It stumps me that the very same people who scoff at ufos/uaps as "woo" do not on the other hand deny the possible existence of aliens in the universe somewhere.
Those two claims are very different.
1. Superadvanced alien beings are currently visiting Earth is spaceships way more technologically advanced than anything humans can produced.
2. It is possible that life developed independently in more than one place in our universe.
Consider claim #2 first. The first thing to notice is that nobody is claimed that extraterrestrial life
has developed independently. That would be overreach, because there's no evidence to support it, so far. The second thing to note is that we know quite a bit about how life developed on Earth, though we don't yet know exactly how it started. The third thing to note is that we already know of one planet on which life developed, so we know for sure that life developing somewhere is possible. The fourth thing to note is that, so far as we know, there's nothing to prevent similar processes happening on another suitable planet somewhere.
So, to sum up, claim #2 is a not a knowledge claim. It is a claim about what is currently considered an open possibility. It is a reasonable and conservative claim, informed by what we already know.
Now consider claim #1. This is very much a knowledge claim. People are claiming to
know that superadvanced aliens are buzzing Earth in their superadvanced spaceships. How do they know this? Apparently, they know this because some people have some fuzzy photos of blobs in the sky that they can't identify, and stuff. What is unclear is how a fuzzy photo becomes certain knowledge of alien visitation. As has already been pointed out, we aren't aware of any life existing anywhere else but on Earth. We know of no populated alien planets. People can't agree on what the blobs in those fuzzy photos are, even. There's no advanced alien technology on display anywhere that we can examine closely. We have no messages from any aliens. It's all just terribly underwhelming, when we consider the paucity of good evidence for the claim.
To sum up, there is no good reason to believe claim #1. The accumulated evidence is just too equivocal and of such poor quality that it is ridiculous overreach to claim to know that aliens are currently visiting Earth. Any critical thinker who takes just a little time to familiarise themselves with the embarrassing state of modern UFOology can see that.
It must create some sort of cognitive dissonance that they in principle accept the proposition of alien existence while denying it in the case of their appearance on earth as uaps.
See my definition of denial in my post to Yazata, above. Clearly you have no idea what denial is, either.
Also, depending on how we read what you wrote here, you might be misrepresenting the claim, either because you're too stupid to appreciate nuance, or because you're dishonestly trying to put up straw man or to muddy the waters.
Nobody has "accepted the proposition of alien existence" if, by that, you mean accepted that aliens actually exist; there's no good evidence for that. Rather, certain skeptics here - myself included - have accepted the proposition that aliens
might exist elsewhere (i.e. not on Earth).
It smacks of cognitive compartmentalization--that sure the aliens are out there, but they can never make contact with us.
Then there are the lies that you and Yazata tell. Why do you do that? I know why. It's so you can pretend that the skeptic position on UFOs is unreasonable and biased. Maybe you're trying too fool others into joining your UFO cult. Maybe you're trying to fool yourselves. Either way, this particular straw man you guys keep trying to prop up just makes you both look terribly intellectually dishonest. It is people like you, who tell that lie, who help to give the UFO believer community such a bad image. You ought to try to do better. But I don't for a moment expect that either of you will. After all, you can no longer claim you don't understand what's wrong with telling this lie you both tell.
To be clear: to my knowledge, no skeptic here has claimed that aliens - if they exist - can never make contact with us.
It's not that you are forced to not believe by lack of evidence.
Belief is not something you choose. Either you're convinced of something - you believe it - or you're not convinced.
If you care about evidence, then an absence of reliable evidence is not something that is going to help convince you of
any claim.
If, on the other hand, you don't give a damn about evidence and you can become convinced of something for other reasons - for example the personal emotion appeal of the belief to you - then absence of evidence is not going to bother you. In fact, you might even come to view the absence of evidence as a spur for you to have stronger faith in the belief.
It's just that you don't WANT to believe, which leads you to interpreting evidence as insufficient to draw a firm conclusion.
The difference between you and the skeptics, Magical Realist, is that the skeptics can say clearly what the deficiencies in the purported evidence are, and tell you exactly why they aren't convinced by your tales of aliens, whereas all you can do is to recite the mantra that the purported evidence can't
possibly be anything mundane. You have never been remotely interested in actually examining any purported evidence in any objective way.
For example, what more would satisfy you about the 40 ft long tic tac encounter?
A 40 ft long clearly alien spacecraft on public display in the Smithsonian or somewhere would be a good start. The alien pilots doing the rounds of the talk-show circuit would be a great addition. Hell, even a clear photograph of the 40 ft long spaceship would be better than anything we've seen from your crowd so far.
Is evidence really lacking in this case, or are you just invoking your own assumption of incredulity or "wooness" regarding the aliens actually being here on earth already?
The purported evidence for any alien spaceship in the tic tac case is extremely poor. The visual footage of the tic tac looks a lot like a bird. The FLIR footage looks like it's probably something different, most likely a jet plane in the distance. We haven't seen any radar records of the tic tac encounter. There are only a handful of eyewitnesses who are willing to talk about it, and at least one or two of them seem to be making money out of telling their stories and speculating. In any case, what the eyewitnesses reported does not immediately scream "alien spaceship!" when looked at objectively.
So, yes, the evidence is really lacking in this case.
Worth noting also that this is among the very
best UFO cases, in terms of evidence. Which really says a lot about the poor level of evidence for aliens.
