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UFOs and Aliens Are (Probably) Not What You Think: An Interview with Diana Walsh Pasulka
europeanconservative.com ^ | Rod Dreher

Posted on 11/09/2023 7:14:58 AM PST by RoosterRedux

Diana Walsh Pasulka never imagined that her scholarly work in the field of religion would lead her to skulking around in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, with one of the world’s top scientists and a former high NASA official. She tells the story in her riveting 2019 book American Cosmic, in which Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, surveyed the then-current state of knowledge of UFOs and related phenomena.

Then came the shocking 2021 revelations by the U.S. government that it had been investigating UFOs—then renamed ‘unidentified aerial phenomena,’ or UAPs. In a series of strokes, the research that Pasulka and many others had been working on for years, even decades, received powerful vindication. Something really is out there—and top national security and intelligence officials have been for a very long time taking it more seriously than they wanted the public to know.

Whatever the ‘aliens’ really are, it is startling to discover that many of the most informed people in the UFO world doubt that they are creatures from other planets. What are they, then? On November 7th, Pasulka’s latest volume hits bookstores, offering answers, but also raising new and important questions about that very issue. Encounters: Experiences With Nonhuman Intelligences (Macmillan), profiles a wide range of people who for various reasons have been drawn into the shadowy and mysterious world of UFOs, and whose testimonies move the phenomenon out of narrowly-drawn scientific categories, and well into the world of the religious and the paranormal.

Pasulka recently agreed to an interview about her work, her new book, and the emergence of a new form of religion tied to aliens, artificial intelligence, and high technology.

Pasulka (from the interview):

I had not paid the slightest attention to the UFO—or, I guess now, UAP—phenomenon since the first season of “X-Files.” Frankly, I thought it was for weirdos. But then a journalist friend told me I was missing out on a serious religious phenomenon, and advised that I read your book American Cosmic. I did, and then went into a mild version of what you call “epistemological shock.” Now you’re out with a follow-up that’s equally shocking. So let me start by asking you to bring ‘normies’ up to date on what we know about the phenomenon—and what we think we know, but really don’t.

Rod, like you, I had never paid attention to UFOs either. I didn’t watch the “X-Files.” I never saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I actually just saw that film last year and enjoyed it!

I began to study the topic of UFOs/UAPs somewhat by accident. My field is religious studies and my focus within that is Catholic history and miraculous events. In my field, we study religion academically, which means that we are looking at things like the social effects of religion, etc. As professors of religious studies, our beliefs, whether atheists or members of religious traditions, do not influence what we study. We are historians, archeologists, social scientists. We are not priests or ministers (generally). We don’t advocate for any religious tradition.

This is how I came to the study of UFOs. I had finished a long study of the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. I used a lot of archival records to do this study, which means that I went to libraries of old manuscripts (archives) and looked at records from 1300 on up to about 1880. That is a long-time span, but I was just looking for what Europeans from those time periods believed about Purgatory.

I found a lot of information, and a lot of what I would call extra information. I saw a lot of records of reported aerial sightings. People saw orbs, discs, and basically things that surprised them, flying around in the skies. I took note of these. I found that when they saw them, they recorded a process of trying to identify these objects. Often, they would think that these were souls from Purgatory that needed to be prayed back into Purgatory. I thought that the sightings were interesting, so I kept notes.

When my book about Purgatory was finished, I showed a friend some of these records. He looked at them and immediately thought of UFOs! I thought he was crazy. This was in 2012. Then, there was a UFO conference near me, and based on my friend’s suggestion, I attended it. There, I heard people talking about aerial phenomena and describing the same experiences described by European Catholics of the past. I then began to study modern reports of UFOs.

At first, I wasn’t shocked at all by this research because I thought that people were utilizing different cultural frameworks for looking at unidentified aerial phenomena. That is, it is rational to approach the topic like this: in the 1400s people were using religious frameworks to describe what they saw in the sky. Today, people do the same thing, but now we live in an ostensibly ‘secular’ society and have achieved flight, so when people see unidentified aerial phenomena, they think of drones or something like stealth aircraft, and maybe UFOs. This is how I approached the study.

I became shocked when I was approached by government agents and scientists who said that they worked, in their ‘spare time,’ on UFOs, and collected UFO materials. They were and are credible people.

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


TOPICS: UFO's
KEYWORDS: ebe; et; etphonehome; roswell; uap; ufo
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To: Carl Vehse

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


61 posted on 11/09/2023 10:42:50 AM PST by RoosterRedux (A person who seeks the truth with a strong bias will never find it. He will only confirm his bias.)
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To: RoosterRedux

Somebody go get that guy with the weird hairdo.

He’s got all the answers.

“I;m not saying it was aliens. But it was aliens’’.

That dude. He knows the score.


62 posted on 11/09/2023 10:44:30 AM PST by jmacusa (Liberals. Too stupid to be idiots.)
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To: Sirius Lee
Sirius Lee: "Well, whatever aliens they are, I think they're just adorable!"

But will they be good eating? Better them than us.


63 posted on 11/09/2023 11:17:05 AM PST by Carl Vehse
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To: Boogieman

#38 those are aliens dressed up as humans making those crop circles.


64 posted on 11/09/2023 11:52:20 AM PST by minnesota_bound (Need more money to buy everything now)
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To: bk1000

‘Prince of the Power of the Air’
Appearing as an Angel of Light
Preaching another ‘Gospel’...
Jesus came to Destroy
The Works of the devil.
.


65 posted on 11/09/2023 2:04:07 PM PST by Big Red Badger (The Truman Show)
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To: jmacusa

Perverts took over their planets just like they are taking over ours....

;-)


66 posted on 11/09/2023 2:08:47 PM PST by cgbg ("Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training." Anna Freud.)
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To: minnesota_bound

67 posted on 11/09/2023 2:10:48 PM PST by Boogieman
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To: RoosterRedux

From your description, I believe I agree with him. I’m not a scholar, but I am a Christian. I’ve always felt that UFO’s were associated with demonic activity for the sole reason that Satan will use any device to distract from, or offer alternatives to God.

In other words, he is like a magician calling attention to something shiny so you won’t look at what’s really going on.

If Satan can get an unbeliever constructing an alternate reality to the one God has revealed, that person may never acknowledge God/Jesus.


68 posted on 11/09/2023 9:12:36 PM PST by HeadOn (Love God. Lead your family. Be a man.)
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To: Mark17

Yes. See my post 68


69 posted on 11/09/2023 9:16:34 PM PST by HeadOn (Love God. Lead your family. Be a man.)
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To: HeadOn
I’ve always felt that UFO’s were associated with demonic activity for the sole reason that Satan will use any device to distract from, or offer alternatives to God.

You are correct sir. If the black eyed children ask if they can come in, tell them NO.

70 posted on 11/09/2023 9:55:43 PM PST by Mark17 (Retired USAF air traffic controller. Father of USAF Captain & pilot. Both bitten by the aviation bug)
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To: UCANSEE2

“Faster than light travel is possible. The ‘secret’ is that the object traveling must have ZERO mass.”

It’s not necessary for the object, massless or not, to travel faster than c. It is more expedient to warp space-time (compress it) so the destination is right next door, so to speak. Problem is that at today’s level of understanding it would take more energy than is present in the entire universe to do that.


71 posted on 11/09/2023 11:41:21 PM PST by steve86 (Numquam accusatus, numquam ad curiam ibit, numquam ad carcerem™)
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To: RoosterRedux

‘UFO’ sighting shuts Imphal airspace ..

Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/105340146.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst


72 posted on 11/21/2023 11:20:31 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion, or satire, or both.)
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