damosuzuki said:

lust said:

Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for letting us know this "fact". It's amazing.

WOOOAH. Somebody just pulled my sceptical handbrake. So how come you have all this info that the government is hiding from us all? Org note me if you prefer with how you have this top secret info and what evidence you have for it. I'd hate you to get "terminated" on my account.

You are right about one thing, we are just not civilised enough mentally. Most of us don't exercise critical thinking and logic enough.

P.S Give my regards to David Icke, he should have stuck to being a goalkeeper and he was crap at that anyway.

I’d like to be cc’d on that note! For some reason, every time I've been exposed to the newest, greatest UFO evidence it turns out to be absolutely pathetic, but I'm sure Paisley wouldn't say something like that without being able to back it up.

I spent the weekend reading Richard Wiseman’s excellent book ‘Paranormality – Why We Believe the Impossible’ and, while he doesn’t address UFO belief specifically, I couldn’t help but think of this thread while reading and how some of the posters might benefit from this book or any exposure to critical thinking. For most true believers that’s a faint hope, undoubtedly. It’s almost certainly ingrained in our nature to disregard evidence when it doesn’t support our beliefs – as Churchill said, “Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.”

But we can move people in increments, and we can try to change the broader culture to one that values science and critical thinking and looks at woolly-headed irrationality with scorn.

Hmmm that sounds like a good book. Im going to have to google that and read a sypnosis.

What is truth and what people do with truth is all self absorbed and used differently to that one person. Universal thruth is something we all cannot change and we do not have enough of that when it comes to this subject.

I gotta say I am a true believer Not that I believe everything that I read...but I cannot sit here and say honestly that we are alone.

damosuzuki said:

lust said:

Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for letting us know this "fact". It's amazing.

WOOOAH. Somebody just pulled my sceptical handbrake. So how come you have all this info that the government is hiding from us all? Org note me if you prefer with how you have this top secret info and what evidence you have for it. I'd hate you to get "terminated" on my account.

You are right about one thing, we are just not civilised enough mentally. Most of us don't exercise critical thinking and logic enough.

P.S Give my regards to David Icke, he should have stuck to being a goalkeeper and he was crap at that anyway.

I spent the weekend reading Richard Wiseman’s excellent book ‘Paranormality – Why We Believe the Impossible’

I just started reading that last week. Only read the preamble about the psycic dog so far.

KingBAD said:

the exsistence of ufos should be a greater proof

of the exsistence of god, shouldn't it???

I always wondered if UFOs were real. If God is real, UFOs are real too. I used to believe like everyone else that it was fake but more and more I keep reading about it, the more I'm convinced they are out there in some form.

paisleypark4 said:

lust said:

Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for letting us know this "fact". It's amazing.

WOOOAH. Somebody just pulled my sceptical handbrake. So how come you have all this info that the government is hiding from us all? Org note me if you prefer with how you have this top secret info and what evidence you have for it. I'd hate you to get "terminated" on my account.

You are right about one thing, we are just not civilised enough mentally. Most of us don't exercise critical thinking and logic enough.

P.S Give my regards to David Icke, he should have stuck to being a goalkeeper and he was crap at that anyway.

Sorry I am not sarcastic and it does nothing for me.

Take what I say as fiction or non fiction...but I have read and read quite a bit already...and still have tons more to go.

The aliens that were described in Betty & Barney Hill's abduction were very far from the alien description from the Travis Walton experience (which when Hollywood got hold of the story they turned it negative and completely different from the actual plot). Michael Desmarquet (who wrote Thiaoouba) comes close in the description of what Travis Walton desribed as aliens (closely looking like us but taller and more..bland of an appearance)....and even in the book described how most races were from other planets and how we got here. Not to say that it is true but does prove some ..otherwise very curious answers about the Earth.

lust said:

paisleypark4 said:

Sorry I am not sarcastic and it does nothing for me.

Take what I say as fiction or non fiction...but I have read and read quite a bit already...and still have tons more to go.

