85 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
85 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: MACK MAKES WEAK CASE FILE: UFO2237
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`ABDUCTION' MAKES WEAK UFO CASE
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04/17/94
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PORTLAND OREGONIAN
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ABDUCTION
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Dr. John E. Mack (Scribner's, $22; 426 pages)
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Let me say up front that I really want to believe. I read every
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account of UFO sightings I can.
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As a child growing up in New Jersey, I spent Saturdays in the
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third row of the State Theater, jawing jujubes while watching "The
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Angry Red Planet," "Forbidden Planet" and "Them!"
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Eighteen years ago, my wife and I made a pact: we would never
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tease one another about seeing a flying saucer. After all, people
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who see UFOs might just as well walk around with a sign on their
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backs proclaiming "Crackpot." It would help if your spouse at least
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believed you.
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So I really, really want to believe.
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But despite his credentials, and the scholarly approach of
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"Abduction," I still don't believe Harvard psychiatrist John E.
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Mack's 13 tales of alien intervention.
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Mack, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for "A Prince of Our
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Disorder," a biography of T.E. Lawrence, has investigated more than
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75 cases of alleged alien abduction. He offers the stories of 13
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people who clearly believe they have been visited by
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extraterrestrials. Mack also seems to believe. The language
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throughout "Abduction" gives the subjects the benefit of the doubt,
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referring to them as "experiencers" and noting matter-of-factly
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that "children have experienced being taken from school yards," and
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"abduction encounters begin most commonly in homes or when
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abductees are driving automobiles. One woman was taken from a
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snowmobile on a winter's day."
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Unfortunately, he offers no proof.
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Mack says we shouldn't get hung up on physical evidence or even
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eyewitness corroboration of other-worldly abductions. The abduction
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phenomenon, he says, might take place on another level of
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consciousness. That's why it might seem like a dream, or not be
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recalled at all without hypnosis.
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So how does Mack determine if someone is pulling his leg?
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"My criterion for including or crediting an observation by an
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abductee is simply whether what has been reported was felt to be
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real by the experiencer and was communicated sincerely and
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authentically to me," he reports in his typically stilted academese.
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Unfortunately, on those grounds, I'd have to also believe in
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the Loch Ness monster, which, given recent revelations of a faked
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photograph of Lessie, is inviting the crackpot designation.
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Mack understands my need for a picture, a fingerprint (tentacle
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print?) . . . something.
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"I do not expect that the material presented in this book will
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have much impact on the minds of those who believe that the laws of
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physics as encompassed by the Newtonian/Einsteinian system are the
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full definition of reality," he writes. "I hope, however, that the
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data contained here is of sufficient power and solidity to enable
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those who are open to expanding their view of possible realities to
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consider that the world might contain forces and intelligences of
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which we have hardly allowed ourselves to dream."
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Trouble is, doc, I dream about those intelligences all the
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time. I keep a candle in the window, just in case E.T. wants to
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visit. I'm about as open-minded on this subject as you can be. But
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13 interviews, earnest as they may be, are not enough to make me a
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believer. And if you haven't sold me, I don't think you're going to
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sell many others.
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**********************************************
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* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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********************************************** |