Let me start this out by saying that if you’re one of those people who will make blanket denials that aliens ever visit this planet, you have veered into the “science as religion” camp. Regardless of the government’s repeated and understandable denials that there’s anything going on with aliens, there are enough first hand accounts from people who have nothing to gain or lose that, it’s clear aliens do visit from time to time. As should be clear from even a casual study of the history of science, it tends to glorify and emphasize those “facts” which adhere to current orthodoxy, and ignore “facts” which don’t fit the narrative.

But the stubborn short-sightedness of science is not what I’m here to focus on.

People who believe in the idea that we are regularly visited by UFOs often have what I would consider odd ideas about aliens. One of the most commonly subscribed to tenets of their beliefs is that aliens, in addition to their superior technology, are emotionally, spiritually, or mentally superior to earthers. This leads to all kinds of conjecture about what alien motivations are and what aliens may have to do with us in the future.

Being fairly pragmatic in my thinking, I think it’s worth looking at this assumption from a practical standpoint. Man on Earth has progressed over a few thousand years from chipping away at rocks for our basic tools to carrying around in our pockets what at one time would have been considered “mainframe” computing power. The sheer bulk and magnitude of the technology the average human can command is beyond stunning by comparison to what primitive man had. And yet, look at Man himself. Has anything fundamentally changed about his psyche in all those thousands of years? Nope. He’s still capable of cruelty in equal measure with his compassion. He still suffers from petty jealousies, seemingly uncontrollable passions, hatreds of one sort or another, unbridled joys and all manner of other pluses and minuses. Man, as a being has not changed one jot. The man today is essentially the same man who crawled out of his cave in the ancient past to view the stars above him. Read the oldest religious texts and the oldest stories we have available. There really is no difference. This is Man.

So why do we think that aliens, simply because they have superior technology (or they wouldn’t be able to do what they do) are any further along spiritually, emotionally or mentally? In fact, it’s worth asking yourself, what if earthers are actually superior to aliens? What if aliens are a lot more docile and herd-like than humans? What if it took them millions of years longer to develop their technologies than it’s taken us? And having asked the question, you really wouldn’t know either way unless you had a chance to sit down and talk to one of them for a few hours.

The other question that often comes up is what aliens want with us. Most people assume there is some great plan in motion which the aliens have for us. But what if that’s not true? Why do you think the aliens haven’t landed here en masse and made their intentions known?

Perhaps because (the simplest answer) they have none. Perhaps they really don’t care about us at all. Perhaps they visit here (and as rarely as they do) out of idle curiosity. If you were going down the road in your car, wouldn’t you slow down to take a look if you saw a train wreck? (And this planet could certainly be classified as a train wreck.)

It’s also worth considering that the aliens which visit us aren’t the only alien species out there. The aliens who visit this place probably think this is their territory. And if that’s so, they might want to defend it from interlopers (other alien species). So they might have bases in the vicinity (e.g. the moon, Mars) to interdict any “invading” alien presence. Betcha never thought of that, huh?

I think most believers in UFO visitation overthink the whole thing. They need to be more practical about this stuff. Aliens don’t stop and have tea with us because they don’t care to. Honestly, what does Earth have that they couldn’t obtain somewhere else? Minerals? Have you seen the rest of the solar system recently? How about the asteroid belt? Honestly, there’s really nothing here they couldn’t get without a lot less complication somewhere else. And if they came here from another star system (duh), who knows what’s there? Maybe they have more than enough of whatever they might want, a lot closer to home. Perhaps the only aliens who visit here are tourists.

Another thing I find amusing about UFO folks is that they often believe that aliens helped us build things like the pyramids. Although science won’t admit it, huge megastructures like the pyramids could not possibly have been built by ancient man. They didn’t have the tools or the knowledge. Look at the pyramids specifically. They had to be a huge undertaking. Scientists are still trying to figure out how they built such things, since we would find it extremely difficult or nearly impossible to build such things today. Why do people wonder about this? When was the last time you saw a fresco or scroll explaining it? For this magnitude activity, it’s pretty certain some Egyptian stonemason or workman would have sketched out the process or at least made some drawings of what the process entailed. And yet, so far as I know such a recording has ever been found. There are numerous sites of massive construction all over the world, and I’ve never heard of one where anyone found a picture or explanation of how they quarried granite from miles away down a hill, dressed the stone, transported it up the hill and dropped it into place perfectly, all without the wheel or anything better than copper tools to do it with. Let me remind you, we’re talking stones weighing in the tons.

In fact, the real question here is why ancient man would even attempt such a thing? Egyptians and just about everyone else was able to build large structures out of bricks and stones which could be carried by a man. So why quarry multi-ton rocks and use them instead? When was the last time in modern times anyone used a construction technique like that for anything they built? Hasn’t happened.

In sum, it’s clear that we didn’t build these things, with or without anyone’s help. We came along after they were already built, and claimed them as our own or put them to our uses.

