UFO Mania Is Out of Control. Please Stop
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
My brother was telling me that he was awoken at night by a very loud bang noise. He looked out of the window and didn't see anything, but he didn't go back to bed for whatever reason. A short time later, he heard it again and looked out again to also see a flash of light. Then he saw some kids run away from a nearby alley and he realized what had happened: they had set off fireworks in the alley, which greatly amplified the bang.
After he told me this, we wondered if anyone else had heard it and what they thought of it, since it was so loud. Did people think it was gunshots or an explosion or something? So we did a web search for the local newspapers and sure enough, people had written in and there was an online article about it! About... the UFO sightings with loud noise and flashing lights that night.. :-/
Some people, when they don't know the cause of something, let their imaginations take over and believe the most far fetched garbage. No wonder there's so many conspiracy believers out there these days!
It really sucks. Sounds like a gunshot in your ears. I actually had this happen to me about a week ago. It's been a few years.
Across humanity, most cultures historically ascribed natural phenomena to agents; wind, fire, lightning, floods are caused by agents (either animal, spiritual, ancestral, or personal.) It makes sense then that if I see unexplained behavior in the sky, and I've been introduced to the idea of UFOs, I may be predisposed to believing that the unexplained behavior is the intentional acts of extraterrestrial actors.
I think most people can be perfectly rational in most aspects of their lives, but for certain beliefs and behaviors (the social, sexuality, and identifying agency) there's likely always going to be a degree of innate irrationality.
It's a great quick and easy way to ask someone if they are an idiot without having to ask them if they are an idiot.
The universe is a rather large place, to say that they definitely don't exist in any form anywhere out there is just as unwarranted as it is to say that they're installing anal probes in humans.
I do agree that it (asking if people believe in alien visitations) is a litmus test that they may be lacking in critical thinking and perhaps education.
People are critical of belief in "alien visitations" who are not necessarily critical of more conventional religion.
In a lot of settings, belief in "fairies" would be treated differently from belief in "angels".
It is a real practical problem in psychiatry of how to evaluate someone who claims to have religious experiences such as hearing God.
The standard approach, if I recall correctly, is to consider it a mental disorder if it involves significant distress and/or interference with normal life, or if it involves angry and violent themes.
The problem with the intellectual consistency of that (from the perspective of Western culture) is, well, have you read the parts of the Christian Bible where Jesus is in a bad mood? Or accounts of various saints?
There has always been, and continues to be, a fair amount of prejudice based on how many people exist with a similar belief structure.
Belief in odd things is not a matter of education, at any rate.
I've always thought that if nearly all religions have such experiences, they must be similar enough that they bely their true bias in their hatred towards each other.
Either they believe those experiences come from God (or aliens) or they do not. But they always seem to find an "obvious" way to explain it away ONLY IF there is an us-or-them relationship. It's like "My experience was authentic, even though all those other ones are not."
In either case, it's hard to not notice the similarities if you are observing from the outside. Especially when people who purportedly have witnessed UFO's have typically witnessed several of them throughout their lives.
> "My experience was authentic, even though all those other ones are not."
Yeah, I've had this conversation with a christian before, I asked how are they so sure they're right and the answer was because of their experience. When I told them that I've had the exact same conversation with the exact same answer with a muslim before too, they didn't believe me. Seems like a lot of mental gymnastics to me.
You're right, the similarities to belief in alien visitations are definitely there.