UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

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Correa Neto said:
Skeptic's "last ditch" is the same as the "first ditch".

"Show me reliable evidence".

Got some?
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The last ditch I got from the skeptics was, "you don't deserve anything but ridicule" and a bunch of attacks on my character.

j.r.
 
23_Tauri said:
Forgive my flippancy. It's Friday afternoon. But, why is it a bad analogy (accepting that all analogies fail to some extent, as they never compare identical things)? People see what they consider to be miraculous sightings or experience things that they can't put down to known natural or man-made phenomena, and they conclude that it must be the Big J.

Then they go to church a lot and praise the laaaard above.
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The analogy you made compared the following statement to blind faith in a deity that nobody in the congregation had seen directly:

"If the experiences you say that these people had weren't convincing enough to make them believe, then they were probably natural or manmade phenomena. Even my sighting is mild compared to what other people have seen, and it has left me with no personal doubt. If the sightings these people here have had are as good or better and they still don't believe, then they are just in a state of denial."

The analogy is obviously flawed. To make it parallel, you would need to take the element of blind religious faith out of the equation. Then you would need to add in that everyone in the crowd had seen a real living Jesus firsthand with their own eyes ... but refuse to accept it.

j.r.
 
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ufology said:
The analogy you made compared the following statement to blind faith in a deity that nobody in the congregation had seen directly

...[snip]...

The analogy is obviously flawed. To make it parallel, you would need to take the element of blind religious faith out of the equation. Then you would need to add in that everyone in the crowd had seen a real living Jesus firsthand with their own eyes ... but refuse to accept it.
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People claim to have had direct contact, seen in person and heard the voice of God and Big JC. There is a parallel.

Your comment previously about: "For me it's too late. There is nothing that can be undone to make me unbelieve what I know" is exactly what these people say too.
 
ufology said:
....snip....

The analogy is obviously flawed. To make it parallel, you would need to take the element of blind religious faith out of the equation. Then you would need to add in that everyone in the crowd had seen a real living Jesus firsthand with their own eyes ... but refuse to accept it.

j.r.
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Nope, not flawed. Whole crowds who believe with blind faith they've seen a real living Jesus or one of his angelic messengers in the sky, and won't be told otherwise? Hmmm... let's have a look, eh?

Here's a famous one.

I'm sure we can all think of some more if we wanted to labour the point.
 
ufology said:
If the sightings these people here have had are as good or better and they still don't believe, then they are just in a state of denial.
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Alternatively they could just have a much better understanding than you do of how easily mistaken normal human perceptions and memories can be.

Everybody has seen something for which they cannot imagine a rational explanation at some time, even if it's only David Copperfield sawing himself in half and putting himself back together again. Only woo believers and pseudoscientists jump straight from "I can't think of an explanation for this" to "it's ghosts/god/paranormal powers/aliens [delete as applicable]".
 
ufology said:
The last ditch I got from the skeptics was, "you don't deserve anything but ridicule" and a bunch of attacks on my character.

j.r.
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Have I ridiculed you or attacked your character?

I attacked your methods. I ridiculed your antigravity technobabble. I don't think you saw an alien craft, I don't think you saw MIBs.

I may question your character if and when I conclude you are behaving in dishonest ways. If I find reasons to believe you faked your credentials and/or sighting, for example.

As for making fun of your ideas, sorry, IMHO very few things in this or any other world are not game.
 
ufology said:
The object did repeated precise manuevers ( several figure 8s ) in the same place on two occasisions and when it departed, it instantly covered over 25 Km from a dead stop in about 1 second. The etreme fast precision maneuvers in the same place on two occasions indicate some kind of flight control system and that implies some kind of intelligence as opposed to a random earthlight or ball lightning phenomenon. Nothing natural or manmade with a flight control system can go from a dead stop to cover over 25 Km in 1 second. So if it wasn't anything manmade or natural that we know of, it had to be alien ( to us ). Where it came from or what it was exactly, I don't know. My best guess is it was some kind of automated probe.

