It's a breakdown of exactly what you posted. And, what you posted pretty much contradicts science.
UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?
- Thread starter Magical Realist
- Start date
It's a breakdown of exactly what you posted. And, what you posted pretty much contradicts science.
It's not just the mechanical sound of the engine, the sound of the jet moving through the atmosphere is also present, as would any and all objects moving through it. But, you claim it's silent. Please describe how this miracle takes place? Oh yes, alien technology that we can't understand.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Sensory perception would demonstrate that reality is full of sounds and that objects moving through that reality are not silent. That would contradict science.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
And these could be wrong.
Many people have observed craft not making any audible sound and craft not having visible wings. Yet I assure you they do indeed make sounds and have wings.
So: Not hearing sound does not mean it is not making sound. Not seeing wings does not mean it does not have wings. That applies to both identified and unidentified craft.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Perception is way more often right than it is wrong. That's why eyewitnesses are so valuable in crime cases, accident reports, news stories, historical accounts, and biographical data. Still don't believe me? Tally up the number of things during the day you perceived correctly compared to the number of things you misperceived. I think your confidence in your perception will be greated boosted by this.
Sure, but those things happen on Earth, probably quite near you with any chance of error reduced...although even with local stuff on Earth, still not 100%...people still make errors, although nowhere near the error making as observing something up in the heavens, and/or space, that is mostly at night, and the often atmospheric phenomena that can confuse people.
Oh, yeah MR, we had a supposed UFO sighting in Sydney last night....https://7news.com.au/entertainment/...ng-in-straight-line-across-nsw-skies-c-672978
Stargazers witness strange ‘UFO’ lights moving in straight line across NSW skies:
Strange lights over the NSW coast just before dawn had early risers scrambling for their phones and cameras on Thursday morning.
Around 5.15am, a strange light was spotted over Sydney, Wollongong and beyond, gradually moving out to sea.
Was it a UFO?
“(It was) definitely not a plane and way too big for a drone,” witness Scott Lipman told 7NEWS.
But it was what the camera didn’t see that made it even more intriguing.
“I could see about 20 to 30 lights, or windows as they were,” Lipman said.
Witnesses saw similar lights in other parts of the world, including San Diego, Canada, the Netherlands and parts of the UK.
Stargazers have seen a distinct line of lights slowly making its way across space.
“Awww aliens! Aliens!” one person can be heard saying as they film the mysterious sight.
But there’s no point calling in Mulder and Scully to reopen the X-Files.
There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the phenomenon.
Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has launched 60 satellites at once for its new Starlink satellite internet constellation.
Revenue from the low-cost internet will help fund a mission to Mars.
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Yazata,
You're a smart guy, but for some reason you're allowing yourself to be sucked into Magical Realist's Vortex of Stupid.
My consistent position on UFOs has always been a very simple one: if you think they're aliens, show me the evidence! That's all I ask. The idea that at least one extraterrestrial advanced civilisation is sending its spacecraft to Earth on a regular basis is an idea that has the capacity to change the entire outlook of humanity, if it is true. Yet all the evidenced presented in support of this extraordinary hypothesis is dubious. There's outright fraud but quite apart from that, the best evidence for alien craft relies largely on eyewitness anecdotes and some edge-of-observability equipment detections that nobody has confirmed are reliable. Despite the fact that practically everybody these days has a high quality camera that they carry around with them most of the time when they're outdoors, almost without exception photographs of UFOs are blurred, unidentifiable blobs, and the videos are so jerky and filmed at such long distances that they could be showing any number of mundane things. The best photographs and videos, without exception, are the outright fakes, which are often exposed sooner or later partly because they are too good to be true.
Never mind the apparent lack of motivation any alien species would have for travelling across interstellar space in an advanced technological wonder and then deliberately hiding from another rare, global, technological species. And not only are they bad at hiding, even though they can supposedly cross interstellar space easily, but they are just bad enough that the UFO nuts can spot lots of them, while all the sensitive equipment and expert observers who are supposed to be watching for this kind of thing almost never see any sign of them.
For the UFO crowd, like Magical Realist, every piece of trodden-down grass is an alien landing zone. Even ordinary clouds become craft that defy human understanding. It's pareidolia writ large, backed up by a really unhealthy dose of wishful thinking.
