Why does the government hide UFO's?

A good answer to "why do people believe in alien UFO's" come from the Washington Post:
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But the enduring power of UFOs doesn’t seem like something we can explain away as delusion or demographic proclivity. It seems to spring from someplace deeper—the same place, psychologists like C.G. Jung have argued, that forced early humans to make up myths to explain the weather. These stories explain things we don’t, or can’t, understand. (“I was dealing with a phenomenon that I felt could not be explained psychiatrically,” the Harvard psychiatrist who believed in alien abduction once said.)

Without these stories, psychologist Stephen Diamond explains in an essay on UFOs and the “cry for meaning,” we have to accept the fact that some things mean nothing, and others are totally beyond us—a strange, frightening and ultimately deflating thought.

In fact, it’s arguably easier to believe the universe is full of life, even hostile life, than to believe the universe holds no meaning at all. In that respect, a belief in UFOs answers many of the same questions as a belief in God—explaining, perhaps, why the religious tend to not believe in them. Both things convince us, in Diamond’s words, that we are:

“… still capable of experiencing something that lifts us out of our everyday, mundane, ordinary, banal, often seemingly purposeless lives, and [they also remind us], if only momentarily, what it means to be fully, ecstatically alive in a universe filled with beauty, mystery, terror, danger and wonder.”

The alternate narrative isn’t very compelling, which explains why conferences and museums on existentialism, if they existed, would draw far smaller crowds than Myrtle Beach’s “UFO Experience” and D.C.’s recent UFO hearings. It also accounts for the flood of Hollywood features on UFOs—500 since 1947, according to IMDB—and the relative lack of movies on the vast, dark emptiness of the unfeeling universe. (Also worth noting: according to Irwin and others, more alien movies = more UFO sightings.)

Perhaps viewers want to feel what Roy Neary felt in the 1977 hit “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

“I know this sounds crazy, but ever since yesterday on the road, I’ve been seeing this shape,” Neary says after seeing a UFO. “Shaving cream, pillows… Dammit! I know this. I know what this is! This means something. This is important.”
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I have said in the past that very few people will ever say "I dont know".

I say it often and folk are always taken aback.

Ask anyone anything and you will get an opinion and that opinion is often offerred with confidence notwithstanding little knowledge of the subject matter.

My why question was to the op.
If there is so much evidence why is not something done?
Does the government know but does not care?
Has the government had folk look at the evidence and conclude there is nothing to worry about.

My "survey" has now had over 600 views and my presumption is from mostly astro folk and little to write home about.

Folk believe in all sorts of things and they generally claim they have proof but often all they have is their belief in a proposition.

When I see God or a ufo or a ghost I will make up my mind if I have seen something real or if my mind is playing tricks on me.

Alex

 

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People already have a comforting myth. It's called religion. It's an all-powerful father figure who lives in the sky and grants them their wishes and eternal life. A flying saucer with alien beings inside isn't really a myth anyone would make up to comfort themselves. It doesn't provide solace on lonely dark nights or a sense of humans being the center of it all. In fact it is all a rather terrifying prospect. That alien beings could swoop down at any time and do whatever they want. One might even call it an anti-myth.

 

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I submit to you that the thread did not properly start with post 1; it started with post 11.

Post 1 - and thus the topic text - is a poorly-formed question.

'Why does the govrnment hide UFOs' makes the implicit supposition that the govrnement does hide UFOs.

It is a question of the form
'have you stopped beating your wife yet?' and
'why are ghosts always seen wearing the clothes they died in?'

They presuppose something that has yet to be granted. To answer these questions at all, is to implicitly grant the premise.

The only way to truthfully answer the question is to stop the queryer in his tracks and call out the malformed question.

So, the properly-formed question must be compound: Does the gov't hide UFO's - and if so - why?

 

You are correct.
But that still does not answer why the government are hiding ufos.
Are you always this difficult?
Sorry for some reason I am in a happy mood...
So many questions are presented incorrectly which would not be so hard to take if the person asking was being sneaky but so often they fail to grasp what you point to.

I know generalisations are of little value but I have noticed some wife bashing questions in the religious forum in support.
Alex

 

Yep. For some, their comforting myth is religion. For others, that need for comfort is replaced by UFO's or ghosts. As the article calls out, there is an inverse relationship between religion and UFO belief, implying that one or the other fills the same need in people who have such a need.

UFO's, of course, may fulfill other needs, such as the need some people have for attention - especially when there is nothing of substance they can do to get similar levels of attention.

