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Thursday, July 27, 2023

What should we make of UFOs?

The subject has been in the news lately. It deserves far more attention than it gets, in the news and elsewhere. That's partly the media's fault. It's more the fault of the average person, though, who's much less interested in such subjects than he should be. In a post shortly before his death, Steve Hays outlined some explanatory options for UFOs from a Christian perspective. I'll briefly summarize the view I currently hold, though UFOs aren't one of my main areas of study. Since the view I hold is unpopular and doesn't get much attention, I think it's worth bringing up and expanding upon as one of the explanatory options that should be considered. Steve mentions it in his post, but doesn't say much about it.

Our conclusions on these issues shouldn't depend much on the ongoing story surrounding David Grusch. Whether you believe everything he's alleged, believe some of it, think he's part of a government disinformation effort, or whatever else, the UFO issue goes far beyond Grusch's claims and other recent UFO stories that have been in the news. There's a larger category of phenomena that have been going on for a long time and need to be explained, regardless of what you make of the most recent developments.

UFO phenomena are diverse and warrant multiple explanations. I wouldn't offer just one explanation to cover everything. What I'm focused on here is the bulk of the cases that seem most difficult to explain by normal means. How do we explain those? I think they probably involve human paranormal activity (which I'll refer to as the human psi hypothesis).

Before I expand upon that, I want to briefly address an objection that I think some people have in mind when this sort of issue comes up. It could be objected that allowing paranormal activity among humans, instead of attributing the events to God or Satan, opens the door to attributing Biblical and other purportedly Christian miracles to human psi. But we can't dismiss a potential explanation just because we don't like its implications. And the objection under consideration here is just a variation on the old objection that Divine miracles could be attributed to demonic activity (or a brain in a vat scenario, etc.). How do we know that the miracles allegedly supporting Christianity aren't a demonic deception? This kind of objection can be raised against any belief system, not just Christianity. We've addressed issues like these in previous posts. For example, see here on attributing Christian miracles to human psi, and see here on attributing them to demons. For some comments I've made about the need for us to allow for some degree of human paranormal abilities and the Biblical support for such abilities, see the comments section of the thread here.

I consider the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe possible, but not probable. When you start adding other considerations, such as the likelihood that aliens would be able to travel so far, would have the motive to do so, and would behave as the UFOs in question have behaved, I think it's highly improbable that aliens are involved.

We have precedent for phenomena similar to what's reported in UFO cases in other contexts, such as in poltergeists and mediumship. And much of the paranormal activity in those other contexts seems best explained by the human psi hypothesis. In those contexts, you frequently encounter objects moving at unusually high speeds, sudden and nonreplicable changes in the direction in which the objects move, the sudden disappearance of the objects, teleportation, objects operating in or falling from the sky, orbs, etc. Some of the cases even involve objects that are described as UFOs or as closely resembling them. There's a history of UFO or UFO-like phenomena being reported in connection with other paranormal categories. And people who are involved in UFO experiences often report other paranormal activity in their lives, sometimes seemingly as a result of the UFO experience, something that also happens a lot in other paranormal contexts (near-death experiences, poltergeists, etc.). Such connections with the paranormal make it more likely that UFOs are themselves paranormal in some manner.

Like many poltergeist, mediumship, and other paranormal phenomena, UFOs often exhibit weaknesses and close connections with human psychology that seem to make more sense coming from a human (a living or dead human) than something like an alien, an interdimensional being, or a demon. Many UFO experiences seem highly nonsensical. They don't seem to serve much of a purpose. There's a fragmentary nature to them. They're reminiscent of the human subconscious, a dream, a hallucination, or something of the like. There's a place in one of Jacques Vallee's books, Dimensions (San Antonio, Texas: Anomalist Books, 2008), in which he uses the term "dreamlike" to describe them (approximate Kindle location 4442). Those who have read my material on other paranormal topics may recall that I've often used that term (dreamlike) to describe other paranormal phenomena as well, such as near-death experiences. I agree with Vallee that UFOs are unlikely to involve aliens. But I disagree with his appeal to interdimensional beings as an explanation. I think human psi is the best explanation we have at this point. The fact that UFOs seem to keep tracking with human psychology (e.g., the changes in the nature of the craft and the beings associated with them over time) makes more sense if they're being produced by the human mind. Similarly, the fact that these UFOs crash or need repaired so often, frequently behave in such seemingly nonsensical ways, and are so varied in their appearance and other characteristics, for example, seem to make the most sense under a human psi hypothesis. We have good evidence for the materialization of hands and other body parts, sometimes even entire bodies, in contexts like mediumship and poltergeists, so that gives us precedent for something like the production of alien bodies, if people like Grusch are right about their existence. In other words, what we're seeing in these UFO contexts are variations of what we've already seen elsewhere. I've sometimes summarized my view of UFOs with the phrase "poltergeists in the sky".

