Gods, UFOs, and evidence

There’s the one thing I always have to wonder about religious people and UFO/alien buffs.

Why is it that out of all the holy books in all of the religions all over the world, not one contains any information that would not have been known by the primitive people at the time?

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sometimes they overlap

You’d think one of those gods would have said, “Hey, the earth isn’t flat, and it revolves around the sun. Also, diseases are caused by germs. Everything is made of atoms. There’s an entire other continent across the ocean. Slavery is actually a bad thing. Plus the Red Sox will win the World Series in 2004.”

Nope. Instead we get talking snakes, world-wide floods, people living in whales, angels, devils, and unicorns. It’s almost as if all of these books were written by primitive sheep herders instead of being the Word of God or something.

And the UFO buffs kind of fall into this same category. If flying saucers have been visiting and watching us for thousands of years (because they like building pyramids and stonehenges or something), why has not a single piece of evidence been found? Surely some alien would have dropped something over those years. (If you dropped an iphone forty years ago people would have thought it was some alien technology.) Maybe a piece of a spaceship would have fallen off and we’d have some unusual metal. Or perhaps one of those alien abductors could have said, “Yo, here’s the Grand Unified Theory.”

But then again, as I’ve said before, one of the biggest mysteries to me in life is how otherwise intelligent, rational people will ignore all logic and facts when they really want to believe something.

And ironically, many of the religious folks laugh at the UFO crowd while the UFO crowd laugh at the religious folks despite their similarities.

Oswald shot Kennedy — From Area 51!

It’s the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination and the conspiracy theories continue.

When I was young, I loved reading about conspiracies. kennedy ufo UFOs, the Kennedy assassination, the Loch Ness Monster — they all interested me.  I was completely skeptical about the official version of the story.

As I grew, I realized what a hypocrite I was being.  I was not subjecting the conspiracy theories to the same skepticism I applied to everything else.   Because I wanted to believe in these things so bad, and because they were often easy answers to complicated issues, I was nieve and accepted things without significant proof.  (Insert your own comment about religious beliefs here.)

I’ve also learned, as a lawyer, that every incident will have various stories that contradict each other and make things seem different than what they appear.  Anything you look at in enough detail will provide things that make it ripe for conspiracy theories.

Plus there are many conspiracy books out there that are just full of lies. Exciting lies that sell books. I used to love reading books by John Keel — “The Mothman Prophecies” was one of his. His books were with all the UFO books in the library and were presented as researched factual accounts. I later learned he was laughing all the way to the bank, and had made up most of his evidence. When they finally made a film of “The Mothman Prophecies” they made no pretense of it being anything other than fiction. But for a long time when I was a kid, I was sure it was all real.

Of course, there really are secret conspiracies.  Usually they are money-related conspiracies, involving insider trading, banks conspiring to sell worthless mortgages, and bribes to get around regulations.  But, as I pointed out before, huge conspiracies of this type are really hard to hide.

If Oswald was innocent, then why did he run after the assassination? Why did he kill the cop who confronted him? It’s not as if it is impossible for him to have done the shooting …

Does that mean there wasn’t something else going on? No, because there are still too many unanswered questions, such as why Jack Ruby, who really had no stake in this, would go out of his way to shoot Oswald. Looked more like a mob silencing to me.

But these days I won’t jump to conclusions without knowing for sure. Just because something is possible doesn’t mean I should believe it.