The aliens that were described in Betty & Barney Hill's abduction were very far from the alien description from the Travis Walton experience (which when Hollywood got hold of the story they turned it negative and completely different from the actual plot). Michael Desmarquet (who wrote Thiaoouba) comes close in the description of what Travis Walton desribed as aliens (closely looking like us but taller and more..bland of an appearance)....and even in the book described how most races were from other planets and how we got here. Not to say that it is true but does prove some ..otherwise very curious answers about the Earth.

I know there are loads of books out there that build compelling cases for alien visitation etc, I used to be right into all that stuff but what I ended up discovering is that they are sensationalist and badly investigated pseudo science. The authors start with the conclusion that there are or have been aliens amongst us and then go data mining and anomaly hunting to present arguments that on the surface seem to prove their assertion. But more often than not they will present unexplained phenomena as being highly suggestive of aliens while purposefully and dishonestly discounting evidence which counters their claims. For example, there will be multiple sightings from nearby towns of strange lights in the night sky. But then leave out that the astronomers quote in the local paper that there was a Leonid meteorite shower that night. This is endemic of the tactics used by these pseudo scientific authors who just want to sell books.

It's all a bit of fun and no harm but you should take it all with a critical eye and a hefty pinch of salt. Learn how the investigations are done and how the bias of the author is allowed to affect the conclusions. Learn how facts that don't support the hypothesis are ignored.

As you like to read a lot I would implore you to read "A demon haunted world" by Carl Sagan. I actually listened to the audio book read by the author. Please read it and read it with an open mind. It's actually really enjoyable.

Now, just to clarify my stance on alien life. Through good science, executed using the scientific method, we have learnt much (not all) but much about how life forms and what it required. We can sensibly deduce from this that life forming on any given rock in space is highly unlikely, however through similarly executed good science we have knowledge of the sheer mind blowing vastness of the universe and the countless billions of galaxies each with 100s of billions of stars. When these two are combined we can mathematically deduce that it is highly probable that there are countless examples of worlds that have spawned life, a minority, though still many of which would be intelligent. For example, yes it's highly unlikely that you will win a powerball lottery but the sheer number of entrants each week makes it inevitable that some people will beat those insane odds and bag the millions. That's what happens in the cosmos. But the idea that two neighbours would win the powerball on the same week enabling them to communicate over the back fence about their win is highly unlikely. That's where we are with the life rich universe.

.It may not be impossible that intelligent deep space exploring life has evolved in the same time that we have in our galactic neighbourhood but it is highly unlikely and therefore extra ordinary evidence is required to back up these claims. As yet, there is none that I find compelling enough.

People have dreamt of ways to overcome the sheer scale of space and to be able to travel to the stars. Alien life is bound by the same laws of physics that we are and unless there is a way to manipulate the speed limit that is light by orders of magnitude(I hope there is) then contact between us and intelligent life is quite possibly impossible.

Bravo, perfectly stated.

And for whatever it’s worth, I wholeheartedly second Lust’s recommendation of Demon-Haunted World. It’s my favourite book, and I think it’s a perfect primer for developing critical thinking.

From Chapter 10 of Demon-Haunted World:

The Dragon In My Garage

by Carl Sagan

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

damosuzuki said:

lust said:

I know there are loads of books out there that build compelling cases for alien visitation etc, I used to be right into all that stuff but what I ended up discovering is that they are sensationalist and badly investigated pseudo science. The authors start with the conclusion that there are or have been aliens amongst us and then go data mining and anomaly hunting to present arguments that on the surface seem to prove their assertion. But more often than not they will present unexplained phenomena as being highly suggestive of aliens while purposefully and dishonestly discounting evidence which counters their claims. For example, there will be multiple sightings from nearby towns of strange lights in the night sky. But then leave out that the astronomers quote in the local paper that there was a Leonid meteorite shower that night. This is endemic of the tactics used by these pseudo scientific authors who just want to sell books.

