Hang in there Russ - you are on the right track!
I find it helpful to remember that there is a very big difference between:
A. A person`s experience and
B. _Their account and explanation_ of that experience.
In Hamel`s case there are 4 different groups of claim which need to be
scrutinised:
1. That at a point in time he had an experience which caused him to espouse
ideas on new kinds of technology
2. That that experience was that of being `contacted` by extra-terrestrials
3. That these ETs had chosen him to bring this new technology to the
attention of the human race
4. That the technology so described actually works (or at least worked well
enough to blow up!!)
Number 1 is simply a point of history and his honesty - there came a point
when he started to espouse new ideas in technology and he says it followed
an extraordinary experience. I see no reason to doubt the veracity of this
claim.
Number 2 is his description of the experience - we have no independent way
of verifying this claim (unless the same ETs show up and vouch for the story).
Number 3 is a problem. We are being asked to believe that a vastly superior
race of ETs, taking pity on our small and increasingly spoiled world, chose
David Hamel - a retired carpenter with little financial resources - to be
the interface with planet Earth. I`m really not trying to sound cynical
here, but I would simply observe - this is a pretty silly thing for such an
advanced race to do. Why pick a guy who has little resources to actually
build the stuff they reveal, who is at the mercy of the `men in black` who
want to suppress this information (Hamel claims this for some of his
stuff), and who has not yet after several years succeeded in demonstrating
anything that resembles a free-energy machine. Wierd plant growth and a
load of sketches of `alien technology` are interesting but don`t prove
anything. (I guess a careful analysis of the plants might show that they
are `life but not as we know it...` but why has no-one taken a sample for
DNA testing???)
Number 4 is ultimately the one that matters.
[Interesting side note on the human race here: if someone succeeds in
producing a working self-destruct Hamel-oil-drum then to many this will
`prove` numbers 1,2 and 3 as well (i.e. people who already believe in
benign ETs and contact stories). Logically of course it proves only number
4 - the technology works. It says nothing about the ETs etc etc. ]
But as Russ says, the big issue is that we should have a mechanism in
future to prevent our resources being wasted and/or diverted by such exotic
claims. I am increasingly astonished by the gullibility of people as shown
by some of the Internet based scams. I`m NOT saying that Hamel is a scam.
I think he is probably very sincere - but you can be sincerely wrong and we
owe it to the free-energy enterprise to let nothing distract us from the
real quest.
Thanks
Nick Hall
"The wise man proportions his belief according to the evidence" - David Hume
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