Originally posted by mpeake
I think this discussion shows the one thing that seems to be the most obvious similarity between religion (take your pick of which one) and belief in aliens. Blind Faith. Both require blind faith to exist.

I'm curious as to why you say "blind faith" rather than "experience."

People who believe in either gods or aliens are sometimes responding to their own experience of reality.

Moses talking to a burning bush, or the couple who are abducted while driving on a lonely back-road, are forming opinions based on experience.

I think 'blind faith' has a derogatory ring to it, as if their life-experience, while unusual, is somehow inauthentic, merely because you and I have not shared those experiences. After all, they ARE the ones who saw something. Maybe it is you and I who have

"Blind Disbelief"

Trust me, I'm not using blind faith as a derrogatory term. I use it quite the opposite. IMO the majority of people who believe in God (again take your pick) and aliens have NOT had a personal encounter, but they hear the teachings and stories of those that have, and then draw thier own conclusions on what to beleive or not. They feel it in thier soul and don't need proof. In the bible Jesus says blessed are those that beleive in Him and after seeing him, but more blessed are those that beleive without seeing Him. I think you can look at blind faith in one of two ways. The strongest form of faith, or the strongest form of ignorrance. That is in the eye of the beholder I guess.

Being that I have not had a personal encounter with an alien, and have yet to hear or see something from someone else that would lead me to beleive otherwise, I choose not to believe. But, if I ever do come into contact, whether it be a personal visitation or I am introduced to them on a massive scale with the rest of humanity I am openminded enough not to dismiss it as insanity or massive manipulation on the general public, as I am sure most religious communities would.

Good points.

Hmmmm. Both worldviews (religion/aliens) are based on experiences or traditions that are highly subjective. Perhaps some of the interesting behaviors and quirky statements come from knowing that other people will probably not believe you when you talk about your beliefs . . . . .

I think the commonality between religion and UFO-beliefs falls short at the point where religionists offer praise and worship to their deities, where UFO enthusiasts look to their contacts as benevolent comrades. But then, I guess its just a question of degree.

Gazrock, have a look at my blog "why I don't believe in Aliens" for an update on the statistical probability of alien life.

When YOU see about a dozen ships around a mountain near a military base, along with dozens of other children out in their jammies, while their parents are in some kind of "sleep paralysis", and the next day, all of the adults come home from working at the base and say, "don't ever talk about that again".....THEN I just might....

It's not "blind" faith....for me...it's backed by personal experience and research. My kneejerk reaction to most evidence is to first scoff at it, until it holds up time and time again...which means I reject most of it. While I don't believe other encounters without doing my homework....I do know what I personally saw....and growing up surrounded by military, I can tell you, it wasn't ours....not at all....

Gazrock, can you give us a detailed acct of your encounter?

dr_strangecraft,

I read your Blog and feel very similiar to you. The only differerence is I still haven't even had a ufo experience where people say "look, a spaceship!". Something that has always bothered me about the people who insist on having very real personal encounters is the way they don't do anything to prove themselves to others. They seem content to just chat about it on websites like this. Even if it meant looking crazy to others around me I'd make it my everyday mission to do whatever it took to prove my experience was real. I don't know who I would but I guess it would depend on the type of encounter I initially had. But, COME ON! You got visited, abducted, abused, or befriended by an alien and that's it?!? I just don't think that if something as spectacular happening to me I would be content to do nothing about.
Which is yet another common similarity to religion. When someone seems to have a very real, personal, and wonderful encounter with God, wouldn't you make it yor life's mission to prove to everyone else how real it was? Just a thought...

Gazrock, can you give us a detailed acct of your encounter?

I have in the past actually...search the archives... I'll likely post it again though, no telling how long ago that was...

I can tell you they were "ships", not just lights in the sky... I've seen military aircraft pretty much since birth....but you could have never even seen a plane before and pretty much known that these were the real deal...

Just to add to it a little bit, as I don't have the time to expound on it a great deal right now....EDIT (hehe....seems I did anyway....)

