2019-1121

Lights In The Sky & Little Green Men

Comments Off on Lights In The Sky & Little Green Men[Author: Category: Non-fiction, Paranormal, Religion, Reviews ]

Lights In The Sky & Little Green Men, A Rational Christian Look at UFOs and  Extraterrestrials, by Hugh Ross, Kenneth Samples, and Mark Clark. The book is published by NavPress, Bringing Truth to Life, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2002.

In addition to numerous other qualifications in education, Hugh Ross has received master’s and Ph.D degrees in astronomy, Kenneth Samples has a master’s degree in theological studies, and Mark T. Clark is a Professor Emeritus of political science. The authors are active in Reasons to Believe, “a nonprofit organization providing research, publications, and teaching on the harmony of God’s revelation in the words of the Bible and in the facts of nature.” There is no hesitation in this compact book of 255 pages to take on the worst human UFO-related disasters of the twentieth century and point directly to the cause, which is demonic.

In the Preface, Hugh Ross writes “Speculations about unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrial beings just won’t go away. They continue to crop up in conversations all over the planet. Almost everyone can tell a story of seeing weird lights in the sky – lights that seem to defy explanation.” Little green men are those beings who fly overhead in spaceships, sometimes landing. “We hope this book will compel people to explore beyond surface explanations.”

Kenneth Samples opens the first chapter with references to sightings from antiquity through the twentieth century, with an increase of sightings by pilots during World War II, who speculated that these anomalies, called “Foo Fighters,” were advanced enemy aircraft. “From the late 1940s through the 1960s, the United States Air Force investigated UFO reports through various projects and committees, concluding with the “Condon Report,” which states that “further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.” However, the subject has obviously not gone away and has continued to be carried, e.g., by NASA’s SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), professional ufologists, social scientists, UFO enthusiasts and debunkers, New Agers, UFO cult members, and Christian theologians and apologists.

Author Kenneth Samples examines Types of UFOs in Chapter 2. “There are plenty of crackpot UFO enthusiasts out there, but many ufologists are respected scientists and other experts who are going about their task in a professional way.” Subheadings in this chapter include Systems of Classification, Natural Explanations, and Two Leading Hypotheses. The hypotheses for the phenomena are extraterrestrial (ETH) – the most popular explanation among Americans – and interdimensional (IDH). Regarding the IDH, this is “sometimes described as the paranormal or occult view of UFOs. Some ufologists, (especially Christians) have ascribed an angelic or demonic interpretation to this interdimensional presence. Even a number of leading secular ufologists have argued for a correspondence between UFO phenomena and the occult or demonism.” Significantly, the authors refer throughout the book to the concept of the RUFO, or the residual UFO, “those unexplainable yet real phenomena that remain after all naturalistic explanations have been exhausted.” The “Condon Report” aside, there should be much to learn about cosmic and human existence – as this book testifies – from UFOs and RUFOs. (RUFOs are later described as “both real and nonphysical” in a chapter titled A Closer Look at RUFOs.)

As Hugh Ross writes in Chapter 9, Nature and Subnature, “Ever since publication of Robert Jastrow’s landmark volume, God and the Astronomers, in 1978, references to the supernatural – and specifically to God and theology – have become commonplace in books by astronomers and physicists. If a person scans the science shelves at a local bookstore, he will find books with titles like God and the New Physics, The God Particle, God and the Cosmologists, Reading the Mind of God and Through a Universe Darkly. What’s going on here? Is a mass conversion taking place? No, it’s not a mass conversion. Rather, this development arises from research findings. A mountain of evidence compels the conclusion that reality must exist beyond the physical universe.” Under one of this chapter’s subheadings, The Nature of Supernature, Hugh Ross writes, “For those who care to investigate, nature holds abundant clues to its supernatural source or cause. And that investigation may hold keys to unlocking some of the mysteries of  UFO phenomena.”