It's all a bit of fun and no harm but you should take it all with a critical eye and a hefty pinch of salt. Learn how the investigations are done and how the bias of the author is allowed to affect the conclusions. Learn how facts that don't support the hypothesis are ignored.

As you like to read a lot I would implore you to read "A demon haunted world" by Carl Sagan. I actually listened to the audio book read by the author. Please read it and read it with an open mind. It's actually really enjoyable.

Now, just to clarify my stance on alien life. Through good science, executed using the scientific method, we have learnt much (not all) but much about how life forms and what it required. We can sensibly deduce from this that life forming on any given rock in space is highly unlikely, however through similarly executed good science we have knowledge of the sheer mind blowing vastness of the universe and the countless billions of galaxies each with 100s of billions of stars. When these two are combined we can mathematically deduce that it is highly probable that there are countless examples of worlds that have spawned life, a minority, though still many of which would be intelligent. For example, yes it's highly unlikely that you will win a powerball lottery but the sheer number of entrants each week makes it inevitable that some people will beat those insane odds and bag the millions. That's what happens in the cosmos. But the idea that two neighbours would win the powerball on the same week enabling them to communicate over the back fence about their win is highly unlikely. That's where we are with the life rich universe.

.It may not be impossible that intelligent deep space exploring life has evolved in the same time that we have in our galactic neighbourhood but it is highly unlikely and therefore extra ordinary evidence is required to back up these claims. As yet, there is none that I find compelling enough.

People have dreamt of ways to overcome the sheer scale of space and to be able to travel to the stars. Alien life is bound by the same laws of physics that we are and unless there is a way to manipulate the speed limit that is light by orders of magnitude(I hope there is) then contact between us and intelligent life is quite possibly impossible.

Bravo, perfectly stated.

And for whatever it’s worth, I wholeheartedly second Lust’s recommendation of Demon-Haunted World. It’s my favourite book, and I think it’s a perfect primer for developing critical thinking.

From Chapter 10 of Demon-Haunted World:

The Dragon In My Garage

by Carl Sagan

---

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

i have a concept that i call GOD

and it simply works because when i pull

out this concept and hold it up against whutever

it shines like the brightest star. and my concept

has become for me my beacon to the shores of peace

and serenity, when ever i choose to take it out

and have a look.

now, that up there, i wrote

that's how i feel, that is my perception

and that is how i use GOD. as a concept.

now you can't see it

but i have explained it to you.

and because you choose (anyone)

not to see it because of the litnis test

of your choice not varifyin it

IT DOES NOT DIMINISH MY GOD

i can find many who will accept this

concept and one daysee GOD for

the being that it is

even if it's only a speck of antimatter

in the eyes of someone else.

an alien concept

unidentifiedEDIT

[Edited 1/23/12 16:37pm]

After a few months away from this place I came back to....this thread?

KingBAD said:

damosuzuki said:

if we found a UFO and on it found an alien (yeesh to all that, but let's play the game) and found that alien had rna and that rna had the same stereoisomer as all living things on earth, well then you might have something. You could argue that we had the most far-fetched case of convergent evolution ever, but at that point you might just have to at least concede that there might be a designer.

But just finding a UFO (not holding my breath) or (more likely, some would say inevitable) one day finding another world with life would just show that the evolutionary principles in effect here will work just as well everywhere else, if there is an opportunity for life to get started and prosper.

[Edited 1/22/12 16:09pm]

who is to say the 'alien' that was found wasn't

dna compatible with man. does that mean it is the ONLY other life form

and again, is GOD so limited as to not to be able

to incompus ALL, EVERY, ANY life form, from any place.

is GOD not the creater of the smallest to the largest of

ALL THINGS even if GOD is nothing more that that which

created the possibilities that came to play in the creation

of the universe as we know it???

i am not a scientist, nor a preacher.

Something is getting lost in this discussion.

