by Gary Bates
Please also understand that I am not saying that all abduction scenarios are explainable by this aforementioned hypothesis, but it does seek to explain (and it fits very well), what one might call the “garden-variety” type experiences that are usually defined under the category of the CAS (Classic Abduction Syndrome).
Using the CAS to predict experiences
Because of the patterns involved and the belief that this whole alien abduction scenario is a deception of cosmic proportions, when meeting experiencers one can even make predictions about the events before being actually told about them. This is because one can understand the agenda behind the deception and understand its purpose. As we have mentioned before, there are so many glaring inconsistencies about the view that benevolent ETs are stealthily abducting people in the middle of the night for their own good. Such a case where I was able to make and test a prediction was in New Zealand in 2006. After a lecture one evening, my hosts and I were leaving a venue when a car sped up to the entrance. I recognized the lady as having attended my earlier lecture. In the passenger seat was a man around 40-plus years old. Getting out of the car, the lady said, “Here he is. Go talk to him quickly.” By now I knew what to expect. A person can become isolated by an experience that no one can understand, let alone believe that it actually occurred. Asking my hosts to move away so we could have some privacy, I invited the man to tell me what happened.
At around 10 years of age it was customary for his parents to visit relatives on their farm in the country. It was a young boy’s paradise as he could play and explore the beautiful natural environment of the New Zealand countryside. He said that one day he saw a flying saucer land. Terrified, he ran away to the barn. He saw an occupant of the craft get out and walk towards the barn. The boy put his shoulder against the door, hoping the “spaceman” would think that it was closed. He says he can even remember pressure against the door. Petrified, he ran to the back of the barn to hide. He said the spaceman stood in the doorway with the daylight emanating from around him and piercing the darkness of the barn.
He was about to describe the spaceman’s appearance when I said, “No, please don’t. May I ask you a few questions?” Working from the man’s current age and his age at the time of the experience, I asked, “Was the spaceman wearing a one-piece silver or white jumpsuit with a glass-type helmet?” He answered “Yes, how could you know that?” It was a guess on my part, but a calculated one. I figured that his experience occurred in the late 1960s. This was the era of the B-grade science fiction movies and TV series such as Lost in Space and this was the typology of the science fiction movies of the day. Vallée was right.
The phenomenon morphs according to the cultural environment of the day. Such a thing seems ridiculous by modern-day standards, but we need to remember that is what people would likely have accepted back then as representing a “real spaceman.” And as we noted UFOlogist John Keel saying earlier, many researchers go off the deep end because they cannot comprehend the seeming bizarreness of it all. This is ultimately because they do not recognize it as being spiritual in nature and how it can transmogrify in our own earthly realm.
There is an answer and we can help people
One would think, then, that because this is a spiritual deception being perpetrated by the enemies of God, this would be bread and butter for the church. The man that I just previously mentioned had become a Christian, but had never found an answer to what had happened to him. As he spoke to me I could see how the event had confused and damaged him. Since I started researching this phenomenon I have now met hundreds of individuals who have had UFO experiences of one kind or another. Many of them come to me because when they hear me speak on the subject they have a sense that I understand what is really going on, and also because they have never heard anyone speak about it before (except perhaps to tell them that they really saw an alien spacecraft and were really abducted by aliens, or to make light of their experience totally).
As I primarily do most of my speaking on the subject in churches, I take no pleasure in pointing out that the overwhelming majority of Christian leaders have no idea that significant numbers of people in their own congregations have seen something in the skies that they could not explain, or even worse, have had experiences with strange entities. The numbers, of course, are significantly higher for the general population—the very people that churches should be reaching. The reason that this grieves me so much is that the church should be regarded as the obvious place to go for people seeking answers to problems in their lives to find comfort and solace. Of course I understand that it is easy to dismiss something that one does not understand. But individuals are being severely traumatized and damaged by their encounters with deceptive and dangerous spiritual forces. It is my own experience, and that of many other Christian UFOlogists, that churches and their leaders will often not even entertain a lecture, interview or discussion on the matter. Simply, they want nothing to do with it. Often it is because they feel there are more important issues to deal with—day to day pressures in the church, for example. This is understandable, but if large numbers of the population believe in such things, and people are really hurting and are confused, then it actually presents significant opportunities for the church. Opportunities to provide answers, to help heal the broken and confused (remembering that the enemy seems to select the most vulnerable to start with), and to be more relevant to the culture than it has ever been. Even some non-Christian UFO researchers recognize the damage that follows experiences and have suggested that the church could help.
