No! No! UFO
“No! No! UFO,” said the U.S. Senate last week.
The UAP Crash in Washington
The big wave of scientific interest and government interest in UFOs has just crashed on the Washington budget beach. Although the U.S. House of Representatives sent their approval of the proposed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act to the upper chamber, the U.S. Senate said “No! No! UFO.” Yes, it was passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (2024). But, along the way, the Senate stripped the bill of two critical provisions.
What two provisions were excised?
The proposed UAP Disclosure Act would have demanded release of information on “technologies of unknown origin and non-human intelligence.” Those crashed flying saucers stored at Wright Patterson Air Force Base or Area 51 or in defense contractors’ warehouses would have to be put on public view.
But News Nation reports that lawmakers nixed a provision which would have created an advisory panel whose members are chosen by the president. This group would have been tasked with sorting through which records would be disclosed.
Also nixed was a provision that would give the government full possession of all recovered “non-human technology” currently housed by private entities such as defense contractors.
What passed includes a list of exemptions for disclosing records on UAPs, including ones if the documents could threaten national defense, compromise national intelligence or federal agents or threaten sources and methods of intelligence gathering. National security trumps transparency.
The ever-colorful representative from Tennessee, Tim Burchett, expressed his disappointment by lowering the rhetorical boom. “It’s about greed. It’s about power. It’s about control,” Burchett said. “All those things that run Washington D.C., and it’s obvious that some of my colleagues have been compromised.”
“No! No! UFO” is a Disappointment for Scientists
“No! No! UFO” is going to disappoint our scientists.
In this Patheos series on UFOs, I’ve reported frequently that since 2017 space scientists around the world have begun accepting invitations to barbecues hosted by ufologists. In organizations such as the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU), the Society for UAP Studies, and Harvard’s Galileo Project, scientists are setting up instrumentation to get data, data, and more data.
Had the UAP Disclosure Act required Uncle Sam to reveal UAP secrets, scientists would have lined up in the middle of the night like Apple aficionados line up for the next generation iPhone.
Ted’s Timely Take on Disclosure
It is my observation that already by July 1947 the UFO phenomenon included not only seeing anomalous things in the sky but also rebellion against an alleged conspiracy to hide UFO information. The culprit, as pointed out already in the early 1950s by the new genre of flying saucer books, is the United States government. Oh, yes, other governments get blamed as well.
Sighting investigation has always held hands with the hybrid hope/suspicion that Uncle Sam knows what’s what. According to Garret Graff. there are…
“…two threads from across the last seventy-five years: the military’s on-again-off-again hunt for UFOs here on Earth, and the increasingly serious work conducted by scientists, astronomers, and eventually NASA to search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe.”
In short, to become a UFO believer one must include government conspiracy in the list of creedal dogmas. One must strive for disclosure, secretly hoping that nothing will get disclosed.
Might the governmental conspiracy be due to a reaction formation?
In my humble opinion with only modest evidence to support it, I hypothesize an explanation for belief in a government conspiracy. I hypothesize that we have a reaction formation at work here. A reaction formation expresses a repressed wish or feeling at the conscious level in a contrasting form.
How does the reaction formation work in the UFO case? The extraterrestrial hypothesis attached to UAP sightings signals the possibility of power — that is, extraterrestrial technologists traveling to Earth must have powerful technology. Regretably, we on Earth do not have proof nor control of ETI’s power. But the U.S. government – the same government that detonated two atomic bombs – has power. Awesome power. Maybe terrestrial power augmented by extraterrestrial power.
Something in our collective psyche wants to believe that such power exists. And that it exists to do good. The longer the U.S. government appears to hide the facts, the stronger our faith becomes. This is a faith that we are protected by a government propped up, and empowered by, ETI technology.
If my hypothesis obtains, then it would be important to our reaction formation that disclosure never happens. Disclosure could be disappointing. Disclosure just might reveal nothing akin to what the UFO community expects. So, the Senate has performed a favor to the UFO believer community: “No! No! UFO” keeps the conspiracy theory alive.
What just happened in Washington confirms what we have all suspected for three-quarters of a century, namely, under the smoke screen of national security our government intends to continue hiding high truths and misnomers from the public.
Whew! Now we can sleep soundly tonight in the confidence that the Pentagon protects us from enemies foreign and domestic with ETI technology at its disposal.
Conclusion
No! No! UFO. That’s what we should expect to be the result of the disclosure attempt.
Now, you may think I’m a skeptic or even a cynic. I am not. Like so many UFO believers, I want – really want – for us to discover that we share our immense cosmos with extraterrestrial neighbors. But, while we are searching for the answer to this quest, I’d like to stick to publicly confirmable data.
This Patheos post is SR 1179 UFO 9. No! No! UFO
Here are previous posts which might be of interest.
Extraterrestrial Intelligence & Science
NASA and Priests Preparing for ETI Contact
Are alien scientists the real gods?
Would confirmation of extraterrestrial life cause a crisis for terrestrial religion?
UFOs and Aliens at the Vatican
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Ted Peters directs traffic at the intersection of science, religion, and ethics. Peters is an emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union, where he co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, with Robert John Russell on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, California, USA. He authored Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom? (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2002) as well as Science, Theology, and Ethics (Ashgate 2003). Along with Martinez Hewlett, Joshua Moritz, and Robert John Russell, he co-edited, Astrotheology: Science and Theology Meet Extraterrestrial Intelligence (2018). Along with Octavio Chon Torres, Joseph Seckbach, and Russell Gordon, he co-edited, Astrobiology: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy (Scrivener 2021). He is also author of UFOs: God’s Chariots? Spirituality, Ancient Aliens, and Religious Yearnings in the Age of Extraterrestrials (Career Press New Page Books, 2014). Look for his newest book, The Voice of Public Theology, a collection of previous articles. See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com.
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