The UFO Craze CH 01

Commentary: This posting is in a series of posts summarizing the book, "Lights In The Sky and Little Green Men" by Hugh Ross, Kenneth Samples, and Mark Clark. Hugh Ross is a scientist in physics and Clark has a PHd in political science. The other authors specialize in social sciences, philosophies, and international relations.  The full series can be reviewed at UFOs an Alternative Look.

The UFO Craze

All throughout history people have reported the unusual and unexplainable. In many cases, what people observed was a natural phenomenon that was explainable only after advances in science made the explanation possible. Nonetheless, many people have insisted on flying anomalies throughout time.

The reports are both subjective and objective often coming in waves. An increase in activity began with the advent of human aviation. During WWII numerous reports were made by pilots on both sides of strange aircraft that paced their flights. Questions began to arise about the existence of life elsewhere than on Earth.

The Age of the Flying Saucer emerged precisely on June 24th of 1947. That is the moment when Kenneth Arnold, a credible witness, reported nine bright lights in the sky near Mt Rainier. Nearly 20 other people corroborated the event. The associated press carried the story and the age of the flying saucer had begun. Following this event and numerous others that followed America began its crazed obsession. The "Flying Saucer" was dubbed UFO's by the U.S. Military whose concern was that these were Soviet aircraft during the Cold War.  The military closed their investigation into UFO's in the late 1960's remarking there was no scientific value to gain.

During the 1970's and 1980's the phenomenon began associating UFO's to the paranormal, occult, and extraterrestrials. The close encounters began to surface more frequently and abductions took center stage. By the 1990's people began speculating about crashed spaceships and retrieved alien bodies. Also in the 1990's, a UFO cult became deadly when the Heaven's Gate Cult committed suicide.  

UFO's and alien creatures have not identified themself in an undeniable way. That sort of evidence is lacking in the UFO phenomenon.  UFO's have such an increasing ambiguous and complex definition that many researchers are now remarking "UFO phenomena" instead of saying UFO's which is suggestive of difficulty in grasping the issue. Specifically, six difficulties arise:

1. An adequate definition that combines logical, scientific, sociological, psychological, and religious assessments is missing.
2. It is a paradox to define an Unidentified Flying Object when it is still unidentified.
3. UFO phenomenon research is second hand based on subjective human reports creating difficulty in performing objective, scientific, and logical analysis.
4. UFO phenomenon are increasingly bizarre, causing previous definitions to be adjusted.
5. UFO definitions suffer from both vagueness and ambiguity because of the nature of UFOs.
6. UFO connotations have morphed from a simple object to spaceships having extra-terrestrials

Given these complexities people still dialogue intelligently about UFOs. Thus, the study of UFOs is a worth while pursuit.

There are about nine groups of people typcially interested in UFOs; Natural scientists, US Government Officials, Professional UFOlogists, social scientists, Popular UFO enthusiasts, UFO debunkers, New agers, UFO cult members, and Christian Theologians and Apologists. Lastly, there is the general populace that are fascinated by UFOs and may be served well by the discussion in this book.

Commentary: No remarks.

This completes the first chapter. I'll summarize chapter two in the next posting. From time-to-time, I may post a commentary section highlighting a specific point.

References:

Ross, H., Samples, K., & Clark, M. (2002). Lights in the sky & little green men: a rational christian look at UFOs and extraterrestrials. Navpress. Colorado.