But unless the church accepts, embraces and learns to deal with this modern cultural phenomenon that is a subset of the issue of origins (where these beings come from, and determining our own place in the universe), then even I (with great sadness) could not confidently recommend to experiencers that the church could help them with this issue. Because of this non-acceptance of the phenomenon occurring around them, the church does not know how to reach potentially millions of people (yes, that many) who are looking for answers. Unfortunately, most experiencers that I have met have felt angry because they felt shunned by the church who would not take their experiences seriously, or simply suggested that these people were demonically possessed. So this forces them to seek the assistance of those in the UFO community, who, sadly, will only reinforce the lie that they are being visited by highly evolved benevolent beings from another planet. A loving church that could embrace and explain this phenomenon will have people turning up at its door for answers.
It may not be possible to reply to all, but please feel free to share your experiences with me by emailing
Endnotes
[1] “The Allagash Abductions,”
[2] PR McHugh, Try to remember: Psychiatry’s clash over meaning, memory and mind (Dana Press, 2008). Cited in “False Memory Syndrome,”
[3]“False Memory Syndrome,”
[4] “Memory and Reality,”
[5] “Frequently Asked Questions,”
[6] Ibid.
[7] See
[8] Ibid.
[9] “The war of the worlds comes down to Earth,”
[10] Cited in “Many Forms of Hypnosis”, Dr Helene Feldman,
[11] Ibid.
[12] “Derren Brown Controls Shopping Mall Visitors—with sound,”
[1
3] “Derren Brown NLP,”
[14] Personal email to Gary Bates from James Allen, B.A. Psychology, Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, American Institute of Hypnotherapy, Forensic Reconstruction Investigator, January 5, 2010.
[15] Email from James Allen, December 21, 2009.
[16] Ibid.
[17] The “host of heaven” in the Bible also sometimes refers to the unfallen angelic beings that praise and serve God. Worship of the “starry host” may also refer to the stars themselves, as in the astrological entities superimposed on them. But this ultimately involves the worship of fallen entities who often masquerade as false deities
Appendix
UFOs in the Bible and Other Questions
Does the Bible mention ETs?
Did God create aliens?
Did Ezekiel see a UFO?
Who were the “sons of God” in Genesis 6?
Who made God?
An interdimensional creator?
Why is the universe so big?
Does the Bible mention ETs?
As we have seen, the Bible is central to the debate about UFOs. Even if you subscribe to the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) or the interdimensional hypothesis (IDH), the question remains, “Did God create the alien beings elsewhere?” If extraterrestrial life exists, it creates a problem for the big picture of Christianity and the very reason that God incarnate — Jesus Christ — came to this earth and died for mankind. Australian Professor Paul Davies[1] believes that traditional Christian beliefs are under threat due to the possible existence of extraterrestrial life. He says:
Christianity, in particular, has difficulties with regard to the very special role that Jesus Christ plays. If they wish to retain Jesus Christ as the savior, is he the savior of mankind only, or of all sentient beings throughout the universe? Or will each community have its own saviour? Doesn’t it all start to become a little ludicrous?[2]
Davies ridicules the Christian faith because he thinks that extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe is more or less a given. This assumption is based on his belief that evolution is true, but as we have seen, the evidence for life occurring through chance random processes weighs heavily against this.
If you take an approach to the Bible which allows you to interpret it according to your own beliefs, you can fit aliens into the scheme of things, in as many other dimensions as you like. You could even claim the world is going to end tomorrow. But you would be adding information to the Bible based on your own beliefs rather than letting the Bible speak for itself. People often question the validity of the Christian faith when they see so much evil, corruption, violence, and distorted sexual practices committed by those who claim to follow Christ, such as followers of many pseudo-Christian cults. However, if one takes a closer look at such groups and their followers, it is easy to demonstrate that they have not attempted to adhere to the words of the Bible, but that they have imposed their own outside ideas (that is, their own belief system) on the Bible. If you let the Bible speak for itself, it is easy to identify those who claim to follow Christ but in reality do not.
One such area where outside ideas have been added to the Bible is the theory of evolution. In this case, it is commonly believed that scientists have proven the idea that simple chemicals can transform themselves into more and more complex organisms over millions of years. This has not been proven at all, but it is believed to have happened by the majority of scientists. A “herd rule” mentality causes others to believe that the majority must be correct, and so it is not openly questioned.
Many Christians believe that this belief system is infallible, then try to fit the idea of evolution and millions of years into the Bible somewhere.
