Unidentified Flying Objects: Fact or Fiction?

Unidentified Flying Objects: Fact or Fiction?

Unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, as they're fondly called, are

one of the century's most intriguing and controversial mysteries. Since

ancient times, UFOs of all types have been accounted for. More today than

ever, hundreds of thinkers, theologians, and scientists have tried to

answer why there are or whether there aren't UFOs. According to some, the

speculation that UFOs are alien spacecrafts from another world is an

absurd and foolish proposal. Others vehemently disagree and assert that

extraterrestrial life is not only possible, but such life forms may be

superior, technologically advanced beings who visit our Earth regularly.

Are these "flying saucers" a figment of our imagination? Or, are they

a genuine reality we prefer to dismiss because we fear the scary truth

that we are not the only master race? Are we hesitant because society

dubs such "immature" psycho tantamount to subscribing to belief in ghosts?

These are a few of the many pertinent UFO questions the mature individual

must address.

One of the most popular theories that support and explains the

existence of alien beings is the ancient astronaut theory. This theory

contains three main schools of thought. The first states that aliens bred

with our primitive forebears thereby creating modern man. The second is

quite similar. Aliens performed genetic engineering on apes thereby

creating the Homo Sapiens and man's intelligence. The third, and least

accepted, is that colonists from another galaxy came to Earth, mated with

the primitives and established a high level of culture, before being

destroyed by some natural catastrophe. And upon this catastrophe and

destruction, we build and grow (Fitzgerald 1). Berossus, a Babylonian

scholar, may have been the first astronaut historian. He said that "

animals endowed with reason" bestowed the Sumerian culture before 3000

BCE. The Sumerians, along with their cultural inheritors, the

Babylonians, never referred to such beings as gods. Rather they were

depicted as "disgusting abominations," a description only deserved by

uninvited alien visitors (2).

One step further takes the astronaut theory and surmises that with

it, we can understand the later religious cultures, such as the Hebrews

who are thought to have borrowed much of Sumerian practice. Such

religions and secret societies, with their elaborate and complicated

rituals may actually be "preserving from a previous epoch fragments of an

esoteric and little understood knowledge, just as the Egyptian, Hebrew,

and Mayan priests guarded in their temples the inspired word of their

self-possessed creators (3)." Alien originators may have set down certain