But instead of admitting just how pitiful the evidence for the alien hypothesis is, you seem to be spending more and more of your time making up stories about how reasonable skeptics of UFOs, such as myself, have made up our minds that alien spaceships are an impossibility, before we ever look at any evidence. It's nonsense, and I know you're capable of better than this. Why do you want to throw your lot in with the likes of Magical Realist - a serially dishonest poster who trolls this forum almost continuously with his faith-based assertions? Is it some kind of anti-authoritarian streak in you that makes you want to stick it to the Man, or something like that?
The complaint levelled at skeptics by True Believers more than any other, I think, is that skeptics are all closed-minded cynics. In reality, being a skeptic only means that you think critically about claims and you try your best to look at evidence objectively.
You're buying into Magical Realist's rhetoric on this rather than reading and taking in what I say on my own behalf about this. I have on too many occasions to count explicitly stated that I am open to following wherever the evidence leads. If the accumulation of evidence were ever to get to the point where to conclude that we weren't dealing with an alien spacecraft would be a case of intransigent unreasonableness, then believe me I'd be very willing to accept that we know with a high degree of confidence that the aliens are here.
It ought to go without saying that if any of these hypothesised shy aliens were to ever change their minds, they could easily convince me (and virtually everybody on the planet with half a brain) that they are real. But like God and Santa Claus and fairies and ghosts, they hide themselves away, albeit with enough absence of skill that True Believers have no problem spotting them.
Since I never argue any such thing explicitly, you are reduced to making an unfounded assumption that I do it implicitly.
Our world is a big, complicated place that is endlessly throwing up surprises. There's so much we don't know. There's so much waiting to be discovered. Science, in particular, has a long history of discovering new, extraordinary and fundamentally unexpected things. That's been one of the most important ways in which our understanding of ourselves and our universe has advanced over time: following unexpected evidence where it leads us. On a regular basis, as we explore, the universe throws up surprises that are far weirder and more unexpected than anything we have managed to invent in our fantasies. Investigating such things with the aim of understanding them is one of the joys of doing science. It is, in fact, probably the single most important part of the job description for the scientist.
Today's little grey men were yesterday's incubi, succubi and witches. Such fantasies can be fun. They can also be scary. The psychology behind the fantasies is the same in all cases, and fascinating in its own right. Science has helped us to understand that, and it is still giving us insights into why human beings are susceptible to believing the fantasies are true.
You're a smart guy, but for some reason you're allowing yourself to be sucked into Magical Realist's Vortex of Stupid.
My consistent position on UFOs has always been a very simple one: if you think they're aliens, show me the evidence! That's all I ask. The idea that at least one extraterrestrial advanced civilisation is sending its spacecraft to Earth on a regular basis is an idea that has the capacity to change the entire outlook of humanity, if it is true. Yet all the evidenced presented in support of this extraordinary hypothesis is dubious. There's outright fraud but quite apart from that, the best evidence for alien craft relies largely on eyewitness anecdotes and some edge-of-observability equipment detections that nobody has confirmed are reliable. Despite the fact that practically everybody these days has a high quality camera that they carry around with them most of the time when they're outdoors, almost without exception photographs of UFOs are blurred, unidentifiable blobs, and the videos are so jerky and filmed at such long distances that they could be showing any number of mundane things. The best photographs and videos, without exception, are the outright fakes, which are often exposed sooner or later partly because they are too good to be true.
Never mind the apparent lack of motivation any alien species would have for travelling across interstellar space in an advanced technological wonder and then deliberately hiding from another rare, global, technological species. And not only are they bad at hiding, even though they can supposedly cross interstellar space easily, but they are just bad enough that the UFO nuts can spot lots of them, while all the sensitive equipment and expert observers who are supposed to be watching for this kind of thing almost never see any sign of them.
For the UFO crowd, like Magical Realist, every piece of trodden-down grass is an alien landing zone. Even ordinary clouds become craft that defy human understanding. It's pareidolia writ large, backed up by a really unhealthy dose of wishful thinking.
But instead of admitting just how pitiful the evidence for the alien hypothesis is, you seem to be spending more and more of your time making up stories about how reasonable skeptics of UFOs, such as myself, have made up our minds that alien spaceships are an impossibility, before we ever look at any evidence. It's nonsense, and I know you're capable of better than this. Why do you want to throw your lot in with the likes of Magical Realist - a serially dishonest poster who trolls this forum almost continuously with his faith-based assertions? Is it some kind of anti-authoritarian streak in you that makes you want to stick it to the Man, or something like that?