It was in the winter of 1981, Kodiak, Alaska, near Mount Barometer, close to the USCG base in Kodiak (near the USCG Compound). It was early in the morning (after midnight, before sunup). My brother and I were awakened by light outside the windows... We went to wake up mom and dad...couldn't even budge them... For some unknown reason, we went outside, still in our jammies...in winter, in Alaska... Wasn't much of a breeze though, so it wasn't that cold... We saw other kids also standing outside their doorways, some even in the roads... All of us then looked toward the mountain...and there were perhaps a dozen multicolored lights... At first we thought they were helicopters...but eventually they came lower, and that's when we knew they were ships, not helicopters...or anything else... Looked like something out of Close Encounters...rings of light, definite silhouette against the sky of a saucer shape (this was the big one, or mothership...must have been the size of an aircraft carrier)... The others were darting about, but the big one just kind of lowered around the mountain. The small ones would occassionally shoot beams down at the forest below, looking like searchlights, but more bluish... Oddly enough I don't remember actually going back in the house and to bed, but upon waking the next day, we all (kids, as there were NO adults outside) talked about it, and that's when we knew it wasn't just a weird dream... We asked our parents about it, but mom didn't know anything about it, and dad just said he couldn't talk about it, and if we brought it up again, we'd be punished. I've since asked him about it, and he doesn't seem to remember anything about it...(could just be clamming up, but he's never been too great at keeping secrets...so I just don't know..)

[edit on 8-7-2004 by Gazrok]

Very interesting story! How old were you and the rest of the kids? Did they all have the same problem with not being able to wake thier parents? Had you any any of the other kids seen the crafts in that area again after that time?

thanks for taking the time to tell the story again too!

How old were you and the rest of the kids?

I was in the 4th grade, and was one of the older kids...as I recall I don't believe the base school went past the fourth grade...(you can do the math, hehe....) Most of the other kids were from 1st to 4th graders...

Did they all have the same problem with not being able to wake thier parents?

Those that I spoke with at the time...yes...and I didn't see any parents outside that morning (night really, not even a hint of sun yet)

Had you any any of the other kids seen the crafts in that area again after that time?

Nope. We did once see a saucer shaped ship in one of the C130 hangars at the base....yet I've since identified it as an SR71 Blackbird. You see the base was right up the hill from the school, and of course, all of our dads worked on the base. At the time, it looked like a big black saucer from the front, and I had no idea of such a plane...yet later on, when seeing a pic of the Blackbird head on, I knew that's what I had seen... They must have been using the base to hide it or something... Since this was AFTER the saucer encounter (months after), most of us assumed this was one of the things we saw (we were young), so we didn't think much more of it. Of course, blackbirds can't hover and dart like the ships we saw, and there was NOTHING that even resembled the big ship....EDIT: nor does the blackbird have a ring of lights around the bottom...(in case of the real nitpicky, the colors were many, blue, red, white, and yellow being more dominant than any others...the ships made almost no sound (as far as we were I guess), but we could smell ozone in the air, like after a nearby lightning strike...)

[edit on 8-7-2004 by Gazrok]

So, I take it your stance on alien existence would be, yes, they do exist? Or is it not that simple? I only ask becuase now you are an adult and have had ample time to weed out the possibilities of what those ships could have been.

So, I take it your stance on alien existence would be, yes, they do exist? Or is it not that simple? I only ask becuase now you are an adult and have had ample time to weed out the possibilities of what those ships could have been.

Yep. Now don't get me wrong, I've wondered if it wasn't just something we were working on, etc., but that day my dad was scared...and I had never seen him like that... Oddly enough, after the next day, he was fine...

Since then though, I've delved into UFO lore pretty heavily, read almost every book on it, talked with UFOlogists, etc. While I'm not into it enough to even attempt a living at it (there are far too many crackpots in the field), I've certainly devoted a lot of time to it....

Above Top Secret, Way Above Top Secret, The Day After Roswell, Cooper's "Pale Horse" book, etc. are some of my favorites (though I think Cooper is a little out there....) But a lot of my concentration has been on going through alleged, and authenticated documents...and there is some very scary stuff there, and more than enough, combined with my own sighting (only one I ever really had by the way)...to make me believe that we are being visited by beings not from around here....

I'm surprised nobody's asked about the missing time after the sighting. No, I have no recollection of being "abducted", and no, I was never hypnotically regressed about it...nor would I care to be. If it's blocked, then I'll let it stay blocked thank you very much.... If I was abducted, then that means their little memory wipe worked, and I'm fully willing to let it stay that way... I've read enough from those who claim abduction to not want to go there, hehe.... In this case, I'll go for "ignorance is bliss", despite our motto here, hehe....

[edit on 8-7-2004 by Gazrok]

Gazrock, thanks for posting your experiences

Mine were no where near as dramatic. I guess I ought to post some on my blog. I just am really slow to do a lot of self-revelation on the web.

