UFO: The Greatest Story Ever Denied.

[_RockSlider]

I wonder how many orthodox Mormons believe in UFO's. My guess is the ratio would be high, possibly even in contrast to other groups.

I have always been surprised by the adult members I know that are over the top with the likes of Harry Potter. Anything mystical/magical is going to grab their attention.
However, I must say that in my young 20's I used to head to Moab Utah, to a camp spot on the Manti La Sal which over looked Castle Valley. I would plan on going down as close to a new moon as I could find on these camping trips to watch the heavens.

I saw a lot of unexplainable things in that 270 degree view overlooking Moab, Canyon lands, Arches, the Book cliffs and east towards Grand Junction. I got quite hung up in it all for several years. Even here in my beloved Heber Utah I've always seen my "lights". I never got a good anal probing, but I do believe there is much more to this universe than the third dimensional view of it which we, as humans can perceive.

Having spent my adult life in electronics and software (started out repairing analog tube radios for the Air Force in the 1976), the explosion of technology in a 30 year span, in comparison to the history of mankind would seem very hard to explain.

I watched the whole video and enjoyed it. Thanks for posting on this topic Ray. It's unfortunate to see Darth and you at such odds.

[_gramps]

I was 17. It was the year 1976.

I was with a friend together hanging out on the "U" above the university, in Salt Lake City. It was 3 in the morning. We smoked a little grass and started hiking up the hill. Shortly thereafter, my friend said, "What is that?" as a UFO came over the top of the mountain and stopped right above us. It was really close. And eery. I really thought someone or something was checking us out.

Just a couple of moments later, it took off across the valley in the direction of Dugway Proving Grounds and seemed to be there in a flash of a second.

Of course, we were tripping on windowpane at the time, so maybe it didn't happen?

[_Ray A]

Now, Ray. When you say things like that, it invites comments about your gullibility that would be inappropriate for the Celestial Forum.

What I call being open minded is what you call “gullibility”. I can imagine your reaction had you been there that night we all saw the UFOs. I can well imagine your verdict; they were “weather balloons.” You should not too harshly judge what you haven’t seen with your own eyes.

You are also burying the needle on the irony meter when you presuppose that I have never looked at purported UFO evidences, then insist that I already had my mind made up when my conclusion is that your previous video was a UFO fast and testimony meeting after I watched it.

You lie. You were arguing ad nauseam against what you had not yet watched, on both occasions. Your mind was made up long before these discussions even began, just like the other exmos who mock Warren Aston and think he’s a circus clown.

Oh, by the way, your documentary is not quite accurate in the statement it attributes to Douglas MacArthur at about 5:07. Neither in his talking with the mayor of Naples, Italy, nor in addressing cadets at West Point did General MacArthur actually make an affirmative statement, as characterized in the video, that "the next war will be an interplanetary war." (Never mind that he would have been wrong, anyway, as there have been numerous wars since MacArthur's lifetime, and the only ones against alien invaders have been in movie theaters or on television.)

Nor did MacArthur give a speech at West Point in 1955 (the date indicated in your documentary).

In talking with Achille Lauro, the mayor of Naples, MacArthur speculated that someday, perhaps a thousand years from now, science and technology would develop to the point that our wars would be interplanetary.

And his speech at West Point, taken in context, makes it clear that he was talking about the potential of mankind, not some imminent alien threat (the knowledge of which we are meant to infer he had because he was a general in the U.S. army). This is what he really said:

We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms of harnessing the cosmic energy, of making winds and tides work for us, of creating unheard of synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of spaceships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all times.

Sauce.

Well what a stupid statement to make, no, not you (for once) but MacArthur. I actually thought that even if MacArthur had made these statements they were 1) foolhardy in the extreme (as if we’re going to fight off technology possibly a million or two years ahead of us), and 2) I thought it was a bad decision on the part of the producers to include this ridiculous statement. Listening to it in MacArthur’s best 1940s “war voice” honestly voice made me cringe. But thanks for saving me the time by doing the research anyway. Otherwise, I thought you’d have more substantial criticisms.

