Dean Radin and The Enduring Enigma of the UFO: A first-rate noetic scientist and parapsychologist comments about ufology

As a rule, parapsychologists, psi researchers and noetic scientists don't typically address the field known as ufology. And ufologists, as a rule, don't seem to have any deep knowledge of psi research.

In an interesting article entitled "The Enduring Enigma of the UFO", first-rate scientific researcher of psi phenomena, Dean Radin, shares some ideas and reflections about the ufo phenomenon.

Personally, and after being initially skeptical of ufo phenomena, I've became convinced (after studying some literature on ufology and discussing the topic with many very well informed people) that the so-called ufo phenomenon deserves a carefully and scholarly study.

A preliminary conclusion about it is that any simplistic answer to the phenomenon is wrong. It seems the phenomenon is highly complex, and it involves not only possibly the existence of extraterrestial intelligence (as many people think), but deep aspects of consciousness and even of spiritual realities or phenomena.

In any case, read Radin's article and think hard about it.

Religion and UFOs:

For unknown reasons, I've been asked frequently if in my opinion Christianity conflicts with UFOs or the existence of aliens. Not being myself properly a Christian (nor a "Christian scholar"), I don't consider myself competent to answer this question in any authoritative way. However, in my humble opinion, I don't see any reason to think that the existence of aliens (if they actually exist) conflicts with Christianity.

In any case, a prominent Christian scholar (William Lane Craig) has given some ideas about Christianity and aliens in this podcast.

I agree with Craig that the existence of aliens would be improbable given metaphysical naturalism, since in such worldview the phenomenon of life and specially consciousness are a kind of monumentally improbable cosmic accidents. And, even assuming that life were common in the universe, in the naturalistic-materialistic worldview, there is not reason to think that such life will evolve to produce intelligent, conscious and rational beings "out of brute matter".

Consciousness, normative properties and values and rationality are phenomena at variance with naturalism and ontological materialism. Therefore, if naturalism is false (as I think it is), we'd expect precisely that life, consciousness and spiritual-rational beings in general (in several degrees of evolution) exist in other parts of this universe, and hence that intelligent aliens will exist too (if they're actually visiting us or not is separate question).

The point is that spiritually evolved and intelligent aliens are more probable to exist given the falsehood of naturalism than in case of naturalism being true. And given that we have strong philosophical, ethical and scientific reasons to think that naturalism is false, we're rationally forced to conclude that it is likely that spiritually evolved beings in other planets (i.e. aliens) actually exist.