I have just returned from an eight-day vacation to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I travelled with my boyfriend Mark to see the in-laws. During this trip I was without the Internet, even though I did visit one local library last Monday. I was more content to sit there and explore the place, then read while I waited for Mark to finish his E-mailing, than to go on-line myself. Thus I am trying now to plow through eight days of friends’ blog entries, so bear with me if I add my comments a week after their original posting.

While in Halifax I finished reading Alien Obsession by Ron Rhodes. Rhodes attempts to find Biblical reasoning behind alien abductions, UFO sightings and other attractions to the paranormal. I must state upfront that I don’t believe in UFO’s or life on other planets. In spite of this, I am nonetheless fascinated with controversial phenomena such as UFO sightings and alien contact. While I don’t deny that people who have had these experiences felt something that they perceived to be very real, I don’t believe that what they experienced had anything to do with aliens, UFO’s or abductions.

The author and I come from the same skeptical background. We are also both Christians, yet I won’t go so far as Rhodes does in his Biblical interpretations of alien encounters. Although he is using the Bible as his source, I found his scriptural backup for UFO sightings and alien abductions to be as weak as water. In his explanation for what causes UFO sightings, he makes the point throughout the book, warning readers about extraterrestrials:

“Christians beware! Deceptive spirits are at work!”; and:

“Don’t be fooled by deceiving spirits!“.

So it’s evil spirits who are making all those lights in the sky, is it? I don’t buy into extraterrestrial travellers visiting planet Earth either, yet I don’t think the answer to all these sightings is that they are manifestations of Satan’s demon angels trying to hook humans into believing in them.

I found the most interesting chapters in Alien Obsession to be “Are UFOs Mentioned in the Bible?” and “The Strange Case of Whitley Strieber”. In the late eighties I read Strieber’s first two books about his alleged alien abductions and visitations, Communion and Transformation. His first book, Communion, scared the living daylights out of me. I had never read a book that made me scared to move about in my own house. Strieber had repeated psychologically traumatic experiences, that, in my opinion, were not extraterrestrial in their cause. Rhodes sums up Strieber’s experiences this way:

“I don’t believe for a minute that Strieber came into contact with bona fide aliens from outer space. Rather, he came into contact with demonic spirits who were posing as aliens.”

This is stated so brazenly that it is laughable. The whole tone of this book, in its Biblical analyses and in the author’s warnings to vulnerable potential Christian alien abductees, comes across as though it was written by –and I am sorry that a fellow Christian such as myself has to say this– a religious wacko. How else to explain the author’s tips to Christians who may find themselves abducted by demonics spirits posing as aliens? Rhodes gives the reader tips on how to get these demonic aliens to let you go. What? Has he used his own advice on himself to vouch that it works? Not a fun read, and I found myself shaking my head with scoffing laughter many times as I turned its 252 pages.