If there's a found alien, then my stipulation would remain the same: if a specific genetic commonality could be demonstrated, then I would allow that you might really have something. My case remains the same: I won't accept the existence of any UFO or alien without reliable evidence, and if we do find life on titan (could happen! http://www.ciclops.org/ne...1&js=1) or somewhere else, I think it's terribly unlikely anyone will show genetic relationship, except for predictable convergences. For example, there are endogenous retroviruses shared in the same location in our genome by humans and chimps that don't appear in any other primate. It's one of the ways we can tell we're closely related. If you could pull a grey out of your hat with that same retrovirus, then I'd say you're on to something. On the other hand, there are genetic traits that are shared by all living organisms on this planet, and there's no reason to think that a lifeform that independently evolved elsewhere would share that marker. I gave an example of that earlier. If you could again produce an alien with that marker, then yahtzee, but as it stands you have nothing as far as I can see.

As for your comments in post #35, all I'll say is I think you're trying to get at something that might be interesting to you, but it's not too interesting (or comprehensible) to me.

[Edited 1/23/12 17:30pm]

Graycap23 said:

Do you believe in conspiracy theories?

Ace said:

Graycap23 said:

Do you believe in conspiracy theories?

This is what I KNOW as fact.

The average person has no idea of the level of manipulation that is put upon them 24 hours a day they they accept willingly.

Theory no? Fact? Absolutely.

Graycap23 said:

Ace said:

Do you believe in conspiracy theories?

This is what I KNOW as fact.

The average person has no idea of the level of manipulation that is put upon them 24 hours a day they they accept willingly.

Theory no? Fact? Absolutely.

All the pieces seem to be coming together now. Can you give some examples?

damosuzuki said:

lust said:

I know there are loads of books out there that build compelling cases for alien visitation etc, I used to be right into all that stuff but what I ended up discovering is that they are sensationalist and badly investigated pseudo science. The authors start with the conclusion that there are or have been aliens amongst us and then go data mining and anomaly hunting to present arguments that on the surface seem to prove their assertion. But more often than not they will present unexplained phenomena as being highly suggestive of aliens while purposefully and dishonestly discounting evidence which counters their claims. For example, there will be multiple sightings from nearby towns of strange lights in the night sky. But then leave out that the astronomers quote in the local paper that there was a Leonid meteorite shower that night. This is endemic of the tactics used by these pseudo scientific authors who just want to sell books.

It's all a bit of fun and no harm but you should take it all with a critical eye and a hefty pinch of salt. Learn how the investigations are done and how the bias of the author is allowed to affect the conclusions. Learn how facts that don't support the hypothesis are ignored.

As you like to read a lot I would implore you to read "A demon haunted world" by Carl Sagan. I actually listened to the audio book read by the author. Please read it and read it with an open mind. It's actually really enjoyable.

Now, just to clarify my stance on alien life. Through good science, executed using the scientific method, we have learnt much (not all) but much about how life forms and what it required. We can sensibly deduce from this that life forming on any given rock in space is highly unlikely, however through similarly executed good science we have knowledge of the sheer mind blowing vastness of the universe and the countless billions of galaxies each with 100s of billions of stars. When these two are combined we can mathematically deduce that it is highly probable that there are countless examples of worlds that have spawned life, a minority, though still many of which would be intelligent. For example, yes it's highly unlikely that you will win a powerball lottery but the sheer number of entrants each week makes it inevitable that some people will beat those insane odds and bag the millions. That's what happens in the cosmos. But the idea that two neighbours would win the powerball on the same week enabling them to communicate over the back fence about their win is highly unlikely. That's where we are with the life rich universe.

.It may not be impossible that intelligent deep space exploring life has evolved in the same time that we have in our galactic neighbourhood but it is highly unlikely and therefore extra ordinary evidence is required to back up these claims. As yet, there is none that I find compelling enough.

