Thursday, August 9, 2018

Reasons to believe?





Written during my skeptical period, when I considered all things paranormal so much bunk. Originally posted on Amazon in 2009. Today...who knows? 

"Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men" is a very curious book. Essentially, it's an attempt to put forward an irrational message as rationally as possible. One of the authors is the astronomer Hugh Ross. However, he is also a leading evangelical Christian and "old earth creationist". His ministry is called Reasons to Believe (RTB). This group often attempts to use main-stream science to argue for what is actually a fundamentalist form of Christianity. In this book, Ross and his co-authors argue that UFOs are real, supernatural and demonic. They are, simply put, minions of the Devil himself. However, this fringe message is put forward is such a dispassionate, scientific-sounding and seemingly rational manner, that the book looks like an open-minded or even sceptical inquiry into the matter.

I must admit that the book is quite smart!

My guess is that "Lights in the Sky" isn't directed at Christians, but rather seeks to address a more general audience. In the United States, a substantial part of the population believes that UFOs are real, and many are ready to consider that they are extraterrestrial space craft. RTB presumably want to evangelize such people, or at the very least to turn them away from the New Religious Movements that exploit popular belief in UFOs. I'm sure the book fulfills its particular mission admirably. It contains several chapters of general information on the UFO phenomenon, including alien abductions, plus discussions of various theories concerning their origins. Are they space aliens, natural phenomena, a government cover-up, or what? There are sections on the most well-known UFO "cults", and two chapters on UFOs and the Bible. Keeping with the broad target audience, the first Bible quotation doesn't show up until page 111! Finally, the authors show their true colors, proposing what they call "The Interdimensional Hypothesis" or IDH. Which means...? Yes, that UFOs are Satanic.

I'm less sure whether the book will convince people who already belong to the actual UFO subculture. One of Ross' co-authors, Mark Clark, argues against conspiracy theories. But who exactly is Mark Clark? It turns out that he works for a major defence company as an advisor on strategic nuclear weapons. He is also a member of a rather exclusive pro-establishment think-tank, the "West Coast Straussian" Claremont Institute! In other words, he's one of "them" according to conspiracy thinking. Good luck, Mark, you gonna need it. Calling harmless groups such as Unarius or the Aetherius Society "cults" might also rub the UFO subculture the wrong way.

Personally, I'm most intrigued by the way "Lights in the Sky" argues against one form of superstition in the name of another. The book's arguments against the extraterrestrial hypothesis are true (or probably true - I haven't checked all the details about planet formation, etc). The book admits that the number of truly unexplained UFO cases, known as RUFOs, is very small, perhaps only one percent of the total. Further, it points out that people who see UFOs are often involved in the occult or New Age groups, that UFOs seem to adapt to the preconceptions of the observers, that they mimic science fiction technology, etc. Surely, somebody with a sober mindset would draw the conclusion that this points to UFOs being illusory! And yet, the authors draw the very opposite conclusion: UFO's are supernatural entities from the spirit world. Since RTB are creationists, the book also attacks the Darwinian theory of evolution and contains an extensive appendix on the so-called anthropic principle.

"Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men" sheds no light on the problem, and contains little to believe in. But as an exercise in fine-tuned propaganda, it's nevertheless an interesting read.

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