Are Flying Saucers Supernatural?

Correa Neto said:
Countdown for Limbo and a "UFOs are psi archetypes + read Campbell + I know because I had amazing mystic experiences" post?
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Oh geeze, you just had to say the Great Deranged One's name out loud. Remind me to never invite you to a necronomicon party ;)
 
Dog Breakfast said:
Exactly! It's almost as though the defining characteristic of supernatural phenomena is that they're not real, or that people just say, "Hey, it's magic," and leave it at that.
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Actually, it seems to me that not being real and belief in magic are two fundamentally different things. E.g., aether or phlogiston turned out to not be real, but there was nothing even vaguely resembling belief in magic in either theory. In fact that's why they could be falsified: there was no expectation of anything else than reproducible natural phenomena there.

It seems to me that for something to be belief in the SUPERnatural, there actually has to be a SUPERnatural component. I.e., something that supposedly can't be explain by just normal matter and physics.

Basically think of the following example: Think if I were a 19'th century explorer and sailed a brand new steel battleship (like La Redoutable) to some new island in the pacific inhabited by a tribe who never met any other humans and never saw a boat bigger than a canoe. Let's say they can think as rationally as they can about it. They know how to make a canoe and they're sure that long before that size, it would break in heavy waves. They can also know that there is no tree whose trunk I could hollow to make a battleship-sized canoe. The ship though clearly exists. What matters is how they explain it.

A. If they think it can be explained by materials and construction techniques, that's not a supernatural belief. Even if it involves non-existent hypothetical entity, like they imagine there are giant steel trees from which such ships are made, as long as they think there is some natural explanation behind it, it lacks the "super" part of "supernatural."

B. If they think that there is an element of appeasing great spirits, or using secret words of power, or whatever, that's belief in supernatural.

The two may be indistinguishable when it comes to explaining how that mighty ship came to be, but nevertheless there is a fundamental difference there.

The former doesn't depend on human wishes or relationships with the spirits or anything. That ship could be made by mindless robots, and predictably it would still sail. It's just the natural properties of the materials and components, tell you that it can sail, and what kind of forces it can shrug off.

The latter is fundamentally something where just the material properties of something aren't enough to make a prediction. A worse ship could sail just fine if the great spirits wish so, and a better ship could break if the spirits are hostle. There is some element, be it a god, or a spirit, or a ritual, or a word of power, or just the power of wishful thinking, or an entitlement delusion (e.g., the universe owes me a good trip because I have good karma), that can take the laws of physics to take a break. And it's invariably a fundamentally untestable and unfalsifiable element. Measuring twice before building the ship wouldn't help, if the great spirit of the sea still doesn't want it to sail.

And to further illustrate the difference between just belief in something that doesn't exist, and belief in magic, consider this: consider that i now were to tell those tribesmen that, nah, mate, this ship ain't the biggest in the world any more. The English built one twice as heavy by now. The English in fact had no such ship at the time, so if those guys believe me, they believe in an English ship that doesn't actually exist yet. But that alone doesn't make it belief in the supernatural. If they believe, basically,

A. "Damn, those English guys must be real skilled at building boats."... then that's naturalistic thinking.

B. "Damn, those English must have some mighty shamans, who know how to appease the spirits of the wood and of the sea, to make such a big ship sail."... that's supernatural thinking.

Someone at this point may note that the distinction is a bit pointless, since all technologically primitive cultures would not have a naturalistic explanation of the universe, so they'll only come up with the latter kind of explanation. (And indeed, even at late antiquity levels, the Greeks were the only culture we know of where some people had ideas that some events can be explained 100% by natural causes, without involving any spirits or gods whatsoever.) But far from being pointless, that's the point: then they only have a supernatural view of the world, and lack a scientific view.

Or in the same vein, consider the following example:

1. If I'm a smith and see for the first time a beautiful katana, and learn of the ritualized way to make tamahagane steel and hammer it into a sword. If my thoughts are:

A) "Damn, I must find out exactly what materials and temperature I must use to make one"... that's natural.