People have dreamt of ways to overcome the sheer scale of space and to be able to travel to the stars. Alien life is bound by the same laws of physics that we are and unless there is a way to manipulate the speed limit that is light by orders of magnitude(I hope there is) then contact between us and intelligent life is quite possibly impossible.

Bravo, perfectly stated.

And for whatever it’s worth, I wholeheartedly second Lust’s recommendation of Demon-Haunted World. It’s my favourite book, and I think it’s a perfect primer for developing critical thinking.

From Chapter 10 of Demon-Haunted World:

The Dragon In My Garage

by Carl Sagan

---

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

Ant that is exactly what the situation is amongst ALL alien life according to our version of civilization, although other versions claimed otherwise weather in pictures or stories..we are the civilization that requires proof that anything that we cannot physically touch and see to be counted on as "real" because more times than one we have been led to ...lies and false beliefs (hence religion).

Now even though I have had ghost experiences...seeing a curtain lift to the ceiling for example in a room with no windows and drop suddenly..there is no way I can actually physically prove why or how that happened..but did it not happen because no one else experienced it but me? Same goes with when a tree falls and one person is there..did it make a sound? Only to that person. There is NO WAY to prove that it actually happened...and that person has to have faith in what he / she experienced as real and..that is the end of the story. Sad as it is...that person is left feeling alone and neglected because he/she was only able to prove that to themselves. Now since some aliens have not quite abducted everyone that exsists...does that prove that they were not? How do we really "believe them"? Is it because we have faith in their truth, or is it because we cannot fathom that it could and have happened? That answer will be based soley on the person that it comes across. I always wondered a bit about this staement in Thisoouba:

‘If certain of the leaders who read your book don ‘t believe you, or doubt what is written, challenge them to explain the disappearance of billions of ‘needles’ put into orbit around Earth (1) several years ago.

(1 - ‘needles’ - 11 years after Michel's adventure, Scientific American, August 1998 (Vol 279, Nr 2, article by N.L.Johnson, Page 43, (63 in US edition?!)) explains: ‘80 clumps of needles (were) released in May 1963 as part of US Department of Defense telecommunication experiment. The radiation pressure exerted by sunlight (???) was to have pushed the tiny needles - all 400 million of them - out of orbit...’ Has anyone ever heard of anything else in the Universe that has been pushed out of orbit by the ‘pressure of sunlight’?? Why do we use rockets? To comprehend the situation, I invite you to calculate the MASS of 400 million needles. (Editor’s comment)

Ask them also to explain the second disappearance of billions more ‘needles’ again put into orbit. They will know what you are referring to, never fear. We are responsible for the disappearance of these ‘needles’, judging them to be potentially disastrous for your planet.

‘We do, at times, prevent your experts from ‘playing with matches’ but it is important that our assistance not be relied upon when mistakes are made. If we judge it appropriate to ‘lend a hand’, we do so, but we can’t, and we don’t wish to save you from disaster automatically - that would be to contravene Universal Law.

Timmy84 said:

paisleypark4 said:

Ant that is exactly what the situation is amongst ALL alien life according to our version of civilization, although other versions claimed otherwise weather in pictures or stories..we are the civilization that requires proof that anything that we cannot physically touch and see to be counted on as "real" because more times than one we have been led to ...lies and false beliefs (hence religion).

Now even though I have had ghost experiences...seeing a curtain lift to the ceiling for example in a room with no windows and drop suddenly..there is no way I can actually physically prove why or how that happened..but did it not happen because no one else experienced it but me? Same goes with when a tree falls and one person is there..did it make a sound? Only to that person. There is NO WAY to prove that it actually happened...and that person has to have faith in what he / she experienced as real and..that is the end of the story. Sad as it is...that person is left feeling alone and neglected because he/she was only able to prove that to themselves.