 

If they're not hiding them, the question is meaningless. And it is by no means an accepted stance that they are.

Too many questions arise like this.

I alluded to another one: "Why" do ghosts appear in certain clothes?

It needs to first be established that ghosts appear in clothes at all.
The nature by which this is resolved (some supernatural explnation and mechanism by which dead people wander amoungst the living) will necessarily play into any question of why they might wear clothes.

That there are UFOS (and how this manifests), and that the goverment is hiding them (and how this manifests), will necessarily play a major role in why they might hide them.


Note, even if one accepts that UFOs and ghost do exist, the qustion remains problematic.

Let's say I grant both exist.
In order to understand anything about them, there must first be a theory of mechanism.

What if ghosts exist, but are simply magic by some wizard? Well, their clothes are at the whim of the wizard.
What if they are actually dead souls? Well, the clothes are... well, who knows. We still need a mechanism by which they intrude upon our living world.

What if UFOs exist but are actually military experiments?
What if the UFOS are faked by the goverment?

You see, the questiom of why something is the why it is requires at least the rudimentary theory as to what they are.

 

Nope..Scary unknown beings are not the stuff of comforting myths. Science on the other hand? Yeah..that's the new myth for lots of atheists. It provides comfort that all can be explained and that there is nothing out of the ordinary or irrational in one's life. There's even a revered priesthood of peer-reviewed scientists to bow before. Science the answer to all problems. Science the infallible font of all knowledge. Yeah...

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I was trying to be funny...
Your earlier post was not lost on me... I was trying to appear stupid... unfortunately I know when I am and when I am not may be difficult to tell.

Alex

 

Well dont you forget it.

Alex

 

I suspected so. I know you well enough.

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Probably should have gone with my first instinct.

 

They get their clothes from companies that have gone into liquidation...

Yes mechanism.
How do tarot cards work?

I had a friend who was into tarot cards and other mystical stuff.
He did paid readings.
I confronted him one day that it was a scam.
What he told me was unexpected.
He said well I believe they work and folk who see me believe they work.
Often in the process of reading the cards they reveal a problem, say a business problem or a tax problem, and the cards often give them the courage to address something they have been avoiding.

Anyway he made me realise in his world tarot cards work, evil spirits are around and there will be a life after death.
It hit me that he really believed stuff that I just saw as nonsence.
And so I thought about the world and the different views... the realisation hits hard when you realise your rational approach probablt is not the norm.

Alex

 

Maybe you have not had the pleasure of meeting someone who is not content unless there is drama in their life.
I have.
They are fighting with the neighbours their friends ...even seem happier if they have an illness or pain they can talk about.

These sort of people revel in drama and the prospect of doom and gloom.

You can not have lived and not come across the type I speak about.

They loved the prospect of the world ending in 2012, they think the world is on the brink of collapse, it goes on believe me.

In any event I could see that type happy to fantasise about alien invasion etc.

You seem like a good man who only sees the good in people but I suggest there are many different types of people both good and bad and you are fortunate that you seem to have not had your belief in humanity seriously damaged.

Alex

 

Years ago I would get caught all the time using dry humour, mock stupidity and silly over statement.

So I took to using emos and things changed.

They are not easy to use on my phone but for the future its probably safe to say I am not trying to be too serious, I am not a puffed up personality and I don't seek to be offensive.

I enjoy all of your posts and happy to have you pull me up if I go off the rails, overstep the line or cross forbidden boundaries....just don't call in my licence.

Alex

 

One report that came in on the astronomy forum described how a group observed what appeared to be metal disk like objects flying over the ocean.
The group could not work it out until the objects came in closer.
Turned out to be seaguls.
They appeared silver and metalic because of the way the Sun lit them up.
Over 700 views nothing that suggest astronomers see ufos as suggested earlier.
Alex

 

Come now. It's not real until it has appropriate theme music and over 100,000 views.

 

You must be posting to get a rise out of folk.
That video was pathetic and takes away from your propositions rather than to add to them.
However we are getting good traffic and I see that as a good thing for sustaining our small group on the one hand but a little sad that so many follow ufos.
The thread I openned on the astronomy forum has been helpful.
It seems many objects can appear very different due to Sun light and various angles.
Seaguls that appeared silvery and metalic. V formations of birds also taking on a look of a single object.
So far what has come out of the thread is some members have seen stuff which was at first a ufo but they were able to identify and often they could identify the object with binnnos.
Alex