by

June Clarkson Swinford

"And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire

"Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man." (Ezekiel 1:4,5)

"And as for their appearances, they four had likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel (Ezekiel 10:10)

According to UFOlogists, this passage from the Old Testament describes a visitation of a UFO, complete with aliens. If they're right, that means that UFO's have been visiting our planet for 2-3 thousand years, that we know of. I think that is ridiculous. If the UFOlogists took the time to examine their beliefs sensibly, they would see the gaping holes in their story.

I can't claim that I followed perfect logical principles in this argument. Think of it as common-sense logic, which I believe is a valid tack for this subject.

Who?

Okay, let us invent our nearest neighbors. I'll call them the Convivians. What do they look like? For the sake of convenience, let's say they look like us (there's actually an interesting article about that; I'll find it and send it to you one day) Like us, they have evolved intelligence, and as they grew, they began to form what we would call a distinct culture. With their culture grew their technology, and discovered that they were quite good at it; they advanced rapidly, and soon had developed interstellar travel (more on interstellar travel later)

So what are they going to do with this fabulous technology? And what makes anybody think they're going to come see us?

The Trip

As I stated before, our nearest neighboring star is Alpha Centauri, which is 4 ½ light years from Earth; and it has no terrestrial, potentially (for our purposes) life-bearing planets. Matter of fact, in 30 years of searching, we have found, only recently, exactly one star system that definitely has a planetary system around it, and we don't even know yet if it's a terrestrial planet, or a gas giant. So our nearest neighbors are somewhere out beyond that (which is pretty damned far, but I can't recall the numbers right now).

This means that the Convivians have an enormous trip ahead of them; even at light speed, it could conceivably take several generations to beat a path to our door. Assuming they can complete the trip at all. Space is a big, dangerous place; radiation, dark matter, solar winds, mechanical difficulties, pilot error, (and who knows what we haven't yet identified) and never a service station around when you really need one.

So why would the Convivians make such an enormous, dangerous journey, to come see us?

Conquest

Okay, the Convivians aren't very neighborly. They're a warlike people, who like to kick dogs and knock old ladies off the sidewalk. Or, maybe they're religious fanatics, who can't accept the notion that God created somebody else besides them; they're going to wipe us out to stabilize their theology and make sure God's attention is only on them. Or maybe they just really like our real estate; we're in a good neighborhood, and we're close to all the best clubs.

Fair enough. The Convivians set out on their jihad, and they get here, ready to kick our asses. So why haven't they done it already? For heaven's sakes, with our relatively limited science, we've figured out a couple of ways to destroy this planet about a hundred times over. How much simpler would it be for them, with their advanced tech?

If they don't have that sort of technology (and I'd find that hard to imagine), it would be relatively simple to pull small asteroids from their orbit and throw them our direction (or just nudge the orbit of a comet; it's not that difficult to do); they could devastate this planet's population as efficiently as the Yucatan meteor ostensibly wiped out the dinosaurs, at little expense or danger to the Convivians. And it wouldn't even leave all that nasty radiation to ruin the real estate for fifty years.

"If they're planning to colonize Earth, or exploit our resources, they wouldn't want to damage the planet that badly. They would want to wipe us out, but preserve our habitat."

There are ways to do that; even we know a few of them, like neutron bombs, or chemical/bacterial warfare. If the Convivians, by some stretch of the imagination, don't know how, it wouldn't take them long to figure it out; it wouldn't even take all that much effort. All it could conceivably take is one Convivian landing on Earth(he doesn't even have to be alive!), carrying a disease that we're not prepared to fight. (H.G. Wells had it right)

What if they are using political means to conquer us, manipulating events until they have us right where they want us? Exactly how do they intend to do that? Create a clone to take George Bush's place? Bodysculpt one of their own people to look like Gorbachev, and take his place? Send in loyal Convivians as moles/longterm agents, and insinuate themselves into positions of power? Are they doing the X-Files thing, trading info and tech with secret government types, in exchange for protection, and sanction to do their evil experiments.

Approaching the last argument first, may I say that this is same world where Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy, and Prince Charles couldn't keep their girlfriends secret, where J. Edgar Hoover couldn't keep his questionable fashion sense private, and where a government's most secretive, trusted types couldn't keep the public from finding out what kind of herbicide they liked to drop out of airplanes. The only sure way to keep a secret is to keep it to yourself; if they're dealing with humans, somebody somewhere, would eventually find out about it.

Boys and girls, any political scientist will tell you, it ain't that simple to insinuate yourself into a position of power. There are a thousand stumbling blocks between Joe Blow on the street and the Leadership of the Free World. As for clones/bodysculpting/moles? Again, it's not that simple. Cloning presents its own problems, making it unfeasible (how do you cram fifty years of experience into the clone of Prince Charles, and how do you know he'll cooperate after you've done it?) Bodysculpting would not hide essential genetic/physiological differences that even a high school anatomy student would catch; same with moles. Assuming they tried, how do they maintain the illusion for any length of time, without anybody getting wise, or at least curious? Not their physician, not their family, not their family pet (a personal favorite of mine!). Again, somebody, somewhere, would eventually figure it out.

