UFOs and the Old Geezers (Kevin Randle)Just recently the RRR Group posted a picture that my wife took at the MUFON Symposium in Denver and claimed that those of us on the Speakers panel were a bunch of geezers who had failed to solve the UFO question. It was time for us to get out of the way and let those younger, brighter and more enlightened take over. We had our chance and we failed.Except we haven't failed. We solved the problem. We have the proof that some UFOs are alien spacecraft and we can make that point over and over. The evidence for that is overwhelming, but not unlike Galileo, who failed to convince the church that there were moons orbiting Jupiter, we get a bunch of people who "refuse to look through the telescope."Come again?I would certainly agree that researchers have succeeded in demonstrating that the UFO phenomenon is a genuine unknown, not a collective delusion. But this isn't the same thing as proving that "some UFOs are alien spacecraft," as Randle claims -- although, in my own view, we would be incredibly foolish to dispense with the possibility.Something phenomenally weird is undoubtedly occurring, and Randle's consternation about the modern world's naysayers "refusing to look through the telescope" is well-taken. But the quickest way to convince scientific orthodoxy that its apathy is well-founded is to proclaim that the mystery has been solved. In the case of serious UFO research, science is left with a legitimate enigma that may prove to be far stranger than the "mere" comings and goings of alien spacecraft. An honest gaze through the telescope is desperately needed, but only if we're able to allow ourselves to relax our preconceptions.Close encounter cases, for example, suggest a curious and unexpected congruence with folklore, and often feature a residue of after-effects that would seem to fall into the domain of parapsychology. This troubling strangeness can't be readily ascribed to nuts-and-bolts space vehicles; indeed, we may be confronting a phenomenon that challenges our definitions of consciousness."Alien spacecraft"? Maybe. "Proof" of extraterrestrial visitation? Sorry, Kevin, but we're not there yet.[Follow me on Twitter.]
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