Little John - good one. I've heard about that incident at Edwards Air Force Base as well. Having seen my own extraterrestrial vehicles, I was not surprised. Jimmy Carter also saw some when he was a state governor, and he spoke to the press extensively about it. He had no doubt that they were extraterrestrial vehicles. After he became president, however, I heard nothing more about the matter. Perhaps those who really hold the power told him to keep his big mouth shut...or maybe he just was too busy with other considerations.

Amos - your comments are marvelous. You ought to write a book on the subject.

General comment on this thread - great stuff! I've not looked at it for some time till tonight. Good contributions by both sides (sceptics and believers, scientists and mystics). And best of all, those who can walk comfortably in both camps.

I think there will always be a debate in any society between those who think man DOES live "by bread alone", and those who think there's more to it than that. Up to at least age 18 I believed nothing but science and rational/logical thinking. Now I believe any number of things that are quite beyond the reach of science (because they are not things confined within the phenomena that we refer to as matter and energy...but rather they are causal things which have produced and brought forth those phenomena of matter and energy (and time) and made them observable...and the causal things continue at all times to support those observable phenomena).

Some people call what I am referring to "God". Others call it the Tao. Others call it the Great Mystery. Others call it destiny or fate or karma.

The guy who thinks man lives by bread alone (I speak metaphorically) does not believe in any of that causal stuff, and he actually tends to feel that the way things are now has occured through a series of accidental happenings, within the workings of natural law, physics, natural selection and so on.

Whereas I feel that the natural laws are themselves part of a structure that was built from the start by a purposeful form of divine intelligence, as is everything.

So, you either believe it's an accident...in which case you are an accident, and everything you do doesn't really matter in the end, because after you die you are gone, gone, gone...

Or...you believe that nothing is an accident...in which case your life has a very important and unique purpose...and everything you do DOES MATTER, and that after you die you are still very much alive (which is what I believe).

Now, I ask you, which of these attitudes leads to a healthier basic psychology? Which of them would tend to ennoble the person, and make the person reach toward higher ideals? Which of them would ennoble others in that person's eyes, and make him "his brother's keeper", instead of someone who simply seeks momentary self-gratification.

The Communists were always very enamoured of the notion that "man lives by bread alone". They were arch-materialists. And that led directly to many of the abuses they inflicted on humanity.

Capitalists, when they go to extremes, are also arch-materialists, consumed by the endless search for more money and more temporal power.

Both Communists and capitalists are happy to use the machinery of science to support their viewpoints....and they both tend to be uncomfortable with spiritual teachings which are non-competitive, which emphasize love and higher ideals. Those ideals get in the way of profits, control, and military supremacy.

Now, I will readily agree that religion has perpetrated equally hideous travesties upon humanity. Even more hideous travesties. Absolutely!!!

However, it is not religion that I am espousing here. I'm not religious, I'm spiritual.

I do not believe that God is a humanlike creature of immense power who sits on a throne judging people and deciding which ones go to heaven and which to hell. That's fundamentalist religion.

So when I counter (or add to, I might better say) the scientific viewpoint with spiritual arguments, don't imagine that I am a religionist!

My idea of "God" (or whatever you choose to call it) is...God is everything...all matter, all energy, all awareness, all being, all seen, all unseen, all potential, all time, all beyond time, all fact, all fiction (which is creative imagination, and is valuable as such), ALL. And it's ALL intelligent and has a clear and definite purpose.

Science is simply a partial way of observing and explaining how the ALL works in the presently observable realms of matter, energy and time. Those realms arose out of something even larger, and ALL of it is "God".

Which means, Wolfgang, that you too are god, although, you're just one little piece of God, one particular aspect of the whole that is God, so to speak...same as me, Spaw, or anyone else, including that fly that just buzzed past your head or the floor you are standing on. Which follows...it is ALL sacred, and we might better recogize that and behave accordingly, like the gods we are meant to be, instead of running around like terrified little death-haunted idiots pursuing limitless amounts of money, fame, military supremacy, and other empty notions of that sort...while we wait for the "grim reaper" to end the game, and sweep it all away. So pass the worlds of illusion.