Total bullshit.....If something is unknown, it is unidentified, and that applies with science also...hence our naming of DM as DM, and DE as DE.
But keep wriggling MR....It's rather amusing.
Mass ufo sightings
- Thread starter Magical Realist
- Start date
Total bullshit.....If something is unknown, it is unidentified, and that applies with science also...hence our naming of DM as DM, and DE as DE.
But keep wriggling MR....It's rather amusing.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
If something remains unidentified, then you have failed as a researcher. Everybody already knows it is unidentified. Telling them you can't figure out what it is means you suck as a scientific researcher. Then we turn to those who CAN offer us plausible explanations for what it is. That's basic science..The ones that can explain win Nobel Prizes. The ones that can't end up working at McDonald's.
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To explain to you, which you seem to ignore, that alien life is not necessarily advanced.
Hence the heading from that article that I quoted - that you chose to ignore in your assessment of what you deem rational. You jump from "alien life is probable" to "therefore they are visiting us!" as being the rational explanation for UFOs.
It's not about what I claim or not... it's about the ridiculousness of your position, of your arguments and assessment of what is rational or not. I don't need to make an alternative claim in order to argue how poor your own arguments are.
Because there's not enough evidence either way. Simples, really. We know of only one space-faring species. We know how precarious our own existence was, given the dominance of "dumb" animals for 99.9%+ of the time life has existed on this planet.
To take a position on the existence or otherwise of advanced alien life we need to make numerous assumptions, none of which can really be tested. So I remain agnostic on the matter. It's a possibility that they exist, sure.
Because for them to be evidence of advanced alien life you have to discount not just known mundane explanations but ALL other explanations.
Are they possibly alien life? Yes. It is mathematically and scientifically possible. But that does not make it the rational conclusion.
Well, while I have previously said he has inferred more than I wrote, on reflection it is actually an accurate representation: I do express doubt - but only through expressing the lack of any actual knowledge we have on the issue. So if someone was to say it isn't advanced, I would express doubt in that we simply don't know enough to be able to say that it isn't advanced (if alien life exists).
Similarly, if someone was to say that it is advanced, I would also express doubt for the same reason.
Thus, upon reflection, he has not misunderstood me at all. Me bad for thinking so.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
LOL! The funniest part of all this is I don't think you even know what you believe. It changes with every new post.
Quoth you: "(I don't doubt it is technologically advanced... I am agnostic on the matter)"
You've made my point for me. Good job. Moving on now to posters who know how to say what they mean the first time.
MR; their use to thinking the Earth as the center of the Universe. Its quite a shock to these people when they realise the Earth is but another planet; in the Universe.
Like a fish on a hook, you are twisting and squirming with regards to science and what you are totally ignorant of.
Like I said, and whether you or river like it or not...All they are, are UFO's
You both of course have the right to whatever opinion suits your fancy and no one is questioning that point........It's just your expectations that either of you are really taken seriously by anyone else that is creating some mirth and merriment among those observing.
Why do you think the universe is Earth centric?
What we hold as rational has to be earth-centric, since that is all we currently have evidence for. But that does not mean we think the universe is Earth centric.
I'm sorry you have difficulty in comprehension, MR.
Let me explain it for you in terms you may understand:
Paddoboy inferred from what I had written that I doubt that it (alien life) is technologically advanced.
I don't have that doubt, any more than I have the doubt that it is not technologically advanced.
The reason I don't have doubt is because I don't know sufficient about the reality of either situation to be able to express doubt one way or the other.
It is thus correct for me to have responded that I don't doubt it is technologically advanced.
Does that explain it to you?
Or perhaps you are someone who doesn't understand the "weak atheist" position either, which is one of neither belief nor disbelief, and you feel all atheists are "belief in the non-existence of God"? (I only raise this comparison because it is the closest).
So quit your whining.
And he interprets other people's arguments to fit counter-arguments he can understand, rather than what that person actually says.Like a fish on a hook, you are twisting and squirming with regards to science and what you are totally ignorant of.
