Get your own Free Home PageI define a religion as a belief system based upon non-falsifiable hypotheses. An example would be the assertion that each of us possesses an immortal soul, or that an unknowable God created the universe. These hypotheses are non-falsifiable because we are unable to test them, even in principle, because of the way "soul" and "God" are defined. They cannot be measured in the laboratory, and so, we cannot perform an experiment to prove that they do not exist (if they don't.)
To define what I mean by "science entertainment" I need to refer to the world of professional wrestling, otherwise known as "sports entertainment". It is a kind of sport in that it is a display of athletic prowess but it is different from a true sport in a number of crucial ways. Most importantly, it is not competitive. There is no real struggle between the wrestlers, but rather, a kind of improvisational stuntsmanship. The matches are at least planned ("booked") beforehand and often rehearsed, and the wrestlers must in fact co-operate with one another, "sell" each other's moves, the loser "jobbing" to put the winner "over". In professional wrestling jargon, fans that believe the matches to be real are "marks".
Most UFO buffs earnestly believe that aliens are visiting the Earth, it seems to me, and I have been trying to figure out why. Those that have seen a UFO themselves, believe in alien visitations as a kind of religion, as far as I can tell. They go to great lengths to justify the fact that not one scrap of real physical evidence for alien visitations has been found - ever. The hypothesis of alien visitations is rendered non-falsifiable either by the invocation of a world-wide conspiracy or by saying that the aliens are so advanced technologically that there is no way for we mere mortals to prove their presence among us.
It is easy enough to draw superficial parallels between UFOlogy and a conventional religion. For example, UFOlogy has its Holy Grail (physical evidence), gods (the aliens), prophets (Lazar, Friedman, Good, etc.), and Roswell, New Mexico has even been declared a "sacred site" by UFO buffs. Non-believers are demonized as "debunkers" or as agents of the Government Conspiracy. Not to believe the testimony of the "experiencers" is an act of stupidity or perfidy.
But such parallels are perhaps too easy to draw, so let us now compare UFOlogy and professional wrestling. Are UFOlogists really doing science, or are they just going through the motions?
I believe that there is a second kind of UFO buff, who may not have had a UFO sighting of his own, but who has been impressed by the "science entertainment" contained in the popular literature on the subject. The causal reader should ask himself "why is it that career scientists, almost to a man, ignore UFOlogy completely"? Are they stupid? Are they closed-minded? Or are they able to tell at a glance the difference between real science and "science entertainment"?
In real sport there is a real athletic competition, and in real science there is a real competition of ideas. Real sport has strict rules, in "sports entertainment" the rules are bent to enhance the spectacle and in UFOlogy the rules of science are bent or ignored in order to justify a continued belief in alien visitations. Flying saucer "marks" really do exist, ignorant of how science really works and of why the arguments put forward to justify the belief in alien visitations violate the basic principles of the scientific method. It may look like real science, but it isn't.
Of course, occasionally, a pair of professional wrestlers will stop co-operating for some reason and a "shoot" fight will break out. And perhaps one day, aliens will land on the White House Lawn. In the mean time, if UFO buffs want to believe in alien visitations as a kind of religion, fair enough. I happen to believe that everybody has the right to believe any religion he chooses. But please, let's stop pretending that a belief in alien visitations is real science.
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