The UFO debunker’s beliefs rest wholly on one single premise:
The eyewitnesses are wrong 100% of the time.
That is, to maintain their position, the UFO debunkers MUST uphold the truth of that statement. That is, in 100% of UFO cases the eyewitnesses have misperceived a mundane object.
This, to me, is just pure nonsense. It beggars belief. It defies rationality. For example in the Rogue River case, under near perfect viewing conditions, five witnesses (two using binoculars) observe and describe a circular (analogous to a coin), silent object moving across the sky at the speed of a jet plane. They were able to observe the object for over 1 ½ minutes, so had ample time to “test” their own hypotheses about what it might have been (as in “is it a bird, a plane, a blimp…”) and they arrived at the conclusion that it represented nothing mundane that they knew of.
Two of the witnesses were able to obtain a good enough view of the object to draw fairly detailed pictures of it, showing a finlike structure of top and a “wrinkled” edge around the circle (almost like the knurl on a coin). To contend in such a sighting that all the witnesses - who all described the object in similar terms – were mistaken, just is not a rational contention. Especially when the alternatives are things that would have been instantly recognisable to them for what they were (like plane, blimp, etc).
Simply, the witnesses saw and described, with a fair degree of accuracy, what was there in front of them.
Let me relate a personal story to illustrate further.
One evening I was sitting inside watching TV. It was a warm, still evening. My wife was outside talking to our the next door neighbour. Next thing I hear my name being called with the exhortation to “come out here. Quickly!” I went out. The two girls were pointing at a large white light (the size of a full moon and as bright as a car headlight) sitting very still in the air toward the North. It looked about 100 meters off the ground and about 500 metres away. It was just hanging there, doing nothing in particular. There was no sound at all from it and it was perfectly still.
No details could be seen in or around the light (for example there were none of the usual coloured navigation strobe lights one might expect if it were a helicopter). Together we commented quietly but excitedly on its size, its brightness, its seeming closeness to us, on the lack of sound, the absolute lack of movement (it did not move one millimetre from its position) and the lack of any other lights or distinguishing features. It was, inexplicably, a large, bright, white light just “hanging” in the sky not very far way from us!
Suddenly the light winked out, reappeared some short distance horizontally to the right (probably about four or five diameters distance - the original size was about 2-3 cm at arms length), although now seemingly somewhat smaller in dimension and with what seemed a slight colour change, then it winked out to reappear at the same distance horizontally to the left of its original position, then winked out again and reappeared exactly where it was before. This all happened literally within the blink of an eye. It was so quick that I was unsure if I had seen correctly. Not wanting to prejudice an answer I quietly asked whether anyone else had seen something occur to the light and if so, what did they see. Both girls stated exactly what I saw happen to the light - their statements accorded exactly with what I observed. We marvelled at this for a bit, then the light suddenly began to retreat directly away from us, gathering speed rapidly as it went, until in a very short time indeed it had disappeared completely, directly away from us into the distance. The whole sighting probably lasted two minutes.
The girls did not see how the light got to where it was, they were simply engrossed in conversation when one of them looked up and saw it hanging there. Then shortly thereafter, my wife called me out to look. We all observed the object for a minute or so, saw it “jump” about, then shortly after we all saw it move extraordinarily rapidly away from us to disappear into the distance.
So, what was this thing? There is no doubt that we observed and described (as above) what was there in front of us. There was no moon, it had not risen yet (besides, the moon is immediately recognisable and never bright like a car headlight). It was not an airplane (it did not move for at least a minute or more), it was not a helicopter (there was absolutely no sound and it was a clear, still evening), it moved away from us very rapidly, more rapidly that any jet plane could have (it was gone within a matter of seconds - so also no blimp, balloon, etc). ).
The bottom line is that there was simply no mistake in our ability to describe exactly what we saw – there was no “misidentification” whatsoever - we saw what we saw and we confirmed among ourselves that each of us saw the same thing. So what was it? Yes it was a “light at night in the sky”, but its characteristics positively ruled out ANY mundane explanation that we could (and still can) can think of.
THAT is a UFO. Pure and simple. Our ability to see and describe it was not compromised in any way. We could do it with relative ease. We did not have to strain our perceptive abilities to view the object – we saw what we saw and what we saw was simply NOT a mundane object.
Now translate that kind of experience into daylight on a perfectly clear “blue-sky” day with the sun at your back – Rogue River. This time, instead of three witnesses, there are five. You see an object that is close enough to you for you to describe its shape as circular (like a coin) and when you apply binoculars, the object reveals plenty of detail which you can then describe accurately – and those details positively rule out any known mundane object.
So along come the debunkers and say “Oh but eyewitnesses are 100% fallible, so they simply could NOT have described accurately what they saw.” I simply say to that proposition: Bunk! They (and we) saw and described the object and events accurately - of course they (and we) did! To suppose otherwise is simply to unreasonably deny the evidence.