Entry 1054, on 2009-07-16 at 21:54:41 (Rating 4, Religion)
Today a friend told me about someone who he had talked to who said that about 30 years ago he had witnessed a real UFO event. Normally I would say he was making it up but a few other people also talked to people who remembered the events although the details they remembered were a bit different. Also there were a few people around at the time who wrote down information about a story circulating at the time.
I know all of that sounds a bit uncertain but there was also the case of the person who received communications directly from the aliens. And after all, there are millions, possibly billions, of people around the world who think UFOs might exist so I think we should take the idea seriously.
If you read the above and think I might be going a bit crazy you will not be surprised to hear that I am engaging in a little bit of rhetoric to make a point here. Although all of the above facts are more or less true I don't think we should take them too seriously because the strength of the evidence is too low to make a convincing case for anything, and its certainly too weak to support the controversial assertion that UFOs are visitors from other planets.
But the evidence above is about the same as what we have for the events described in the Bible about the alleged life of Jesus, except the Bible story is even more suspicious because it all happened 2000 years ago and various organisations have a lot to gain from saying it is true.
So let's look at the evidence. The life of Jesus is described in Biblical texts such as the gospels but they were all written at least 30 years after the events described by people who weren't there and they aren't even consistent on many points. The only text written at the time was from people, such as Paul, who reported everything second hand because he never met Jesus. And the people who reported receiving messages directly from God have just a subjective, personal experience to base their claims on.
Its all very weak when you look at it. Its certainly far weaker that the evidence we have supporting UFOs and most people don't take that too seriously.
But what about the evidence from other sources, such as Josephus and Tacitus? They were well respected, accurate historians of the time. Unfortunately even they turn out to be either fake references made up by later Christians or extremely vague second and third hand information with little credibility.
Its a bit like how UFO supporters might use a report in our local paper a couple of days ago about a "UFO" sited here. The photo looked very much like a bright star photographed through a telephoto lens which wasn't being held very still by the photographer yet anyone wanting to support UFOs could use the superficial report as evidence that something unexplained existed. I wasn't there so I can't say for sure that it was a star but using that incident as evidence for UFOs is ridiculous.
So anyone who thinks the stories about Jesus in the Bible are true in any way should think again. Maybe a person roughly fitting the description might have existed at the time but the miracles and other unlikely events almost certainly never happened!
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