You need to question whether you misinterpreted an experience. When paranormal experiences are investigated, and I really do recommend reading Richard Wiseman’s book because it’s chock-full of examples of this, it’s generally found that the cause is something extremely mundane and natural that was mistaken to be something unnatural. Instead of just accepting the conclusion that you had a ghost experience, you should review all possible explanations and try to discover which one best explains the facts. Let’s review a few scenarios – this isn’t meant to be comprehensive, just a demonstration.

1) You could have mistaken some natural, explainable occurrence.

2) Someone could have been playing a trick on you.

3) Your memory of the episode may be faulty – we know all too well that human memory fails miserably at recalling specific events, and that we will conflate two separate events into one and so on.

4) You could have had a genuine ghost experience.

1 through 3 are all reasonable explanations for a paranormal experience, and require no events that contravene the way we understand how the world works. To demonstrate #4 is the correct explanation, you should provide a level of evidence that would make it a more plausible explanation than 1 through 3 – extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as a wise man once said.

This is the standard anyone should apply to any such claim, and it’s the standard you should apply to your own experience. Everyone should question their own interpretation of events because we are imperfect mechanisms for viewing and recording information. We can be fooled, and we can fool ourselves, so we need to provide evidence outside our own memory before we accept a supernatural explanation. If you can’t provide that evidence, then I think you should recognize that the explanations most likely to be correct are the ones that are the least extraordinary, the least outside the way we understand the world works, and no one should accept a paranormal explanation, an invisible dragon, for your experience until you can demonstrate that #4 is more plausible than 1 through 3.

I think I’ve answered this in my statement above. A person’s testimony cannot be accepted as adequate evidence for such an extraordinary claim. It can be the basis for investigation and from there we let the facts lead us to the truth. The best method of determining whether something is true is to utilize the scientific process of reviewing data and determining which explanation describes the facts. I think it's terribly unlikely that people are being abducted or seeing space ships, but if this can be proven true, then I will accept it.

[Edited 1/24/12 4:21am]

[Edited 1/24/12 4:26am]

Ace said:

Graycap23 said:

This is what I KNOW as fact.

The average person has no idea of the level of manipulation that is put upon them 24 hours a day they they accept willingly.

Theory no? Fact? Absolutely.

All the pieces seem to be coming together now. Can you give some examples?

Simple question.

Do u believe your vote counts in a national election?

Do u believe Oswald Killed Kennedy?

Do u believe that human existence started with Adam & Eve?

Do u believe that there is a concerted effort 2 keep racial issues on the table of humanity?

Why is sodium floride added to items that are consumed by humans?

Why would Obama sign the NDAA bill? What is it's true purpose?

Why are there FEMA camps all over the U.S.? What is there purpose? What has there been billions spent on them?

[Edited 1/24/12 6:53am]

damosuzuki said:

paisleypark4 said:

You need to question whether you misinterpreted an experience. When paranormal experiences are investigated, and I really do recommend reading Richard Wiseman’s book because it’s chock-full of examples of this, it’s generally found that the cause is something extremely mundane and natural that was mistaken to be something unnatural. Instead of just accepting the conclusion that you had a ghost experience, you should review all possible explanations and try to discover which one best explains the facts. Let’s review a few scenarios – this isn’t meant to be comprehensive, just a demonstration.

1) You could have mistaken some natural, explainable occurrence.

2) Someone could have been playing a trick on you.

3) Your memory of the episode may be faulty – we know all too well that human memory fails miserably at recalling specific events, and that we will conflate two separate events into one and so on.

4) You could have had a genuine ghost experience.

1 through 3 are all reasonable explanations for a paranormal experience, and require no events that contravene the way we understand how the world works. To demonstrate #4 is the correct explanation, you should provide a level of evidence that would make it a more plausible explanation than 1 through 3 – extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as a wise man once said.

