Guardians of The Rabbit Hole: Considering Skeptical Thinking and Enquiry

Posted by Alcyone _Featured_, UFO Monday, February 25th, 2013

Towards the end of last year I had a number of experiences which lead me to believe that taking a step back from the UFO subject was probably a healthy thing to do. I needed time to process them. I have no doubt in my mind that my experiences were results of genuine phenomena, but what the phenomena actually were and what they tell us about ourselves and the universe is open to question and debate. I’ve been convinced for some time that dissembling is often present within UFO and paranormal phenomena, so the idea of taking the experiences at face value or taking the empirical evidence literally seems foolish.

The one thing that can be said with certainty is that the UFO subject – real or not – has shaped our modern culture. It is one of the most searched terms on the internet, it dominates movies and television, and it even plays a role in shaping our beliefs. Our culture, almost without question, links the UFO subject with extra-terrestrial visitation.

But what if that isn’t the case? Or – more likely, in my opinion – what if the phenomenon is multi-faceted and no single explanation accounts for all genuine UFO sightings? What if the answer to many of these unexplained experiences was something far more esoteric than ET visitation? Maybe something we haven’t even considered yet?

To me, it seems awfully arrogant to believe that unexplainable things can’t and don’t happen. We live in a vast universe and know very little about how it all works, how our brains work, what a soul is, what consciousness really is and how it connects us to one another, or even how we got here. And even with all our current technology, there are still unexplored corners of Earth. We are constantly discovering new things, having to adapt our science and ways of thinking to compensate for the latest findings. If we took a step back in time even a decade, we could barely comprehend the computer processing power we have today.

But does that mean that UFOs exist? That Bigfoot exists? That ghosts exist?

Not necessarily. But I’ve seen UFOs, I’ve had some pretty crazy experiences and I’ve had unexplainable things happen to me. That’s why I am doing what I am doing. You may be skeptical because you haven’t had these experiences. I can’t fault anyone for that. I doubt I would believe any of it if I hadn’t experienced it myself either, so I welcome skeptical viewpoints and debate in all aspects of paranormal research. A good skeptical argument may just be the one thing that stops us from falling down the rabbit hole – or at least guides us gently down it.

People who spend any time considering the UFO phenomena seem to fall into roughly three groups: the definitive believers (or “paranormalists”, to use the more recent term), the skeptics, and the debunkers.

Skeptics and debunkers would probably label me a paranormalist/believer, but that isn’t necessarily how I see myself. Just because I believe that unexplainable things happen doesn’t mean I blindly believe in ALL alleged paranormal phenomena and that ALL UFO cases are real. I try to approach each case with an open mind and judge it on its own merits: the evidence, the eye-witness testimonies, the conditions in which the event allegedly occurred. In my own experiences, I am even more careful to avoid jumping to any conclusions.

Can anyone say with 100% certainty that an event occurred in the way that it was reported? No, never. Can I say that an experience I had happened exactly as I recall it? No, never. I rarely draw a definite conclusion that a case is real, and it is actually easier for me to draw a conclusion that something is probably bogus or simply misidentified and may be conventional in nature, but I try not to be dismissive.

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Conscious Life News does not implicitly agree with or endorse the views of the individuals expressed in this article, but we do believe that they have something valuable to add to the conversation.

As with all things, apply your own discernment, and fact check and verify where you feel it is appropriate.

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