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Taking UFOs Seriously
Psychology Today ^ | Feb 05, 2019 | Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D.

Posted on 02/11/2019 10:02:05 AM PST by BenLurkin

In American Cosmic, D.W. Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, draws on a six-year ethnographic study and the work of Carl Jung (Flying Saucers) and Jacques Vallee (Passport to Magonia and The Invisible College) to explain the widespread belief in aliens. Pasulka identifies three aspects of UFO inquiry: physical evidence (crash sites and artifacts); testimonials made by experiencers; and the persistence of belief whether or not there is verifiable evidence to support it.

Pasulka also challenges the view that UFO believers are uneducated, fringe members of society. Some very well-regarded scientists, she indicates, are convinced that non-humans have visited Planet Earth; they have chosen to remain anonymous to protect their professional reputations.

Using a method common among anthropologists, Pasulka maintains she neither believes nor disbelieves but insists that testimonials are, in important ways, “real.” This approach allows her to gauge the impact and internal logic of a “thriving belief system.”

Pasulka regards them as “heroes,” who have “the guts and ability” to take on skeptics, and are “fighting the good fight for the right reasons”: because they believe, and “they would say,” because they know.

Pasulka turns her attention to television shows and movies. Models of “events” can be conflated, she asserts, even when one “representation” is real and the other is fictional. The likelihood of putting a model in “the wrong bucket” increases when producers (whose clients include National Geographic, The History Channel, and The Smithsonian) use a genre called “specialist factual programming” to fuse archival material and special effects to create realistic montages, with “documentary” in the title.

These productions influence memory, Pasulka emphasizes; “they contribute to belief in fabricated UFO phenomena.”

(Excerpt) Read more at psychologytoday.com ...


TOPICS: Health/Medicine; Science; TV/Movies; UFO's
KEYWORDS: aatip; americancosmic; carljung; dwpasulka; fringe; glenncaltschuler; jacquesvallee; nationalgeographic; northcarolina; ohsomysteriouso; psychologytoday; thehistorychannel; thesmithsonian; ufo; ufos; wilmington
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To: chaosagent
Regardless, did the cuffs and collars match?

81 posted on 02/11/2019 12:40:06 PM PST by SunkenCiv (and btw -- https://www.gofundme.com/for-rotator-cuff-repair-surgery)
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To: Openurmind

I also believe they are real, and far from what the psychologist seems to be discussing, I got the majority of my info about them from books, not the Tee Vee.

There is also the possibility that the pilots of these craft could be demons in some exotic form. As a Christian, I can NOT dismiss this possibility, put forth by others in threads like this one.


82 posted on 02/11/2019 12:41:19 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (Modern feminism: ALL MEN BAD!!!)
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To: PUGACHEV

Absolutely... You are close to true enlightenment of mind, body, and spirit. And this concept is universal and nondenominational.


83 posted on 02/11/2019 12:43:27 PM PST by Openurmind
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To: Crusher138

I have had these conversations with “those in the know” also.


84 posted on 02/11/2019 12:47:47 PM PST by Openurmind
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To: Openurmind

Sitchin in fact denied all of Nancy Lieder’s hullaballoo. But I don’t trust any of them. I used to take Richard Hoagland halfway seriously until he claimed a compression artifact in a photo of comet Elenin was a tetrahedral force field projected by aliens. When George Noory took over Art Bell’s show, I know for certain that he made stuff up for ratings. I’ve given up on the whole bunch of self-described “ufologists”.


85 posted on 02/11/2019 12:48:57 PM PST by Telepathic Intruder
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To: jeffc
As far as we know, only machines could last the time it would take travel interstellar..
As far as the public knows ...

There is evidence that zero point propulsion could work which basically means the faster you go, the faster you can go with no gravity penalty for the occupants of a ship.

86 posted on 02/11/2019 12:51:21 PM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: BushCountry

Well... you mentioned faster than the speed of light so I responded. :-)

It’s an interesting topic. Once one looks into such things such as wormholes you realize that even if such things exist custom building one from point a to point b is not going to happen unless can travel to both points.

