::shaking head sadly:: Dear me. David’s addiction to Circus Peanuts is finally starting to affect his posting… 
CollegeStudent,
I find the contrast interesting that you so readily discount the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, yet are quite willing to accept the existence of magical, supernatural beings called demons. Is this your position?
He is saying UFO’s are not real because demons are not real. The suggestion being that they are really the same experience neither of which is authentic in traditional terms. I’m taking the assumption he means they are both hypnagogic states.
I’ll concur with most views here…it’s possible (likely, even) that there is life elsewhere, but it’s highly unlikely that aliens are visiting Earth. Space travel just ain’t easy (unless there is something we haven’t figured out yet :)). Go SETI.
I wouldn’t rely on Larson to give the time of day accurately.
Bob Larson was huge on Christian talk radio in the days of the “Satanic Panic” and was partially responsible for it. He is/was a scam-artist who was regularly in trouble with the IRS.
My favorite stunt of his was when he regularly (about once a week) on his old radio show (now apparently defunct) called “Talk Back” exorcised demons over the phone while on the air. He was so good at it that, in the midst of the alleged exorcism he’d put the demon on hold to sell whatever product he was currently pushing.
He was based out of Denver, and while I’m glad he’s gone and off the air, I kind of miss the psychotic nature of his show from time to time…
…but then I tune into Jerry Springer for a few minutes and the feeling passes.
Fenris
More than that, if some aliens had figured out a way around the laws of the universe as we understand them, why would they come here? We’ve been spitting out radio signals for only the last few years, too short for anyone to have heard them and come to visit. And if the aliens had taken the trouble to make their spacecraft invisible to radar, why would they allow themselves to be seen? The whole scenario just makes no sense.
By the way, I’m ambivalent about SETI. If SETI were to find something, it would be possibly the biggest news in the history of humanity. But the chances of finding anything seem so remote as not to be worth the effort.
So what are those saucer and cigar shaped things that humans have been seeing in the sky for ages? I’ve never seen one and can’t imagine being picked up and examined by one unless they are doing a study on cellulite. But it does interest me to know what it is people have been seeing. The Learning Channel ran a few UFO programs this weekend back to back the most interesting was called “UFOs: Then and Now”. They showed saucer and cigar shaped symbols and icons in everything from ancient cave paintings to Renaissance paintings. Are they ball lighting, gases, play of light on clouds, some kind of light refraction phenomena similar to a rainbow? What they are they then, that’s what I’d like to know.
Need2know
Hey, here’s a thought. I’m not saying I believe this theory, but it’s something to think about. What if those strange lights/saucers/cigars/etc. in the sky are NOT from a distant planet, but are actually time travelers from our own future. Maybe it’s a history class… If humans in the future find a way to travel through time, they’d have to understand the danger of a paradox if they come into contact with anyone/anything from the past, so maybe they just watch us from a distance… ya think?
As for UFOs actually being alien life forms, I say “why not?” There is so much we don’t yet know, and to say that there is no way it could be, is to close the book and stop learning. Not too long ago, man didn’t think it was possible to travel at the speed of sound. Now we do it every day. No one knows what the future holds. Perhaps the aliens know that we’re not ready to be contacted on a bigger scale yet. Perhaps their own race is becoming extinct, and they’re looking for answer to save their own people. It might not be that they’re just coming here simply to probe us. Maybe they keep coming to take DNA samples to attempt a cross pollination with their own.
I don’t know. There’s no way right now that anyone can prove or disprove it. I like to believe that there’s something out there. Hell I like to believe there’s a Bigfoot, sea monsters, ghosts, etc… The world needs to hold SOME kind of magic, doesn’t it?
But like most, I can’t totally believe until I see proof.
Bob Larson??? Is this the guy who claimed to have worked at Area 51? If it is the guy that I am thinking about, pretty much everthing that he has claimed has been refuted by more reasonable, reliable sources.
I think, like many others here, that there is life in the universe besides what is here on Earth. One more thing to think about…don’t these alien exams of humans sound similar to what humans do to animals that they study?
I don’t know why you’re assuming aliens will only come if they detect radio signals, us lowly earthlings have detected extra-solar planets without the use of guiding radar waves. If we have FTL travel we’d investigate these planets completely expecting not to find anything and if we did all the better.
I’m not expert on UFOlogy but I’ve heard of many cases of air traffic controllers (using radar) validating the eye witness accounts.
Tracer said:
D’oh! It’s a conspiracy! A conspiracy, I tell you!
