I always get really intrigued when I see stories about UFOs in the news. Especially when similar-sounding stories start showing up on the same day in Arizona and Florida.
With the preponderance of better cameras, camcorders, and even cell phone video, one would think that some better footage might emerge if these things are as common as people claim (to be sure, plenty of people are trying to capture them on film). All the same, something is causing these sightings, and even if it’s of entirely terrestrial origin, it still fascinates me.
While I’ve seen some weird stuff in the skies, I’ve never had a close encounter. And while I find the prospect of extra-terrestrial life very exciting, I don’t claim to be a die-hard believer. It raises many philosophical and theological questions that I’m not sure how I would answer. (These questions, by the way, are one of the things that makes Michael Flynn’s Eifelheim so compelling. It’s also what makes C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra rank among, in my opinion, the most brilliant fiction ever written.)
What do you think? Is there life out there? If so, how does it reconcile with our Catholic sensibility. If not, why not? Better yet, have you seen anything that makes you wonder….?
Ooo I wish I weren’t so dumb.
I went to Chester yesterday and was in the book shop, looking over the SF section and trying…trying like anything to remember the name of either the book or the author.
I got a depressing thing by Hannah Arendt on the influence of revolution in 20th century political philosophy instead.
Tried to read it on the bus on the way home, but the sheep and fields and hedgerows just looked so happy and nice, I couldn’t stand to look away.
Intelligent extraterrestrial life doesn’t conflict with Catholic sensibility, but is more problematic with fundamentalist Protestant theology, and unfortunately, American popular theology is highly influenced by the latter. The Catholic interpretation of the scripture “created in the image and likeness of God” is intellectual rather than biological.
For a while, I toyed with the idea of bidding on government research contracts (but the time it takes do do a proposal will leave no time to do actual research, not to mention that I am more dovish now). Some of the stuff they are doing is absolutely astounding. The DoD wants someone to research this topic:
“Antiproton capture, confinement, transport, injection, and annihilation
processes— particularly those leading to the formation and storage of anti-
hydrogen.”
Just imagine the possibilities: antimatter propulsion! You could power an aircraft carrier for years on just a few grams of the stuff.
Or this:
“autonomous/semi-autonomous aerospace vehicles [with] robust and adaptive non-equilibrium control of nonlinear processes where the primary objective is enhanced operability rather than just local stability”
- this means aircraft that fly like insects. Non-stable aircraft can radically shift direction in a mere moment. UFOs often have this kind of erratic movement.
See more here: http://www.wpafb.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-080212-048.pdf
Some of the UFO stuff out there is disinformation to cover actual flight tests. Crazy talk about UFOs discredits all UFO research. Plenty of test aircraft are only flown a few times, and there is a huge variety of ideas that are tested, including enormous lighter-than-air craft, clusters of ‘flocking’ robotic craft, quiet aircraft engines, etc. All of these types have been the subject of recent military Requests For Proposals.