UFO researchers have, in the main, tried hard to stay away from any aspect of the phenomenon that smacks of religion, and for good reason. Science and religion do not mix well; some would say they are mutually exclusive. But in my research into the so-called alien abduction phenomenon, I have found that a thorough study of the subject led me directly to religious and spiritual matters. As a researcher who tries to be scientific and objective, what am I to do with such data? If I publish it, as I did in my book The God Hypothesis, I risk being accused of being non-scientific at best and a “cultist” at worst.

In fact, UFO debunkers (those with a hidden agenda to discredit all UFO information), often accuse anyone who has an interest in UFOs of being a member of a cult. Such defamatory comments are designed to scare scientists away from this field of study. But what is science if it is not courageous? Paradigm-breaking discoveries are often ridiculed at first, only to be found accurate later ...