This is the standard anyone should apply to any such claim, and it’s the standard you should apply to your own experience. Everyone should question their own interpretation of events because we are imperfect mechanisms for viewing and recording information. We can be fooled, and we can fool ourselves, so we need to provide evidence outside our own memory before we accept a supernatural explanation. If you can’t provide that evidence, then I think you should recognize that the explanations most likely to be correct are the ones that are the least extraordinary, the least outside the way we understand the world works, and no one should accept a paranormal explanation, an invisible dragon, for your experience until you can demonstrate that #4 is more plausible than 1 through 3.

Now since some aliens have not quite abducted everyone that exsists...does that prove that they were not? How do we really "believe them"? Is it because we have faith in their truth, or is it because we cannot fathom that it could and have happened? That answer will be based soley on the person that it comes across.

I think I’ve answered this in my statement above. A person’s testimony cannot be accepted as adequate evidence for such an extraordinary claim. It can be the basis for investigation and from there we let the facts lead us to the truth. The best method of determining whether something is true is to utilize the scientific process of reviewing data and determining which explanation describes the facts. I think it's terribly unlikely that people are being abducted or seeing space ships, but if this can be proven true, then I will accept it.

[Edited 1/24/12 4:21am]

[Edited 1/24/12 4:26am]

Like I said that is the sad part of our society...and the reason that this all came to be was because society have been lied to so many times...lots of people require full head on evidence that a paranormal experience actually exsisted. There is nothing wrong with that either..however it does not stop the discussion.

Even the book I read says the alien disregards 'ghost experiences' as the 1% atom energy forms still left over from a previous living person. However I don't know if I can accept that because it is not the truth to me.

So now back to the subject of the Roswell incident where we have numerous proof of items pulled from the crash, numerous mysterious threats and deaths and files documented on this incident and in the area...does that not say anything about what happened there? What does that say?

Graycap23 said:

Ace said:

All the pieces seem to be coming together now. Can you give some examples?

Simple question.

Do u believe your vote counts in a national election?

Do u believe Oswald Killed Kennedy?

Do u believe that human existence started with Adam & Eve?

Do u believe that there is a concerted effort 2 keep racial issues on the table of humanity?

Why is sodium floride added to items that are consumed by humans?

Why would Obama sign the NDAA bill? What is it's true purpose?

Why are there FEMA camps all over the U.S.? What is there purpose? What has there been billions spent on them?

As I said, the pieces are all starting to come together now...

Ace said:

Graycap23 said:

Simple question.

Do u believe your vote counts in a national election?

Do u believe Oswald Killed Kennedy?

Do u believe that human existence started with Adam & Eve?

Do u believe that there is a concerted effort 2 keep racial issues on the table of humanity?

Why is sodium floride added to items that are consumed by humans?

Why would Obama sign the NDAA bill? What is it's true purpose?

Why are there FEMA camps all over the U.S.? What is there purpose? What has there been billions spent on them?

As I said, the pieces are all starting to come together now...

Actually u have not said any thing.................

Graycap23 said:

Ace said:

As I said, the pieces are all starting to come together now...

Actually u have not said any thing.................

My sworn oath to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion forbids me from doing so.

Ace said:

Graycap23 said:

Actually u have not said any thing.................

My sworn oath to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion forbids me from doing so.

Lol........

Graycap23 said:

Ace said:

My sworn oath to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion forbids me from doing so.

Lol........

thanks to those of you who took the time to show up and post derogatory remarks about what, to date, has not yet been proven or disproven. it speaks volumes about you that, even though the scientific community is still debating this topic amongst themselves, YOU have the answers we are all searching for.

XxAxX said:

thanks to those of you who took the time to show up and post derogatory remarks about what, to date, has not yet been proven or disproven. it speaks volumes about you that, even though the scientific community is still debating this topic amongst themselves, YOU have the answers we are all searching for.

By design............

Graycap23 said:

Simple question.

Do u believe your vote counts in a national election?

Yes and no.

Do u believe Oswald Killed Kennedy?

No.

Do u believe that human existence started with Adam & Eve?

No lol.

Do u believe that there is a concerted effort 2 keep racial issues on the table of humanity?

