…tempering rabid [UFO] belief systems.
UFO skeptics (sometimes debunkers) are a lousy lot, not really thoughtful skeptics, rather wilding anti-thinkers.
Fortunately, I’ve been able to quell the irrational skepticism of French skeptic Gilles Fernandez here but nudging his vaulted ego with assailing asides.
He’s withdrawn to the cloistered halls of Facebook, where he’s protected from assault by Facebook’s blocking mechanism.
Only his “friends” and like-minded skeptics can read his narrow views.
Christopher Allan [aka CDA] is a skeptic I admire. He’s anti-UFO/Roswell views are laced with subtle British humor and the vicissitudes of age; he, like me, has been around a while, and doesn’t take UFOs seriously, having read and seen all the hogwash that has ensued since the Kenneth Arnold sighting of 1947.
Lance Moody, UFO’s angry man, is also admired by me. He remains, generally, polite and dignified while skewering UFO nonsense, as he defines it.
Tim Printy and Robert Sheaffer are reasonable skeptics. I don’t find their views offensive nor obnoxious; Sheaffer’s UFO invectives are substantiated by reasoned analysis and counter data that is germane.
Zoam Chomsky [aka The Iron Skeptic] has been quiet of late. Did he die?
I like the counter views of intelligent skeptics.
Then we have the die-hard UFO promoters; everything about UFOs are true: abductions, MJ-12, Extraterrestrial agencies working with Earthian governments, Roswellian bodies,
Vast interplanetary visitors (for millennia), and so on….you know the lore they laud as authentic and valid, even in the face of that lore’s absurdities.
There are iffy issues that one has to contend with, such as The alleged Travis Walton abduction.
Walton maintains to this day that he was abducted by a UFO and examined by creatures within it.
His tale is recounted by him in ways that belie falsehood,
For example, Dan Frederiksen provided this, in a comment to an old posting of ours:
“Travis Walton reported a heavy damp atmosphere onboard that was hard to breathe and he felt short of breath. He also felt physically weak as in hard to carry his own weight. He never made the connection himself but it makes perfect sense that the ship had higher gravity onboard because that was natural to them.”
If Walton said that, and I am unfamiliar with it from his conversations (on YouTube) and writings about his sojourn, it makes for an interesting aside, as Mr. Frederiksen notes.
Like Betty Hill’s “Star Map” – an odd thing surely – one finds such an offhand reference to bolster the believability of the event Betty (and Barney, sometimes) revealed.
The there is Roswell.
The recent Kodak slide imbroglio revitalized that ancient, hoary UFO tale. But there is more, and Anthony Bragalia, a Roswell devotee of the highest order, as strong an advocate as David Rudiak, seems to find minute Roswell details that allow one to consider the 1947 incident as possibly extraterrestrial in nature.
But there are enough caveats from the overworked episode that skepticism is warranted, not the skepticism of a Gilles Fernandez, but the rightful skepticism of those who do not find grist in the Roswell mythos.
Witnesses have lied. Balloons were all over the place, near Roswell, in June/July 1947. Nothing has surfaced from an alleged flying disk crash which purports to be from an advanced alien culture or civilization. Alien bodies have not been discovered or their whereabouts disclosed by anyone inclined to present such a monumental truth, despite personal repercussions. [The CDA view]
But yet, something happened near Roswell, in the summer of 1947. What that was remains unknown, as the alien crash crowd and its badgering skeptical counterparts have not deconstructed the matter in any way that brings a conclusive element into play.
That’s true of many UFO accounts; they remain closeted: The Arnold sighting, The Tremonton movie clip (resurrected by Kevin Randle at his blog), the RB-47 event (touted by Paul Kimball and others as a UFO sine qua non), the Phoenix lights, and, my favorite, the 1964 Socorro/Zamora episode.
Skepticism (and/or debunkery) hasn’t demolished any UFO event, fraudulent or real.
UFO proponents, of the ET persuasion or any other conjectural persuasion, hasn’t given the UFO patina a valid gloss that makes the phenomenon compos mentis for the public, news media, or science.
But shutting down those anti-UFO voices may help, along with a concerted effort to separate the UFO wheat from the chaff.
The UFO mystery is a valid topic for the dilettante, a wasteful matter for those who have (or should) an interest in bettering society or, at least, explaining what this life is all about.
Skeptical views and out-and-out acceptance of an ET presence within the UFO phenomenon are both grounds for suppression or dismissal.
Anything less reeks of intellectual cowardice.
RR
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