Mark Clark tackles Government Cover-Ups in Chapter 7. “True believers in UFOs are frustrated at not being able to convince the world that a residual portion of UFO sightings are for real. Could someone be making their task more difficult?” The U.S. Government. “And so the loaded word ‘cover-up’ enters the conversation.” He continues on with the subjects of Roswell, the Classified Information that came out of the Cold War, Project Blue Book (the Air Force response), the CIA, and Bureaucratic Politics. Then a second full chapter, Government Conspiracies, includes the topics of Political Culture, The Psychological Dynamic, Contrary Evidence, Popular Opinion and the Ockham’s Razor dictum.

This is a remarkable book that should be on the shelf of every conscientious twenty-first century citizen. It is not easy to read through Chapter 14 on UFO Cults by Kenneth Samples, where he describes The Aetherius Society, The Unarius Academy of Science, Heaven’s Gate, and The Raelian Movement. These unimaginably horrible realities of human behavior and error are followed by The Bible and UFOs, Chapter 15 – quoting Ezekiel 1:4-28;10, 2 Kings 2:1-12, and Revelation 1:12-18  –  and a Summary, Chapter 16, stating that “RUFOs … are consistent with the Bible’s descriptions of demons.” Adhering to the “doctrinal statements of the National Association of Evangelicals and the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy,” Reasons to Believe has admirably taken on the UFO phenomena. The book concludes with three Appendixes (e.g., Appendix A, Fine Tuning for Life on Earth), extensive Notes, a Bibliography, and Subject and Name Indexes.  – Martha Keltz

References:

The Incarnation of Ahriman: The Embodiment of Evil on Earth: Seven Lectures by Rudolf Steiner, Given Between October and December, 1919, Skylark Books, on Amazon.com.  

Astronomy and Spiritual Science, The Astronomical Letters of Elisabeth Vreede, SteinerBooks, on Amazon.com.

On-Line references:

Cosmic Christianity & The Changing Countenance of Cosmology: https://wn.astrosophy.science/Books/Cosmic/Cosmic_index.html

The Ahrimanic Deception: https://wn.rudolfsteinerelib.org/Lectures/AhrDec_index.html

The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman: https://wn.rudolfsteinerelib.org/Lectures/GA191/English/AP1993/InLuAr_index.html

The Cosmic New Year: https://wn.rudolfsteinerelib.org/Lectures/GA195/English/RSPC1938/CosNew_index.html

The Mission of the Archangel Michael: https://wn.rudolfsteinerelib.org/Lectures/MissMich/MisMic_index.html

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2012-0619

The Immortal Fire Within: The Life and Work of Edward Emerson Barnard

2 Comments[Author: Category: Biography, Reviews ]
The Immortal Fire Within: The Life and Work of Edward Emerson Barnard, by William Sheehan
The Immortal Fire Within: The Life and Work of Edward Emerson Barnard, by William SheehanBy William Sheehan
Published by Cambridge University Press, 1995, 2007 Click to Buy this Book!

This 429-page biography of Edward Emerson Barnard (1857–1923), an astronomer who is best known for his discovery of Jupiter’s fifth satellite, now named Amalthea, and “Barnard’s Star,” was published in its paperback edition in 2007 and, with its new preface, the same wealth of photographs, and 27 chapters that present the biography in precise chronological order, it will prove a treasure for amateur astronomers and serious readers alike. However, even in the paperback version this is a very costly book, although it can continuously serve as a course in astronomy, particularly as the science developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Especially helpful is the fact that the footnotes are included at the end of each chapter, instead of at the end of the book. Reading slowly, a chapter at a time, will nearly guarantee thoughtful visualizations of starry night skies, and summon many familiar questions regarding the mysteries of the universe. It will also be discovered that author William Sheehan (an amateur astronomer and a psychiatrist by profession) touches upon the meaning of the words The Immortal Fire Within only very lightly and in few places, yet somehow the deeply significant meaning of these words pervades the entire book, as though throughout the long process of studying and writing this biography Sheehan had put this question to E.E. Barnard himself and awaited the answer. What is a biography of this devotion and profundity but repeated meetings of two souls, however separated in time, space, and spiritual dimension? In the end, each reader will have to draw his or her own conclusion as to the meaning of The Immortal Fire Within. Clues are apparent, such as the author’s wariness of the term “sixth sense,” and his touching upon the fact of “immortal fame” as merely in regard to a new astronomical discovery. Certainly the inclusion of this poetic phrase in the title does seem affirmative. “As above, so below,” recalls the anthroposophist, and thoughts of the “Macrocosm and Microcosm” enter anew into the sphere of consciousness.