The rest of skeptics here have just resorted to ridicule and/or personal attacks. As irksome as GeeMack may be, technically, you can't rule out that the whole story is fabricated, or that the stimulus was induced by some shared mental and/or perceptual abberation. And if you go with those explanations, you can rule out every unexplained sighting everyone has ever had or will ever have that doesn't include sufficient empirical scientific proof. Exactly what proof they would need has not been made clear.

j.r.
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Or it could be a reflection.
 
Stray Cat said:
People claim to have had direct contact, seen in person and heard the voice of God and Big JC. There is a parallel.

Your comment previously about: "For me it's too late. There is nothing that can be undone to make me unbelieve what I know" is exactly what these people say too.
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I don't know of anyone who claims to have actually seen Jesus Christ alive in modern times. I did find this video however.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1sdx4o_ONU

j.r.
 
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ufology said:
I don't know of anyone who claims to have actually seen Jesus Christ alive in modern times. I did find this video however.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1sdx4o_ONU

j.r.
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You haven't claimed to see an alien. You saw a light in the sky and believe it was of alien origin. In the same way that people see lights in the sky - both now and throughout history - and believe them to be of angelic aka religious origin.
 
Pixel42 said:
Alternatively they could just have a much better understanding than you do of how easily mistaken normal human perceptions and memories can be.

Everybody has seen something for which they cannot imagine a rational explanation at some time, even if it's only David Copperfield sawing himself in half and putting himself back together again. Only woo believers and pseudoscientists jump straight from "I can't think of an explanation for this" to "it's ghosts/god/paranormal powers/aliens [delete as applicable]".
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It's amaziing to see how the skeptic's perception of human ability changes to suit their biases. If it is about a UFO sighting, humans are frail fallible creatures with senses and brains so poor they can't count on them to recall anything accurately and are fooled easily into believing almost anything. When it suits their bias the other way, for example when addressing supporters of ancient astronaut theories, suddenly even really primitive people are these brilliant smart creatures with incredible minds that can figure out almost anything and are constantly underestimated.

PS: On Copperfield ... I gotta admit he's so good he makes me wonder. I saw Doug Henning do the human slice thing and he was good, but Copperfield made a Lear jet disappear that was tied down to the middle of a runway. Of course that was on TV ( supposedly live ). I like the one where Amazing Randi is accused of being a fraud because in reality he's the real deal pretending to be a magician. It's all good fun.

j.r.
 
23_Tauri said:
You haven't claimed to see an alien. You saw a light in the sky and believe it was of alien origin. In the same way that people see lights in the sky - both now and throughout history - and believe them to be of angelic aka religious origin.
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You are correct. I have never claimed to have seen an alien. I claim to have seen an alien object, typically described as a UFO, and yes in the same way as people see lights in the sky or anything else ... I saw it with my own eyes. As for what other people have seen, if they are religious, it would be natural for them to interpret such a sighting to some deity. I'm not religious though, so I simply see it as some kind of object that fails to conform to anything we know of ... therefore it is alien ... not "an alien", but simply alien to us. I've never made any claim that I know where the thing I saw actually came from.

j.r.
 
Apples to oranges...

Skeptics say some UFO sightings can be explained by SNAFUs in our perceptions, how we interpretate and we remember them.

No SNAFU, no UFO.

Now, regarding ancient aliens, skeptics say our ancestors were smart and bright enough to build things that some people nowadays can't figure out how they were built.

"I don't know what it was" is not equal to "aliens" and "I don't know how it was built" is not equal to "aliens".
 
23_Tauri said:
Sadly, Mr Occam has just left the building on the next available Space Beetle, so we might be grasping at straws here.
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Nah, he's down at the cutlery shop getting his razor sharpened because it's been dulled down from slicing through all the thick, compacted BS in this thread.
 
