Last night, I watched a thing on the History Channel with Amanda about how some people think that the Bible recorded various accounts of visits from UFO’s and extraterrestrials. The classic explanation of people in this camp is that people back in the day could only describe alien craft using the objects and metaphors available to them at the time. They weren’t accustomed to flying craft or space travel, so they had to use words like “flying chariots” and shit like that to describe UFO phenomenon.

Like most things, I don’t necessarily discount these theories, because they are cool. And coolness almost always wins against absurdity or outlandishness for me. But neither do I really put a ton of stock into them. The researchers in that field do, of course. For whatever reason. One guy in particular struck a chord with me. His name was Barry Downing and he was a Presbyterian minister. And the whole time he just kept talking about how different divine encounters in the Bible were actually alien/UFO encounters. And yet he’s sitting there wearing one of those black priest outfits with the little white collar. It’s always really amazing to me when people can so effectively straddle two contradictory worlds like that. Cause not only did he seem totally convinced that all that rather than ascending to Heaven, Jesus was beamed up into a UFO at his Ascension. But then he still totally believed in Jesus, and didn’t seem to see any apparent problem at all. I think that kinda shit is just great. Weird, but great. Apparently Downing also put out a book in 1968 called, The Bible and Flying Saucers.

Cable documentaries about paranormal/mystical stuff seem to usually suck though. I don’t have cable myself, but over the holiday season, I’ve ended up actually watching quite a few at different people’s houses. I’ve noticed an annoying trend among all of them. First is that they are usually poorly researched and written. You could cover these topics with a great deal more flair and excitement than any of them seem to. But more important than that is what happens at the end of the documentary. They will spend the first like 55 minutes of a documentary offering all these crazy whacked out possibilities and wildly divergent theories about things that could or could have happened. But then they will invariably spend the last 5 minutes doing a complete reversal, and basically reminding the viewers that none of this stuff is really possible, and that while it may be entertaining to consider, it’s merely superstition in the end.

When did that trend start happening in these types of documentaries? I used to watch them all the time as a kid, but I don’t remember that element cropping up all the time. Maybe I was just too culturally unaware to realize what they were doing. Or else maybe it just wasn’t there. The whole thing kind of annoys me. It’s almost like if you went to the movies, and they kept splicing in written disclaimers that said:

This is just a movie. This is not real life. Do not get any crazy ideas from this about how you might like to change your life or your mind.

I just think it’s very telling of a lack of trust for the audience. And also of a fear of the power of imagination. It’s a very good example too of what I was referring to in the Golden Bough, about how Frazier anthropologically trying to discredit things as savagery and superstition constantly.

Anyway, I also discovered that watching TV documentaries is much too slow of a way of gathering information for me nowadays. Which is funny, because people are always criticizing television for being too fast and for ruining people’s attention span. I find quite the opposite to be true. I’m used to gathering my informational fruits online, and when I do so, I can zoom immediately right towards the nuggets I’m after. I can sift and wade through huge texts enormously quickly with a combination of visual scans and search tools. But then sitting there with these TV shows, you have to wait and wait and wait for them to drop any kind of interesting or relevant tidbits. It’s totally annoying and gives me lots of thoughts about how much media will need to change over the next few years.