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Pentagon confirms new UFO footage is real

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Is belief in UFOs religious? Today the world is reeling from a new video of an object flying like no human craft. But some think our UFO obsession is just a new answer to an ancient problem.

In July 2019, the USS Omaha was suddenly swarmed by 14 unknown aircraft. Video footage of the event released this week shows a small object shaped like a pill that bobs and weaves from side to side, before disappearing into the sea without a splash. A submarine sent to investigate found no sign of wreckage.

In recent months, several videos like this one have been verified by the US military. They have shown airborne objects that appear to have non propulsion system, yet can easily climb to 30,000 feet and move at supersonic speeds.

The PentagonThe headquarters of the US Defence Department, so-called because it has five sides. In 1967, peace protestors attempted unsuccessfully to levitate it (making it rise into the air) until all evil emissions had fled, in the hope of ending the Vietnam War. is due to release a report on its study of UFOs since the 1940s on 25 June, prompting many experts to start taking the question of UFOs much more seriously.

Previously, people who believed that extraterrestrialAnything from outside Earth. life had visited Earth were often dismissed as mad conspiracy theorists.

But in truth, believers in UFOs are not confined to the fringes of society. More than half of people in the USA, the UK and Germany believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. A poll earlier this year found that 67% of British people think the government should have a strategy for dealing with alien contact.

Some think belief in UFOs can actually tell us a lot about society.

Diana Pasulka, a professor of religion, claims that like religious belief, UFOs satisfy two deep-seated instincts in human beings: the need to understand our place in the universe and the need for some external power to make the world better.

In the religion of ufology, technology wields power over humanity and promises to revolutionise our lives.

And there are other similarities. Like any religion, ufology has its relics. At a secret location in New Mexico, there is a site where ufologists claim to have found fragments of material that cannot have originated on earth. Pasulka describes one of these materials as a metal alloy that is like “metallic frog skin”.

It is certainly true that human beings have often used gods to understand themselves by attributing human characteristics to divine beings. AristotleA student of Plato, tutor to Alexander the Great and the father of political philosophy. described god as “self-thinking thought”: he treated God as the highest possible form of a uniquely human attribute – the capacity for thought.

Karl MarxA 19th-Century German economist and philosopher who argued that capitalism was doomed to collapse. argued that gods are quite simply an imaginary projection of humanity. He thought that people used these projections to lend authority to their own moral rules, but that gods end up taking control of our lives and oppressing us.

In the same way, Pasulka argues, we use UFOs to understand who we are and where we stand in the universe.

But others think it is a shallow comparison. Religious belief is about more than just finding the meaning of our lives: it provides people with a moral code and a way of treating others. Belief in UFOs might be like a spiritual experience, but it is very far from being a religion.

Is belief in UFOs religious?

UFyes or UFno?

Yes, say some. All human beings have ever wanted is to be told who we are and what we are here for. For most of our history, and for billions of people still today, the answer to that question lies with a god or gods. But in an increasingly secular world, we are having to turn to different powers in the skies to give us a sense of where we stand in the universe.

Not at all, say others. Unlike religion, belief in UFOs is not about faith: it is about logic and cold, hard evidence. Given the size of the universe, it is vanishingly unlikely that intelligent life would have evolved on only one planet. And now there is mounting evidence that Earth is regularly visited by technology well beyond any human science.

Keywords

Pentagon – The headquarters of the US Defence Department, so-called because it has five sides. In 1967, peace protestors attempted unsuccessfully to levitate it (making it rise into the air) until all evil emissions had fled, in the hope of ending the Vietnam War.

Extraterrestrial – Anything from outside Earth.

Aristotle – A student of Plato, tutor to Alexander the Great and the father of political philosophy.

Karl Marx – A 19th-Century German economist and philosopher who argued that capitalism was doomed to collapse.

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  • Some people say

    “But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited? … Are we or they Lords of the World? … And how are all things made for man?”

    Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630), German astronomer. 

  • Dive in deeper

Six steps to discovery

    • ▶️ How experts started taking UFOs seriously. CBS News (8:38)
    • ???? A handy summary of the new video showing a UFO and what it means for the forthcoming Pentagon report. Fox 5 (450 words)
  1. Think about the paragraph in bold under the image. Based on your background reading what other questions do you have?
  2. Make sure that you understand all of the key words.
  3. Read the quotes under Some People Say in the left-hand column. What reflections do you have about this topic?
    1. Do you ever worry that aliens might invade Earth?
    2. Do human beings and societies need religion? Why?
    1. Get in a small group and draw what an alien visitor to Earth might look like. Imagine that they had evolved in very different ways from human beings.
    2. In a small group, come up with some ways in which a spaceship could travel at very high speeds without an apparent propulsion system, then draw your design.