Faith is just "belief not based on evidence"
Carl Sagan stated that faith is the belief in the absence of evidence. "For me , believing when there is no compelling evidence is a mistake."
For Richard Dawkins, faith is merely belief without evidence; a process of active non-thinking. A practice which only degrades our understanding of the natural world by allowing anyone to make a claim about reality that is based solely on their personal thoughts, and possibly distorted perceptions.
Faith is in general the persuasion of the mind that a certain statement is true, belief in and assent to the truth of what is declared by another, based on his or her supposed authority and truthfulness.
We will not argue about the importance of Faith in Religion. Muslims and Christians kill themselves in the name of Faith.
In mythological Ufology, the rhetoric of people like Michael Salla, Alfred Webre or Richard Boylan demand faith as primary condition. Without faith, the whole exopolitical and exobiological discourse is meaningless.
This is the tradition in UFO mythology. We must always believe in what these people say, even if they have no scientific background at all. In fact we must deny science and instead believe in pseudo-scientific, unsubstantiated rants.
We need to discredit the whole scientific establishment if we want to believe in what Boylan, Webre, Salla or Greer say.
We must "sell our soul to irrationality" and forget Logical, Rational, Critical thinking.
We are back thousands of years, again in a dark age of gods and all-knowing shamans.
We are into superstition, and in the political context, ready for Fascism and Authoritarianism.
But what are the motivations of all these fantasists?
There could be several motivations.
Ego, profiteering, resentment against society and science, and the will to control people for the pleasure of it.
Also we must consider the possibility that some of them believe in what they say, but usually the insane rhetoric is not clearly elaborated.
Personally I do not believe that they are professional disinformers. This would be the counter-conspiracy, the echo, the opposite delirium.
What is true is that the whole pseudo-ufolofgical scheme works well for those in Power.
Keeping people Ignorant and superstitious is what the Big Corporations need to remain in control.
Collective hypnosis, ignorance, belief in the Big Cosmic Brother, these are the new "opium for the people".
James Black
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rationalufology
http://ufoculture.blogspot.com/