My “Aliens” posting of a few weeks ago provoked the following complaint from someone who goes by the alias “mudphud” – a word that I believe derives from MD/PhD:

I could have done without the rip on Mormons (“I guess that there’s some kind of connection?” between Mormons and aliens). It’s never okay to cast aspersions on a religious group, even if you are just trying to be funny. Think about it, would you have made the same crack about Jews and aliens, or Catholics and aliens?

Well, I did think about it. My first thought was to investigate the web for “alien” connections to Jews and Catholics. Google found a bundle of them. The score for “Jews” was 584,000; and “Catholics” it was 564,000 – both substantially more than the Mormon score (a little over 100,000), so perhaps there’s even more of a connection here.

Actually, it depends on how you look at it . When you follow the links, many lead to information for or about non-US citizens – “aliens” of a different kind, who should not be confused with the putative silver-skinned creatures with domed heads that abduct Americans on a regular basis.

Other “alien” Jewish and Catholic web pages major on discussions of religious attitudes to UFO reports, and some are links to wacky postings in chat rooms, one of which suggests that Albert Einstein was an alien – which indeed he was, until he acquired US citizenship. However, the Mormon links, though less numerous, are more entertaining. Google threw up the following headline in the first page or two: THE SHAPESHIFTING REPTILIAN MORMON BROTHERHOOD. Call me a skeptic, but even after reading a few pages of the web site I wasn’t entirely convinced of the existence of such a brotherhood.

As it happens, many of the alien/Mormon pages derive from some wacko theory, based on no evidence whatsoever, that Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, who claimed in 1827 that an angel gave him golden plates inscribed in an unknown language, actually received them from aliens of the silver skinned variety. The historical record indicates that Smith was hounded out of New York, Ohio and Missouri, tarred and feathered, jailed and accused of serious crimes, but there’s no record of any alien encounter, alien abduction or even a visit to Area 51.

Alien abduction, by the way, appears to be an American dominated experience. According to reputable surveys, between 1 and 2 percent of Americans believe that they have been abducted by aliens – a curious phenomenon I’ll touch on in a future blog.