Skeptic magazine contributor Michael Shermer covers wide
swaths of fantastic beliefs in his book 2011 The Believing Brain, but he's at
his level best when he takes on religious belief. As he notes:
"As a back-of-the envelope calculation, with an order of magnitude
accuracy, we can safely say that over the past ten thousand years of history
humans have created about ten thousand different religions and about one
thousand gods."
Shermer's point is that not all of these can be true or valid. The very
fact so many religions exist, and so many gods, means they are all relative only, not absolutes. Which comports with my own take in my book, Beyond Atheism, Beyond God', p. 12:
”When people use the word G-o-d they’re not talking or writing about an actual entity but a limited construct or ideation configured as a noun, which we call a God concept. Further, because it’s limited by content and comprehension, i.e. by finite minds with finite intelligence which can’t grasp all aspects, then all such concepts must be relative and subjective. This means that the Jewish concept of Yahweh, the Muslim concept of Allah, the Hindu concept of Brahmin and the Christian concept of the Trinity all stand in the same epistemological relation. From an informational point of view, none can be selected as “true” to the exclusion of the others. All are relative deities only.”
Sadly, however, Shermer in his recent Washington Post piece:
Opinion | I’ve reported on UFOs for decades. Here’s what I think. - Washington Post
Veers off from acceptable logical argument by invoking pseudo-psychological twaddle. He applies a 'homemade' quasi religious belief template to the recent exposure of serious UAP-UFO incidents such as revealed in the documentary, The Age of Disclosure, i.e.
The Age of Disclosure - Official Trailer | IMDbWhile looking carefully for a bona fide, serious analysis and criticism, all I really detected was a kind of half-baked dime store skeptic psychology misapplied to the UAP phenomenon, i.e.
"I have come to the conclusion that aliens are sky gods for skeptics, deities for atheists and a secular alternative to replace the rapidly declining religiosity in the West — particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, where, not coincidentally, most UAP sightings are made."
A 'secular alternative' to standard religiosity? I hardly think so. Confirming further that Shermer simply ignored the testimony and evidence presented by David Fravor and the other Navy pilots. So it isn't really clear what he's trying to do apart from simple dismissal, a la the late Über skeptic Philip Klass. This is confirmed when he delivers his three possible categories to account for UAP:
"In my own classification system, I put reported UFO and UAP sightings in three categories: 1. ordinary terrestrial (balloons, camera/lens effects, visual illusions, etc.), 2. extraordinary terrestrial (Russian or Chinese spy planes or drones capable of feats unheard of in the U.S.) and 3. extraordinary extraterrestrial (alien presence).
I strongly suspect that all UAP sightings fall into the first category, but other commentators suggest the second, noting that they could represent Russian or Chinese assets using technology as yet unknown to American scientists, capable of speeds and turns that seemingly defy all their physics and aerodynamics."
Wherein he gives short shrift to choice 3 (alien presence), clearly because he skipped over the Nimitz pilots' congressional testimony and the evidence presented from radar and other instruments. (Category 2 was summarily dismissed as unrealistic by Fravor and the other Nimitz pilots), because he avoids tackling or discussing the specifics, i.e. of the congressional UAP testimony of those like Ret. Navy Cmdr. David Fravor.
To try to support his opinion that UAP aren't real, he offers this astronaut (Scott Kelly) example:
"What about the reports of unexplained phenomena by pilots and astronauts? According to Scott Kelly, who has logged more than 15,000 hours over 30 years in planes and in space, “the environment that we fly in is very conducive to optical illusions.” At a NASA news conference on UAPs, he recalled his co-pilot seeing a mysterious object that turned out to be “a Bart Simpson balloon.”
Nicely cherry-picked, Maestro! Entirely omitted, is any attempt to sensibly account for the UAP Navy Cmdr. David Fravor confronted in the Nimitz (2004) incident. As Fravor noted in his House testimony, the object was estimated at forty-six feet in diameter and easily paced his own aircraft in velocity and exceeded it. It was no optical illusion as it was independently reported and observed by other pilots and separate instruments. Fravor emphasized how the object "shifted its longitudinal axis and paced his fighter which was at 15,000 ft. altitude, while the object was at 12,000 ft. before it rapidly accelerated in front of us and disappeared, adding (in his testimony):
"We started to turn back and then the controller interrupted and said 'Sir, you're not going to believe this but that thing turned around is at your cap point, roughly 60 miles in less than a minute.':
Fravor goes on to reference radar evidence that was never released:
"What you don't see is the radar tape which was never released and we don't know where it is right now. But there was active jamming the object put on our AG373 radar. I can get into modes later if you want. What was shocking to us is the incident was never investigated, tapes were never taken, leaving it just a great story with friends. It wasn't until 2009 Jay Stratton contacted me to investigate, he was part of the AATIP program with Lou Alizondo."
Then there were the more recent UAP hearings ('Inside Capitol Hill's Latest UFO Hearings', TIME, Dec. 9, p. 16) Shermer appears to have missed, wherein we learned of another blatant coverup. This based on the testimony of Ret. Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet who
"was on deployment in January, 2015 when one of the cockpit videos that were declassified in 2020 was first captured. According to his testimony, he and a handful of other Navy officers received an email with the video attached. However, the email vanished from their inboxes 'without explanation'. "
This is indeed serious, as it indicates a pattern of deliberate withholding of material evidence at ATTIP coordinator Elizondo also referenced in his book, Imminent.