If someone has the technology to build such a construct then they could more easily terraform planets in our solar system. Not to mention that human navigation of a wormhole is surely fatal.

From a pragmatic standpoint building some devices even if possible seem unnecessary.


87 posted on 02/11/2019 12:51:40 PM PST by plain talk
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To: BenLurkin
"To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow." -- Metrodorus, 4th c BC Greek philosopher
"Heaven and earth are large, yet in the whole of space they are but as a small grain of rice. How unreasonable it would be to suppose that, besides the heaven and earth which we can see, there are no other heavens and no other earths." -- Teng Mu, 13th c AD Chinese philosopher
"But I am not really willing to accept your premise, because it may well be that the means of communications they have are of a kind that we do not know how to receive, and that they would not have the means of communicating with sufficiently powerful radio or optical signals. That is something which, technologically, is too difficult for them but they would have some other means we would not recognize." -- Thomas J. Gold, 'Communication with Extraterrestial Intelligence' (Sagan, ed)

88 posted on 02/11/2019 12:51:47 PM PST by SunkenCiv (and btw -- https://www.gofundme.com/for-rotator-cuff-repair-surgery)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Yep... Just have to remain skeptical and weed out what might be possible without believing it all. But to immediately throw up a firewall and blind yourself could be a lose of certain possible knowledge that might lead to other real realities. Never burn your bridges before you ever cross them.


89 posted on 02/11/2019 12:55:57 PM PST by Openurmind
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To: samtheman

There is a Fermi Paradox for a reason.


There is also a corollary theorem - The Dark Forest. Aliens are hiding because like in a dark forest there are predators who eat the weak and kill any potential competition. So every one with any sense hides and does their level best to remain quiet - unlike humans ...


90 posted on 02/11/2019 12:57:04 PM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: BenLurkin

Cool. Then lead me to one.

It’s pure BS no more real than believing in Odin and Loki.


91 posted on 02/11/2019 1:02:10 PM PST by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ....)
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To: Telepathic Intruder

Oh absolutely... I always remain skeptical because there is a lot of garbage out there. But I figure I am intelligent enough to not believe everything I hear or read. But sometimes in weeding through it all I come across something that rings possible and go chase it down. 99 out of a 100 times it too turns out to be garbage.

But I will always remain objective about everything. And on this topic I actually have had personal eyewitness experiences myself. Like I just shared with another poster on this thread, never burn your bridges before you have even crossed them. Sometimes there is something definitely interesting on the other side to learn from.


92 posted on 02/11/2019 1:04:29 PM PST by Openurmind
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To: plain talk

Ha, ha. We’re still not going to agreed. You’re thinking small if you think a solar system of Terra-formed planets can contain an expanding human race. At the birth of Christ there were 150 million people on earth. We’re at 7.5 billion now. The population is growing a lot faster with modern technology and life extension. By the end of this century the population is predicted to be 12 billion.

We’ll fill up planets quicker than we can Terra-form them. Even though this is all speculation. I suspect we’ll kill ourselves or throw our technology back to the stone age with a war. The smarty pants guy below might be right.

I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones! ~ Albert Einstein


93 posted on 02/11/2019 1:08:29 PM PST by BushCountry (thinks he needs a gal whose name doesn't end in ".jpg")
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To: BushCountry

Oh yeah, a sci-fi show called The Expanse follows along your reasoning. Mankind trapped in it’s solar system. Terra-formed Mars. Three separate spears of influence. The earthers, martians, and belters. Not bad for the most part, best sci-fi since Battlestar.


94 posted on 02/11/2019 1:15:08 PM PST by BushCountry (thinks he needs a gal whose name doesn't end in ".jpg")
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To: pjd
I’m not saying this is what happened, but it is entirely *possible* that aliens may have a state of technology very similar to our own but just happened to stumble upon a practical near-light or faster-than-light means of travel.
That's why I roll my eyes at the "it's impossible because of the distance" arguments. If you had brought up the idea of radio, TV, electricity, or steam engines, just to name a few, in the Middle Ages, you would have been burned at the stake. It's the old human hubris that "If we haven't invented it yet, it can't be done."

