The UFO skeptics’ belief system(s)

“A doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt”; “A doubt without an end is not even a doubt.” [Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 1969, from The Classical Tradition, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 2010, Page 892]

I’ve been at this long enough to have some thoughts on the inner workings of the skeptical mind that intrudes on my pages and also a few other pages [Kevin Randle’s, Above Top Secret, et al.].

CDA [U.K. resident Christopher Allan, who has been at this as long as I have and maybe more].

CDA, down deep, believes something odd happened at Roswell and proceeds to press the matter with skeptical asides, hoping that someone, sometime will provide proof of an extraterrestrial connection to the Roswell incident.

CDA is open to an ET explanation, even while seeming to eschew the idea of an ET explanation.

There are sympathetic musings all over his commentary, but he hasn’t seen anything that confirms for him what he believed in his youth and still believes, hesitatingly, today: a flying disk crashed near Roswell, but the fact of it has been submerged for a myriad of reasons, none of those reasons clear to CDA or anyone else.

This is where his skepticism resides: in the idea that no one could cover up such a monumental event, for such a long period s sixty years plus.

Yet, he thinks that something uncanny and flying saucer related happened near Roswell in 1947, yet he will protest this thought process I’m thrusting upon him.

But read his energetic comments about Roswell and many other early flying saucer accounts and you can only conclude that he, at one time, believed the phenomenon to be ET-related, only to be flummoxed by the seemingly fraudulent activities and accoutrements to the topic by George Adamski and especially Cedric Allingham, CDA’s fellow countryman whom he unmasked as astronomer Patrick Moore creating a hoax:

“[The] unravelling the mystery came in 1986 as a result of research by Christopher Allan and Steuart Campbell which they revealed in the skeptical Fortean journal Magonia.

In Flying Saucer from Moore's?, they argued that the prose of Allingham's book showed significant similarities to the writing of the famous astronomer Patrick Moore.” [Wikipedia]

Today CDA presses the issue that Stanton Friedman unconsciously (or purposefully) coached Roswell citizens in the late 1970s in the ET proposition for the Roswell incident (with which I am in agreement).

So, CDA’s skepticism is rooted in the prevarications about flying saucers, not that they don’t exist or that nothing odd happened at Roswell.

He thinks something happened at Roswell, and I get the impression that the happening he thinks occurred was more ET oriented than anything else but no one can prove it, not even the prolific ET-biased David Rudiak.

And thus CDA is skeptical in facile terms.

The other skeptic that sometimes visits here is Lance Moody.

Lance is not a UFO doubter by a long shot, he just thinks that the hooey presented for an ET presence to explain such episodes as Roswell, the Trent/McMinnville saucer photo, et cetera are too skimpy to provide proof of anything.

Lance dislikes chicanery and is noted for exposing Philip Imbrogno’s education credentials plus the embarrassing Kodachrome slides mummy placard exposé.

Lance isn’t a radical skeptic, but he is a forceful opponent of nonsense and attempted trickery when UFO event explanations are fulsome, often taking to task David Rudiak’s excessive circumlocutions to explain Roswell and other noted UFO cases.

(Then there are Robert Sheaffer and Tim Printy, about whom I will not say much, except to note that they both take on classic UFO reports or sightings in an exact way, Sheaffer the more thorough of the two.)

Zoam Chomsky [The Iron Skeptic] is from the atheist school of skepticism, proselytizing against UFOs as if they do not exist at all, but, seeming, to me, to believe, in his heart of hearts, they do.

(Only the fool says, in his heart “there is no God.” Psalms)

Zoam is too energetic in his UFO denial. He wants to crush out a deep-rooted belief that caused him grief in his younger days, it seems to me.

(The psychoanalytic pursuit of his qualms must be for another time.)

The only real, objective skeptic I’m familiar with is French psychologist Gilles Fernandez.

Gilles is fervent in his skepticism, resorting to massive “evidence” that refutes classic UFO sightings of the past and today, such as the 1896 Airship sightings or those damnable mummy slides that caused havoc and strife for many of us.

My only problem with Gilles’ skeptical approach, if I have any problem at all, is how he musters all counter arguments against a UFO event, everything, including a kitchen sink.

He sometimes piles upon legitimate refutations accreted nonsense, like his Venus explanation for some of those late 1800 airship reports, overlooking the obvious journalistic tomfoolery that generated many of the reported sightings.

In his zeal to condemn anti-scientific thinking, he gathers debunking material that is extraneous to his arguments, and unnecessary.

But that said, he doesn’t seem to have a deep-rooted, hidden, unconscious belief that UFOs or airships or flying saucers might be extraterrestrial, as CDA does or maybe Lance (or even me).

Gilles is a bona fide skeptic.

Well, that's how I see it. Now let the denials spring forth.

RR