Gazrok: that's an amazing experience; any idea how old you were at the time (i can't recall what age you're supposed to be in 4th grade anymore, and also I'm not sure if it wasn't different then)?

also, what kind of age distribution do you remember there being at the base? like, was it all just adults and kids in grades <= 4th, or were there older children also (ie, teenagers)? if there were teenagers, etc., were they out there also or also knocked out cold?

as for the topic of this thread: yeah, a lot of the ufo-believers do exhibit behavior similar to that of the religious, and a lot of the nuttier ufo-believers do exhibit behavior similar to that of religious fanatics; as with anything else, though, there are plenty of people with minds open enough to take the evidence seriously -- ie, not dismiss it out of hand -- but also with minds critical enough to separate the valid evidence from the bogus, and those are the people most worth listening to, reading the works of, and so forth.

Hmmm, bandit. I'll have to look at those numbers again. I DO think that moving drakes numbers gives you less than one hit in the whole galaxy, but again, it looks like you've gotten more into the numbers than I have.

Radiant energy is about the only way to transmit accross the intersellar void, short of faster than light energy or supernatural energy (more on that later).

Yes, an advanced civ would probably use something we might not detect; but they would almost certainly have "heard" us by now. With the first known radio messages broadcast over 100 years ago, there is a "bubble" of human radio information expanding out into the universe, and it is now over 200 light years across. And no serious objective responses so far.

On the way to more advanced tech, an alien civ would almost assuredly have passed through it's own radiant-energy phase, and we ought to be within their "information space" by now. It is remotely possible that another civ would have not used radiant energy at all; but then, if they were so different, we might not be capable of communicating with them or vice versa anyway.

I would agree with you on the astral projection thing. I think that sort of thing has more promise than all the tech stuff anyway. Of course, most others reading this will think that you and I are drinking the same bong water.

See my post on the RATS site about the 'birth of a new secret society.' Part of that "club" was trying to make astral contact with the illuminati. The results were pretty off the wall.

I see this whole dialogue as a sort of verbal/intellectual saber-duel. We are definitely in the range of hypothetical. And while I don't agree with you on some particulars, let's just say I won't be caught as off-guard as the rest of the populace will on that day when the tralfamadorians manifest themselves in three-space.

Gazrok: that's an amazing experience; any idea how old you were at the time (i can't recall what age you're supposed to be in 4th grade anymore, and also I'm not sure if it wasn't different then)?

also, what kind of age distribution do you remember there being at the base? like, was it all just adults and kids in grades <= 4th, or were there older children also (ie, teenagers)? if there were teenagers, etc., were they out there also or also knocked out cold?

Well, the sighting was at the compound (living quarters), not the base, just to clarify...(this was about 20-30 minutes away from the base....the school though, was right downhill from the base)...

As I recall, all the kids in the compound were between Kindergarten and 4th grade (5th grade being middle school there if I remember correctly and 4th grade was as high as that school went up to).... No teenagers...I was one of the oldest kids in the compound...and I was only about 9 or 10 (can't remember what month it was...as winter was pretty long there, hehe...) I think that older kids were likely either in a different compound (though I don't believe so), or their parents simply got reassigned to somewhere that had a school for them. I also don't remember seeing all the kids out there...(for example, my best friend who lived next door (same age) wasn't out there...yet another friend across the street was....(younger)



[edit on 9-7-2004 by Gazrok]

Damn Gazrok, thats some trippy stuff. I've never had any exprience like that, however I'd love too, not that I could handle being abducted but perhaps a memory wipe would quell that fear. Honestly if I came face to face with an alien, I might forget to breathe.

Have you had any other expricnes similar to that since then and how about any scars and the such that are unexplainable?

Nope, I've never had any other sightings...

No alien nightmares...no unknown scars (at least not ones that seem important, just average everyday scrapes, etc. that you don't remember getting)....and I like it just fine that way.

About all I've really had are other strange experiences...minor psychic phenomenon (reference SLIDER phenomenon on either the web or in our archives) and more than normal encounters when it comes to ghosts, etc. (prompting me to research those as well...see any of my posts in the paranormal forum)...

Hi All,

Interesting blend of beliefs, opinions, and suppositions in this thread.

Wonderful personal anecdote Gazrok. Thanks for sharing that for us (again).

The blueish lights projected on to the forest by the crafts...paralysis beams perhaps?

I agree with a couple of you that extrasenory explorations are a valid option for obtaining data about that which cannot be obtained otherwise. World renown astral projector/remote viewer, Ingo Swann, recommended astral projection to explore other worlds. Any form of extrasensory/intuitive exploration can gain insight.

Dr. Strangecraft,

You stated:

<< Radiant energy is about the only way to transmit accross the intersellar void, short of faster than light energy or supernatural energy (more on that later). >>

I'm intrigued. Care to elaborate on that for us?

In other words, how do you define "radiant energy" and "supernatural energy?"

Thanks.