There's no such thing as an easy explanation for UFOs. But the human psi hypothesis has some advantages over the alternatives, advantages that make it a significantly less difficult explanation on balance. The advantage I'm most focused on here is one I've also highlighted in a lot of other paranormal contexts, something that's frequently been neglected. There are weaknesses, not just strengths, that need to be explained in these phenomena. A human psi hypothesis is good at addressing the weaknesses of the UFO phenomena, which tend to be neglected. People are often overly focused on the strengths that impress them so much (the speed of the craft, etc.).

Getting back to something I raised in the opening paragraph of the post, why do people want to avoid the UFO issue so much? Surely for multiple reasons, not just one. There's the issue of tradition, inertia, or whatever you want to call it. UFOs were considered disreputable in the past, and that reputation can continue, and is continuing, even after the state of the evidence or public recognition of the state of the evidence has changed. And people are often lazy, cowardly, dishonest, and irresponsible in other ways. The fact that sorting through the issues related to UFOs takes a significant amount of work is enough to motivate a lot of people to try to avoid thinking or talking much about the subject. A lot of people are frightened, disturbed, or whatever by the thought of the existence of aliens or whatever or whoever else is causing these phenomena. And the people reacting that way probably include a lot of Christians. For many people, it's unsettling in one way or another to think of what implications the existence of aliens might have for the truthfulness of Christianity, the status of mankind in the universe and in life in general, the future of our planet, and so on. But a Christian ought to have a high enough view of God, the gospel, God's promises about earth's future, and other such issues to not have that sort of overly negative reaction to the UFO issue. A couple of verses from Maltbie Babcock's hymn "This Is My Father's World" express what I'm getting at:

This is my Father’s world.
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong
Seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world:
The battle is not done:
Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.

This is my Father’s world,
Should my heart be ever sad?
The lord is King—let the heavens ring.
God reigns—let the earth be glad.
This is my Father’s world.
Now closer to Heaven bound,
For dear to God is the earth Christ trod.
No place but is holy ground.

What we've been seeing in these UFO contexts probably doesn't involve aliens. But even if there are aliens, they're part of God's creation and under his sovereignty. They can't and won't change what God has done in earth's history and has promised about our future.

5 comments:

  1. I agree with your position here. It's more likely that Sasquatch species exist. Almost certainly sightings of supposed alien activity are natural phenomena or caused by humans, whether as hoaxes, misdirection, or accidental sightings of secret development or activity. It doesn't seem particularly fruitful to be demonic activity, but who knows? It's possible.

    As for natural phenomena, I live near Brown Mountain in NC where strange lights are sometimes seen. Given the patterns of sightings it's pretty clear that this is plasma caused by the illumination of carbon-laden smoke from nearby fireplaces by ionization from a high concentration of quartz in the mountain. People want to think it's some other phenomenon.

    As for hoaxes, this is becoming far more common as CG technology improves and is increasingly available to the average person and easy for them to use. I expect to see very creative hoax videos crop up and I've seen kinds of "making of" hoax videos where the people who made the hoax video tell how they did it.

    With drone and projections technologies also improving, we may see more creative diversions from governments who want to keep people's attention off of other activities they calculate might be seen, either to keep people from seeing it or cloak the activity so little to know information as to what is being developed can be discerned about it. They don't want enemies figuring out what they're working on, so they camouflage the activity in such a way as to obscure key information in the development. They can further confuse the issue by leaking false information through "whistleblowers". For me, it's all just taxpayer-funded entertainment.