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ufology said:
The last ditch I got from the skeptics was, "you don't deserve anything but ridicule" and a bunch of attacks on my character.
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Actually it's your arguments attempting to support your alleged alien sighting that have earned ridicule. They're just plain silly. "I know 'cuz I know." It's ridiculous.

And your insistence that you're being persecuted is simply a dishonest plea for sympathy which has failed so many times already it's almost but not quite surprising you keep trying it.
 
ufology said:
It's amaziing to see how the skeptic's perception of human ability changes to suit their biases. If it is about a UFO sighting, humans are frail fallible creatures with senses and brains so poor they can't count on them to recall anything accurately and are fooled easily into believing almost anything. When it suits their bias the other way, for example when addressing supporters of ancient astronaut theories, suddenly even really primitive people are these brilliant smart creatures with incredible minds that can figure out almost anything and are constantly underestimated
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Some people are capable of figuring things out - including how reliable their perceptions are, and how to compensate for their occasional unreliability.

Some people choose to wilfully ignore the hard won knowledge and understanding of their ancestors and contempories about this, and many other, subjects.

'Twas ever thus.

Which group, do you suppose, is responsible for most of the advances humanity has made over the generations?
 
ufology said:
You are correct. I have never claimed to have seen an alien. I claim to have seen an alien object, typically described as a UFO, and yes in the same way as people see lights in the sky or anything else ... I saw it with my own eyes. As for what other people have seen, if they are religious, it would be natural for them to interpret such a sighting to some deity. I'm not religious though, so I simply see it as some kind of object that fails to conform to anything we know of ... therefore it is alien ... not "an alien", but simply alien to us. I've never made any claim that I know where the thing I saw actually came from.
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Ahhh... going for the Rramjet and King of the Americas dishonest argument trying to weasel out of things you've said by making words so vague they become almost meaningless.

But if we run with that... Alien to you, not us. Your argument from incredulity and ignorance belongs to you. It is your very own.
 
ufology said:
You are correct. I have never claimed to have seen an alien. I claim to have seen an alien object, typically described as a UFO, and yes in the same way as people see lights in the sky or anything else ... I saw it with my own eyes. As for what other people have seen, if they are religious, it would be natural for them to interpret such a sighting to some deity. I'm not religious though, so I simply see it as some kind of object that fails to conform to anything we know of ... therefore it is alien ... not "an alien", but simply alien to us. I've never made any claim that I know where the thing I saw actually came from.

j.r.
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You may not be religious but as you say on your website "The paranormal has been a part of my life-experience all the way from childhood to the present.". Even prior to 1974 you had had experiences that you had interpreted as being extraordinary, according to your website. Therefore, it would be natural for you to interpret subsequent unusual events through the filter that you had already developed.

Is this a fair comment?
 
ufology said:
It's amaziing to see how the skeptic's perception of human ability changes to suit their biases. If it is about a UFO sighting, humans are frail fallible creatures with senses and brains so poor they can't count on them to recall anything accurately and are fooled easily into believing almost anything. When it suits their bias the other way, for example when addressing supporters of ancient astronaut theories, suddenly even really primitive people are these brilliant smart creatures with incredible minds that can figure out almost anything and are constantly underestimated.
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That whole thing is called a straw man argument. It's dishonestly misrepresenting other people's position so you can avoid addressing what is really being said.

And only a very few people go around insisting their senses and brains are so good they recall every little detail of events that happened decades ago. Even fewer of them continue to insist on it even after they've proven how poorly their memories work. Nobody is knocking humans in general for their fallibility. The skeptics' are going to note those who do fail but don't recognize their failure, especially when that fallibility comes through in such ridiculous arguments. The skeptics are being cooperative and helpful. But of course there's no way we can force anyone to learn critical thinking, objectivity, and skepticism if someone either doesn't want to or doesn't have the capacity to learn it.

Oh, and once more, you are not being persecuted no matter how often you try to pull that one. It is not the skeptics fault that your arguments are so poorly assembled and/or presented that they are wholly unconvincing.
 
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