SPEAKING OF THE UNSPEAKABLE: GOD, UFOs AND LIFE AFTER DEATH

By Edward R. Close, PhD, PE, DISPE

For more than three hundred years, it has been strictly taboo to make any mention of God in a scientific discussion. This attitude was voiced clearly in a conversation with the Emperor Napoleon Bonapart in 1802 by French astrophysicist Pierre-Simon Laplace after he had published his extensive work applying Newton’s laws to celestial mechanics:

Napoleon: “Newton spoke of God in his book. I have perused yours but failed to find his name even once. Why?” 

Laplace: “I have no need of that hypothesis. The true object of the physical sciences is not the search for primary causes, but the search for laws according to which phenomenon are produced.” 

This attitude became entrenched in science and science education, and is even more prevalent today than ever, with many mainstream scientists professing atheism. Students and scientists, even if, like Newton and Einstein, they believe there is no reason to renounce their faith, must not mention the ‘unspeakable’ in connection with their work, or they will be ostracized from the scientific community.

This was perhaps justifiable in the early days of science, because science had to divorce itself from the pseudo-scientific claims of alchemy and astrology and it appeared that about 99% of phenomena were adequately explained by considering the universe as simply the interaction of matter and energy in space and time, in other words, by materialism. However, today, this avoidance of the idea of an intelligent creator is nothing more or less than scientific political correctness. With the discovery of ‘dark matter’ by astronomers, and discovery of gimmel, the third form of the essence of reality, by Close and Neppe, making up about 95% of the substance of reality, science must open its collective mind again and consider things previously excluded from scientific investigation.

In short, it’s time to speak about the unspeakable.

In 1973, Dr. Harley Rutledge, Chairman of the Physics Department at Southeast Missouri State University, undertook a scientific study of the rash of UFO sightings occurring near Piedmont Missouri; setting up triangulated observation points with state of the art cameras and recorders. 

Dr. Rutledge said: “My decision to become actively involved in UFO research did not come easily. Because it would mean placing my career in jeopardy,” The results of his studies were published in “Project Identification, the first scientific field study of UFO phenomena” in 1981.

The Wikipedia entry for Dr. Rutledge says: “Challenged to explain sightings of unidentified lights and luminous phenomena in the sky around Piedmont, Missouri, Dr. Harley Rutledge decided to subject these reports to scientific analysis. He put together a team of observers with college training in the physical sciences, including a large array of equipment: RF spectrum analyzers, Questar telescopes, low-high frequency audio detectors, electromagnetic frequency analyzer, cameras, and a galvanometer to measure variations in the Earth's gravitational field.

The resulting Project Identification commenced in April 1973, logging several hundred hours of observation time. This was the first UFO scientific field study, able to monitor the phenomena in real-time, enabling Rutledge to calculate the objects' actual velocity, course, position, distance, and size.

Observation of the unclouded night sky often revealed "pseudostars" - stationary lights camouflaged by familiar constellations. Some objects appeared to mimic the appearance of known aircraft; others violated the laws of physics. The most startling discovery was that on at least 32 recorded occasions, the movement of the lights synchronized with actions of the observers. They appeared to respond to a light being switched on and off, and to verbal or radio messages. The final results of this project were documented in the 1981 book, Project Identification: The first Scientific Study of UFO Phenomena.

But this is only part of the story. Dr. Rutledge was a physics professor and my adviser during my second and third years as an undergrad physics/math major at Central Methodist College, about 15 years before the Piedmont study. So when I returned to Missouri after several years out of the state and the country, I went to visit him in his office at SEMO University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri in 1982. He confided in me with much more detail than is published in his technical papers and his book. When I suggested that the phenomena he had filmed and recorded in 1973 could be explained in terms of extra dimensional domains, he was interested and encouraged me to continue my research.

Even though Dr. Rutledge had been President of the Missouri Academy of Sciences and a member of Sigma Pi Sigma, the National Honor Society in Physics, he was ostracized for his investigation into UFO phenomena, and he confided to me that scientists he had considered to be good friends told others that he had suffered a ‘mental breakdown’. We exchanged books and vowed to keep in touch, but my career took me back overseas, and Dr. Harley Rutledge, a pioneer who attempted to break out of the box of scientific political correctness, passed away at the Veteran’s Home in Cape Girardeau Missouri in 2006.

Does his soul live on? Does individual consciousness survive the dissolution of the physical body? Can your consciousness exist outside your body? The paradigm shift to TDVP provides, for the first time in the history of science, a logical framework within which such questions can be asked and answered. Stay tuned.