A Marriage Made in Heaven’s Gate

With the two latest suicide attempts, one successful, added to the original 39, Heaven’s Gate continues to transfix the world. Were these people crazy, a fringe group, overcome by paranoia? Or was there a deeper cause at work in their behavior?

The followers of Heaven’s Gate lived under a siege mentality. They were super-secretive, attempting to hide their personal identities. They were like nomads wandering in the wilderness, seeking the truths of a higher revelation from extraterrestrial semidivine beings. What has puzzled so many commentators is the depth of their conviction that space aliens were sending envoys to Earth and taking humans away.

This form of irrational conduct came as no surprise to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and skeptics across the globe. It is the mass media that deserve a large share of blame for this UFO mythology. Book publishers and television and movie producers have fed the public a steady diet of science fiction fantasy, packaged and sold as real. Alien abductions, nightly visitations, spirit channeling, interdimensional travel and psychic ability are just a few of the fringe claims that permeate our media.

The effect is to feed the “transcendental temptation,� the tendency of many human beings to leap beyond the Earth to other dimensions, impervious to the tests of evidence and the standards of logical coherence, the temptation to engage in magical thinking and fantasizing. UFO mythology is similar to the message of the classical religions where God sends angels as emissaries to promise salvation to those who believe and obey God’s word as given to the prophets. Today, the chariots of the gods are UFOs. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Kenneth Arnold’s alleged sighting of the first flying saucers, and what we have witnessed over the past half century is the spawning of a New Age religion.

Creators of science fiction and fantasy like “The X-Files,� “Independence Day� and “Alien Autopsy� claim that their products are harmless and not taken seriously. The public, however, has not been exposed to the careful, critical investigations of UFO claims, which invariably find them without scientific foundation. TV is a powerful medium, and when it enters the home with high drama and the stamp of authenticity, it is difficult for ordinary persons to ferret out purely imaginative fantasies from reality. Many people have blamed the Internet, but it is the media conglomerates, which market fantasies as products, that should be criticized, not the Internet. This is not a call for censorship, only that some measure of responsibility be exercised by editors and producers.

Given the steady stream of irresponsible programming spewing forth, we need some balance in the presentation of science. It is increasingly difficult for large sectors of the public to distinguish between science and pseudoscience, particularly with “quasidocumentary� films that distort the truth. If the United States is to continue to provide leadership and compete in the global economy, we need to raise the level of scientific literacy and understanding of the general public. Otherwise, there may be more Heaven’s Gates.