Essays in Idleness

Growing awareness of the astrophysicist, Messer Hugh Ross, is among my recent Toronto glitters. He is actually from British Columbia, and is employed mostly elsewhere, but he has also loitered within the University of Toronto, &c. In addition to his chops as an astronomer and physicist, Dr Ross (born 1945) has acquired a reputation as an articulate interpreter of scripture, a sincere and uncompromising Christian, and an “Old Earth Creationist.” The only way I could like him more is if he became a Catholic.

But I am shocked (shocked!) to discover that he has an explanation for flying saucers that is identical to the one I’ve been spouting for the last forty years; and more generally (and Christianly) considers evil spirits to be active in our (pretentiously material) world. From as many angles as I can approach it, our theory appears the inevitable one, crossing space, time, theology, and sciences. It is that the spirits are simply having their (malignant) fun with us.

Alas, science is crippled at the moment, from its refusal to acknowledge non-physical realities, and from ideological (superstitious) adventures. Yet I don’t think it will be impaired forever. Until then, I shall simply claim my UFO remarks reflect “the Toronto theory” — itself a development from Enrico Fermi’s Italian observation that if there were biological extra-terrestrials who had mastered trans-universal flight, they would be here by now. (They’re not.)

Fermi learned physics by studying an 1840 Jesuit manual, which fell into his youthful hands. He had other accomplishments. But he was not a Torontonian.