UFO Believers get a Nod from Jung
I thought it appropriate as to the position of UFO believers and their arch-enemies, skeptics.
(Now some of you are familiar with Jung's nomenclature -- such as numinosity -- and his slant on things, so I've left intact his wording and applied bracketed inserts to make a specific point.)
From The Dark Side of God (Chapter 10) by C.G. Jung in
Doomsday! How the World Will End – and When, Edited by Martin Ebon [Signet/New
American Library, NY 1977]
The numinosity of the object makes it difficult to
handle intellectually. One always participates, for or against, and “absolute
objectivity” is more rarely achieved here than anywhere else.
If one has positive religious convictions, i.e., if one
believes, then doubt is felt as very disagreeable and also one fears it. For
this reason, one prefers not to analyze the object of belief.
If one has no … beliefs, then one does not like to admit the
feeling of deficit, but prates loudly about one’s liberal-mindedness and pats
oneself on the back for the noble frankness of one’s agnosticism.
From this standpoint, it is hardly possible to admit the
numinosity of [UFOs], and yet its very numinosity is just as great a hindrance
to critical thinking, because the unpleasant possibility might then arise that
one’s faith in enlightenment or agnosticism might be shaken. Both types feel,
without knowing it, the insufficiency of their argument.
Agnosticism maintains that it does not possess any knowledge
of God or anything metaphysical [such as UFOs], overlooking the fact that one
never possesses a metaphysical belief but is possessed by it.
Is not something that is and has real existence for us an
authority superior to any rational judgment, as has been shown over and over
again in the history of the human mind? [Page 92 ff.]
RR
posted by RRRGroup at
Sunday, December 29, 2013
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