The roundtable show and ATP was quite interesting. Thanks to all participants!
Your comment above Ufology, is a nice lead-in to an idea I was thinking of suggesting for the Forums. My thought is that it might be worth adding another general forum heading to the existing headings to encourage direct discussion of world views, ancient and modern, and what impact they might have on fortean / UFO / paranormal, etc. My three suggestions for the title of such a forum:
a) World-views in Collision (hat tip to Immanuel Velikovsky)
b) Deisi-Daimonia (δεισιδαιμονία - hat tip to ancient Greek culture)
c) The 5th Dementia (hat tip to a '60's-'70's Champagne Soul group, and to Mad Magazine)
Ufology, during conversation on the show about Amy Allan you said,
"I don't think anyone is in contact with dead people."
Actually, though I am a theist, I would tend to strongly agree with your statement, even though the grounds on which I'd support that statement would be quite different from yours. On the other hand, I am not against the idea that Allan may be in contact with "something" external to her that may be sentient.
There are lots of varying reports of such things: T. Allen Greenfield talked about invoking Metatron. Nancy du Tertre talked about contact with aliens, angels and demons, Whitley Strieber talked about all his stuff. Still, 0ther guests have different views, some holding strongly to the ETH.
Is there proof to decide in a particular direction? I don't think so. There's just evidence, most of which is not susceptible to empirical research.
IMHO much of ufological / fortean study is more akin to something like proving in the 21st century that Joan of Arc actually lived and had an impact on battles in France six centuries ago. According to medieval records she was, intentionally, so thoroughly burned at the stake and cremated that nothing was left of her at all, and the ashes were dumped in the Seine. All eye-witnesses are long dead. There are only records that may be true, or biased, or invented out of whole cloth. Indeed, there is much in history that we take for granted today that has very little actual "physical" proof to support the idea. So, similar to the filtering of historical reports, ufology is more about filtering highly unusual reports with little to no "hard" evidence, and then assigning probabilities. IMHO, one's world-view is a "bias" that will cause evidence to be weighted in various directions. So, I suggest that the Paracast open a new forum, now at the beginning of the second decade, that directly encourages discussion of world views.