No.

Why is sodium floride added to items that are consumed by humans?

To stop Jews' midichlorian count getting too high.

Why would Obama sign the NDAA bill? What is it's true purpose?

To close prince.org.

Why are there FEMA camps all over the U.S.? What is there purpose? What has there been billions spent on them?

To make the strongest superglue yet.

[Edited 1/24/12 6:53am]

XxAxX said:

thanks to those of you who took the time to show up and post derogatory remarks about what, to date, has not yet been proven or disproven. it speaks volumes about you that, even though the scientific community is still debating this topic amongst themselves, YOU have the answers we are all searching for.

I think you’re not appreciating where the burden of proof lies in such matters. It’s not the place of skeptics to disprove UFO claims. The burden is on those trying to make the case. Given how outlandish the claims for aliens are, those making the claim have an incredibly high burden to meet (extraordinary claims/extraordinary evidence), and generally speaking the evidence that is presented for alien visitation doesn’t meet the minimum standard required to take the topic seriously.

This is a fairly frivolous & harmless subject, certainly nothing I want to go to get all pissy over, but it does say something about the ability of people to review evidence and exercise critical thought. We need clear, unambiguous proof, but instead we get a steady stream of pictures and videos that are, coincidentally, just barely as good as the kinds of simulations our current technology allows. In the 70s UFO pictures and videos looked like models hung from string (a la billy meier). Now they look like cheap, desk-top CGI. After over a half century, the accumulated evidence presented is simply dismal, and that’s a disappointment because few discoveries could be more thrilling – but it’s that aspect, the rush that would come from such an incredible discovery, that makes this topic such a magnet for suggestibility and wishful thinking.

Graycap23 said:

XxAxX said:

thanks to those of you who took the time to show up and post derogatory remarks about what, to date, has not yet been proven or disproven. it speaks volumes about you that, even though the scientific community is still debating this topic amongst themselves, YOU have the answers we are all searching for.

By design............

well, hopefully reading all these comments won't discourage them from stopping by planet earth

[Edited 1/24/12 16:46pm]

minneapolisFunq said:

imago said:

How is it that you can believe this slop but dismiss God?

Isn't this unproven jibberish just another god?

I'm not saying that space aliens don't exist.

But why have you chosen to believe one over the other?

IRanG, I swear to god if your annoying ass comes in here

I'm going to explode.

I'm hoping that those were troll statements (I'm aware of the possibility, but I shall continue regardless). (Or you could just be really stupid, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt).

Belief in alien life goes hand in hand with atheism and evolution.

The size of the universe is beyond human comprehension (as is a potential god), so it is only natural for someone who believes in science over religion to assume that life exists elsewhere.

*I didn't even bother to watch this video, I don't believe it would be possible to travel lightyears across the universe in a primitive spaceship as most 'witnesses' describe.

Not necessarily. I believe in both aliens and God. Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive to you? I just think God made aliens AND us.

But yeah I definitely believe aliens exist, whether this Anderson guy is batshit crazy or not (and he probably is). I've said this before, and I'll say it again - it's pretty arrogant and presumptuous for humanity to assume we're the only intelligent life form out here. There's got to be more. But I'm thinking that they're just smarter than we are and, for the most part, keep their distance from us because they know 'we' (and I mean that in a collective sense) don't really have our shit together.

[img:$uid]http://i800.photobucket.com/albums/yy281/iwanigor/tumblr_lycd6zNZue1qanb21o1_500.jpg[/img:$uid]

Ask yourself a simple question.

Is God from Earth? If the answer is no........then God is an Alien.

Graycap23 said:

Ask yourself a simple question.

Is God from Earth? If the answer is no........then God is an Alien.

and then,

if whut they say is true

and we know now how to do

time cloaking. wouldn't a

higher life form just blank out

a visit when they came to see us

and find that we are

the 'retarded cousins' are still

droolin on the furniture???