Overwhelming belief in aliens is ‘dangerous’ to society, new paper warns
Don’t tell Mulder and Scully.
An academic in England says Earthlings are having too close of an encounter with UFO conspiracies and that it “is no longer a quirk, but a widespread societal problem.”
“This belief is slightly paradoxical as we have zero evidence that aliens even exist,” Tony Milligan, a research fellow in the philosophy of ethics at King’s College in London recently wrote for The Conversation.
“What’s more, given the vast distances between star systems, it seems odd we’d only learn about them from a visit. Evidence for aliens is more likely to come from signals from faraway planets,” the naysayer said.
Milligan, now published in the Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, cited recent “dangerous” statistics that nearly a quarter of Americans believe they have seen a UFO.
He added that the recent federal initiatives to publicize classified knowledge have only fanned the flames ignited by Jimmy Carter, who promised more answers for Americans while campaigning in the 1970s.
Now, hearings on unidentified aerial phenomena and Pentagon whistleblowers are turning more and more people into conspiracy theorists, says Milligan.
He referenced a pre-UAP commission 2019 Gallup poll which showed 68% of people believe that “the US government knows more about UFOs than it is telling.”
Furthermore, the past few years have only been “ultimately encouraging conspiracy theories, which could undermine trust in democratic institutions,” Milligan claims.
“Too much background noise about UFOs and UAPs can also get in the way of legitimate science communication about the possibility of finding microbial extraterrestrial life,” he said of the search for evidence in molecular structures across the universe and in our own solar system.
That kind of astrobiology “has a far less effective publicity machine than UFOlogy,” according to the researcher.
Milligan also noted that conspiracies about aliens visiting ancient Earth are causing anthropological issues by overshrouding the mythology of early, indigenous humans.
“It is increasingly clear that belief in alien visitation is no longer just a fun speculation, but something that has real and damaging consequences.”
