Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
In the years, I’ve spent commenting here at Professor Turley’s blog, I have presented myself as an honest person, sensible and with humane beliefs. Many regulars think of me as sort of a blog “elder statesman” and one who has a rational view of the world. There are of course others, fewer in number I assert, who think me a fool and a knave, which shows you can’t please everyone. Professor Turley himself has expressed fondness related to my tendency to be honest and open about myself personally.
Yet through all of these years here, I have harbored a secret belief that I’ve avoided mentioning for fear that the esteem in which I’m held, will disappear in an avalanche of ridicule and disappointment. I have to admit that to a retired old guy on the wrong side of sixty years, my place here has provided comfort to my self-esteem and certainly the feeling that I can still find things in life to accomplish. To those who haven’t realized the obvious yet from my writings, I have my vanities and indeed my insecurities, so being a guest blogger has stroked those needy aspects of my ego. Since I’ve received much gratification from this, I have been loath to be completely honest about one of my more deeply held beliefs. I came across an article that impels me to break my silence and reveal this belief here and now. While in the eyes of some reading this blog, it might lower their opinion of me and expose me to ridicule, I must finally admit to you my dirty little secret.
Ever since the first nationwide “Flying Saucer” sensation began with the first “official” UFO sighting on June 24, 1947 by pilot Kenneth Arnold http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arnold_UFO_sighting#Skeptical_explanations Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO’s) have been a phenomenon lasting for the past 64 years, with most governments ridiculing the people making the reports and dismissing the entire idea. This is despite the fact that many pilots have made sightings and indeed many people in large communities, such as WashingtonD.C., have seen UFO’s in their skies over a period of nights. I personally believe that UFO’s are indeed alien spacecraft and that the possibility of this being the case is narrowed by the unfathomable size of the Universe, its age and the trillions of stars that exist. I further believe that the governments have covered this up to prevent what in their minds is public panic and to deny the truth that if UFO’s do indeed exist; our technological capacity could not deal with them if necessary.
This article in Huffpost on 6/17/11confirms my belief in governments covering up the details of these sightings and ridiculing anyone claiming to have made a sighting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/17/uk-releases-ufo-files_n_927351.html “The former Ministry of Defense (MoD) UFO Project chief [Nick Pope] is openly admitting to being part of what he claims was a U.K. policy of ridiculing UFO reports and the people who reported them.
“What’s abundantly clear from these files is that, while in public we were desperately pushing the line that this was of no defense interest,” Pope told The Huffington Post. “We couldn’t say ‘There’s something in our air space; pilots see them; they’re tracked on radar; sometimes we scramble jets to chase these things, but we can’t catch them.’ This would be an admission that we’d lost control of our own air space, and such a position would be untenable.”
My interest began in 1953, reading a book by Major Donald Keyhoe, USMC Pilot, Retired. In it he described the various documented incidents and the explanations given for them by the Department Of Defenses “Project Blue Book”, that was established seemingly to investigate the phenomenon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Keyhoe . Among others, Keyhoe had interviewed Air Force Captain Edward Ruppelt, who had been head of the Project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_J._Ruppelt
What I found so compelling was that perhaps 20% of the incidents could not be adequately explained and that distinguished observers, such as veteran pilots, were supposed to have mistaken everyday phenomenon, like weather balloons and Venus, for UFO’s. As my interest grew, it became obvious that our government would respond to any new sighting by first ridicule of the person(s) making the report of the sighting and then responding with explanations that were not credible. In the D.C., sightings in 1953 a mass of objects were not only detected by eye, but by airport radar and yet dismissed without adequate explanation.
What added to the government’s ability to ridicule were the so-called direct contact cases, first made famous by George Adamski: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Adamski and later by Betty and Barney Hill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Hill . Since the “contactees” in these cases seemed mainly to be self-serving individuals, they muddied the waters by being conflated with people who were seriously looking for explanations, or who had made direct sightings. Considering what the Huffpost article cited as details about the British Government’s policies, ridicule replaced research as a tool of institutional government investigation.
In further revealing my dirty little secret, I was for a time, in my teens, a dues paying member of The “National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (or NICAP). It was a civilian unidentified flying object research group active in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NICAP
While I never lost interest in UFO’s, my interest waned as my puberty began to assert itself and other things in life became more important. However, I have read enough about the topic to be certain in my own mind that there is much more to it than merely misidentification of known objects, moneymaking schemes, and public hysteria. In fact, an article in yesterdays Huffpost shows that the amount of UFO sightings has increased in recent years: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/26/ufos-pilots-history-channel_n_935847.html
As someone interested in ancient history some of the writings of Sitchin, Velikovsy and Von Danniken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitchin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken
also, attract my interest and tie in with my feeling about UFO’s. I am keen on the possibility of Alien visits throughout human history and the possibility that they have affected our history and progress.
So there you have it. I’ve exposed one of the final embarrassing secrets about myself and opened up to your possible ridicule and/or opprobrium. Since we have so many people here who are qualified to comment, given their knowledge of science and other erudition, I would enjoy your comments. In any event, I feel much better having gotten this off my chest and while I’ve exposed myself further as someone with quirky sensibilities, I feel a certain lightness and freedom in making my confession.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
OS,
What is your professional opinion of spontaneous combustion…..some think it exists…some think that it is impossible and some other reason is explain….what is yours….