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  2. An interesting piece, Jason, and I agree with many of your comments - particularly the human psi hypothesis . It was after reading John Keel's 'The Mothman Prophecies' and Colin Wilson's 'Alien Dawn' that I began to think that UFOs weren't really interstellar life forms or even, as I think Keel notes at one stage, permanent constructions of matter.

    It seems likely to me that the human psi hypothesis is a significant factor in much, if not all, paranormal phenomena - from Janet Hodgson and the Enfield poltergeist, the sightings of Mothman in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, the stench that plagued Tony Cornell, and the bizarre (yet compelling) reincarnation case of Carl Edon.

    That is not to say of course (and I am quite sure you aren't saying it), that the anomalous phenomena doesn't have an objective existence. Were anyone to aver that, then I am not sure how we could account, for example, for John Burcombe's terrifying experience when he visited the Hodgson home alone one night. How could Janet be manifesting this phenomena when she wasn't there, even unknowingly, especially considering that some invisible someone or something was opening doors for Burcombe? Perhaps one might say that Burcombe, having hitherto being immersed in the paranormal phenomena in the house, was generating it himself, but this seems unlikely. The real difficulty it seems to me lies in developing an explanation that accounts for the apparent interaction between the human psi foci and the external paranormal phenomena.

    I prefer Anthony Peake's term "non-human intelligences", rather than inter-dimensional beings - incorporeal intelligences that somehow interact with this corporeal plane.

    I agree that the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is possible, rather than probable - at least, in *this* universe. I've long been intrigued by Lee Smolin's hypothesis of cosmological natural selection, which as people will gather, extends Darwinian natural selection to the cosmic level. Although pretty speculative, it is testable, and when one considers the age of our universe and its putative heat death, I don't think it's too far-fetched to imagine that there have been, will be, and maybe are, other universes.


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    1. Even when an episode primarily involves something other than human psi, there's a lot of potential for human psi to become a factor. Interaction with a non-human source of psi has so much potential to activate psi among the people involved.

      Regarding a multiverse, it is one of the explanatory options on the table, but I'm not aware of any good arguments for its probability. In the UFO context, we'd need not only a multiverse, but also one of a particular type. We'd need such a wide variety of entities and/or phenomena existing in one or more other universes involved, having an ability to come over to our universe in the relevant ways, with sufficient reason for that potentiality to be actuated, often having the sort of dreamlike qualities referred to earlier, lining up so well with human psychology, etc. A human psi scenario is more parsimonious.

      I haven't read any of John Keel's material, but I want to. I've also been wanting to read The Edge Of Reality, a book in which J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallee discussed UFOs. It was originally published in 1975, and a new edition is due out in November. I'll probably wait for the new edition (available for preorder at Amazon here).

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  3. It is very difficult to untangle it all because there are so many facets to paranormal phenomena. It seems that anyone is capable of experiencing paranormal phenomena - like Vic Nottingham, a no-nonsense builder - whereas others, such as Janet, can become epicentres. As Robert McLuhan has noted, 'psi emerges from the research as a complex and confusing phenomenon, an effect of consciousness, seemingly (and bizarrely) one with quasi-material properties'.

    Smolin's theory has some support - and its critics. But if Darwinian natural selection does operate at the cosmic level via black holes, then it seems possible that other universes might harbour biological life. Of course, that assumes that the spark of life has happened in these universes. It may well not have, given we don't understand what sparked biological evolution on earth. As for UFOs, like you, I think they are but one facet of the panoply of paranormal phenomena, and not the product of biological evolution elsewhere in our universe.

    Thanks for the link to the Hynek and Vallee book. I'll also be interested to read Danny Robins' survey of the paranormal, when it is published next month:

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Into-Uncanny-Danny-Robins/dp/1785948091/ref=sr_1_1?crid=334BYTFMJMCMO&keywords=Danny+Robins&qid=1691521923&sprefix=danny+robins%2Caps%2C121&sr=8-1

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    1. I haven't been following Robins' work much since his Battersea series in 2021, and I wasn't aware of the upcoming book. Thanks for mentioning it.

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