1. 1:15 AM RELS 225 2009-03-23: UFO Religions Attendance Announcements Review: Solar Temple Triggers? External or Internal, or what combination? UFO Religions

2. 1:15 AM Announcements Today, March 23: deadline for The Rev. Bernard A. MacDonald Memorial Bursary. http://www.stfx.ca/academic/catholic- studies/macdonald-bursary/B-A-MacDonald- Bursary.html Thursday April 2: Religious Studies thesis defenses 3:30 to 4:30, Nicholson Tower 3 rd floor seminar room Wednesday April 8: Religious Studies book launch Kornel Zathureczky: Messianic Disruption of Trinitarian Theology Campus Art Gallery 4:00-5:30

3. 1:15 AM UFO Religions UFOs: non-religious? Mythological characteristics: spaceborne saviours? Demonic figures? First sighting: June 24, 1947: Kenneth Arnold, Boise Idaho. By early 1950’s: mostly skeptics; claims to have made contact.

4. 1:15 AM Similarities to 19 th C. Spiritualism. Descending gods, deliver wisdom and messages of warning, hope, or apocalypse. Interstellar abduction Also Men in Black harass UFO observers. Appear to chosen few. Messages passed on to others (by trance, automatic writing) Groups tend to be loose and short-lived. Presuppose spiritually significant beings between human and ultimate reality (God). Expanded consciousness Psychical phenomena; “signs” producing faith. Channelling: Instructions from spiritual teachers Wisdom tends to Theosophy: karma, reincarnation Spiritual evolution possible, by effort, initiation, and acquired wisdom

5. 1:15 AM Similarities to fairy tales Otherworldly “little men” (Jacques Vallee) Appearance like elves or goblins Time not passing (like into a fairy mound) Changelings (half-human pregnancies) Experience: subjective or objective impossible to prove (Thomas Bullard)

6. 1:15 AM Contactees George Adamski (1952) Flying Saucers Have Landed. In Mojave desert “Orthon” from Venus Religion is “science of life, without temples. Truman Bethurum (1954) Aboard a Flying Saucer. Also Mojave From Clarion No war, divorce, taxes Fry 1954 Warning from past earth civilization: atomic warfare Angelucci 1955

7. 1:15 AM Explanations: Cold War, anticommunism World can become better

8. 1:15 AM Early Organizations Conventions (1954-1977) Fry: Understanding, Inc. Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs (1957) Heralds of the New Age (early 1950’s) Cosmon Research Foundation (1962 martyred Gloria Lee) Christ Brotherhood (1956). Halsey disappeared 1963 Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara (When Prophecy Fails) Mark-Age (1956) Charles Boyd Gentzel Unarius (1954) Ernest L. Norman Aetherius Society (1955) George King

9. 1:15 AM 1970’s- UFO cults Human Individual Metamorphosis (1975) Bo & Peep, “The Two” “to the level above human” “The Four: A Christian Newsletter of the Tribulation” (1980’s) (in Ottawa and Kansas)

10. 1:15 AM M.I.B. Gray Barker, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956) 1953 Three men in black suits visit Albert Bender of Conneticut, director of “International Flying Saucer Bureau”. Bureau ends. Mechanical walk and voices.

11. 1:15 AM Abductions John Fuller (1961): Barney & Betty Hill abducted in New Hampshire Medical experiments Missing time Budd Hopkins & David Jacobs Laboratory animals? Pregnancies Whitley Streiber: Communion and Transformation. Ultimately benign aliens

12. 1:15 AM So What? Concerns expressed by: American Humanist Association Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal Skeptical Inquirer Skeptics UFO Newsletter Promotes credulity and authoritarian truth in charismatic figures Glorifies pathological psychosis Are UFO movements religious? Use categories from myths & religion We are not alone Beings with supernatural abilities to harm & heal, like angels & demons.

13. Homework For Wednesday: We’ll cover Heaven’s Gate. Read “Finding Heaven’s Gate” article on Moodle. Write the online quiz For Monday: Read Chapter 8 in Comprehending Cults No quiz! Come prepared for discussion.