Is The UFO Out There?

Stuart McAllister presented a talk on "The Challenge of UFO and ET" some time back, and Leon ably recorded the entire event here:

The air was teeming with anticipation as Stuart begun his presentation. The many views sat unseen in the mind of the audience, a fundamentalist viewer or two perplexed that CDPC would even host such an event as this, many post modern youth curios to hear another X-file's like conspiracy theory and the average CDPC thinking Christian, wondering if he is going to call it all a hoax or blame it on the devil.

Stuart begin by taking us down memory lane recalling the 1960's when Gene Roddenberry launched the popular series 'Star Trek' that begin the worldwide interest in this phenomenon. But the interest in the phenomenon had begin earlier. Most people narrow the beginning of the modern rash of UFO sightings down to a day in 1947, on June 24 to Kenneth Arnold who observed, from his private plane, nine disk-like, silver objects flying in formation over Mount Rainier, Washington and he described them as "flying saucers". Later as Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt coins the phrase "UFO" to replace the term "flying saucers" to try and diffuse the sensationalism on this matter, but despite his efforts the media in the US hype it up and he gets almost 40 reports of sightings a day.

Stuart then proposes that popularity of ET's and UFO's because they carry with them some profound questions like;

"Are these our ancient ancestor's coming to visit us?"
"Does this mean that we are not alone in the universe?"
"Is the answer to humanity's meaning and purpose found in this phenomena?"

Read the rest of the discussions here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5