But Shermer in his yen to dismiss, simply avoids these hardball examples in favor of a cherry-picked optical illusion. Which then allows him to reduce all UAP sightings to a quasi religious belief in 'sky gods'. Heck, he even cites an academic paper to try to get us to buy his own dime store skeptic psychology:
"What I think is actually going on is a deep, religious-like impulse to believe that there is a godlike, omnipotent intelligence out there who 1. knows we’re here, 2. is monitoring us and is concerned for our well-being and 3. will save us if we’re good. Researchers have found, for example, an inverse relationship between religiosity, meaning and belief in aliens."
Shermer's major fault in his WaPo piece is applying similar religious belief "logic" as in his earlier book, though with a more secular twist. Again, revealing that neither he nor the researchers whose paper he cites ever did a deep dive into the actual physical evidence for UAP as disclosed in the UAP hearings.
But this also harkens back to similar flaws in his book, The Believing Brain, such as injecting too many irrelevancies. I noted examples in a 2011 blog post, wherein he specifically attempts to negate conspiracy in the JFK assassination using this weird "test":
"Any expression of strong suspicions of either governments or companies, or attributing too much power to individuals"
So, any such expressions immediately disqualify the person's claim for a serious conspiracy in any given event. Iran-Contra? Pure coincidence, nothing to see there. Please forget that Iran –Contra Report. Forget the U.S. shipping Israeli Hawk and TOW missiles to Iran from
1985-86 to obtain the release of American hostages held in the Middle East, despite
an embargo on such sales. Ignore that the money from the sales of these arms
was to be funneled into Nicaragua to support the Rightist “Contras’, a
violation of the then Boland Amendment, and basically exposing the
Reagan administration’s covert support for paramilitary activities conducted
against the Sandinista government.
Hell, by Shermer's criterion, The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and
Carl Bernstein ought to never have been suspicious of the Watergate break-in
and the role of Nixon's government? Had that been the case, the Watergate
conspiracy would never have been exposed, and Nixon would never have been
forced from office! So much for that one!
What about companies? Can't be suspicious of them? Is Shermer's memory so short he can't recall a
certain Houston company called ENRON in 2001, which set up hundreds of dummy
accounts in the Caribbean and used them to funnel money to, and at the same
time kept other liabilities off its U.S. books to fool shareholders? More than
21,000 Enron employees who'd been duped into buying its shares- while Kenny Lay
and his cohort profited- paid the price.
It appears then - certainly to me - Shermer has a pattern of using convoluted and balmy excuses, rationales and objections when it serves his purpose: mainly as a dismissive shortcut. He does it again in his WaPo piece on UAP - using an astronaut's optical illusion to dismiss all the UAP incidents as 'balloons' or some other phantasm.
A number of the comments after the article are revelatory and show at least some readers saw through Shermer's attempt to dismiss the phenomenon:
I'm a
professional astrophysicist. I thought the same way you did....until I started
seeing the radar and FLIR evidence...Until I started hearing from high end
government officials and CIA members...Then I realized it was not Bart Simpson
balloons, advanced Russian and Chinese spy planes.....it's something else...and
it is real.
---
What a
wasted column. For those of us that have seen these things it's obvious Shermer
doesn't know what he's talking about.
His bias is evident. Don't believe some of the Navy's best pilots, the word of former astronauts, or the many brave scientists willing to buck establishment science, not to mention the hundreds of thousands or millions of people that have seen something mainstream science cowardly avoids.
---
This doesn't
really explain the numerous sightings by military experts- documented with
radar and video. These aren't religious zealots. Fearing that anything
currently unexplainable must be false and part of a religious impulse isn't
logical or skeptical, its just aversion.
Why not comment on the gimbal videos released? No logical explanation for those - but maybe that is why it was left out.
I don't buy
this article or its premise at all.
---
I watched
the documentary entitled Age of Disclosure with the videos of Navy fighter pilots
encountering UFO objects! I worked for the Department of Defense for 22 years
and believe the pilots.
Condescending,
and he really doesn't discuss those incidents where it is unexplainable. To put
it another way, his skepticism is too absolute and a default position that is
eristic, almost beyond rationality. He lacks curiosity. I don't think that
existential folks look at UFOs as some god-like thing. It's more of a curiosity
to understand. Shermer just likes to say "You're wrong" just to be
mean, for lack of a better word, that will pass the filter here, or get some
sort of satisfaction from being oppositional defiant.
---
Nobody
disputes that most sightings can ultimately be explained, but there are many
accounts that are supported by radar, high tech imaging, and very experienced
military pilots, who often speak out reluctantly to protect their careers from
others unwilling to be open minded. I listen with curiosity and my own
scientific engineering background. If you want to raise the topic, do so
seriously and give the scientific credibility it deserves. I dont discount
skepticism, but i don't discount credible witnesses and data, and will remain
open and interested. I want to hear more from experienced pilots and I want
Congress to continue to hold hearings and push hard on the Pentagon to open up
about what it may have. I appreciate their courage to look into this and hold
the government to account, which is something dearly needed today. And I ask
the Post to have the courage to be open about this and present the other side
to Mr Shermer's skepticism. 60 Minutes did this a while back. You should too.
Don't hide behind a magazine publisher.
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