Improving Our Understanding

WHEN I WAS TEN YEARS OLD, I read a book called "The Interrupted Journey; the Betty & Barney Hill Story", and found it so fascinating that I spent the rest of my life reading about UFOs, and all other manner of pseudo science, ghosts, spirit channelings, the whole bundle. I believe everything read. But I understand that my belief is a personal choice, and does not in any way necessarily reflect "reality". What a great hobby! And may the day come when we the human species knows something about all this, because its pretty obvious we don't know squat right now. I don't know squat, all of God's children don't know squat. We're still just asking questions. Einstein said it best: "WE don't know one millionth of one percent of anything". Now, that's real humility, and its the only way to go. Doesn't humility, and the admission of ignorance seem preferrable to the certainly of firmly held beliefs? At least, in terms of honesty? Isn't it better to go through life shrouded in mystery, wonderful blissful truth seeking ignorance, than to strut around convinced that we know it all? This is what is troublesome about many of the milllions of people who share my interest in UFOs and the "paranormal." They speak about their subject matter as if it were a matter of established fact, rather than theory, or opinion. The extraterrestrial beings are out there, because we want them to be, or because we have real strong evcidence that they are? Which is it? The former, it might seem. Humans are by nature prone to form associtations and organizations based on belief systems, such as religions. And when people come together in large numbers, all of whom embrace the same system of belief, like a religion, or extraterrestrial beings, the belief system becomes entrenched, ingrained, and it comes to assume the roll not of a mere system of belief, but of absolute, undeniable, irrefutable reality. WE must all believe in our religions, else there is sno benefit to having them. But must we by so doing exclude from our thinking even the remotest possibilty that our beliefs are unfinished, incomplete, subject to future change? To the extent that we feel we must, we have ruined our opportunity to improve our understanding.