© 1998 Merlyn Cox
© 1998 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
Recently, with some extra time over vacation, I read another book on UFOs. It’s been a subject of interest for some time, as it apparently has been for most Americans, and it seems to be increasing. I consider myself an open skeptic on the matter. There have been enough reports to be intriguing, but none unqualifiedly convincing. That, I think, is what Carl Sagan meant when he said, in effect, that there simply wasn’t a shred of evidence to prove that UFOs exist, or that we have been visited. I think it would have been more accurate to say there is a tremendous amount of evidence — tens, if not hundreds of thousand of sightings from all over the world-however, most of it is poor, and some ludicrous. Sagan is right: you can’t point to a single piece of evidence, some artifact that all reasonable people can examine and affirm that it’s not of this world. I can’t recall how many TV documentaries and reports of suspected UFOs I’ve seen that began with a comment, such as, “Well, I saw this bright light in the sky and it moved like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” I often find myself saying out loud, “Give me a break.”
I’m reminded of a time recently when I attended a minor league ball game. At one point I looked up and saw a strange dark object moving slowly just above the horizon to my left. It appeared to be a huge triangular shaped craft, with bright lights, just like the ones I’d seen on the TV documentaries. But just as I was becoming intrigued, the object banked over, and the sun reflected off its top side and I could see it for what it was, a large commercial airliner that was likely heading for the airport nearby. I never heard it, although it wasn’t that far away. Apparently the conditions were just right to mask the sound in my location. It reinforced my skepticism of most so called UFO reports.
However, there is a bit more to be considered. Not all the evidence is that flimsy. After throwing out all the easily explainable, the figments of over-zealous imaginations, and outright hoaxes, it still leaves a lot of sightings by credible witnesses that can’t easily be written off.
Even the Roswell affair has taken on new life. Despite the latest “explanation” by the Air Force, and the conflicting reports of what happened, there is a stubborn residue of witnesses and reports that have a ring of truth to them. At least these people don’t appear to be making up stories. They are convinced something “out of this world” happened. And in recent years there have been more firsthand accounts added by those who swear by their story — some civilian and some military. Some are now deceased; others are still living. Some can be reasonably discounted; others can’t.
The recent book I read was by Philip Corso, a colonel in the Army, now retired. [1] His credentials are impressive and have been verified to the satisfaction of at least some researchers. He claims that he was privy to inside information and conversations on the Roswell incident at the highest level during the administration of two presidents, Truman and Eisenhower, and was on the national security staff of President Eisenhower.
While he was not at Roswell at the time of the supposed crash, he claims to have been the post duty officer at an air field in Kansas the day that a plane transporting some the debris landed for a stopover on its way to the Air Material Command at Wright Field in Ohio. He claims to have seen an alien body as well as some of the wreckage, and was so shaken by the event that he pushed it out of his mind as something he didn’t want to deal with.
A reconnection would later be made when he became Chief of the Foreign Technology Division of the Army’s Research and Devleopment Department, and was given the assignment to investigate material from the Roswell crash and seek to farm out this material to industry for “back” engineering and seeding the development of new technologies.
It reads almost too good to be true for those looking for positive evidence — and it may be. Even some UFOlogists are critical of the book. However, those in the UFO research community are spending a great deal of energy attacking each other and appear quite jealous of their own sources and theories. And Corso isn’t the only military person who has come forth after all these years to claim firsthand knowledge of such events.
It does seem clear that the military, for whatever reason, has been involved in a cover- up, whether it was deliberate, or a matter of naive oversight. The documents released through the Freedom of Information Act make this one of the few certainties in the whole matter. Why this is so is uncertain. Having read Corso’s book, I can better understand, I think, the reason the military might be concerned about possible Soviet involvement, even in suspected but unproven cases, as well as the impact such knowledge might have on the nation if it were proven. The impact of the recent White House scandal on the fragile psychological underpinning of the economy is a tiny ripple compared to what might have happened then, or could happen now, should “proof” come forth of extraterrestrial visitations, especially abductions.
I’m not convinced that most people, even in our supposedly more enlightened era, are ready to easily assimilate such knowledge into their understanding. It would be a profound threat to many, including many in the religious community who still hold, by and large, a pre-Copernican cosmology and theology. For readers of The Urantia Book, it would not be surprising to discover that other civilizations might be looking in on us. And, although I’m convinced the more advanced a civilization is the more likely the observation would be benign, there is no guarantee. We might be a part of a local family of civilizations whose members are far beyond us technologically, but are not all that sympathetic or even paternalistic in their outlook.
If such events should prove to be true-past, present, or sometime in the future-they will most certainly force mankind to dramatically reassess its understanding of the universe. The possible dire aspects of such a visitation might help precipitate a crisis of faith, and eventually lead to a new era of religious understanding.
What The Urantia Book gives us, in addition to a meaningful physical cosmology in which to understand such events, is a spiritual cosmology that can assure us that we are still a part of a universe that is ultimately friendly, and in keeping with the Creator’s plans for all his children. Such a visitation would not be, as is often claimed, the greatest event in the history of mankind. It could, however, help us to understand what is — namely, the Incarnation of a Creator Son, Christ Michael, as Jesus of Nazareth.
Philip Corso, The Day After Roswell, Pocket Books — Simon & Shuster, Inc., New York, 1997. ↩︎