UFO Religions

I just came across my lecture from the 2003 God, Man, and ET Conference on YouTube. The event was hosted at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. I participated in the planning of the event. Aside from myself, the speakers were Dr. Hugh Ross, Dr. Paul Nelson, Richard Hoagland, and the late David Flynn.Cheryl Jones was MC and my good friend and former teaching colleague Doug Vardell served as moderator.

I had no idea it was on YouTube. You can watch it below (be patient, it takes 8-9 minutes to actually get to the lecture, and the whole thing is one hour and twenty minutes long).

I also found the panel discussion from the event (also over an hour long). Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Christianity, conference, David Flynn, ET, extraterrestrial life, fundamentalism, God, Heiser, Hoagland, Hugh Ross, judaism, man, Paul Nelson, religion

The Uncommon Descent blog has some pull quotes from an article from the Technology Review/Physics Archiv blog entitled, “The Amazing Trajectories of Life-Bearing Meteorites from Earth” that make that point.

This is the idea that, when earth was struck by space objects in the distant past (e.g., asteroids), material from earth was ejected up into space from the impact, and that material held living organisms. The material was then drawn out into space by various forces. The implication is that if some of that debris made it to various moons or back to earth and was discovered today, it might mistakenly be interpreted as ET life, but it actually originated on earth.

As the Uncommon Descent link notes, astronomer Hugh Ross has been saying this for many years. I recall it from the God, Man, and ET Conference where we were both speakers, as well as some of his radio appearances. But I’d never seen (probably because I never felt compelled enough to look) any journal literature on it. Very interesting.

Technorati Tags: asteroids, extraterrestrial life, impact, meteorites, Panspermia

I wasn’t aware that the Mirage Men, a book I reviewed here some months ago, was being made into  documentary film. I liked the book, so hopefully the film will be well done. Here’s a look at the recently released teaser-trailer.

Technorati Tags: documentary, mirage men, movie, Pilkington, trailer

I think I’ve seen this in a movie.

Camper loads of happily deluded new-age pilgrim-hippies (pippies sounds like a good term to coin here) have descended upon the Pyrenean village of Bugarach, where a mountain overshadowing the tiny hamlet has been labeled the landing spot for an extraterrestrial Noah’s Ark that believers expect to arrive on December 21, the mythical Mayan doomsday.

I’ve been reading about this sort of nonsense for years, but I’m still amazed at how people can be so detached from reality and, in this case, normalcy. Honestly, would anyone you know give up their lives to go camp out at a mountain waiting for ET? I’ve been to several UFO conferences and can honestly say I’ve never met anyone who expressed this kind of wish (out loud, anyway). Then again, there really is a flat earth society.

Technorati Tags: aliens, commune, doomsday, extraterrestrials, france, mountain, spaceship

I wanted to call the attention of readers to this informative and humorous post from Skeptophilia entitled, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Starseed.” The post is about the nonsensical new-age fantasy maintained by some people that they are actually extraterrestrials in human guise. The post is especially adept at making two items clear: (1) the deeply flawed and self-delusional logic that convinces these poor souls that they are really aliens; and (2) the contrived “research” on the part of people like Brad Steiger aimed at reinforcing the delusion (and selling books).

Granted, I don’t think all of Steiger’s work is this bogus. And to be fair, Steiger doesn’t seem to do research; rather, he “reports” things found somewhere (where?). But this material gets re-cast as though it were empirical, when the string of statistics drawn from his work in this post has absolutely no basis in empirical research. Without citations of actual studies or at least peer-reviewed article references, or URLs to lab reports for these “findings,” the enterprise is irresponsible.  Less academically: it’s faked statistical BS that leads to reinforcing a false view of reality and, for these folks, themselves.

Technorati Tags: extraterrestrial, human, star children, starseed, Steiger