I'm more open minded than I ever have been before. I have never experienced anything unusual, or seen any type of UFO/alien in my life. Nothing at all. However, I can't dismiss the thousands of very mentally stable, sane and smart individuals that have shared experiences whether it be NDE's, UFO, paranormal etc.. I guess at the end of the day I just believe them. Not all of course. Even if 95% of everything is bs, I still put a significant amount of faith in that 5% that I think has some legitimacy to it.
I have found that most of those shows, especially anything on History Channel, are sensationalized too much for my liking so I tend not to watch.
Philosophy professor Jeffrey J Kripal: ‘Thinking about a UFO as some kind of extraterrestrial spaceship is naive’ | Philosophy books | The Guardian
You were more cynical before?
I had started adult life in a Benedictine seminary. So no, this didn’t come out of the blue. I grew up in a German farming community in Nebraska. I was the weird kid; I really wanted to know, what the **** are we doing here? In the seminary, I thought: this is not sufficient.
Has that belief made you a heretic in academic circles?
I would say that most intellectuals are sympathetic [to mystery], but they’re in the closet. In other words, they don’t want to talk about “impossible thinking” because they’ll lose prestige or authority.