Julius CSICOP (Part II)

Julius  CSICOP

(Part II)

 by Alfred Lehmberg

...You need more substantiation for CSICOPian intellectual constipation?  ...You need another justification for their demise?  ...Further evidence is required validating their orbit's nuke? OK... one only has to observe how our errant denizens of CSICOPia endeavor to fall on the wrong side of the already errant and fatuous but still asked question:

UFOs—Are they "real"... or are they "fake"?

Rise up in outrage!  Perceive this obviously contrived mechanism of unwarranted dismissal!  Avoid this unbrave intellectual circumvention of the obvious!  Be not fooled, reader!  The question itself is bogus!  It presumes an answer that is itself, not forthcoming.

Verily, it is just this typified cant solemnly expressed at every conference, all television appearances, and each radio interview... where angry CSICOPians are trotted in for alleged balance, but end up looking more like a suicide-bomber invited to a respectful discussion of confounding political issues. CSIcopian Minds are made up, and shall not be changed!  They are that bomber alluded to!

Consider: New conservative re-estimations of the Drake Equation (that attempted a scientific stab at calculating the number of intelligent species in the universe?) puts the measurement probability for a plethora of off-world intelligences, I understand, so close to 100% that the difference is immeasurable!  Immeasurable, reader!

This is to say that one has a much better chance of winning the Publisher's Clearing House lottery (approaching zero) than one does betting against extraterrestrial intelligence elsewhere in the universe (in actuality, zero)... ...Yes.

We, ourselves, are proof, if you will, of this Drake equation's compelling validity...

Consider, briefly, that an immutable law of the universe is that what can happen... happens.  There is that much space, time, and surface area, reader!  Humanity "happened"... proving the certainty of that particular potentiality with equal assurance...

What happens once... happens again.  Stuff happens, that is to say.  What can happen, happens.  What has happened... ...happens once more... then once more... then one more...

Frankly, that fires of self-aware intelligence have kindled right here on this planet, reader, many times!  This is to include three or four species of humankind, forgetting its occurrence in a smear of Animalia from mollusks (Octopi), through cetaceans (Whales), to pachyderms (Elephants)!

Frankly, pretending we are alone in all this awesomely boundless magnificence of this space, time, and surface area, forgetting the very concept is flatly ludicrous... is naive and ignorant arrogance, I expect, at best.  At worst, it may be a sophisticated and informed arrogance... a knowing arrogance... a conscious arrogance... a baseless arrogance...!  A contrived arrogance born of unqualified hubris, to be sure, and one with no justification!

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?  Why, this debate has been going on since 1947 in a seemingly apparent attempt to preclude any substantive progress on the question, at all!

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?  ...Are there not seven (7) categories of compelling evidence very specifically indicative that UFOs are a stone cold reality?  Almost (99.999999999>>>...%) certainly, according to Bentley College professor Doctor A.D. Aczel in his book "Probability One"!

The huge volume of extant evidence is of a quality that cannot be forever ignored even as card carrying CSICOPians Kurtz, Mcgaha, Shermer, Shostak, Nickell, and the still in print if late Philip Klass furiously try.  The evidence remains.

Yes, reader, the quality anecdotal evidence, compounded with the vetted photographic evidence, and then added to the documented historical evidence... gives every indication that a ufological contention regarding that phenomena must be more real than not...

Moreover! When the preceding is shown in pre-digital photographic evidence, framed by the serious artistic evidence, qualified by the available physical evidence, verified by a mathematical evidence, and then conclusively buttressed by the emboldening personal evidence (...if the reader has some... as I do...), I can only be annoyingly astonished by the continued reluctance of some to face the highly strange music that just cannot be forever marginalized... I submit the reader should be outraged, too?

Does the information available justify attention by the mainstream to perform a more *in depth* investigation of UFOs?  Absolutely"!  ...CSICOPiate and angry SETIan Seth Shostak, hilariously, agrees!

