UFO Fact Or Fiction Essays - Ufologists, Extraterrestrial Life

UFO Fact Or Fiction annon Unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, as they're fondly called, are one of the century's most intriguing and controversial mysteries. Since ancient times, UFOs of all types have been accounted for. More today than ever, hundreds of thinkers, theologians, and scientists have tried to answer why there are or whether there aren't UFOs. According to some, the speculation that UFOs are alien spacecrafts from another world is an absurd and foolish proposal. Others vehemently disagree and assert that extraterrestrial life is not only possible, but such life forms may be superior, technologically advanced beings who visit our Earth regularly. Are these flying saucers a figment of our imagination? Or, are they a genuine reality we prefer to dismiss because we fear the scary truth that we are not the only master race? Are we hesitant because society dubs such immature psycho tantamount to subscribing to belief in ghosts? These are a few of the many pertinent UFO questions the mature individual must address. One of the most popular theories that support and explains the existence of alien beings is the ancient astronaut theory. This theory contains three main schools of thought. The first states that aliens bred with our primitive forebears thereby creating modern man. The second is quite similar. Aliens performed genetic engineering on apes thereby creating the Homo Sapiens and man's intelligence. The third, and least accepted, is that colonists from another galaxy came to Earth, mated with the primitives and established a high level of culture, before being destroyed by some natural catastrophe. And upon this catastrophe and destruction, we build and grow (Fitzgerald 1). Berossus, a Babylonian scholar, may have been the first astronaut historian. He said that animals endowed with reason bestowed the Sumerian culture before 3000 BCE. The Sumerians, along with their cultural inheritors, the Babylonians, never referred to such beings as gods. Rather they were depicted as disgusting abominations, a description only deserved by uninvited alien visitors (2). One step further takes the astronaut theory and surmises that with it, we can understand the later religious cultures, such as the Hebrews who are thought to have borrowed much of Sumerian practice. Such religions and secret societies, with their elaborate and complicated rituals may actually be preserving from a previous epoch fragments of an esoteric and little understood knowledge, just as the Egyptian, Hebrew, and Mayan priests guarded in their temples the inspired word of their self-possessed creators (3). Alien originators may have set down certain rites which became confused over the years, resulting in the various ancient religions; aliens being the source of our notion of God. This also may explain how miles long designs, only viewable from the air, were created in ancient times. The only rationalization for the possibility of such designs is that the ancients had assistance from the sky, namely extraterrestrial assistance. Many UFO theorists, astronomer Morris Jessup being the forerunner, go even further: not only were pre-Biblical and Biblical times full of Alien intervention, but he contends that the UFO phenomenon is the missing link between Biblical supernatural accounts of miracles and established, contradicting science. Jessup explains that nothing is supernatural and nothing is outside nature (12). He continues that the Bible is full of UFO accounts, depicted by various descriptions: angels, the revelation on Mt. Sinai, the burning bush, and Elijah's levitation to heaven. Jessup says the Bible is a physical record, not a collection of divine revelation although the miracles of this and all religions invite rational and physical explanation, if we grant the 'existence of spatial intelligence (13).' Another thinker, Brinsley Trent, follows the theme of extraterrestrial interpretations of the Bible and claims that the Garden of Eden was, as many ancient texts point out, not the underground, but in the Underworld - i.e. outside the orbit of earth, meaning Mars. When the Great Flood occurred, Noah built a great boat, a spaceship, and landed on Earth (Life 16). However, Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan warns that this ancient astronaut theory and the saucer myths represent a compromise between the need to believe in a traditional God and the contemporary pressures to accept the pronouncement of science (Fitzgerald 5); therefore, according to Sagan, the proposition that aliens exist and the astronaut theory should be tossed. Many theorists assume the Bible is a totally separate entity and don't associate or contradict the UFO phenomenon with the well established theological belief system in the supernatural. Wilhelm Reich, for one, a noted Austrian psychoanalyst, claimed to have witnessed various UFO crafts and believed that these aliens are hostile. Such aliens wish to rob Earth of orgone, a cosmic life