Or it could just be that I forgot to copy the actual location into my clipboard and thus pasted whatever happened to be there, which in this case was that article.
Nah. That can’t be it. It must be a conspiracy!
Fenris: Thanks for jogging my memory about the satanic panic stuff. I knew I recognized his name, but couldn’t remember from where. Now I do. And you’re right – I wouldn’t rely on him for the time of day, either.
After reading some of CollegeStudent’s posts in the religious threads here, I have to think he’s being completely serious when he talks about demons.
OK this is from Bob Larson’s book “Larson’s New Book Of Cults.” “The description given of UFO occupants usually include grotesque features and oddly shaped structures. They may have enlarged heads, slits for eyes, ethereal forms, and antennae sticking out of their skulls. Most accounts are of beings that bear a distinct resemblance to the ‘familiar spirits’ described in classical spiritualism.” “When UFO visitors speak, their message brings neither solace nor information in conformity with God’s Word. They talk of cosmic awareness and transcendence to higher spiritual planes. Their discourses never glorify Christ as God and Creator. Instead, contactees are told to prepare for an age of peace that will be ushered in by those unidentified aliens. UFO occupants also encourage participation in a variety of psychic practices: astral projection, psychokinesis, automatic handwriting, clairvoyance, and levitation. Sin, judgement, and the redemptive work of Christ are never mentioned. Their words, their actions, and their appearances betray the concealed satanic origin of these beings. (Larson 434-435)” And as far as I can tell, Mr. Larson has never claimed to work at Area 51. There is more information by him on this topic I need to sort through.
You can, if it makes you happy, but I’d advise strongly against taking Larson’s word for anything.
This is a guy who’s ministry was “in the red” and “just about to shut down” for over a decade.
Check out
http://www.freespeech.org/boblarson/
for a thorough (and blistering and funny) look at this creep.
http://home.flash.net/~twinkle/psycho/DARK/recreational/bobfiles.htm has some info too.
A Christian group, upset at him giving Christians a bad name, actually exposed his phoney Peter Popoff-esque excorcisms-for-money scam
http://www.christianweek.org/stories/vol13/no08/story4.htm
In addition, his ghost-written (and sued-over) “best selling novel” Dead Air (about a brave radio talk show host who fights secret satanic cults who, he discovers are part of a VAST international conspiracy, while rescuing demon-possessed women with recovered memories of Satanic Ritual Abuse all set against the backdrop of a world gone mad!) is so bad that it makes the Left Behind series of books look like masterpieces of Western Literature. Utterly masterbatory excrescence.
Seriously, quoting the guy as an authority on anything other than con-games is like quoting Peter Popoff for sound medical advice.
Fenris (who once actually met good ol’ Bob Larson once. Brrrr)
It’s good to keep speculation separate from acceptance/belief until there is evidence. That’s why the scientific process goes from hypothesis to experimentation/verification to explanation. But speculation and imagination can lead to some interesting discoveries too. Overall, I tend to agree with the person (I forget who at the moment) who once said something along the lines of…“there are enough amazing things in the universe without my having to invent any”. When you study it, “magic” is easily debunked and boring, except perhaps as an interesting quirk of human behavior. But I am constantly fascinated by the natural world/universe.
What I would like to know is why (apparently) alien visitors only visit/communicate with/abduct postal workers, the homeless, the unemployed, rednecks etc.etc. Why don’t alien visitors ever abduct a doctor, a lawyer, or a computer scientist?
No you might be thinking of Bob Lazar.Here is some info on him. He seems to me to be a nerd with an imagination.
Needs2know wrote:
Humans have not been seeing saucer and cigar shaped things in the sky “for ages”.
The original Ken Arnold account – the one from which the term “flying saucer” was coined into the popular imagination – described objects that were shaped like boomerangs. It was in his description of the erratic paths they flew through air that Ken Arnold said they flew “like saucers skipping off a pond.” The public fascination with the term “flying saucer” was the only impetus behind the repeated “sightings” of saucer-shaped objects. See http://www.csicop.org/si/9709/sheaffer.html, an article in the Sept. 1997 Skeptical Enquirer.
When saucer (and, later, cigar) shaped objects started popping up in UFO reports, the True Believers started scouring historical literature for anything remotely resembling UFOs. Ezekiel’s wheel magically became saucer-shaped in their view. An oblong paint smudge on an Italian Renaissance painting was interpreted to be a rendition of a flying saucer hurtling through the air, as though a painting were a kind of snapshot. Truth is, the “strange apparitions” people saw prior to the 20th century tended to be shaped like things they expected to see, e.g. angels or demons.