The first chapter, titled Through rugged ways, describes the boyhood of Edward Barnard, who was born in Nashville, Tennessee, a place of culture and cultivation that became ravaged by the Civil War. His father died before he was born and his mother, also raising Edward’s older brother, decided to move to Nashville in hopes of finding work. Edward was born with a caul, and his mother gave him the middle name of Emerson after the New England writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson. “The dreadful privations that fell upon the South during and just following the war only intensified the misery of the impoverished Barnard family. Barnard recalled many years later that his early youth was ‘so sad and bitter that even now I cannot look back to it without a shudder.’” When Barnard was nine years old his mother obtained employment for him in the photography gallery of John H. Van Stavoren, and the boy was soon put to work running errands and guiding the immense solar camera that Van Stavoren had mounted on his studio roof. The camera was named, significantly, Jupiter. William Sheehan quotes from an autobiographical sketch by Barnard: “Through summer’s heat and winter’s cold [the boy] stood upon the roof of that house and kept the great instrument directed to the sun. It was sleepy work and required great patience and endurance for one so young, and at this distant day he realizes that this training doubtless developed those qualities — patience, care and endurance — so necessary to an astronomer’s success.” More »

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2012-0419

In Search of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton’s Clockwork Universe

Comments Off on In Search of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton’s Clockwork Universe[Author: Category: Reviews, Science ]
In Search of the Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton’s Clockwork Universe
In Search of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton’s Clockwork UniverseBy Richard Baum and William Sheehan.
Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York, 1997 Click to Buy this Book!

 

On the back flap of the jacket cover, the publisher summarizes this book as one that “will hold you spellbound from beginning to end. An irresistible tale of human eccentricity … destined to become a classic.” Authors Richard Baum, former Vice President of the British Astronomical Association, and Dr. William Sheehan, an amateur astronomer and a psychiatrist by profession, present a highly readable history of astronomy regarding the search for additional planets in the solar system, a search that intensified after William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781. Attempts to explain observations of Uranus’ “wayward movements” led, through applications of Newton’s laws or “celestial mechanics,” to the sensational discovery of a second new outer planet, later named Neptune. Neptune was discovered in 1846 by the great French mathematician and astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (1811–1877), not from observations, but from calculations alone. The new planet was then observed in the exact position of Le Verrier’s calculations by Johann Gottfried Galle and his assistant on September 23, 1846.

The title of the book, the cover art, the photograph of the statue of U.J.J. Le Verrier across from the title page, the emphasis on the name Vulcan, and the publisher’s comments, above, are all somewhat slanted towards the entertainment value of the book (Richard Baum was involved in the Vulcan episode of the television documentary series Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World). The authors, however, do offer clear, informative history, helpful clarifications of astronomical theory and calculus, interesting biographies, and many humorous touches, all leading up to and including the quest for an intra-mercurial planet to explain the “anomalous advance of the perihelion of Mercury.” Searches for trans-Neptunian planets (e.g., the discovery of Pluto) are also described, from the time of Herschel up until the late 20th century. From the Epilogue: “Compared to the substantial gas giants sunwards of it, Pluto is a mere planetary soufflé, a creampuff planet … although it might be argued that Pluto does have a small moon — Charon, discovered only in 1978 — and an atmosphere.” More »

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