The complaint levelled at skeptics by True Believers more than any other, I think, is that skeptics are all closed-minded cynics. In reality, being a skeptic only means that you think critically about claims and you try your best to look at evidence objectively.
Exactly what I said. Magical Realist, as you will be aware, disagrees. For him, UFOs are all technological "craft". Even clouds are technological craft, according to him. That's where he starts. He's even on the record as continuing to deny that particular sightings of ghosts or UFOs are mundane objects even when all the available evidence points almost unequivocally to that conclusion. No UFO case is ever solved, according to Magical Realist. All UFOs must remain forever unknown. He's actually written that.
No no no! A thousand times no! How often do I have to say this? And what on earth gave you the impression that I have any such unstated premise?
You're buying into Magical Realist's rhetoric on this rather than reading and taking in what I say on my own behalf about this. I have on too many occasions to count explicitly stated that I am open to following wherever the evidence leads. If the accumulation of evidence were ever to get to the point where to conclude that we weren't dealing with an alien spacecraft would be a case of intransigent unreasonableness, then believe me I'd be very willing to accept that we know with a high degree of confidence that the aliens are here.
It ought to go without saying that if any of these hypothesised shy aliens were to ever change their minds, they could easily convince me (and virtually everybody on the planet with half a brain) that they are real. But like God and Santa Claus and fairies and ghosts, they hide themselves away, albeit with enough absence of skill that True Believers have no problem spotting them.
You couldn't be more wrong if you tried.
Since I never argue any such thing explicitly, you are reduced to making an unfounded assumption that I do it implicitly.
Our world is a big, complicated place that is endlessly throwing up surprises. There's so much we don't know. There's so much waiting to be discovered. Science, in particular, has a long history of discovering new, extraordinary and fundamentally unexpected things. That's been one of the most important ways in which our understanding of ourselves and our universe has advanced over time: following unexpected evidence where it leads us. On a regular basis, as we explore, the universe throws up surprises that are far weirder and more unexpected than anything we have managed to invent in our fantasies. Investigating such things with the aim of understanding them is one of the joys of doing science. It is, in fact, probably the single most important part of the job description for the scientist.
Today's little grey men were yesterday's incubi, succubi and witches. Such fantasies can be fun. They can also be scary. The psychology behind the fantasies is the same in all cases, and fascinating in its own right. Science has helped us to understand that, and it is still giving us insights into why human beings are susceptible to believing the fantasies are true.
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(continued...)
A single eyewitness reporting what he describes is a "40 ft long object that looks like a tic tac" is not proof of any craft, let alone an alien craft. The report is certainly evidence of something. It could be evidence that the eyewitness's perception is screwy for whatever reason. It could be evidence that the eyewitness is delusional, or mistaken, or fantasising, or hallucinating for whatever reason. It could be evidence for an actual object of some sort: a rare meteorological phenomenon, a mundane object viewed from an unusual angle or under unusual circumstances, a mundane object that is out of its usual environment. It could even be a human construct of some sort - not necessarily a "craft" containing people. It could be an optical illusion. There are lots of possibilities.
I make no prior assumption that any given sighting will be found to fit nicely into any pre-existing classification category. I am 100% willing to draw reasonable inferences from the evidence, and to follow wherever the evidence might lead. In instances where the evidence doesn't clearly point to one definite explanation, I am content to have an "inconclusive" or "unknown" finding unless and until more evidence comes to light that might lead to a positive ID.
This is vastly and fundamentally different to the faith-based assumptions that Magical Realist and river make. river, as you will be aware, simply asserts that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists. He has never even attempted to find evidence for that assumption. As for Magical Realist, he is happy for UFOs to be anything other than mundane things. For Magical Realist, mundane explanations never enter into his consideration except at the very first step. Beat him over the head with the obvious and he sits there and ignores or actively denies it all, consistently and repeatedly. Here's the MR flowchart:
Want a different example to illustrate? Try the "God did it" hypothesis on for size. Saw something weird in the sky? Answer: God did it. Nobody can complain that this hypothesis is inconsistent with the evidence. God can do whatever he likes, so he can be used to explain anything and everything.
