UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

Talking about ghosts here. See rest of post for reason why.

Anecdotal evidence..

 

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Pretty sure skepticism has its own online fanboy subculture led by such heros such as Mick West and contributors to the Skeptical Inquirer magazine. It smacks of some sort of fanatical cult following. "Science rules! Critical thinking rocks!" And so forth.

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Why do you cherry pick which beliefs you are willing to accept on anecdotal evidence? Why UAPs, ghosts, etc, and not, say, religious beliefs? Do you believe people who say they have been visited by God, or spoken with God, for example?
Would you believe me if I said that I dreamt of the winning lottery numbers the day before the draw, but chose not to play them, and now wish I had?

 

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I would gladly be open to anyone who claimed to have been visited by God. That is, outside of a psych ward!

Yes I would. At least until I have evidence saying otherwise.

 

So, I ask again, why do you cherrypick which beliefs you are willing to accept on anecdotal evidence and those that you aren't?

If that is true then you are the very definition of gullible, and I fear for you when opening your door to salespeople.

 

Even among the most religiously faithful, seeing and talking to God physically is tantamount to blasphemy and subject to investigation. There just aren't that many accounts of this. Compare this to the anecdotal accounts of ghosts, of which there are so many. I simply accept that all these people who see ghosts aren't lying or hallucinating. Is this dangerously gullible too?

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I saw BATMAN.

 

This seems to be appropriate at this moment

Article from today's NT News newspaper apparently reprinted from The London Times

They lived weirdly ever after…

OSLO: Princess Martha Louise of Norway has announced she will no longer represent the royal family after widespread criticism of her fiance, an American self-styled natural healer who has claimed to be a reincarnated pharaoh and a hybrid “reptilian” capable of curing cancer with his mind.

The princess, the eldest child of King Harald V and fourth in line to the Norwegian throne, will retain her title but will stop carrying out official duties, ostensibly to “create peace in the royal household”.

Her fiance Durek Verrett, 47, is a self-proclaimed shaman with supposed magic powers who is a friend of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and charges more than $2000 for spiritual therapy sessions.

He met Princess Martha, 51, in 2016 through a mutual friend and they announced their engagement in June.

The princess had been criticised in the press for her forays into the paranormal, including her claims that she was a clairvoyant who could commune with animals and angels.

The press has dismissed Mr Verrett, 47, as a fraud, and one of the country’s largest publishing houses dropped his 2019 book Spirit Hacking, which suggests children are to blame when they get cancer.

The London Times

Ummm Don't think Harry can top that

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Indeed. That is pretty much the acme of a double standard.

It effectively says:
If someone relates their firsthand experience of God; do not believe them; they must be mentally ill.
If someone relates their firsthand experience of a UFO; if you do not believe them then you must be mentally ill.

 

Since MR found 'himself' having to mention ''psych ward'', then ''we'' have to look into the reason MR ony has double standards and not quadruple standards.
''psych ward''
''They have each evolved into 4 distinct personalities''
My bold below.

''In my case I experience the voices as in my head. I am not psychotic cuz I know they are brain generated.''
MR is so positive that 'he' knows they are '' brain generated'', but ''we'' have to ask, which one knows the other 3 are just '' brain generated''.
That is which one has ''logged-in to sciforums today??
Each thinks the others are ''brain generated''.

 

I suggest you look up Theophany. I'm also not sure that it is in itself blasphemous. Lying about it would be, sure, and any investigations are almost certainly because other people are not believing them based solely on their anecdotal evidence. Unlike you.

Furthermore, according to this PEW report, a survey of 5,000 Americans suggests c.70% talk to God, and 28% said God talks to them. All blasphemous, though, right?

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See the report above.

Sure, ghosts are more widely and openly talked about, as many consider religious beliefs to be far more personal, and not something they are happy discussing in public. And I have no doubt more people believe they have seen a ghost than think God has talked to them: for one there are far more things that can be misinterpreted as a ghost than can be misinterpreted as having God talk to you.

But the point is clear: you cherrypick which areas you're willing to accept anecdotal evidence prima facie and those you are not. That in itself is an inconsistency in your approach, and suggests that there is an agenda at work: for some reason, other than and before the evidence, you want to believe in UFOs and ghosts etc, but not other things, and so accept a bar for continuing that belief much lower than for those other beliefs. It means you are not able/willing to be as reasonable with this subject matter as you probably are with others. Maybe you don't know why you do this, maybe you do. But, hey, it is what it is.

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I looked up theophany on Wikipedia and it said this:

"Traditionally the term "theophany" was used to refer to appearances of the gods in ancient Greek and in Near Eastern religions. While the Iliad is the earliest source for descriptions of theophanies in classical antiquity (which occur throughout Greek mythology), probably the earliest description appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh.[7]

In the specific usage for Christians and Jews, with respect to the Bible, theophany refers to an event where the Abrahamic God reveals his presence to a person."

IOW, there are no contemporary claims of God manifesting himself physically to men. The events are all reputed to have occurred in religious scriptures and stories and myths. I am not a firm believer in religious texts, as you can probably guess. It's essentially like using Mother Goose to prove the existence of magic.

 

You know what's a little crazy? It's you spending untold hours going thru my past posts just to catch me in some inconsistency. Why are you so obsessed with this? You should really spend your time more productively.

 

It says no such thing.

There are have innumerable claims of deific visits in modern times.
You have no way of disclaiming that farmer Bob down the street didn't have God visit him in his living room.

And, by your logic, strangers don't lie, so you'll have to take them at their word.

 

Like with any extraordinary experience I will ask questions and analyze it. Then I will make up my mind just like everyone does. I rule out mundane causes just like skeptics do. But unlike them I am open to an encounter being real yet unexplained. The miraculous events at Fatima is one such example of this.

 

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Even the Wiki page you claim to have read offers up some modern examples - including by Philip K Dick. But since religious belief and experiences tend to be more personal, more private, it is to be expected that they are not widely shared and known about, unlike claims of ghosts, for example.

 

No you won't. That's the skeptic's anal pedantic way.

You will take eyewitness claims at face-value, because normal people don't lie or hallucinate, and only mentally ill or paranoid people would think they do.

 

I understand you don't you like being shown to be a hypocrite.

Cutting and pasting quotes one after the other, page after page for day after day on the Quotes Thread.

Hours?? Minutes more like, that's what the back pages of long threads and archives are there for. Search and google make it quick.

This whole thread is testimonial to your inability to analyze anything.

 

I'd qualify that with "analyze [sic] anything rigourously". MR does analyse things but starts, and stops, with analysis that he thinks supports the a priori belief that it's non-mundane.

But look, everyone, we get that this is what MR does (or doesn't do) so is there any reason to keep harking on about it? MR isn't going to change. Let's just use this thread for him to post what he thinks are examples of non-mundane UFOs and we can, if we want, try to analyse to see if we are convinced or not. Just because (we know) MR doesn't do any rigourous analysis, and thus reaches conclusions we're not convinced of, doesn't mean we shouldn't analyse the cases if we want to. So what if MR believes on the basis of anecdotal evidence. So what if MR is inconsistent in his approach between UFOs/ghosts and, say, religious beliefs. That's his problem, which has been highlighted. If he wants to dispute the analysis that others come up with, sure, let's have that argument, but then agree to disagree on what we find convincing or not.
Just a thought.

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