Okay, let's play what if. What if they pulled it off? They slipped past every possible stumbling block, they overcame every possible situation, and managed to blend perfectly into our society, completely overturned my arguments above. I can ask only one question: why now? If they've been here for thousands of years, they waited through a number of prime opportunities to easily take us, no muss, no fuss. They could have done it during the Black Death, when a third of the world's population was wiped out, and the other 2/3 were damned scared, willing to follow anybody who would even pretend to protect them from the plague. They could have done it during the Depression, when we were equally desperate for a leader to get us out of a socioeconomic nightmare. Before the time of Christ (and even for a while after), it would have been simplicity to turn up and pose as deities (remember, science way ahead of your own would look like magic), and we'd have handed them the keys to the world, and probably our daughters as well!

Conquest? What a foolish notion! The Convivians are not warlike; indeed, they are men of science and wonder, driven by the need to understand it all. Good for them; I approve wholeheartedly. BUT: what can they possibly learn by joyriding around our planet for a couple thousand years, and ruining English grain crops, or abducting the odd housewife?

Physical Science: Geology? Seismology? Vulcanology? We learn stuff like that about the other planets of our own system, without ever leaving terra firma. Even assuming that our neighbors would come so very far for that information, they would not have to come close enough to Earth to be spotted by those people in Marfa. They could just as easily sit out of sight, hidden in the asteroid belt, and take their readings from there. If they took the notion they needed core samples, that would require a couple dozen, or (being generous) maybe a hundred landings, not the thousands and thousands described by UFOlogists.

Life Sciences: Botany, zoology, anthropology, sociology? Okay, I can see traveling halfway across the galactic arm to study the biosphere of a planet. Life is unique, happening according to the requirements of the world around it; no two biospheres would evolve in quite the same way. I'd certainly want to go study the Convivians' homeworld, wouldn't you?

Botany and zoology in particular, require a hands-on approach; the Convivians would want to take specimens, observe animals in their natural habitat, study the local ecosystem, and perhaps consider the evolution of the subject. But honestly, would it really take two thousand-plus years to collect that much information? We've made a substantial dent in cataloging our planet's life, in only about 700, despite our limited technology. They could have finished collecting their specimens around the time of the Renaissance (again, being generous), and been merrily on their way home.

But the human is a much more interesting animal, don't you think? Anthropologists and sociologists would want to make much more intensive, long term observation. I'd certainly want to hang around long enough to watch Rome rise and fall (and rise, and fall, and rise, and so on....). And what about the Dark Ages, or the War of Jenkins Ear, or the Protestant Movement, and on and on, and on. I can see the Convivians hanging around for two thousand years and watching us; we must be better than TV. I can even see them kidnapping people from time to time, to conduct the odd experiment.

But, if that's what's going on, they certainly wouldn't buzz the planet, grabbing all those blurry photo ops. There's no reason to for a physical anthropologist; he just gets his specimen and goes. And an important tenet of cultural anthropology/sociology is that the scientist must not influence his subjects' environments. Creating a cult/subculture, inadvertently or otherwise, taints the whole project.

A quick not about the supposed sexual experiments abductees often describe: Why? Why repeat the experiments? Why hang out for two thousand years? What's the big mystery? Sex ain't that complicated.

Commerce

No, wait, I was wrong before: the Convivians don't want to conquer us, or study us. They want to trade with us, they want to take advantage of Earth's fabulous resources. How very commercial of them. Or perhaps they want to rob us, steal our platinum or our water, or our uranium, to take home to their own planet, which is desperate for our resources. Or maybe they are stealing us, to be slave labor. This has been a staple of SF practically since the beginning of the genre. But it doesn't make sense.

First, every planet that exists is made of basically the same stuff: the detritus cast off by every star and proto star. This star exhaust accretes, forming rocks, asteroids, planetoids, and planets. As such, the most common compounds cast off by the stars will be the most common in the planet: carbon, silicon, hydrogen, and so on. Less common compounds will be in scarcer supply (gold, uranium, etc.). The details, precise ratios of this to that, will vary slightly from planet to planet, but not by much; there's no such thing as a planet made of solid gold, for example. The Convivians are not going to come steal our silicon, because they've got plenty at home. They're not going to come steal our platinum (which would reasonably be rare on their planet) because we haven't got much more than they do, certainly not enough to make such a trip feasible.

The same applies to things like water, which is a common enough notion tossed up in SF and UFOlogist logic. A planet without water could not produce life in the first place; and if it did, what use would that sort of creature have for our water. The only argument even moderately feasible is the idea that the Convivians would come to partake of our plant and animal life (which WOULD be unique to us), to make some pharmaceutical that they need. That would be motivation enough to come across the galactic arm, assuming they even knew we had the compound they needed in the first place.

