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.

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Just what is the truth about UFOs? Put two ufologists in a room and you'll get a hundred different opinions. And then which one would be right?

What if each opinion was backed up by totally different standards of evidence? Whose standards would be correct? Would the scientist prevail over the psychologist, the historian over the documentarian? And who gets to make the ultimate decision?

Would it be the person with the best internet website? The best book? The best magazine? The best radio show? The best documentary? The best podcast? Where are the standards of judgment and who gets to set those standards?

In a field where the very existence of the thing that's supposed to be studied has been denied by the government, by scientists and engineers paid by the government, and by the government's own military and politicians, how can there be any standards at all?

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