So. given that's where you think we're up to, how many people do you believe you've convinced?
I don't need to "convince" anyone. That is not my aim. My goal, apart from presenting evidence that UFOs and "aliens" exist, is to get people
thinking and to try and get them to apply a little
skepticism to their own belief systems.
On the topic of UFOs (in particular) it seems that members of the JREF are not skeptical thinkers at all, rather they blindly accept the "handed down" folk wisdom of a handful of debunker "gurus" without ever having critically examined the evidence and without ever exploring whether the "gurus" have presented any scientific, unbiased analysis of their own, or are merely making "pronouncements" to their flock of "true believers".
Patently UFOs exist. There are simply too many sightings to dismiss them out of hand. So what are we then to make of all these sightings? Certainly some will be misidentified mundane, natural or technological, events. However the largest truly scientific study of its kind - the Battelle Study (under the auspices of Project Blue Book) found at least 1 in 5
reported UFO sightings to be truly inexplicable in terms of any known mundane event (
http://www.ufocasebook.com/specialreport14.pdf).
UFO debunkers claim that according to the probabilities, the chance that any single UFO sighting being a misinterpreted mundane event will be high. That may be so, but at the same time, the chances of any single event being truly inexplicable in terms of mundane events is
significant.
We must therefore examine individual cases to see if we can place them into either category. I have simply presented some cases that I contend fall into the "inexplicable in terms of mundane events" category.
The Rogue River incident for example. Here witnesses describe an object that IS truly inexplicable in terms of a mundane event. The UFO debunkers have "latched" onto "blimp" as an explanation , but the eyewitness descriptions of the object actually rule out a blimp (and remember, in that era, blimps were much more part of the public psyche and would have been instantly recognizable for what they were). Blimps do not fly at speeds of a jet plane. Blimps are noisy beasts, yet the UFO made no sound. Blimps are cigar shaped, yet the witnesses described a circular object (like a coin or pancake) and so on...all the witness descriptions positively rule out "blimp" as the explanation.
Because the eyewitness descriptions do not accord with descriptions of a blimp, the UFO debunkers are left with trying to impugn either the reliability of the witnesses or their powers of observation - to force a fit where none exists on the face of it. On the first point, the reliability of the witnesses is well established. They held responsible positions in a government military research establishment and never told their story to anyone outside their own security people - and all their character references stated that they were reliable, sober minded people.
On the second point, their powers of observation is harder to asses. They had and used binoculars. It was a clear day and the sun was at their backs. There were five witnesses involved and they all described ostensibly the same thing. There were discrepancies in their stories, but the discrepancies were exactly where one would expect them to be, in the estimates of size and distance in a clear blue sky. It is extremely difficult to make a case that all five witnesses were somehow "deluded" or otherwise mistaken in their general observations, particularly in the shape of the object.
What we are left with is a UFO. There is nothing else that we can conclude from the case. We certainly cannot conclude "aliens". Simply, the Rogue River incident was one of those "1 in 5" cases that are truly inexplicable in terms of a mundane event. In other words a UFO.
Then there was the White Sands case. Here a team of highly trained military observation and analytical experts set out to film and triangulate UFOs in an effort to discover what exactly it was that seemed to be overflying a supposedly secret military installation. In fact these experts managed to both film and triangulate the UFOs (more than one and on more than one occasion), but of course they could not explain exactly what it was they had filmed! There is no doubt they filmed something, but where the UFOs were located was inexplicable, high up on the edges of the atmosphere, and the military establishment were certain they had put nothing up there to explain the sightings ...so again UFOs, but this time there could be no question of manmade technological explanations and no question that the witnesses did not know how to observe and analyse those observations correctly. So another case of UFOs.
Then there is the Tehran incident. Here a UFO (or UFOs) exhibited extraordinary abilities. Shape shifting, splitting apart and rejoining, "jumping" locations, outmaneuvering two F-4 fighters, chasing at least one F-4, able to interfere with the F-4s avionics (to name just some of the more startling characteristics) ... in doing all these things the UFO seemed to display intelligent control in that it was able to respond to and affect its environment in an intelligent fashion. Again the witnesses were highly trained personell (tower operators and fighter pilots). All that seemed to suggest that not only was a UFO involved, but that it was under intelligent control! That in turn raises the possibility of "aliens". For if it is not human technology (and its antics rule human technology out) and it was intelligently controlled, then what other explanation do we have apart from (almost by definition) "aliens"? Note we cannot claim "ET" because we have no idea of the nature of the "aliens" we are dealing with here.
The next case up for discussion was/is the Father Gill case. We have of course touched on this case briefly and sporadically, but in this case we DO have observed beings who are in ostensible control of their "craft" and who also interact (albeit at a distance) with their observers! This case goes well beyond
mere UFO and positively (rather than speculatively as was the case in the Tehran incident) enters the realm of the "alien".
All these cases together add up to some pretty compelling evidence that not only do UFOs exist, but "aliens" do also!
The astute reader will have noted by now that every time I mention "alien" I utilise quotation marks. This is because I want to distinguish "alien" from "ET". ET has the connotation of technological beings from other worlds and we simply do not know this to be the case. Of course the evidence strongly points in that direction, but as skeptics we must consider that we have no direct evidence for this. Other hypothetical scenarios are possible (local "aliens" for example, or inter/intra-dimensional beings to name just two other possibilities).
Of course I have more cases and evidence to present. But my approach has been a step-by-step one, each case building on the next, allowing time for discussion of each as we go. Currently the Tehran case is being "discussed...
(although I note that there no longer seems to be much argument about the actual evidence -but all things concerning the case must be discussed, it shows that people are at least
thinking about the case - even if it IS only from the perspective of trying to support their own beliefs and not a from a truly skeptical scientific position, but my sincere hope is that as each case is discussed, it may slowly dawn on the UFO debunkers that their position actually NEEDS to become skeptical and scientific, rather that merely argumentative and based on unfounded belief systems. And above all it must become a rational debate, rather than some of the logical falaciousness that has so far been forthcoming)
...and so far no mundane explanation has been forthcoming. The Father Gill case is also interesting in its own right and there are other cases waiting in the wings that show other aspects of the UFO phenomena, butnthey will have to wait for now. So...on with the show!