But...

When, Dr. Shostak?  Where, Dr. Shostak?  How, Dr. Shostak?  With regard to what, Dr. Shostak?

Outside of his own parochial boondoggle at the Specious Exercise To Investigate (SETI)... when has Dr. Shostak ever championed an increase in the aggregate ufological consciousness even world class physicist Michio Kaku has countenanced?  No, Dr. Shostak has only ever been a steadily smirking bulwark against same!

Instead, don't these errant *avians* (Pelicanists!) ooze forth, periodically... to re-prosecute the skeptibunky case of yesteryear, every year!  Don't they furiously spin the ufological reality extant in their cowardly attempt to reduce the level of ufological debate tediously, once again, to its tiresome starting point!

Is it not their goal, reader, to re-achieve an old, outdated, and mind-numbingly outrageous level of pre-discussion... re-discussing the (...now thoroughly discredited!) possibility... that UFOs are likely something safely prosaic and certainly other than evidence of some significant alternative (off-planet?) intelligence?

Yes.  I think the reader must agree that these do.

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?  Does the reader see how that suggestive statement brings the level of debate back to the decades old, and very dreary, level of "conceivable deniability"?  In other words... That it is somehow still very, very possible, boys and girls... that UFOs... may not... exist... at all?  ...Everybody draws a deeper, if fallaciously inaccurate, breath!  Then... the prize truck from Publisher's Clearinghouse pulls into your driveway blaring its triple-toned horn... for you!  ...not!

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?  "There is no 'proof', you know, even as there may be some evidence for a ufological reality..." I paraphrase.

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?  "Mind you, UFOs and aliens might exist, but no proof has been uncovered in over 50 years that this is so..." I paraphrase.

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?  "We are the only *proof* of intelligence in the whole of the universe..." I paraphrase.

...Oh... so comforting, eh?

The preceding, frankly, is what we must move beyond.  Yes... first we must get passed the level of the remotest denial in a discussion of UFOs, as the denial of UFOs can not have the remotest validity given the work, research, and tight explication of a host of quality ufologists and researchers... and NOT forgetting the obvious inability of a well-financed CSICOPian opposition to discredit same... after many well-funded years of furiously trying to do just THAT!   

I remind the reader of the aforementioned CSICOPian imperatives, via:

Friedman's Rules of CSIcopia

1. What the public doesn't know,we're not going to tell them!

2. Don't bother us with the facts, our minds are made up!

3. If we can't attack the data, we attack the people!

4. We Avoid investigation! We do research by proclamation. It is much easier.

We must admit (and otherwise cop to) the aforementioned and ponderous volume (Seven categories, reader!) of evidence that exists regarding the ufological reality extant, evidence handily destroying or compromising every CSICOPian effort to make UFOs 'disappear', again and again, over many, many years...!

None dare calls the preceding proof!  I shall!

We must demand a government forthcoming-ness with regard to funded and open investigations, investigations both international and cross-cultural in scope (...and generations of corporate tax scofflaws can pay for it!)!  We'd be served is my feeling!

We must face our well cultivated and crippling fear facilitated by those unwilling to cop to UFOs... (Shostak and Shermer et sig al) ...step forward to embrace this conjectured future!  We must not step back to a pie-in-the-sky past that only existed in a skeptibunker's spotty imagination, cowardly intellectualism, and suspect politics, anyway!

Summation? CSICOP only offers their six duplicitous, discredited, and un-repudiated points of shame wrapped in time-loop... re-discussing what does not remain to be discussed, reader!  Simply re-asking already answered questions not even in a new way... like they were questions asked for the very first time.  Simply re-plodding worn paths, re-examining every already exhausted pebble and slight inconsistency anew like they were smoking guns... ...so cowardly...

Humanity is better than that.  Humanity demands more than that.  You reader, are worth more than that!

Death to CSIcopia!

Read on...

ÆL