UFOs

Was just listening to the weekend edition of the Albert Mohler radio show on local Christian radio, which is a collection of different shows he's aired over the week. Today's included segments on Ray Boltz's homosexuality, the Anglican church's apology to Charles Darwin, and prejudice against large families, each of which was a topic on his radio list this week.

There was also a brief discussion on UFOs which a caller raised toward the end. If you want to listen to that segment, all I know is it's probably on one of those shows on the list for this last week. He doesn't seem to have discussed it on his blog at least not recently. So this is the best I can do for a reference to his opinions on the subject.

As to the topic itself, I don't know whether to be surprised or not that Dr. Mohler considers it only in terms of how it is presented in the mass media, that is, as showing the possibility of other life forms in the universe. The caller who had raised the topic was referring to the same network show I had also seen a few nights ago covering many sightings of UFOs and some of the UFO abduction claims over the last few decades. I was pretty bored with it because it presented only the usual ideas about "extraterrestrials" and their supposed "advanced technology," and I turned it off before the end.

Years ago I came to the conclusion that UFOs are demonic apparitions of some sort, which I thought was a fairly common idea among Christians, but maybe it's not. In the early 90s someone lent me a book about UFOs by Jacques Vallee, a well known investigator of such phenomena, who had come to the conclusion that they had more in common with nonphysical phenomena:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Vallee

In the mid-1960s, like many other UFO researchers, Vallée initially attempted to validate the popular Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (or ETH). Leading UFO researcher Jerome Clark[4] argues that Vallée's first two UFO books were among the most scientifically sophisticated defenses of the ETH ever mounted.

However, by 1969, Vallée's conclusions had changed, and he publicly stated that the ETH was too narrow and ignored too much data. Vallée began exploring the commonalities between UFOs, cults, religious movements, angels, ghosts, cryptid sightings, and psychic phenomena. These links were first detailed in Vallee's third UFO book, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers.

As an alternative to the extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis, Vallée has suggested a multidimensional visitation hypothesis. This hypothesis represents an extension of the ETH where the alleged extraterrestrials could be potentially from anywhere. The entities could be multidimensional beyond space-time, and thus could coexist with humans, yet remain undetected.

Vallée's opposition to the popular ETH hypothesis was not well received by prominent U.S. ufologists, hence he was viewed as something of an outcast. Indeed, Vallée refers to himself as a "heretic among heretics".

Vallée's opposition to the ETH theory is summarised in his paper, "Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects," Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1990:

Scientific opinion has generally followed public opinion in the belief that unidentified flying objects either do not exist (the "natural phenomena hypothesis") or, if they do, must represent evidence of a visitation by some advanced race of space travellers (the extraterrestrial hypothesis or "ETH"). It is the view of the author that research on UFOs need not be restricted to these two alternatives. On the contrary, the accumulated data base exhibits several patterns tending to indicate that UFOs are real, represent a previously unrecognized phenomenon, and that the facts do not support the common concept of "space visitors." Five specific arguments articulated here contradict the ETH:

1. unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth;
2. the humanoid body structure of the alleged "aliens" is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel;
3. the reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race;
4. the extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and
5. the apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives.

Although Vallee does not have a Biblical view of these things, his scientific approach identifies phenomena that fit very well with the interpretation that they are demonic in origin.

Most of the world apparently continues to believe the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (if they believe in UFOs at all of course).

There are now ministries that interpret UFOs as part of the great deception to come upon the earth in the very last days, to seduce humanity to follow the Antichrist.