Agnosticism / Atheism: What's Hot Now: Roswell & the Will to Believe

Agnosticism / Atheism: What's Hot Now These articles that had the largest increase in popularity over the last week // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Roswell & the Will to Believe Aug 15th 2011, 10:00 So what really did happen in Roswell, New Mexico back in 1947? According to popular legend, a UFO crashed, and from the wreckage, the United States government obtained the bodies of dead aliens and all sorts of advanced technology. Ever since, the government has been involved in a complicated cover-up and a conspiracy of silence regarding the truth. Just how much do believers really care about the truth and how much are they invested in preserving a belief-system that has become vital to their sense of identity? It's not a coincidence that these same questions could be asked about religion and religious beliefs. Summary Title: Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe Author: Karl T. Pflock, Jerry Pournelle Publisher: Prometheus Books ISBN: 1573928941 Pro: •  A skeptical investigation from a believer, which is unusual •  Goes into great detail about the events Con: •  May be more detail than some people want. Description: •  Explores the testimony of witnesses •  Explores information from government documents •  Demonstrates how to proceed on a skeptical inquiry   Book Review Just how much real truth is there in that legend? This is the question which occupies Karl T. Pflock, former Defense Department official and CIA intelligence officer, who goes over the available information in painstaking detail. Indeed, he goes into so much detail that it might become too much for those who do not bring with them a prior interest in UFOs generally and this case specifically. Pflock's work is unusual, because most books you find on UFOs or Roswell are either written by skeptical debunkers or true believers. Pflock, however, is both. Pflock believes that some UFOs really are alien space craft visiting our planet - but he does not believe that the events in Roswell were the result of such a ship crashing in the desert What makes his project even more interesting is contained in the subtitle: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe. This might appear to apply to the "true believers" in the popular Roswell legend, but it also applies to Pflock himself. Although he tried to approach the topic as impartially as possible, through the course of his investigation he realized just how much he wanted to believe and just how much evidence was required to change his mind about Roswell. Are there any new and remarkable revelations to be found in Pflock's book? No, to be quite honest - but that is neither bad nor surprising. After nearly 50 years, we shouldn't expect any new and incredible information to come to light. What is valuable in the book, however, is that it serves as an example of how to proceed in such a difficult and laborious investigation of claims, evidence and arguments. It becomes, then, not simply an education about Roswell, but also an education about skeptical and investigatory methodology â€" a methodology that could be applied to a variety of fields, not just alleged UFO sightings. One important step involves how to deal with the testimony of witnesses, a factor in many popular beliefs involving the paranormal, supernatural, and religious. A large percentage of paranormal and supernatural beliefs rest upon the eye-witness testimony, even though it must be acknowledged as the most imprecise and unreliable form of evidence we have. Roswell Image Courtesy PriceGrabber To begin with, Pflock dismisses the reports of those who appeared late in the Roswell story as having little credibility and being filled with inconsistencies. Their role only came to light in the late 1970s because before then, most people weren't interested in the incident and it was simply neglected. Without them, everything came down to a single witness, a rancher who found mysterious debris on his ranch near Corona and alerted military officials. After eight years of work, what is Pflock's conclusion as to what most likely happened in Roswell? He argues that what people saw was caused by secret high-altitude balloon research which was being conducted for the U.S. Army Air Force by New York University. Balloon trains, taller than the Washington Monument, were launched from Alamogordo Air Force Base, 90 miles southwest of Roswell, and some of the material ended up crashing in the desert.

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