This is a guest post by Matt Rouge, who has previously contributed posts on capital-S Skepticism, the Western myth, and "the burden of Mystery." And now, here's Matt!
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Thank you, Michael, for the opportunity to contribute to your blog again!
I was very happy to see Michael’s three excellent posts on UFOs recently. I had been wanting to discuss the relationship between UFO phenomena and Afterlife phenomena, as well as make the argument I’m going to make in this post.
Phenomena are separate from their interpretations. That is, it’s possible to acknowledge UFO sightings and alien abduction experiences as genuine phenomena (i.e., not wholly due to the Skeptical go-to trifecta of fraud, hallucination, and error) without signing onto any particular explanation.
I don’t believe UFOs are actual “nuts and bolts” spacecraft, nor do I believe that the entities experienced in so-called alien abductions are actual physical beings like us. I want to make it clear, however, that I am not a Skeptic with respect to the phenomena themselves. I think that at least the best cases are paranormal in origin and cannot be explained under the current scientific paradigm.
Today I’d like to take a look at a short paper from 1990 by Jacque Vallée: Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Object. Vallée is perhaps the most prominent opponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, or ETH,1 and Michael has discussed his work in the above-mentioned posts. I’m going to paraphrase his arguments, comment on them briefly, and then lay out a new argument that I think adds something to the overall argument against the ETH.
Valée’s five arguments
1. There are so many UFO sightings that earth would have to be ETs’ Grand Central Station.
This, I think, is Vallée’s most devastating argument. Even if we counted only the most solid cases, earth would be overrun with ETs coming and going to a degree that is truly unrealistic.
2.It’s too big a coincidence that ETs are humanoid, can breathe our air, etc.
This is the only argument out of the five that I really don’t buy. I think it’s possible that convergent evolution could result in many species being bipedal and humanoid, and it may be that oxygen is the gas that supports life on most planets. Further, there are reports of ETs, such as Mantis ETs, that don’t look very human at all.
3. The ETs in alien abduction reports are using really bad and primitive science.
This is another killer argument in my view. Abducting people is a supremely inefficient way to get DNA and other biological samples.
4. UFOs are an old phenomenon in a modern guise.
Michael talked about this argument in this post. I find it pretty compelling.
5. UFOs do not behave like normal physical objects.
And Michael talked about this argument in this post. Again, compelling.
Arguments #1 and #3 tie into the argument I will make, which is this:
The ETs in UFO and alien abduction reports are “ideally inept”: they give themselves away just enough to tease us with their presence yet never collectively convince us of it.
Let’s take a look at both phenomena, and I’ll explain what I mean further.
A saucer lands on the DC mall in 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still
UFO phenomena
ETs are supposedly advanced, with technology thousands if not millions of years ahead of our own. Combined with the discipline required, one would think, to explore the stars, this technology should allow them to be seen only to the degree they wish to be seen.
Thus, the idea that they are just—whoops—accidentally being seen strains credulity.
One perhaps may object that ETs don’t actually care about being seen from afar. But where does their caring begin and end? If they didn’t care at all, then they would be landing anywhere and everywhere and being photographed and videoed all the time. OK, maybe they don’t mind being seen from afar but do mind being seen up close.
In that case, we are still left needing to explain such coincidentally perfect fine-tuning. Do all the ETs who are nonchalant about being seen from a distance have a program in place to prevent all of the thousands (per Vallée’s #1 argument above) of spacecraft visiting Earth each year from being photographed, videoed, captured on radar, etc., to an excessive degree?
Vallée points out in his paper that it would be easier for ETs to send probes to get their work done. Further, Ray Kurzweil observes: “A computational-based superintelligence of the late twenty-first century here on earth will be microscopic in size. Thus an intelligent delegation from another planet is not likely to use a spaceship of the size that is common in today’s science fiction, as there would be no reason to transport such large organisms and equipment.”2
OK, but maybe the ETs are sending probes to earth, which they intend to be seen by humans to such a fine-tuned degree. They are not sending microscopic probes but instead large objects that make lights in the sky,3 are visible sometimes on radar, and are from time to time seen up close by people. But they never make the proverbial landing on the White House lawn, and they never, say, descend into Manhattan and get seen and videoed by thousands of people all at the same time. In other words, plausible deniability is always maintained.
Alien abductions
In his paper, Valée observes, “The means of permanently erasing the memory of the victims through the use of appropriate drugs are also available in the current pharmacopeia.”