B) "Damn, I must learn Japanese to say the proper prayers to the goddess of smithing like those guys do"... that supernatural. It means there is something beyond the natural stuff like materials, temperatures, etc, that can make or break the whole thing.

2. I learn that there is a 5m long Japanese blade somewhere. Which is actually false, since IIRC the Norimitsu Odachi is the longest, and it has a 3.7m long blade, of which actually only about 2.25m long cutting edge and a metre and a half worth of tang. So I'm clearly believing that a sword exists which actually doesn't. Do I think...

A) "Dude, now that must have been a pain in the ass to quench without warping. Hats off to that guy's getting the steel, the temperature and all just right. Mad skillz, that"... that's natural.

B) "Dude, that guy must have been a really holy man, and purified himself and said the prayers just right"... that's supernatural. For the same reasons as before.

(Incidentally for the record, although they did recognize the skill and material quality as important factors, the Japanese themselves did include a hefty dose of supernatural. The ritual parts could go to such extremes as, I kid you not, on the tang of a good quality sword we have an inscription that the smith meditated and ritually purified himself for 100 days before starting to work on it. And, you know, that was actually something to brag about, not a case of "ha, I loafed for 100 days on the client's money.")

3. I notice that when swinging a sword, pushing or drawing in certain ways that obey the pre-existing movement of the sword, result in much easier and faster cuts, while going against this makes it harder, slower and more imprecise. Do I think

A) "There must be a perfectly physical explanation (e.g., momentum), and indeed one can replicate the same effect with just a tree branch or any other object"... that's natural

B) "The sword clearly has its own spirit, who wants to act in certain ways, and for best effects I much act in harmony with the spirit of the sword."... that's supernatural.

(Incidentally the Norse went firmly with option B.)
 
"Flying saucers" are a journalistic mistake.


When Kenneth Arnold was interviewed about what he witnessed in 1947, he described the "object(s)" movement as like a saucer skimming across water. The journalist took that as "license" to describe the objects as "flying saucers".


Ever since, flying saucers have been the "norm". I find it interesting that the aliens would design their space vehicles to "conform" to a journalistic mistake.


Flying saucers are not supernatural...they are not even real.
 
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Well put R.A.F.

Regarding"supernatural," that's a man-made term.

True story: when I was a very young kid (back when the Dead Sea was only sick) I saw my aunt appear to pour hot water into an empty cup and ... it turned into coffee! I thought she was a witch with 'supernatural' powers. I didn't see the instant coffee granules at the bottom of the cup and probably was too young to know what instant coffee was anyway.

My point? Not understanding what I saw at the time didn't qualify the existence of something pegged as "supernatural." I never liked that word anyway as it implies 'beyond science' in a permanent kinda way.
 
Archer17 said:
Well put R.A.F.

Regarding"supernatural," that's a man-made term.

True story: when I was a very young kid (back when the Dead Sea was only sick) I saw my aunt appear to pour hot water into an empty cup and ... it turned into coffee! I thought she was a witch with 'supernatural' powers. I didn't see the instant coffee granules at the bottom of the cup and probably was too young to know what instant coffee was anyway.

My point? Not understanding what I saw at the time didn't qualify the existence of something pegged as "supernatural." I never liked that word anyway as it implies 'beyond science' in a permanent kinda way.
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I wouldn't say it puts anything permanently beyond science, as, after all naturalistic explanations evolved from supernatural ones. But I would say it's a qualitative difference, and one which seems to have been historically a bigger hurdle to jump than one would assume.
 
HansMustermann said:
I wouldn't say it puts anything permanently beyond science, as, after all naturalistic explanations evolved from supernatural ones. But I would say it's a qualitative difference, and one which seems to have been historically a bigger hurdle to jump than one would assume.
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I see no qualitative anything with regard to the 'supernatural.' Science can't very well jump over a presumption, can it?
 
