Yep, the astronaut is definitely a fruitcake - but he's a very intelligent one. Point of the posting is just to highlight that the brightest of people, if they are so determined to believe in something, no matter how implausible and questionable are the evidences for it, no logic, no reasonable argument to the contrary will prevent them from latching onto that belief. This happens in so many areas of life - and we've seen it repeatedly on this forum with people of differing/often non-Christian beliefs. Sometimes, I think the more educated some are, the less common sense they seem to use.
Notice that the astronaut claiming all of this alien nonsense acquired his "insider knowledge" of such things,
secondhand - by "talking to people" and from "stories from people who manned missile bases during the 20th Century," and that
others "
told me their [test] missiles were frequently shot down by alien spacecraft" - an assertion, EVEN IF that was remotely true, the people involved would have had no idea what entity (supposedly) fired upon those bases - IF indeed they were even fired upon. It just goes to show that if someone wants to believe something badly enough, they sure won't let reasonable skepticism or paper-thin to non-existent evidences stop them from buying into something crazy.
Remember the Heaven's Gate cult that thought a mother ship was traveling in the tail of comet Hale-Bopp? So, to rapture aboard, 39 people all killed themselves. Many were highly intelligent and well-educated - and they so wanted to believe their New Age belief that the Earth was about to be "recycled" (wiped clean, renewed, refurbished, and rejuvenated), and that the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately by "rapturing/beaming aboard." Thus they put on their Nikes, got on their bunk beds and killed themselves. Anyway, it's incredible what people will believe without good reasons to do so.
