Staunch an atheist as I am, I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. Believing that there are aliens who regularly buzz Earth in their UFO’s and abduct people and give them anal probes is arguably as nutty as many popular religious ideas (and not necessarily any more or less nutty than more “mainstream” beliefs about God, angels, and heaven). But believing that you yourself have experienced an alien abduction is more like believing that God has spoken to you (in a “burning bush” kind of way, not a “still small voice of conscience” sort of way); I don’t think most religious people would claim to have had that sort of experience.
I think the thread is straw-manning the entire issue. Read Communion by Whitley Strieber. The man is not a “nut,” and if he’s done it 100% for money then he’s accomplished some serious CYA in acting out the whole thing in front of intimates and getting plenty of people to go along with his story.
Not a “nut”: Strieber again and again explicitly considers the possibility that the “visitors,” as he calls them, may not be “real” in the traditional sense. He leans toward not believing that they are extraterrestrials.
I believe that the abduction phenomenon is purely mental; that doesn’t make it any less amazing or less likely to alter our collective worldview considerably. There are still many big questions left unanswered: Why do people tend to see the same kind of visions if they are merely “dreams” or the effect of sleep paralysis (aren’t there an infinite number of fantasy objects available; why is this one so common and/or powerful?)? One website I read asked the pertinent question, if these are all dreams and fantasies cobbled together from bad sci-fi, why do abductees extremely rarely report ray guns and other such weapons? Why are there reports of people seeing the same thing at the same time?
Research the topic a little more, and you’ll see that it’s not just a matter of “kooks and charlatans.” This rabbit hole is awfully deep. I myself have no explanation for the phenomenon.
I don’t agree. It may be true that most would say they haven’t had the “burning bush” type of experience, but I’d wager that a large percentage of them WOULD say that they have some sort of connection to their god. That might vary to some sort of spiritual communication to actual miracle working.
And yes I belive that to be orders of magnitude less likely than some alien vessel anal probing some of us. and I believe alien vessels anal probing some of us to be completely nutty.
The magazine The Skeptical Inquirer has published several articles that suggest that many claims of abduction are due to hynagogic or hypnopompic illusions (a lot of abduction scenarios take place in the bedroom, with people going to sleep or just waking up). I’m pretty sure that Klass (who also contributed to SI) made the same suggestion, but I can’t swear to it – it’s been a couple of years sinc I last read his book.
Michael Shermer, in Why People Believe Weird Things discusses his alien abduction experience. Similar cause, only I believe it was more heat prostration than anything.
That sounds a lot like Dave Davies of the Kinks, who since the early '80s has made repeated claims that aliens visited him and showed him great philosophical truths, beamed spiritual energy through him to the audience while he was onstage, etc. I don’t know if you could say that he makes money off of the claims. He was already an established, successful musician before the “visitations”-- though it has become the subject of much of his music since.
Clearly you’ve never been to a Pentocostal service.
Not a nut? Whitley Strieber, a.k.a. hack novelist who turned other peoples’ credulity into profit and bestseller listings. His recent thing is his “Master of the Key” fortellings:
In the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1998, Strieber was reportedly visited in his Toronto hotel room by a mysterious but apparently human man who delivered an unsolicited lecture covering various subjects from spirituality to the environment. The man gave no name, but Strieber has taken to referring to him as the “Master of the Key.” Strieber first reported the visit in his online journal in 1998 and later gave a more complete account in his self-published book The Key (2001). Skeptics have pointed out that The Key and the 1998 journal entries give very different (not contradictory, but largely non-overlapping) accounts of what the man said. Strieber has mentioned his own misgivings about the truth of The Key, admitting the possibility that he made it all up.
He may not be a nut, but he’s certainly a huckster. 'Course, he’s also laughing all the way to the bank, which makes him more successful (or, at least willing to to take advantage of others) than me.
Stranger
Paging Carl Jung!