Archer17 said:
I see no qualitative anything with regard to the 'supernatural.' Science can't very well jump over a presumption, can it?
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Science may not, but humans do have to make the qualitative jump between

A) there's a spirit in the sword, and some moves are easier because they're what the spirit wants, and

B) it's just inertia, a purely material, measurable, testable, and predictable property of nature.

Or in your example between

A) your aunt is some witch who can turn water into coffee, and

B) it's just a solution, which has nothing to do with human agency or their intent, and which would happen jolly well even if the kitchen were flooded and the instant coffee jar broke.
 
It's not that I necessarily disagree with what you posted to me HansMustermann, I just don't think 'paranormal' exists in an established sense. It's an arbitrary definition and one I find sloppy. That's it. I don't expect everyone to feel that way and I'm not on a semantical crusade here.

Anyway, regarding the OP I think the proper response can be found it post# 3 and others here like it. UFOs are just object(s) that are unidentified to a particular observer(s). I saw a "UFO" myself a couple of years ago. Labeling an unidentified object with a term commonly used as a synonym for otherworldly craft is very presumptuous. I could have saw a balloon.
 
Stray Cat said:
Which is exactly why I said "if the claims made about them were true"
It is claimed that this one was flying low, nearby and supersonic, without making a sonic boom.
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Ah, okay--I had read your original as saying that IN GENERAL flying saucers were allegedly found in the atmosphere. I was merely pointing out that this wasn't universally true. Obviously, if there's a specific case than any other case won't matter. :)

Archer17 said:
I saw a "UFO" myself a couple of years ago.
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I used to work on a lot of air force bases, doing environmental remediation work (mostly groundwater monitoring). I had lots of time to watch the really cool jets, choppers, etc. flying around. Saw a lot of UFOs--things that I couldn't identify (an F-22, past a certain distance, looks like nothing more than a greenish dot in the sky). Many of them were of the "If I told you I'd have to kill you" variety.

HansMustermann said:
Science may not, but humans do have to make the qualitative jump between

A) there's a spirit in the sword, and some moves are easier because they're what the spirit wants, and

B) it's just inertia, a purely material, measurable, testable, and predictable property of nature.
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Probably not your best example. I once tried to use a friend's sword, and it just didn't work. I favor a style that emphasizes speed and manuverability, while he favors a style that emphasizes mass and having so much inertia that nothing deflects them. The sword was the same, but it felt alive in my friend's hands, and dead in mine.

The issue is, swords aren't universal--there's a connection between the user and the blade that must be made. THAT is measurable and testable and all that, but it's a component most leave out.

This isn't entirely off-topic, either: UFOs are only UFOs because of the human element. I've got a friend that can ID any plane made in the last fifty years by the USA, Russia, Europe, and China; they'd be IFOs for him. The human element is difficult to quantify, because it's different for different people.
 
archer17 said:
i saw a "ufo" myself a couple of years ago. Labeling an unidentified object with a term commonly used as a synonym for otherworldly craft is very presumptuous. I could have saw a balloon.
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a balloon ? A PARANORMAL BALLOON ??
 
Dinwar said:
Ah, okay--I had read your original as saying that IN GENERAL flying saucers were allegedly found in the atmosphere. I was merely pointing out that this wasn't universally true. Obviously, if there's a specific case than any other case won't matter. :)
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I think the relevance of the word "claims" is more important than anything.
Because it is the claims that are usually found to be erroneous upon investigation, in the specific case I was referring to or any other.
For another example, when: "It was jumping about in the sky just above the hill top" turns out to be Venus. The claim of it "jumping about" is obviously false and it's description of "just above the hill top" is inaccurate by about 25,000,000 miles.
So really, 'where' and 'what' the objects are has no bearing on the claims often made about them. :)
 
Archer17 said:
Well put R.A.F.
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Right back at cha...and it's good to "see" you...cheers. :)


Regarding"supernatural," that's a man-made term.
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Of course. Lets examine that term. It's basically defined as "beyond natural"...or more precisely, in my opinion, beyond science, or another way I like to put it, beyond evidence.

If something is not evidenced, then just why should anyone pay a lick of attention??
 
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