But it wouldn't necessitate sticking around for 2,000 years. They'd grab their specimen and go home; they could synthesize it, or cultivate it themselves. Or, if it absolutely had to grow here, and couldn't be synthesized or cultivated, then wouldn't the UFO appearances be localized around the wellspring of that unique resource. They'd be coming back down to that same place over and over to get a new supply, not popping up all over the place, stealing people, or doing that crop circle thing.

What if the resource the Convivians want is us? Slavery is an ugly word. It's also an ugly economic structure, one which is doomed to failure in the long term. It's just too expensive to maintain slaves in a manner designed to keep them as usable labor. Even our own Roman Empire had to radically modify what we think of as slavery to make it work for them as long as it did. With day labor, you don't have to bear the full brunt of their medical costs, retirement, room and board for them and their families. With mechanization (highly likely, if they're capable of interstellar travel), you don't have to pay ANY medical costs, or pay into the retirement fund.

Besides, why are they only taking one person here, another there, etc, as the abduction proponents insist is happening. Why not take us wholesale, in big job lots, which would be faster and simpler? Or why not kidnap Steven Hawking and Isaac Asimov and Einstein, instead of the rather random (and no leading lights of the academic circuits) sampling they're supposed to be grabbing now.

Colonization

If that's what they wanted, where the hell are they? And why would it necessitate abductions, buzzing Marfa, Texas, or destroying crops in England?

‘Nuff said.

The Really Bizarre Notions

The Convivians are here to teach us how to live in peace. No wait, they're here to take us to heaven. No, I'm wrong, what they really need is to breed with our women (or our men), and thereby replenish their shrinking population.

I'll take the last statement first: miscegenation is a strangely appealing notion to some people, oddly enough. But even if it were genetically possible (which is laughably unlikely), why would it take two thousand years? Pick up a couple of girls (or guys), do what you gotta do (no, don't think that; I like to think they'd use some test tube process. The other doesn't bear thinking about), then use the children they produce to continue the effort. And where's the evidence?

As for the others, not to sound dismissive, but I think they more likely reflect the agendas or prejudices or mentality of the speaker, much more than the possible motives of any aliens. However, to address it hypothetically: if they wanted to convert us, or "save" us, they'd want to save all of us, right? Which means going VERY public. And, unless you know something about Jerry Falwell I don't, I haven't seen any aliens in my church, or on CBN.

A Note about Abductions

So where's the evidence? Why don't these abduction victims show any physical signs of the tests they describe? Not a needle puncture, or an abrasion where a skin sample was taken, or the least change in metabolism, blood volume, brain chemistry. No evidence of anesthesia, nerve induction, exposure to an unearthly air, germs, cloth, hair, any kind of forensic evidence that would indicate that they were not home in their beds at the questioned time.

For that matter, in all the thousands upon thousands of people who claim abduction (and some of those claim to have been abducted hundreds of times), how come nobody ever noticed that they were missing? No husband rolling over in bed, and finding her side of the bed empty. No kid waking up in the middle of the night, coming to get Daddy to fetch him a glass of water, only to find Daddy in absentia? No policeman finding a car abandoned in the middle of the road, and tracing it back to, voile!, an abduction victim's temporary disappearance.

The same goes for those ships buzzing through the atmosphere, ostensibly looking for victims/subjects. Where's the evidence? Where's the contrails, or the chemical/radioactive signature of an alien (or even a familiar) propulsion, or where's the ship dandruff (paint chips, space dust, other bits of flotsam and jetsam that any ship would shed)? For that matter, where's one convincing photograph or videotape? Where are the satellite photographs? Where are the convincing radar signals? Where's the evidence of a crash/accident/waste dump? And don't say Roswell. When that plane crashed the week the Atlanta Olympics started, it strewed debris across a twenty mile swatch of ocean floor. No way to pick up every seatbelt buckle, rivet, bit of chair stuffing. What makes you think aliens -- or humans -- could do such a thorough job of cleaning up a wreck that, in fifty years, nobody has found so much as a shard of window glass, or an alien shirt button?

Ready to Beam up?

I wouldn't presume to posit why all these reports of UFO's, abductions, crop circles, and such keep cropping up again and again, or why so many reasonable, intelligent people take them so seriously. I'm not a psychologist. If I had to guess, I would say that somewhere in the hearts and minds of these people, there is a desire to be special. Saying you've seen a UFO, or been abducted gives them that, and believing so firmly in them provides a spark of magic to an otherwise mundane life.

I wish there were UFO's. I think it would be really fascinating. But there's not, and I think I've given some common sense reasons why I'm sure of that. I do believe that we are not alone in the universe; I just don't think they're coming to visit us.

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