One of the most provocative and interesting videos I have seen over the past five years was an interview with Professor Robert Eisenmann, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, on the subject of the real-life Jesus and James, brother of Jesus. It was Eisenmann's research that partly inspired Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and later Dan Brown, author of the Da Vinci Code.
In his interview Eisenmann talked about the sect that Jesus belonged to, the Zadokites, an extreme fundamentalist group who sought to unite the kingdom of Israel under its leadership even by committing violence against their fellow Jews. In explaining the motivation of this sect, and indeed, motivations of extreme fundamentalist sects in general, Eisenmann said that this group believed that it carried with them the holy spirit.
And in carrying with them the holy spirit, they believed that they had to be completely pure and to purify those with whom they came in contact. These were the zealots. And in the ensuing centuries zealotry flourished among all types of religious groups and continues to this very day right before our eyes.
But zealotry is not confined to religion. It crops up in politics and in all types of belief systems, even in the great nonscience of ufology. Here is a perfect example of the foolishness of zealotry because in ufology not only is there no real science, there are actually no real UFOs because those who have them are certainly not going to hand them out to those who don't. So the zealots run around screaming at anyone who doesn't adhere to their nonbelief systems.
Essentially the zealots' arguments turn out to be that one must believe as they do or will they attack all those who don't. They attack charlatans, but since they do not have the sole patent on the truth, who's to say who the charlatans are?
In essence, they turn out to be those whom the zealots call charlatans, just like the victims of the seventeenth century New England witch hunts. In this way, our modern UFO zealots act like the body snatchers of the classic movies, hissing at those who don't conform and excoriating those whom they deem to be frauds.
In a subject like ufology, which is clearly a case-driven area of study, UFO cases are evaluated on the basis of evidence. Evidence consists of testimony -- often subjective witness testimony -- and those pieces of substantiating evidence that supports the testimony. Case in point: RAF Bentwaters, where the subjective testimony of witnesses like Charles Halt and James Penniston form the heart of the story.
What is the evidence that we cite to substantiate the testimony of Halt and Penniston who state that on two successive December nights in 1980 a strange craft hovered over RAF Bentwaters and landed in Rendlesham forest? There are the ground impressions that Penniston and Halt saw at the landing spot, the radiation levels around that landing spot, the inscriptions on the craft that Penniston said he copied, and the testimony of a security officer in the watch tower who told Halt he saw the whole event from his vantage point.
There are those who refute this evidence, citing the beam of light from Orford Ness that could have been confused for the light of a UFO, rabbit scrapings that would account for the impressions in the ground, and a mass confusion among the military personnel that night as panic seeped through the teams stumbling through the forest.
Rendlesham is a classic mass UFO sighting case that very few zealots would challenge because of the credibility of the witnesses, the consistency of the testimony, and the record of radiation above normal levels at the landing zone. As a secondary form of substantiation, the British Ministry of Defence cited this case as one without a conventional explanation to date.
Would the zealots challenge Roswell and the video testimony of Lt. Walter Haut, one of the participants of the cover-up who went on the record almost sixty years later to describe what really happened in 1947? Would they challenge the subjective testimony of Betty and Barney Hill, the testimonies of astronauts Gordon Cooper and Edgar Mitchell, or the testimony of Socorro, New Mexico police officer Lonnie Zamora? I don't think so.
The fact is that they spend their time attacking those cases about which most people in the nonfield of ufology don't even care. In fact, UFO zealotry is a largely empty argument because most people enjoy the promise of ufology much more than the disputes within ufology.
In my own situation on UFO Hunters I've found that the people who write simply want to see the process of the investigation even if the results don't always show anything conclusive. It reminds me of the instructions that your elementary school teacher gave you when she handed out the arithmetic test.
You always had to show the long division because you got credit for the process even if the answer was wrong. In algebra and trigonometry, you had to show the series of equations that brought you to an answer. And you got credit if you knew the process. Even in law school, you had to show the argument and not just jump to a guilty or not guilty conclusion.
That's why every time someone from the zealotry bench screams into a microphone, "It's a hoax," it's time to tune it out. Conclusion reached by a majority of one. No argument needed. This is the argument of the Taliban: strictly fundamentalist and without logic.
Ufology is existential. I think you should go with what's there and not with what you want to be there or with what your predetermined scheme says what should be there. Because if your scheme dictates what the conclusion is, you will certainly agree with the official policy of the Pentagon: There are no UFOs.