Conclusiveness, you say? Well that's a whole different kettle of fish, isn't it?
No. This thread is not, fundamentally, about prejudging evidence based on two equally-valid but competing worldviews. The two worldviews in question are not equally valid when it comes to learning about things in the real world. On the one hand, science has built our modern world. It has a long track record of proven success and utility. On the other hand, fantasies at best give us insight into the human condition. There can be passing - or persistent - fads in which some people mistake the fantasies for data. Alien visitation is, more than anything else, a modern fad. If any evidence for this is needed, look no further than the extraordinary geographic concentration of these supposed alien sightings. Ask yourself why the space aliens are so fascinated by Americans, who also happen to churn out the most literature and fantasy content about space aliens. Ask yourself why the space aliens almost exclusively choose to kidnap uneducated Americans who can be shown to be psychologically unstable.
You can't pretend that you're unaware that MR is prejudging every UFO report. All he requires in order to call something a "craft" is that he doesn't know what it is. It's also immensely useful to him if an authority he trusts (e.g. breathless History Channel pseudo-documentary entertainment programmes) tell him that something is an alien craft He doesn't even need to think, then - just have faith.
A single eyewitness reporting what he describes is a "40 ft long object that looks like a tic tac" is not proof of any craft, let alone an alien craft. The report is certainly evidence of something. It could be evidence that the eyewitness's perception is screwy for whatever reason. It could be evidence that the eyewitness is delusional, or mistaken, or fantasising, or hallucinating for whatever reason. It could be evidence for an actual object of some sort: a rare meteorological phenomenon, a mundane object viewed from an unusual angle or under unusual circumstances, a mundane object that is out of its usual environment. It could even be a human construct of some sort - not necessarily a "craft" containing people. It could be an optical illusion. There are lots of possibilities.
No! Emphatically no, once again.
I make no prior assumption that any given sighting will be found to fit nicely into any pre-existing classification category. I am 100% willing to draw reasonable inferences from the evidence, and to follow wherever the evidence might lead. In instances where the evidence doesn't clearly point to one definite explanation, I am content to have an "inconclusive" or "unknown" finding unless and until more evidence comes to light that might lead to a positive ID.
This is vastly and fundamentally different to the faith-based assumptions that Magical Realist and river make. river, as you will be aware, simply asserts that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists. He has never even attempted to find evidence for that assumption. As for Magical Realist, he is happy for UFOs to be anything other than mundane things. For Magical Realist, mundane explanations never enter into his consideration except at the very first step. Beat him over the head with the obvious and he sits there and ignores or actively denies it all, consistently and repeatedly. Here's the MR flowchart:
- Does this report/sighting look like what I assume alien spaceships should look like?
- Yes: proceed with interpretation of all evidence on the assumption that it is an alien spaceship, and ignore or actively deny all evidence that tends to suggest it isn't or might not be.
- No: dismiss it as uninteresting and start looking for the next shiny bauble.
Poor-quality evidence (which is the kind we most often find ourselves dealing with when it comes to UFOs) can be consistent with lots of different theories (hypotheses). Also, some hypotheses are themselves consistent with such a wide range of "evidences" that they are practically valueless as explanations of anything.
Want a different example to illustrate? Try the "God did it" hypothesis on for size. Saw something weird in the sky? Answer: God did it. Nobody can complain that this hypothesis is inconsistent with the evidence. God can do whatever he likes, so he can be used to explain anything and everything.
Conclusiveness, you say? Well that's a whole different kettle of fish, isn't it?
As far as I can tell, you and I would be on entirely the same page regarding our attitudes to UFO reports, were it not for your belief that I am making certain faulty assumptions, namely the ones that you refer to as "implicit". If I wanted to be a smart-arse about it, I might argue that it's you who is making implicit assumptions about my personal beliefs and about my attitudes to evaluating evidence.
(continued...)
To avoid possible confusion, let me say it again without the jargon (not so much for your benefit, but for the benefit of some of our other readers). I don't think the argument is fundamentally about what kinds of things skeptics and True Believers are willing to consider might be real. I think the argument is about what the two groups believe is sufficient for somebody to claim to know that a thing is real.