A plain reading of the Bible allows no such thing. It clearly states that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal 24-hour days and rested from this process of creation on the seventh day (Exod. 20:11). In addition, by looking at the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and then the genealogies throughout the Old Testament, we can trace Jesus’ ancestry all the way back to Adam and Eve. These two were real people — we know that Jesus believed in them because He referred to them. By a simple calculation of the ages given in these chronologies, it is easy to estimate that the time of creation, as recorded in the Scriptures, was only about 6,000 years ago. (Space does not permit us to go into exhaustive reasoning or scientific details on this, but there is a “Recommended Resources” section at the back of this book that covers the subjects of creation/evolution, radiometric-dating methods, natural selection, cosmology, etc.).
If creation occurred a few thousand years ago and the Scripture records that God finished on day 6, there was no time for any processes of evolution to have taken place, here or on any other planet.
If there was intelligent alien life elsewhere in the universe, it must have been created by God during the creation week, because the Bible says that everything, without exception, was created during those six days. But does the Bible mention the creation of intelligent alien life? Before we proceed, let us define what we are looking for. God has created intelligent life other than life on the earth. These creatures are mentioned dozens of times in the Bible, and as we discovered, they were the central focus of our study. They are angels. They do not live on other planets (although it is quite possible they could visit them if they so wanted). They exist in the heavenly realms, and have been created as specific agents of God to do His will.
But the “aliens” that most people really want to find are extraterrestrial beings, Star Wars–like, and perhaps displaying all of the unusual features that are shown in science fiction movies. Or perhaps they could look like us.
The modern English translations of the Bible mention the word aliens only in the context of people being “strangers” or “visitors from a foreign country.” It was even used of believers in God (Christians), in recognition that their eternal home is with Jesus Christ in heaven, and therefore Earth is a temporary residence. Many have pointed out that the Bible does not mention intelligent alien life, and therefore conclude that God could have created it elsewhere without telling us. However, this is known as an argument from silence; and conversely, one could argue that it means he didn’t.
I use the word “intelligent” because it may be possible to find simple life forms elsewhere in the solar system. Discoveries on other planets may turn up bacteria, for example. But does that mean it originated there? If scientists believe that Martian rocks have found their way to Earth, surely it would be possible for Earth life — even deep rocks contain micro-organisms — to contaminate other planets.
However, the reason I draw the conclusion that there is no intelligent ET life elsewhere in the physical universe is by strong inference, looking at the many Bible verses that explain how humans are at the center of God’s stated purposes for His creation (more shortly). I am surprised at the number of solid Christian researchers, even in the UFO field, who are sitting on the fence with regard to the possibility of ET life, unsure what to believe.
Did God create aliens?
It would be fair to say that, even for Christians, whether to fit “alien life” into the Bible has been a tricky issue. The confusion results from two main sources. Firstly, no one is immune to media saturation. Alien themes are so commonplace that it has become almost a given that aliens exist. “Harmless” product advertising on TV commercials, and even children’s cereal boxes, promotes these alien space themes. I believe that popular culture has subconsciously caused most people to think that aliens are out there somewhere.
Secondly, our discoveries about the enormous and incomprehensible size of the universe have caused many to think that we cannot be the only “race” in space. Otherwise, the universe would be an awful waste. Similarly, if God created, then why did He create such a vast universe with our little speck of dust (the earth) as the only inhabited place (see the section later, “Why is the universe so big?”)?
/> The major influence here is the erroneous belief that evolution occurred on the earth, and by extrapolation, elsewhere in the universe. Even Christians who don’t believe in evolution end up thinking they have to accept that God created aliens or some other form of intelligent life elsewhere. I repeat, though, that this is a case of allowing outside ideas to influence our view of Scripture.
For the Christian, the perspective should really be what God said He did, not what He might have done or could have done. If one takes the latter approach then the Bible is up for grabs for inserting into it virtually any concept that one wants to. I have heard some respected Christian leaders say that the Bible is silent about many things such as motor cars, for instance. And so, because the Bible does not talk about every single thing, we simply cannot be sure about whether there are aliens or not. In short, they claim that it is fallacious to use the “argument from silence” to exclude alien life. However, this is a flawed argument. The Bible provides all the information we need to know about man’s sinful condition and his eternal state, and the concept of sentient, intelligent, moral decision-making capable life (in other words with the same capacities as human beings) actually invalidates the very gospel of Christ, as we shall see. In other words, as we will see in more detail, it is not what we don’t know; it is what we do know from the Bible that allows us to conclude that God did not create extraterrestrial civilizations, for example.