Question, Just like religion….How can one state with certainty that another life form exists or does not exist…..and I am not talking about Bush or Cheney…outside of this solar system….
Mike, I haven’t made up my own mind as to whether or not we have been
visited by someone from another planet. Some of the UFO sightings I
suspect are from advanced weapons systems being tested by our government at places such as Area 51. But that in no way should diminish
the possibilty that extraterrestial life does exist. You have your reasons for
believing in UFOs and I respect that. I consider your contrubtions to this
blog very thoughtful and filled with much insight and I will continue to do so.
PSmith makes some good observations. However, I think items 1 & 2 are plausible. Given the billions of stars out there, many of which have planets, I think it is not only possible, but probable there is something we could identify as “life,” if we were able to examine it. We have a good idea of how the planets in our own solar system formed, so the laws of physics and chemistry would apply elsewhere, making the formation of a life creation and sustaining planet a reasonable assumption.
As for “intelligent” life, that depends on what you call intelligent. Using ourselves as a baseline, again it is not unreasonable to assume that such life forms might have evolved elsewhere. Remember we are talking numbers of stars in such quantities that it is hard to comprehend a number so large. Just the laws of chance creates a reasonable probability at the .05 level of confidence.
Items 3, 4 & 5 are the real kickers in this scenario which make alien visits so unlikely. Impossible? No. Just incredibility unlikely.
Belief in UFOs and little green men is nothing more than 20th century sci-fi religion. It’s as much bu**sh** and stupidity as any religious belief.
In order for aliens to visit the Earth, ALL of the following must be true:
1} Life occured on at least one other planet. There is no proof of that.
2} Intelligent life evolved on at least one other planet. Again, no proof.
3} Aliens were capable of faster than light technology. There is no proof of such technology, and no habitable planets are within 30 light years of Earth.
4} Aliens would have to detect our planet. Our radio waves have only been going out for 50 years at the speed of light, and any detection of our planet via telescopes was seen after the light had travelled for millions of years to other planets.
5} Life occured at the EXACT SAME TIME on another planet as it did here, or aliens somehow knew Earth would be habitable before they came. Even if life existed elsewhere, is it really going to evolve at the same point in the universe’s 13 billion year existence? The Earth and Sun were not formed in the big bang, they are the product of an earlier star going supernova. How would a planet of aliens more than four billion light years away know that a habitable planet even formed?
There are so many “ifs” and wishful thinkings to be assumed to make any claim of aliens. The only one that could ever hold any water is aliens evolved billions of years ago and sent spacecraft around the universe to possible habitable worlds, placing seeds of life – otherwise known as panspermia, which means we would be aliens. But even that is a load of codswallop, knowing the fact of evolution and abiogenesis.
Tom,
Great video. I want to know what kind of drugs these guys are on!
who needs aliens?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkxuPxdsZ58
we’re weird enough as it is
“In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been generally considered a bad idea.” – Douglas Adams
rAmen
OS,
The Flying Spaghetti Monster reached out her noodlely appendage…
My question is, who created God? Where did She come from?
Nal,
Exactly.
NoWay:
Then what created the alien?
The theory that some polymers got together and started self-replicating seems more likely to me than the infinite regress you propose.
No Way,
I don’t think your theory holds water – either you need to bootstrap yourself to infinity or you need abiogenesis at some point. In the first case it’s not a scientific theory and in the latter it should be discarded according to Ockham’s razor. Its internal consistency isn’t great, either – for instance, if there are a race of alien progenitors of life out there, why don’t we see the civilizations that they’ve grown? How long did it take them to evolve their skills? What sort of infrastructure/society do they need to have on Earth? Can you fit all of that into a plausible timeline? The most likely thing (in my opinion) would be a race that seeded appropriate planets with life and moved on, but even that seems extremely unlikely to me.
Tahitian Christianity
what is that? Sitting on the beach in Tahiti and thinking damn this is grand and having a Mai Tai and mango for communion?
Mike Spindell
as to AY,
I’ve never talked about my spiritual beliefs, you might be surprised. However, you must remember that “back in the day” four decades or so ago, I was a hippie and consumed a lot of psychedelic drugs that taught me “reality” could sometime not be what your senses imagine. However, most of the films I’ve seen and tales I’ve heard about those who delve too much into the spiritual realms have bad outcomes.
*************
No what I am trying to get at and was not so clear…is You have your beliefs…I support you for yours….I have my beliefs…But FYI, I am not getting into any magic stuff…or Tahitian Christianity…
Mike S:
You are not alone in your thinking.
Damn, NoWay and I have found something we agree upon…wow….This universe is amazing….
Slartibartfast,
“My question for you (and Mike) would be – what do our alien benefactors (or overlords) get out of it?”
Maybe the same satisfaction that an artist gets from painting a picture, or a scientist performing an experiment. Why did Bach create music? The reward must be determined by the creator. A sense of accomplishment? Sometimes the ability to create it is enough motivation.
If I were to acquire the ability to create life, I think it reasonable to create life of my own design and see how it develops and interacts with other life forms.
Maybe it’s a vast competition between those who have learned to create life? Which begs the question; Who created the our creators? And who/what created them? Some things are beyond our minds ability to grasp…though we will continue to attempt to find answers. Fascinating!