Encounters

Watched all four episodes of the USA's 2023 Encounters. The success of this semi-dramatized documentary is that it does not build its case on old-hat incidents such as those from Roswell or the Bermuda Triangle. It presents heretofore unpublicized testimonies and interviews from the USA, the United Kingdom, Africa, and Japan following sightings over Stephenville and Dublin in Central Texas, Zimbabwe, a triangular area in Broadhaven, and Fukushima. 

Among the resources interviewed are a Homeland Security consultant, a cryptologic technician of the US Navy, a pilot and businessman, the managing editor of the Empire Tribune, a constable, a nanotechnology engineer, the director of Research at Mufon Mutual UFO Network, the chairman of the board of the First National Bank of Dublin, a high school principal, a former Army radar expert, a reporter for The New York Times , an attorney, a Pulitzer-prize winning professor of Harvard University, a headmistress, a psychiatrist, an astrophysicist and former research scientist, former students (then schoolchildren and now adults), a retired regional investigator for the British UFO Research Association, a local reporter, a journalist, two headmasters, a former RAF officer, hotel owners, farmers, the chief monk of Enmyion Temple, a newspaper editor, two visual artists, a scholar and author, a Religious Studies major, a computer scientist, a drama teacher, and a USAF missile officer. In fairness to the entire production, the opinions of skeptics were also included.

The documentary does not use costumes. masks, and spectacular effects to drive home its point, the point being that extraterrestrials have always been concerned about the preservation of Planet Earth and may have been perceived as gods and goddesses or angels from the very beginning. It is a hard pill to swallow for religious fundamentalists and science fundamentalists alike, for it indirectly addresses the issue of salvation: that salvation could simply mean the survival of the species and the continuation of life via progeny and environmental consciousness--minus the ascension of souls into a heaven in the clouds.

Certain suppositions are made clear:

--That we are not alone, and that we never were

--That today's religion is tomorrow's mythology, no matter how many thousands of years it takes for people to realize it

--That hundreds of years of Bible scholarship will become obsolete because nothing in this world is permanent, especially men's minds

--That there is more than one god in the multiverse

--That Satan is not in hell, he is a member of the heavenly council

--That God did not make us in his image and likeness, and that it is the other way around: we made God in our image and likeness

--That we are not, and we were never, the center of the universe

--That fundamentalist religion is incompatible with progressive science

--That aliens do not show up accidentally. but deliberately

--That religious fundamentalists especially fear having visitors from other planets who will tell them that they are their true salvation

--That "God" is not a participant, He is an observer

Sadly, as Mark Twain wrote, "No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot."