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The bizarre belief that powerful alien beings from distant planets have not only visited earth but forcibly kidnapped unwilling humans and conducted strange and intrusive experiments on them has been around since the 1960’s. Various polls over the years reveal that the majority of Americans believe there is life “out there” and super-intelligent beings may have visited us. A smaller but significant percentage claim to having been abducted by aliens or believe the claims of others.
1) Not one shred of hard
scientific evidence has ever been produced by the numerous people who
supposedly underwent such an intimate and profound “close encounter”. Where are
the alien high-tech devices implanted in victim’s bodies? Why are the special
messages the chosen ones have for humanity from these godlike beings always
“live in peace” and never “here is the cure for cancer”? Or “here’s how to
travel to our planet”?
2) Most people have a legitimate strong desire
to believe in something greater than themselves. To find meaning in their often
unsatisfying lives. The possibility of being singled out by some super-evolved
intelligence, for any reason, brings some existential meaning, substance and
wonder to futile lives mired in life’s besetting mundaneness. Also, in some
cases, the knowledge of being selected as one of the chosen few elevates
fragile and battered egos above the ordinary, insignificant lot assigned to
most of human kind.
3) Dr. Susan A. Clancy spent 5 years
interviewing hundreds of people who sincerely believed they had such an
experience. In her book, Abducted: How
People Came To Believe They Were Abducted By Aliens, she explains in most
cases the thinking starts with unexplainable occurrences. Why did I have this
“nightmare on steroids”? Why are there unfamiliar bruises on my body? Why are
my pajamas on the floor? A visit to a sympathetic hypnotherapist often leads to
discovery of repressed memories and an uncovering of the terrifying event
hidden deep within the psyche. Many hypnotherapists specialize in unearthing
alien abduction memories, which should have been wiped clean by the menacing
aliens, but they missed some pertinent brain cells.
4) Dr. Clancy on these practitioners: “A wealth
of solid research, conducted over four decades, has shown that hypnosis is a
bad way to refresh your memories. Not only is it generally unhelpful when
you’re trying to retrieve memories of actual events, but it renders you
susceptible to creating false memories – memories of things that never
happened, things that were suggested to you or that you merely imagined. If you
or your therapist have pre-existing beliefs or expectations about what might
come up, you’re liable to recall those experiences that fit with those beliefs,
rather than events that actually happened. Worse, neither you nor your
therapist will realize this, because the memories you do retrieve seem very,
very real.”
5) Sleep paralysis along with hallucinations is
the most common explanation for these experiences. A good summary of these night time occurrences
is offered by skeptic and author Guy P. Harrison: “It happens when the natural
transition between deep sleep and waking up is somehow derailed. The brain can
still be in a sleep state with motor output from the brain blocked, as is
normal during sleep so that body movement is restricted, but the person ‘wakes
up’ and feels paralyzed. Add to this the possibility of a dream in progress,
and one could be in for a very scary ride. In an awakened state, or something
close to it, a dream might be impossible to separate from reality.”
6) Two accounts from people who have
experienced numerous sleep paralysis episodes in their lives, and were soon
able to rationally evaluate the incidences, shine a light on how
misinterpretations and exaggerations can easily occur:
----- “It would be so terrifying if you didn’t know what
was going on, and being conscious but being unable to move does make you feel
like you’re being crushed somehow. You so badly want to open your eyes, but
can’t. You try to imagine what’s going on in the room, and it would be pretty
easy to think of something terrible, since this terrible thing is happening to
you. My only concern is, How long will this last? I’m pretty good at calming
myself and getting back to sleep, thankfully.”
----- “Usually I feel like someone is in the room with me
or lying down next to me. Sometimes I can see a face and sometimes I can only
see a shadow-type figure. I always feel like I’m conscious but can’t move or
make any sounds. A lot of the time I’m trying to talk or yell but nothing comes
out ….The experience is damn scary.”
7) The perception of
aliens as beings with slender, puny bodies, big heads encasing equally big
brains, and large, sinister eyes, have pervaded all media since the 1950”s.
They are the standard, cultural symbols of space invaders permanently etched in
the imaginations of anyone who has ever looked into a TV. It is no coincidence
that experiences of sleep paralysis and false memories will inevitably bring up
images already ingrained in minds since childhood.
8) An illogical leap is made by people who,
despite no evidence, believe that these alien abductions are taking place due
to the vastness of the universe and the billions of galaxies and planets. There
must be life out there, therefore humans are being visited and abducted. These
common errors in logical thinking are known as the Appeal to Probability, the
Appeal to Wishful Thinking, the Unfalsifiability fallacy, and the Affirming the
Consequent fallacy. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/rhetological-fallacies/
9) Many Christians and
people who believe in an invisible, spirit world see obvious parallels between
alien abduction and demonic possession. Some of the most common similarities
are levitation, trances, rape and speaking for the entity. “Abductees” who dabble
in the occult could be experiencing demonic activity, while the majority “encounters”
are purely psychological. For a partial list of similarities see: http://www.danielrjennings.org/SimilaritiesBetweenUFOActivityAndDemonicActivity.html
Guy P. Harrison, 50
Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True, Prometheus Books, 2012 (Points
1– 8)
Photo: designtoscano.com CC
Jerry De Luca is a Christian freelance writer who loves perusing dozens of interesting and informative publications. When he finds any useful info he summarizes it, taking the main points, and creates a (hopefully) helpful blog post.
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