Advances in technology comes in leaps and bounds. Look at the Wright Brothers. They flew the first successful flight in 1903, and only 66 years later we were landing on the moon. (I was just a kid in 1946 and vividly remember the Daily News headlining "RADAR BOUNCED OFF THE MOON!" Everyone was astonished. Twenty-two years later we landed there).

Who know if/when one of our scientists has an O Sh!t moment and discovers a new way to travel in space?

Yet, in other technologies they may even be behind us.
There was a neat Sci-Fi story about aliens landing on earth and we found out they were dumber than Hell, with their only advancement being in space travel. Wouldn't that be a hoot!

95 posted on 02/11/2019 1:33:26 PM PST by Oatka
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To: BushCountry

“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones! ~ Albert Einstein”

Interesting statement. With increasing technology comes the potential for worldwide destruction and slaughter of billions. Combine muslims with such technology and I doubt we will have a population problem in the distant future unless the muslims completely take over globally. If so then do you see muslims worrying about wormholes?

But even with increasing populations many seem to underestimate the sheer size of the solar system and the amount of potential habitable space available through exploitation of planets, moons, steroids and dyson spheres.

An extremely advanced civilization doesn’t have to travel that far. They can custom build what they need within their star system or nearby star systems.

This may be why we haven’t been conquered by aliens, e.g. Fermi paradox. There is really no need for them to come all the way out here.


96 posted on 02/11/2019 2:13:50 PM PST by plain talk
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To: BushCountry

“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones! ~ Albert Einstein”

Interesting statement. With increasing technology comes the potential for worldwide destruction and slaughter of billions. Combine muslims with such technology and I doubt we will have a population problem in the distant future unless the muslims completely take over globally. If so then do you see muslims worrying about wormholes?

But even with increasing populations many seem to underestimate the sheer size of the solar system and the amount of potential habitable space available through exploitation of planets, moons, steroids and dyson spheres.

An extremely advanced civilization doesn’t have to travel that far. They can custom build what they need within their star system or nearby star systems.

This may be why we haven’t been conquered by aliens, e.g. Fermi paradox. There is really no need for them to come all the way out here.


97 posted on 02/11/2019 2:13:53 PM PST by plain talk
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To: BenLurkin

If, in the end, “climate change” doesn’t succeed as the global enemy the globalists need to cow the people of the whole world, evidence of “approaching asteroids” will happen, and if that fails, they will move on to evidence of impending “alien invasion”. (and never mind that alien invasion on the Mexico border)


98 posted on 02/11/2019 2:15:02 PM PST by motor_racer (If you don't read the news, you are uninformed. If you read the news, you are misinformed.)
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To: Oatka; Rockingham

Absolutely. History always repeat’s it’s self. Yet we have not learned one thing from this fact. Like the Alcubierre drive mentioned by Rockingham above. They may have dropped it because it is now obsolete. They may have gone far past that. Never close your mind to possibilities, it holds us back in the dark ages.


99 posted on 02/11/2019 2:17:45 PM PST by Openurmind
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To: BushCountry

[ Oh yeah, a sci-fi show called The Expanse follows along your reasoning. Mankind trapped in it’s solar system. Terra-formed Mars. Three separate spears of influence. The earthers, martians, and belters. Not bad for the most part, best sci-fi since Battlestar. ]

Bunch of government bootlickers in the inner solar system!!! Real freedom lies in setting up a settlement on Sedna in the Scattered Disc area, plenty of ice to mine for water and deuterium fuel.


100 posted on 02/11/2019 2:24:57 PM PST by GraceG ("If I post an AWESOME MEME, STEAL IT! JUST RE-POST IT IN TWO PLACES PLEASE")
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