Mastodawn

I’m bemused that the Vice President of the United States now says “I don’t think [UFOs are] aliens. I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a longer discussion.”

That is *exactly* what the teacher of AP Chemistry told us when I was in high school somewhere around 1975. (I went to “the bad high school”.)

I am not kidding, or exaggerating. He specifically said that UFOs are piloted by demons. (He was a fundamentalist before fundamentalists were cool.)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jd-vance-aliens-demons-devil_n_69c93d9de4b0a014076f69bb

JD Vance Believes UFO Sightings Are 1 Of The 'Devil’s Great Tricks'

The vice president shared a spiritual explanation for supposed alien encounters during an interview released on Saturday.

HuffPost

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Brian Marick 2d ago

It never occurred to me to blame that high school teacher for my getting an F in freshman chemistry at CalTech. Just as well, I guess.

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Brian Marick 2d ago

I also had a high school English teacher who’d been a Catholic nun. When talking about the Greek myths, she told us that the classical Greeks didn’t *really* believe in polytheism. Of course they knew there was one God.

The mid-70s were a time of “let your freak flag fly” for public school teachers. And others.

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GLC

@marick

She may possibly have come under the indirect influence of Pico della Mirandola.

At the time he proposed something like that, it was condemned as heresy, but it may have lingered on. Notably among the nuns, who were an unruly bunch theologically.