At about 15:30, the narrator informs us that government employees went on radio and television to tell the "naïve, gullible, and patriotic American public" about UFO's.

But at about 3:30, a colonel (of what service branch and whether he is retired, we are not told) says that the government should release the putative information about space aliens to the young people and the people of this country (the United States) because people "want to hear it" and that "they're not stupid."

So which is it? Are the people of the United States naïve, and gullible, and inclined to believe whatever they are spoon-fed from the government because they are patriotic? Or do they want the truth and are not stupid?

Or do the producers of your documentary intend for us to conclude that people who are not persuaded by the ufologist narrative are "naïve and gullible," whereas those who do believe in space aliens being here-and-now are the ones who want the truth and are not stupid?

Let me explain that for you. At 15:30 the narrator was speaking about the government campaign to deceive those (the public) they felt would fall for their lies (and most did; and were confused about all the baloney about “weather balloons”), and shockingly many still do today – like yourself. What you are seeing is successful government propaganda now into its seventieth decade! That’s also what Project Blue Book was about – propaganda to shut up the Ufologists once and for all and incite the public to brand them as “cranks”, “lunatics” and “crazies”.

If you were informed about ufology you'd know that the man speaking at 3:30 (after Edgar Mitchell) is the late Colonel Philip J. Corso, author of The Day After Roswell.

Don’t confuse the government’s campaign of lies and distortions to Corso’s genuine desire to see them given the truth. The whole film is about bringing the truth to the people.

I'll have more later.

[_Darth J]

Now, Ray. When you say things like that, it invites comments about your gullibility that would be inappropriate for the Celestial Forum.

What I call being open minded is what you call “gullibility”. I can imagine your reaction had you been there that night we all saw the UFOs. I can well imagine your verdict; they were “weather balloons.” You should not too harshly judge what you haven’t seen with your own eyes.

Are you referring back to that story where you admitted that you do not know what you saw and I repeatedly explained how it is impossible for you to have calculated the speed of whatever you saw as you claim to have done?

You are also burying the needle on the irony meter when you presuppose that I have never looked at purported UFO evidences, then insist that I already had my mind made up when my conclusion is that your previous video was a UFO fast and testimony meeting after I watched it.

You lie. You were arguing ad nauseam against what you had not yet watched, on both occasions. Your mind was made up long before these discussions even began, just like the other exmos who mock Warren Aston and think he’s a circus clown.

Yes, I had never heard of---nor read anything about---the UFO phenomenon prior to your video homework assignments.

Oh, by the way, your documentary is not quite accurate in the statement it attributes to Douglas MacArthur at about 5:07. Neither in his talking with the mayor of Naples, Italy, nor in addressing cadets at West Point did General MacArthur actually make an affirmative statement, as characterized in the video, that "the next war will be an interplanetary war." (Never mind that he would have been wrong, anyway, as there have been numerous wars since MacArthur's lifetime, and the only ones against alien invaders have been in movie theaters or on television.)

Nor did MacArthur give a speech at West Point in 1955 (the date indicated in your documentary).

In talking with Achille Lauro, the mayor of Naples, MacArthur speculated that someday, perhaps a thousand years from now, science and technology would develop to the point that our wars would be interplanetary.

And his speech at West Point, taken in context, makes it clear that he was talking about the potential of mankind, not some imminent alien threat (the knowledge of which we are meant to infer he had because he was a general in the U.S. army). This is what he really said:

We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms of harnessing the cosmic energy, of making winds and tides work for us, of creating unheard of synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of spaceships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all times.

Sauce.