I also get tired of listening to the “religion-is-why” such huge structures were built. People try to add up all these numbers and assign great significance to where things were built and how they were oriented. Who says they didn’t build them this way just because they thought it would be cool to have the morning sun coming in the window? Why does everything have to add up to some magical number often found in nature? Why does everything have to line up a certain way? Why can’t it have been built that way because aliens just happen to like their buildings facing certain ways. (I say “aliens” here just because I don’t think we did it. For all I know, it could have been people who look like us, but preceded us by millions of years.)

Everyone also assumes that we’re the only ones who have ever inhabited this planet (in terms of intelligent species). What in the world makes you think that? There are artifacts (often hidden away) which indicate there was activity going on on this planet long before Man. Let’s be generous and assume that Man in his present form has been on this planet for a million years or so. If, as science says, the Earth is four billion years old, that’s a long time for the planet to be devoid of intelligent life before Man came along. Why couldn’t civilizations have been here, built a bunch of big stuff, and then left? Frankly, the Earth’s climate would have put me off. I go to build this huge structure, and then along comes a dang ice age a thousand years later. And the ice age lasts for ten or twenty thousand years. Jeeminy. I’d be better off on Mars, building a big dome or underground bunker, putting a bunch of stuff under it, and living a more comfortable life in a place without the variable weather, variable geology and all that rot.

Another thing I love about scientists and UFOers alike is their tendency to try to stuff certain things where they don’t belong. For example, there are various examples, particulary in parts of the Sahara, where you can find green-yellow glass on the surface of the desert. When I first saw and read about these places, I made the most obvious observation possible: someone dropped a nuke there! But no. It always has to be an asteroid. Never mind we can’t find a crater. (Asteriod impacts leave craters, just like a nuke will if exploded at the surface. Blasts which happen above the surface– both kinds– do not leave craters. Asteroids typically go all the way to the ground when they hit. Nukes are more destructive when exploded above, not at, ground level.) Try finding a crater at Tunguska. Try finding a crater for the K-T event (the extinction of the dinosaurs). Try finding a crater for the Saharan yellow-green glass. What makes everyone think that wayward aliens, fighting with each other, couldn’t have let loose a nuke or two here and there?

What about sites which exhibit massive damage on the surface of Earth? Science insists uniformly that these must be asteroid impacts. Orthodoxy, and besides there are no aliens because we haven’t captured one and dissected every part of him. One thing that tends to show up in areas where there’s been mass damage is rare elements. Some elements, like Iridium and Osmium, are vanishingly rare on Earth. Yet in the vicinity of damage areas, you’ll find significant quantities of these elements. So the scientific orthodoxy assumes that there must be a lot more Iridium and Osmium in space. (Did it ever occur to anyone to ask why we have a dearth of these elements on Earth? I’m betting they were mined out from Earth ages ago. Probably handy for building spaceships.) But has anyone ever entertained the idea that you could build a nuke which left a lot of Iridium/Osmium around when it exploded? I think nukes explain a lot of damage better than asteroids.

Another point of important note. Alien craft, at least as reported, tend to make maneuvers which would introduce G (gravity) forces impossible for humans to survive. They typically move slowly into a certain position. Then, often when approached or obviously noticed, they take off at speeds and angles which would crush any human in the craft. Notice also that the most commonly reported form for aliens is about 3-4 feet tall, grey-skinned, with huge black eyes, which may or may not have noses, mouths, ears and other accoutrements common to human heads. They also may or may not wear any clothing. What if their bodies are not organic as ours are? What if they are more like plastic, like dolls? What if plastic-skinned doll bodies could withstand high G forces, like those which would be produced by alien craft typical maneuvers? All things being equal, the human body doesn’t appear to be suited for space travel. On the other hand, the main type of aliens, as far as we can discern, don’t function as we do, and may be perfectly crafted or tailored to traveling through space. All of this is just supposition, except for the spacecraft maneuvers. So take it as you like. But it is the simplest explanation available.

I also love these folks who see magic numbers everywhere. Pi (3.14159), 1.618, 5, 7 and all these other “cosmic” numbers somehow figure into the building of megaliths, and that means that such-and-such aliens have a message they’re trying to send us. Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe aliens, like us, have a sense of humor, and they only do things like including some number in their construction to drive us up the wall trying to figure it out? Or maybe they just like some numbers better than others. Numbers are just numbers folks. Don’t overthink it.

And how come every megalith has to have a religious purpose to it? Okay, so maybe some of them (and only some of them) have figures of deities on them. So what? Our money has references to God on it. For us, this mostly means, “Yeah God, we haven’t forgotten about ya. Thanks for all the rocks and animals and stuff”. In some cases, megaliths were probably there for a long time, and then men came along and carved their gods into them, as if to say, “Nice job, God!” We didn’t build the World Trade Center towers to pay tribute to some deity. (Or maybe we did, and the deity we had in mind was green and foldable.) These massive structures built by the ancestors of Man or aliens could have been built for any number of reasons, none of which had anything to do with deities. We really have no idea why. Maybe we should just leave it at, “Someone built these, and we don’t know why”.

In any case, I just find it amusing how “scientists” will bend over backwards to try and fit everything into their dogma, and reject, hide, or lie about things which lie outside their dogma. And how UFOers overthink everything. Come on, people. Be pragmatic for once. Forget religion, astronomy and the like. Just look at what’s in front of you.