Like I said, and whether you or river like it or not...All they are, are UFO's
You both of course have the right to whatever opinion suits your fancy and no one is questioning that point........It's just your expectations that either of you are really taken seriously by anyone else that is creating some mirth and merriment among those observing.
All rather amusing.
He also invokes the notion that not ascribing an explanation is somehow poor scientific research ("If something remains unidentified, then you have failed as a researcher"). What he doesn't realise is "they're aliens" is rather an unscientific claim in the first instance. There is no way to test the theory, all one can test is future events should one be captured. There is no practical way to falsify such claims short of the people involved claiming them to be fake (although even then that may be interpreted as being part of a conspiracy to hide the truth!), nor any way to test the theory.
Maybe I'm wrong in that, though...
So maybe MR can put forward an actual scientific theory, 'cos at the moment "it's magic" is just as viable an alternative "theory".
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
If we are talking about truly anomalous sightings in the sky, I think that it's best to approach them with an open mind and not try to prejudge what they are.
That's the nature of the unknown. We don't know what it is.
What makes these anomalous sightings anomalous is the fact that they don't easily fit into our classificatory and explanatory schemes.
My inclination is to think that our calling these anomalies 'extraterrestrial spaceships' is just as foolish as the ancients and medievals giving them religious interpretations. In both cases, it's cultures projecting what interests them up into the sky.
(There's something kind of "retro" about extraterrestrial spaceships. The idea is so 50's and 60's. It reflects a period when the general public was fascinated by space travel, when people wanted humanity to expand off the Earth and explore the universe. Today, the public has lost interest and couldn't care less.
That's why we rarely see the kind of excited media reports and speculations about ufos that once were common. To the extent that the ufo myth still lives, it's grown darker and more political, colored by the cultural alienation that's so pervasive today. Today's myth is focused more on alleged Earthly government conspiracies devoted to covering up the existence of extraterrestrials on our planet.)
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Yazata
Valued Senior Member
"Damn them! Damn them all to Hull!" (as some of my northern brethren would say it)
Hull is a city in England, isn't it? It can't be that bad.
Australia on the other hand... There was recently a documentary about life in Australia in the theaters, called 'Mad Max'. It helped me understand Paddoboy, Bells and JamesR a little better....
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
As anomalies that exhibit the same characteristics over time and appear to be craft piloted by non-human beings, it's entirely appropriate to infer that they are from other planets. What do you think an ET in a spacecraft would look like? Well..let's see now. A ufo? Pretty much. That's how we learn. We try out different theories until something comes along that suggests a better one. Just saying they're unidentified objects isn't anything. It's saying what everyone already knows them to be. It may be true, but it's not helpful in understanding them better.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I lost interest in watching you explain what you mean't to yourself long ago. Rather than twisting yourself up in rhetorical knots all day just to cover your ass, why not just relax and discuss the topic at hand? Do you even remember what it was?
I kinda have to award points for that one.
Neither is automatically assuming "aliens in spaceships".
Bells
Staff member
You aren't trying out any different theories though. You aren't even considering any different theories. Which is part of the problem. If you were willing to consider that it could be something else and earthly, instead of aliens, then it would solve a lot of the 'issues'. It doesn't help to understand anything better if people are already jumping on the aliens bandwagon right from the get go.
In these last few weeks, I have seen two things in the sky that I cannot identify. They are, for all intents and purposes, UFO's. But instead of saying "ALIENS!!", I am considering all other theories first and foremost. Aliens didn't even enter my mind or form part of considering what it could be.
I have no pathological need for it to be something else. Why should it be? Why does it need to be something else? What does it being something else give you or bring you? Isn't human ingenuity that created something that can fly into space and stay there not enough for you? Isn't that prospect exciting enough? How about the prospect that we have landed space craft on multiple bodies in our solar system? Isn't that exciting or enough?
Contrary to conventional wisdom, people of all levels of education like to believe in “weird things,” says Michael Shermer of theSkeptical Inquirer. Shermer wrote that people tend to seek or interpret evidence favorable to existing beliefs and ignore or misinterpret evidence unfavorable to those beliefs.
