Ted Peters - UFOs: Gods Chariots?: Spirituality, Ancient Aliens, and Religious Yearnings in the Age of Extraterrestrials

Are UFOs replacing yesterdays angels? Will flying saucers bring redemption from the sky? What could be the impact of the discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence on religions? Ted Peters offers some potential answers in this groundbreaking work and a fascinating contribution to the religious and spiritual structures at work in the UFO phenomenon, as well as establishing a new field of research Astrotheology.

Philippe Ailleris, Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (UAP)
Observations Reporting Scheme, the Netherlands

Ted Peters brings a much-needed sober voice to topics that can be highly charged. His book examines connections in alternative and traditional belief systems, demonstrating central ideas that buttress our world views are not as disparate as they may seem. It is an important examination that, to me, sheds light on the similarity of our hearts, and our yearning to connect to something greater.

Alejandro Rojas, editor and writer for Open Minds Magazine, and
host of Open Minds UFO Radio, www.openminds.tv/alejandro-rojas

This book is a welcome update of Ted Peters UFOs: Gods Chariots? It blends historical, cultural, and theological analyses with consideration of the relations today between science and religion, and, importantly, of the nature of human religious longing and experiences. A variety of readers from the general to the scholarly, from the skeptical to the faithful will find this book to be informative, engaging, and thought-provoking.

Catherine Wessinger, Rev. H. James Yamauchi, S.J. Professor of the
History of Religions, Loyola University New Orleans

UFOs: Gods Chariots? explores incisively and insightfully the intertwined observer-observed elements of UFO encounters. Peters uses hermeneutical phenomenology to analyze possible symbolic meanings of reported events as he links witnesses (including those claiming to be abductees) to what they perceive; defines a new area of reflective research, Astrotheology; and, rejecting cultural scientism, affirms the religious and spiritual dimensions of human existence. An important contribution to efforts to understand holistically and interpret critically UFO phenomena.

John Hart, professor of Christian Ethics, Boston University School of
Theology; author of Cosmic Commons

Are UFOs best viewed through the eyes of science or religion? In this updated edition of his 1977 classic, Ted Peters says both, and he also adds a third eye, the sociological, noting that UFO waves often come in times of social and political crisis. UFOs: Gods Chariots? offers a fascinating critical survey of the aerial phenomenon down through the decades since it essentially began in 1947, moved through the era of benign space brothers contacts, and into the often sinister abductions and bizarre medical exams of later decades, and finally provides both problems and data for what Peters calls astrotheology. Highly recommended for reading and reflection.

Robert Ellwood, University of Southern California

Spirituality, Ancient Aliens, and Religious Yearnings in the Age of Extraterrestrials

Ted Peters

Copyright 2014 by Ted Peters

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UFOs: GODS CHARIOTS?
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Peters, Ted, 1941

UFOs--Gods chariots? : spirituality, ancient aliens, and religious yearnings in the age of extraterrestrials / by Ted Peters. -- 2 [edition].

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-60163-318-7 -- ISBN 978-1-60163-468-9 (ebook) 1. Unidentified flying objects--Religious aspects. 2. Unidentified flying objects--Miscellanea. I. Title.

TL789.P439 2014

001.942--dc23

2013046730

This book is dedicated to Kayla Carter, Jessica Carter, David Peters, Nina Frase, Madeline Lulu Peters, Jacqueline Carter, and Lydia Frase, along with Jack Anderson, Will Anderson, and Reynold Andersona new generation of sky-watchers.

I sat on the floor near the front door. I couldnt wait for my mother and father to arrive home. Along with another couple, my mother and father had driven to Detroit to hear a lecture by George Adamski. I had already read Adamskis first book, Flying Saucers Have Landed, a story about how George had met a man from Venus in a California desert. Now, members of my very own family were going to listen to the man who had listened to a space man.

When they arrived at the front door near midnight, they brought with them Adamskis new book, Inside the Space Ships. I flipped through it while I listened to the four grownups discussing the topics of the evening. On his first encounter Adamski had spoken with a man from Venus, gentle in demeanor with flowing hairvery Jesus like. Now, my family was abuzz about Adamskis new adventures aboard a mother ship orbiting our planet. How thrilling for me as a teenager with a vivid imagination!

Later I concluded that George Adamski was a charlatan. I learned that Venus is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid. The greenhouse effect produces a surface temperature of 860 degrees Fahrenheit and an atmospheric pressure 92 times that of Earth. This means that the Venusian visiting George would not have looked like Jesus. Rather, he would have looked like a burned pancake.

Nevertheless, outer space had entered my inner soul. The nighttime sky glittered like a white-lighted Christmas tree. The daytime sky was no less amazing. I recall one sunny afternoon with my friends at the swimming pool. I was lying back on my towel. My eyes feasted on the dramatic theater of the heavens. Beyond the sun the blue color seemed to go on and on. The unfathomable depththe incomprehensible infinityof the heavenly vault buried itself within my soul. It has never been dislodged.

All too soon my daydreaming was interrupted. My burly swimming pool friends said it was time to play water football. We chose teams. For the ball, we selected a diminutive 5-year-old boy. We lined up at scrimmage. The quarterback passed the boy to the half back, who then plunged through the line. When tackled, the little boy found himself smothered under 3 feet of water and under a pile of bodies. He came up sputtering and spitting. But, curiously, he did not complain. We went ahead with second down. Life on Earth goes on, whether or not were aware of our flyspeck status in this immense universe.

Outer space has been lodged in my soul since my youth. This led me to write the first edition of UFOs: Gods Chariots? in 1977. In more recent years, Ive invested considerable academic energy in the dialogue between science and religion with a special focus on Astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). One thing I learned is that SETI scientists and UFO researchers do not attend the same barbeques. Rather, they sneer at each other in the others absence. Each accuses the other of not being scientific enough. I find this curious, but not boring. So, after writing a few treatises on