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Ancient space man8/3/2023 ![]() ![]() Where some, such as noted religion scholar Steven O'Leary, are concerned with how the self-professed scientific study of UFOs is infiltrated by spiritual concerns, I am more concerned with how religious movements make UFOs and aliens integral parts of their belief systems. Of the small but growing number of scholars who study UFO phenomena sociologically, many agree that UFOs have great religious importance and potential. I then offer some reasons why UFOs fail in that reconciliatory role: first, that UFOs must be as malleable as spirit yet more physically real and second, that mainstream scientific and religious stigma against UFOs undermines UFO religions' credibility in a wider cultural arena. I suggest this is because these creators desire a spiritual system that is also scientifically credible. This paper examines why UFOs are highly suitable symbols for some creators of new religions. Posing complex questions of fact and fiction, knowing and believing, and science and religion, this article analyzes the postwar UFO phenomenon as part of a broader astroculture and identifies transcendental and occult traditions within imagined encounters with extraterrestrial beings. Studying a phenomenon whose very existence has been non-consensual since its genesis presents a particular challenge for historians. Yet they failed to develop a response to the epistemic-ontological challenge posed by one wave of UFO sightings after another. Jung, a modern myth evolving in real-time. Clarke, and Wernher von Braun sought to debunk what they considered a great swindle, or, following C.G. Incipient space experts including Willy Ley, Arthur C. As innumerable reports of sightings led to a transnational movement driven by both proponents and critics, controversial protagonists such as ‘contactee’ George Adamski became prominent media celebrities. In the public imagination, UFOs were frequently conflated with technoscientific approaches to space exploration. Contemporaneous with efforts to legitimize the possibility of spaceflight in the years before Sputnik, the UFO phenomenon generated as much sensation in Europe as in the USA. ![]() Initially an American phenomenon, flying saucer reports quickly became global in scope. Beginning in 1947, with the first waves of UFO sightings, and continuing in the subsequent decades, debates on the existence and gestalt of extraterrestrial life gained unprecedented prominence. ![]()
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