Well what a stupid statement to make, no, not you (for once) but MacArthur. I actually thought that even if MacArthur had made these statements they were 1) foolhardy in the extreme (as if we’re going to fight off technology possibly a million or two years ahead of us), and 2) I thought it was a bad decision on the part of the producers to include this ridiculous statement. Listening to it in MacArthur’s best 1940s “war voice” honestly voice made me cringe. But thanks for saving me the time by doing the research anyway. Otherwise, I thought you’d have more substantial criticisms.

See, the thing is that what the documentary played was not MacArthur's voice. He never said that.

I agree that faking a recorded statement that MacArthur never actually made was a bad decision on the producers' part, since it does not do a lot to bolster their credibility.

At about 15:30, the narrator informs us that government employees went on radio and television to tell the "naïve, gullible, and patriotic American public" about UFO's.

But at about 3:30, a colonel (of what service branch and whether he is retired, we are not told) says that the government should release the putative information about space aliens to the young people and the people of this country (the United States) because people "want to hear it" and that "they're not stupid."

So which is it? Are the people of the United States naïve, and gullible, and inclined to believe whatever they are spoon-fed from the government because they are patriotic? Or do they want the truth and are not stupid?

Or do the producers of your documentary intend for us to conclude that people who are not persuaded by the ufologist narrative are "naïve and gullible," whereas those who do believe in space aliens being here-and-now are the ones who want the truth and are not stupid?

Let me explain that for you. At 15:30 the narrator was speaking about the government campaign to deceive those (the public) they felt would fall for their lies (and most did; and were confused about all the baloney about “weather balloons”), and shockingly many still do today – like yourself. What you are seeing is successful government propaganda now into its seventieth decade! That’s also what Project Blue Book was about – propaganda to shut up the Ufologists once and for all and incite the public to brand them as “cranks”, “lunatics” and “crazies”.

If you were informed about ufology you'd know that the man speaking at 3:30 (after Edgar Mitchell) is the late Colonel Philip J. Corso, author of The Day After Roswell.

Don’t confuse the government’s campaign of lies and distortions to Corso’s genuine desire to see them given the truth. The whole film is about bringing the truth to the people.

I'll have more later.

Okay, so you're agreeing with me that the documentary just puts this guy up there without explaining who he is or why we care what he says.

But if people are so confused and gullible and whatever, then what is the basis of the expectation that they will be able to discern the "truth"?

So far I'm not seeing a lot of difference between people recognizing UFO evidences and people recognizing Book of Mormon evidences. Nor am I seeing a difference between the claim that the "truth" is being suppressed by people who don't want the "truth" to get out, in the case of either UFO's or the Book of Mormon.

It's kind of funny that all I did about this latest video is ask what it was going to be like, but now that I am making specific comments about it I am closed-minded and have not looked at this overwhelming mountain of evidence such that anyone who is not firmly convinced that space aliens are on the Earth is a drooling moron.

I'm still watching your video, but unlike Stanton Friedman I also have other things to do,

[_Quasimodo]

There are (by current count) over 170 billion galaxies in the Universe (looked it up).

New data from the Kepler telescope gives estimates of 50 billion planets orbiting stars in our galaxy.

Estimates put the number of inhabitable planets in our galaxy (only by our own standards of what's inhabitable) at 500 million.

The odds of someone else being out there are astronomical (pardon the pun) in favor of it being true.

The only question is, can they get here given the distances? Current physics says no, but the understanding of our physics changes continually. Who really knows what is possible?

I think there may be a better chance that alien craft (or whatever you would like to call them) are getting here than I would for the existence of God.

[_consiglieri]

Dear Ray,

I watched the first ten minutes of the video and it seems to be very interesting, but as many have noted, the music interferes with my being able to hear the words.

Is there some place I could order a DVD of this program so I don't have to listen to it on the computer?

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

[_Ray A]

I watched the first ten minutes of the video and it seems to be very interesting, but as many have noted, the music interferes with my being able to hear the words.

Is there some place I could order a DVD of this program so I don't have to listen to it on the computer?

