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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
UFOs and the Bible
The advent of the phenomenon of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) in the middle of the 20th Century has led to a wide range of religious speculation, especially in regard to the Bible, in western culture. There have been four major theories put forward to connect UFOs and the Bible: the ancient astronaut, the angelic, the demonic, and the fallen angel theory. These theories all seek to reconcile the concept of extraterrestrial visitation with the biblical material. There is also a wider sense in which UFOs have influenced religious imagination, and in this regard the Bible is seen as a resource but not as an authority to be interpreted. There are three other major ways in which the issue of religious imagination has related to the UFO experience: UFOs as a modern religious mythology, UFOs as hope for a New Age spirituality, and the emergence of religious cults rooted in UFO mythology.
All of this discussion has taken place against a back drop in which the governments of the world deny that we are being visited by an extraterrestrial reality, while UFO researchers claim that the evidence of a cover-up is overwhelming. The United States Air Force study of UFOs stated there was “no factual basis whatever” of a government UFO cover-up.
But authors such as Donald Keyhoe, Timothy Good, Richard M. Dolan, Terry Hansen, Lawrence Fawcett and Barry J. Greenwood believe there is a cover-up. Because of the lack of clarity about UFO truth, a truly scientific and academic appraisal of the religious implications of UFOs can only be tentative at this time. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "UFOs and the Bible". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.
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