True. As a medical interpreter helping Japanese people, I’ve observed patients coming out of sedation/anesthesia perhaps around 50 times. Today’s anesthesiologists and their technology are very good. The doctors always use a drug that induces amnesia—and it works. People wake up and are usually surprised that the procedure or surgery is over already, and they certainly don’t remember anything about what happened during it.
Again, it strains credulity to suppose that the ETs intend for abductees not to remember their experiences and have technology in place to induce amnesia, but—whoops—quite a large number of people end up remembering anyway.
Plausible deniability is an issue here too. ETs that abduct humans are clearly ethically challenged—so why don’t they just kill their catches or keep them for experimentation over the long term? If we suppose that only a fraction of abductees remember their experiences (i.e., when ET amnesia technology fails), and if we consider that thousands of people have reported abduction experiences, then it stands to reason that the actual number of abductees is quite large indeed, perhaps numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands. If only a small fraction of this total were never to be returned, then that would entail a substantial number of disappearances requiring explanation. Yet this problem does not seem to exist.
Fair enough. Perhaps the ETs don’t disappear humans. But they seem to be taking care not to get “caught” in many other ways as well. While abductees do report physical traces of their ordeals, such as small wounds and scars and small metal implants, and perhaps these are indeed genuine phenomena in their own right, to my knowledge there have been no reports of limbs amputated, organs removed, or surgeries performed that leave major scars, sutures, etc. That is, there is nothing to compel us to believe that someone with medical skill and technology was involved in the abductee’s ordeal. Further, to my knowledge, no recovered implants have ever consisted of undeniable extraterrestrial technology. Plausible deniability is always maintained.
In Forbidden Planet (1956), humans are piloting the saucer
Plausible deniability—or simple inability?
Thus, in their “ideal ineptitude,” the supposed ETs give us glimpses of themselves that are always just this side of the line of plausible deniability. Many different species are reportedly involved, and the circumstances of their appearance can vary considerably, but they always maintain iron discipline in order to, well, just tease us.
By “plausible deniability,” I do not mean that the phenomena themselves can or should be denied. In our Skeptical age, however, they mostly are denied—or at least swept under the rug by the media and other elites.4 Rather, the phenomena are not strong enough to instantly compel consideration by the global populace, as would happen with a landing on the White House lawn or something similar. Nor are the phenomena distinct (e.g., detailed video of ETs walking out of a landed craft) or permanent (e.g., artifacts left behind) enough as to give a prima facie indication of their physical origin.5
Thus, I think we are left with two possibilities: either the ETs continually screw up just so, which is not plausible,6 or the two phenomena of UFOs and alien abduction have a cause (and not necessarily the same cause) that prevents anything more from happening than what actually does. In other words, they or it are unable to do more.
I think the latter possibility is the truth. In a future guest post, I would like to explore what I think may actually be the cause of the phenomena in question.
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1On the other side of the debate, one of the major proponents of the ETH today is Richard Dolan, who has a great YouTube channel. Although I don’t ultimately agree with his conclusions, he is an immensely knowledgeable, intelligent, and entertaining speaker, so I encourage you to check out his videos.
2Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines, Viking Press, 1999.
3Just as we do not put big honking lights on our warplanes just for fun, there is no technologically plausible reason for ETs to have craft that light up like Christmas trees in the night sky.
4By “elites” I do not mean anything particularly conspiratorial. I merely mean that those with the power to shape our worldview, such as prominent members of the media, scientists, teachers, public intellectuals, etc., collectively prefer not to examine the phenomena and incorporate them into a revised worldview. I don’t think it is much different than the reaction of elites in the 17th century to heliocentrism. Needless to say, such elites are equally in denial about the psi and Afterlife phenomena that Michael regularly discusses on this blog.
5I’m well aware of claims that the government is in possession of crashed spacecraft, ET bodies, and so on. I will certainly believe if I can see the evidence. (Contrary to Skeptics, I am willing to change my views when I see proof.)
6“Screwing up” (i.e., committing errors or causing accidents) is by definition a lack of control on the part of the entity screwing up. Just as it would be implausible to suggest that, say, losing control on the freeway could cause damage to the vehicle but never a serious injury or fatality, it is likewise implausible to suggest that UFOs could accidentally be seen in the sky but never be captured at close range on video, or that alien abductions could result in undesired memory recall but never any extreme physical evidence.
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