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

I agree Consig (in fact you've probably offered the best criticism so far). It is annoying where it occurs, but it doesn't occur all through the movie, and this isn't the first movie to make such a poor choice of where to place untimely and unwanted music. If you persevere I think you will be rewarded.

[_Ray A]

The only question is, can they get here given the distances? Current physics says no, but the understanding of our physics changes continually. Who really knows what is possible?

As Ben Rich noted, "we have to figure out where Einstein went wrong". They did not get here by conventional chemical propulsion systems. The discovery of a moon base (back in the 1960s) nevertheless also tells me that it may involve some "sizeable" time, and they can't just zap between solar systems in seconds.

Remember that America's plan was to colonise the moon and set up space stations, and even as a teenager I remember reading about the first planned moon flights for civilians. The moon was going to be a sort of "first base" to colonising space. Apollo 17 was the last moon landing in 1972. For 40 years America has left the moon untouched (in spite of $billions in expenditure, including lost lives, to get there), and all of the latest reports, from 2009 onwards, indicate that they have no plans to continue with the once "great adventure".

Obama: we don’t like the Moon - February 02, 2010.

Why? Because they were warned to stay away from the moon, but don't expect to find this sort of information in the daily media.

[_Ray A]

Are you referring back to that story where you admitted that you do not know what you saw and I repeatedly explained how it is impossible for you to have calculated the speed of whatever you saw as you claim to have done?

I admitted I didn’t see the occupants of the craft. You explained nothing of substance, and my calculation of approximate speed remains intact. Point A to Point B plus time equals approximate speed, which was beyond the sound barrier, with no sound emanating from the craft – at all. If it was piloted by, say, NASA crew, then America has some incredible locked-up aeronautic secrets the public know nothing about.

Yes, I had never heard of---nor read anything about---the UFO phenomenon prior to your video homework assignments.

You have indeed, from The Journal of New England Skepticism, hoping to confirm your a priori conclusions.

Okay, so you're agreeing with me that the documentary just puts this guy up there without explaining who he is or why we care what he says.

Do I have to “agree with you” on what was obvious from the start?

But if people are so confused and gullible and whatever, then what is the basis of the expectation that they will be able to discern the "truth"?

The Holy Ghost, of course. Nothing about “discerning” was presented. Facts were presented, like the conversations between Houston and Gemini 7 and Discovery, as one example. When Borman says he sees a bogey at 10 o’clock high, over 4,000 miles away from earth, I don’t think he was referring to a Cessna 150. Many astronauts know a lot more than they have let on to the public – so does NASA. In fact NASA has told them to shut up! And not talk about their experiences publicly. The early Roswell media reports said what was discovered – an alien spacecraft, and recovered alien bodies – blasted all over the front pages, and then it mysteriously turned into a “weather balloon”. Something like 1,500 rounds of artillery were fired at a mysterious UFO hovering over LA in 1942, all unable to destroy the craft, and then it too turned into a “weather balloon”.

Battle of Los Angeles.

So far I'm not seeing a lot of difference between people recognizing UFO evidences and people recognizing Book of Mormon evidences. Nor am I seeing a difference between the claim that the "truth" is being suppressed by people who don't want the "truth" to get out, in the case of either UFO's or the Book of Mormon.

Then I really can’t help you. Others seem to have no problem seeing the difference. I grant that there will be skeptics who will never be convinced, even informed ones, and perhaps you fall into that category.

It's kind of funny that all I did about this latest video is ask what it was going to be like, but now that I am making specific comments about it I am closed-minded and have not looked at this overwhelming mountain of evidence such that anyone who is not firmly convinced that space aliens are on the Earth is a drooling moron.

You are not open minded, because you blatantly mock and joke about that which you haven’t experienced, and don’t understand, and you're desperately searching for "weather balloon" explanations. You have approached this subject with anything but rationality.

[_Dr. Shades]

I watched the video. Very, very interesting stuff.