IN THIS previous post on UFOs, Alan responds to commenters who suggest there is credible evidence that objects seen in the sky have been spaceships from other planets. He writes:

ALAN writes:

The Thinking Housewife is being taken for a ride by flying saucer advocates and UFO believers. I do not “imply” that flying saucers do not exist. I assert flatly that they do exist. They are as real as rainbows and just as insubstantial.

Decades ago, when I was an amateur astronomer, I studied the Saucer Myth at great length. I read all the books and stood with people on hilltops as they pointed at stars, planets, and aircraft lights and called them “UFOs.” I attended dozens of lectures and spoke with UFO “experts” like Dr. J. Allen Hynek. For a while, I gave them the benefit of the doubt on the chance that a substantive mystery might exist.

However, years passed and no one produced a shred of evidence to support that idea. I became a UFO skeptic because I discovered there is nothing there but storytelling, anecdotes, mis-identification of ordinary objects, hoaxes, tall tales, and sensational journalism. The UFO Myth is worth studying for those reasons, but not because Aliens are flying around in super-advanced Spaceships. (And UFO advocates would have us believe that those Aliens who build and fly sleek spaceships across interstellar space were so inept as to permit one of their Saucers to conk out and crash in the New Mexico desert in 1947. That is hilarious. But it is the kind of colorful story that sells books and generates tourism dollars.) (more…)

ALAN ROEBUCK, and two other readers, have interesting responses to the entry from Roger G., the Thinking Housewife flying saucer correspondent.

Mr Roebuck writes:

I wanted to give my two cents about the flying saucer thing.

The best take on the subject that I’ve ever heard comes from Hugh Ross, former professor of astrophysics and head of the Protestant “science apologetics” organization Reasons to Believe.

In summary, Ross’s take is this:

Although most reported “OFU” activity (around 95 percent) is either charlatanism or honest misunderstandings, there is a significant amount of unexplainable, real UFO activity. This activity often leaves behind physical evidence, but the craft themselves have never been handled. They are only seen in the sky. (more…)

ROGER G. writes:

Awhile back, our estimable blogmistress wrote about her sighting of a green fireball.  I am the official flying saucer (and rugby) expert for the THW and VFR websites, so it might be thought that I would have responded. But I am an old and seasoned flying saucer nut. Therefore I’m not to be provoked by a bolide, or any of the many other natural phenomena which lie behind almost all UFO incidents.

However, other readers have made comments implying that flying saucers don’t exist. (See here and here) That’s a point of view which does motivate me to respond.

I concede that intelligent and well informed people generally are of such opinion. On this matter, they are wrong. Anyone who looks at the evidence objectively must conclude that we are being visited from outside the earth – given what we know of Sol’s other planets, certainly from outside our solar system. (more…)