This is no more obvious than in the writings of “creationist scientists” who either reject or grossly misinterpret geological, biological and astronomical data to support their biblical-based belief in an 8,000 year-old universe.
This “confirmation bias” is in real science as well. The classic example is the 1903 discovery of “N-rays” a completely new form of radiation announced by Prosper-René Blondlot. At the time, dozens of other scientists confirmed the existence of N-rays in their own laboratories. But further tests showed that N-rays don’t exist at all.
How could so many scientists be wrong? They deceived themselves into thinking they were seeing something with their instruments that in fact was not there. This came on the heels of Wilhelm Rontgen’s discovery of X-rays and Paul Ulrich Villard’s discovery of gamma rays in the early 1900s. Apparently there was a predisposition to expecting that other invisible forms of radiation must permeate the universe.
Likewise, any two people can see a blob of light in the sky, one thinking it is the planet Venus and the other person predisposed to interpreting it as a space vehicle under alien control. Yes, airline pilots, and law enforcement office seen strange things in the heavens too. But this is outside of their sphere of expertise — especially when it comes to astronomical phenomena seen under unusual conditions.
Collectively, UFO stories are a sci-fi inspired projection of how we think space visitors would look and behave. Despite over 60 years of “sightings,” the purported scientific evidence is largely anecdotal and uncorroborated. The Mars Science Lab landing left more physical evidence strewn on the Red Planet than thousands of alleged flying saucers reported over the decades.
This is no more obvious than in the writings of “creationist scientists” who either reject or grossly misinterpret geological, biological and astronomical data to support their biblical-based belief in an 8,000 year-old universe.
This “confirmation bias” is in real science as well. The classic example is the 1903 discovery of “N-rays” a completely new form of radiation announced by Prosper-René Blondlot. At the time, dozens of other scientists confirmed the existence of N-rays in their own laboratories. But further tests showed that N-rays don’t exist at all.
How could so many scientists be wrong? They deceived themselves into thinking they were seeing something with their instruments that in fact was not there. This came on the heels of Wilhelm Rontgen’s discovery of X-rays and Paul Ulrich Villard’s discovery of gamma rays in the early 1900s. Apparently there was a predisposition to expecting that other invisible forms of radiation must permeate the universe.
Likewise, any two people can see a blob of light in the sky, one thinking it is the planet Venus and the other person predisposed to interpreting it as a space vehicle under alien control. Yes, airline pilots, and law enforcement office seen strange things in the heavens too. But this is outside of their sphere of expertise — especially when it comes to astronomical phenomena seen under unusual conditions.
Collectively, UFO stories are a sci-fi inspired projection of how we think space visitors would look and behave. Despite over 60 years of “sightings,” the purported scientific evidence is largely anecdotal and uncorroborated. The Mars Science Lab landing left more physical evidence strewn on the Red Planet than thousands of alleged flying saucers reported over the decades.
One of the biggest issues is that people are willing to believe pure internet hoaxers on the internet and blurry pictures and are completely unwilling to even consider that it could be something else. I'll be perfectly honest, your belief in aliens and UFO's being alien space craft is almost evangelical. Like a religious evangelical responds in horror and anger when confronted with something like evolution, you respond in the same way when confronted with explanations about what a UFO might be. It is safe to say that your belief in these things is almost religious, as though you swapped religious beliefs for beliefs in UFO's, spirits, bigfoot and the rest and you are just as evangelical about it. So the question remains, why do you need it to be aliens? What does that mean to you? What does it bring you or give you?
I’d say that UFO beliefs are fueled by a “secular theology” where people look for greater meaning to the universe and our relationship with it. The theme is that the aliens flying the UFOs pay attention to us, worry about our misdeeds (as evident in alleged sighting of UFOs hanging around nuclear power plants) and want to help raise us to a higher level of existence. This is simply a post-industrial age version of ages old stores of visitation by angels, demons, and other imaginary spirits.
Is this it?
Is this why you believe?
No one would complain and people would take you seriously if you actually considered all that it could be instead of jumping straight to extraterrestrial visiting us in their space craft.