evidential waters. Vallee proposed that the reported details, which are thick, involve well--what? "Spirituality" perhaps; or inter-dimensional features, which are impossible to fit with current science as we know it. He has a huge amount of work available: three primary titles are Revelations, Confrontations, and Dimensions. He also alluded to the possibility that there is real intelligence behind this stuff; but that it also seems to work deceptively and manipulate human consciousness for its own purposes, which is not apparent to us. Thanks.

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