The Skeptical [UFO] Insanity

For those of us who’ve seen something odd in the sky that may be labeled a UFO, an Unidentified Flying Object or UAP, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, the ongoing colloquy here between Zoam Chomsky, Gilles Fernandez, and maybe CDA and Dominick, AI12, Larry, Don, Joel, et al. is baffling or worse.

That Zoam Chomsky takes an atheistic view about UFOs, denying they exist at all, even as a mythical sobriquet, is intellectually painful.

Gilles Fernandez’ attempt to place all UFO sightings in a quasi-scientific category just irritates.

CDA refusing to accept Roswell as the scene of a covered-up alien craft accident doesn’t irk. It’s a proper skeptical view, considering that nothing has surfaced, after 67 years, to show a flying disk landed or crashed near Roswell, nothing but vague or erroneous witness testimony.

But to deny that UFOs exist at all is sheer pathological thinking (or rather non-thinking). The evidence – government concerns and investigations, thousands of reputable reports from credible (sane) people, and some circumstantial forensics (indentations in the ground, film or photos that may be faked but haven’t been proven, conclusively. to be so, radar trackings by qualified military or authoritative personnel) – is overwhelming, even if it isn’t proof of anything but a strange, unknown phenomenon.

Monsieur Fernandez’ views are simplistic and just as nebulous as the accounts he seeks to excoriate as mythological.

Mr. Chomsky’s views are radical and pathological. They disregard the Cartesian reality that has been sensed by humans, even if some of that sensed reality is delusional in several UFO cases.

That Mr. Chomsky hasn’t seen a UFO allows him to refute the idea that others may have. He takes the obtuse view that what he hasn’t experienced doesn’t exist.

Mr. Fernandez just chooses to attack the idea of UFOs, providing the patina of mythology to all accounts, even when some of the reported instances of a UFO sighting accrues from a person or persons whose mental faculties and sensory perceptions are above reproach.

The 1964 Socorro sighting is such a case, no matter what the thing Police Officer saw ultimately turns out to be – it’s, at this point, a UFO – it meets all the qualifying accoutrements to be so labeled.

Bumping heads with Mr. Chomsky or Monsieur Fernandez is a futile game of one-upmanship. Those two skeptics, both radical in a unique way, are given sway here as their pronouncements are interestingly lunatic, and this from someone who uses his psychological training to make that assessment.

But those wishing to convince Mr. Chomsky or Monsieur Fernandez that UFOs generally exist or that some UFO accounts bespeak an actual witnessed event have got to understand that they will not win the argument; the two fellows cited here are not amenable to rationality.

To continue the back-and-forth here, readers and commenters have got to apply reasonable argumentation and academic intellectualism, not obscurant references that don’t apply (Chomsky) or obscurant internet references from people who are without cachet in academia (Fernandez).

Let’s see where this takes us…

RR