Specifically, I think that the True Believers in woo of all kinds usually have a muddled and ill-formed sense of what kinds of things justify a person saying they know that something is true, with high confidence. Skeptics, on the other hand, identify as such precisely because they have spent a lot of time considering that very point of philosophical dispute, such that they have a consistent and well-formed approach to evaluating evidence and arguments for and against hypotheses.
If you need examples, look no further than river or Magical Realist, whom we have been discussing:
From river's posts to this forum, I think it is quite reasonable to conclude that river thinks that any idea that he finds appealing - for whatever reason - is probably true. He doesn't see any necessity at all to make a case to support any of his beliefs, certainly not so as to attempt to convince anybody else that his beliefs reflect real-world truths.
In Magical Realist's case, the overriding considerations in deciding whether something is true are aesthetic appeal and personal trust. First and foremost, something can only be true is Magical Realist likes the idea that it is true. In that sense, he is the same as river. MR's posts show that he is a fantasist. He deeply wants the fairies at the bottom of the garden to be real, and the ghosts and the monsters and the aliens and the rest of the woo. But he is a little more sophisticated than river in that he appreciates that something objective is probably going to be needed in order to bring anybody else around to his point of view, if they don't start there. So he appeals to evidence, but only in the loosest possible sense, and inconsistently at that. The primary discriminator of good evidence from bad, for him, is that good evidence tends to support the fantasy, while bad evidence casts doubt on it. Appeal to authority is his most common method of evaluating evidence. All eyewitnesses whose reports support the fantasy are unimpeachable authorities and so are figures of authority in fringe believer groups that share MR's fantasies. On the other hand, everybody self-labelled or identified by MR as an enemy skeptic can be safely ignored or denied, no matter what they have to offer in terms of objective evidence or analysis. It should also be noted that MR is a conspiracy theorist of the first order. To him, there is a grand conspiracy to suppress or deny his fantasies. The conspirators, by definition, are not to be trusted, so everything they present can be safely ignored or waved away with a "well, they would say that, wouldn't they?" Who are the conspirators? All those who threaten the fantasy by checking it carefully against reality.
I think you're making a mistake. You think the difference of opinion is one that is grounded in the ontological beliefs of the pro-ufo crowd, as opposed to the ontological beliefs of the sceptics. I see the difference as one not of ontology but of epistemology.
To avoid possible confusion, let me say it again without the jargon (not so much for your benefit, but for the benefit of some of our other readers). I don't think the argument is fundamentally about what kinds of things skeptics and True Believers are willing to consider might be real. I think the argument is about what the two groups believe is sufficient for somebody to claim to know that a thing is real.
Specifically, I think that the True Believers in woo of all kinds usually have a muddled and ill-formed sense of what kinds of things justify a person saying they know that something is true, with high confidence. Skeptics, on the other hand, identify as such precisely because they have spent a lot of time considering that very point of philosophical dispute, such that they have a consistent and well-formed approach to evaluating evidence and arguments for and against hypotheses.
If you need examples, look no further than river or Magical Realist, whom we have been discussing:
From river's posts to this forum, I think it is quite reasonable to conclude that river thinks that any idea that he finds appealing - for whatever reason - is probably true. He doesn't see any necessity at all to make a case to support any of his beliefs, certainly not so as to attempt to convince anybody else that his beliefs reflect real-world truths.
In Magical Realist's case, the overriding considerations in deciding whether something is true are aesthetic appeal and personal trust. First and foremost, something can only be true is Magical Realist likes the idea that it is true. In that sense, he is the same as river. MR's posts show that he is a fantasist. He deeply wants the fairies at the bottom of the garden to be real, and the ghosts and the monsters and the aliens and the rest of the woo. But he is a little more sophisticated than river in that he appreciates that something objective is probably going to be needed in order to bring anybody else around to his point of view, if they don't start there. So he appeals to evidence, but only in the loosest possible sense, and inconsistently at that. The primary discriminator of good evidence from bad, for him, is that good evidence tends to support the fantasy, while bad evidence casts doubt on it. Appeal to authority is his most common method of evaluating evidence. All eyewitnesses whose reports support the fantasy are unimpeachable authorities and so are figures of authority in fringe believer groups that share MR's fantasies. On the other hand, everybody self-labelled or identified by MR as an enemy skeptic can be safely ignored or denied, no matter what they have to offer in terms of objective evidence or analysis. It should also be noted that MR is a conspiracy theorist of the first order. To him, there is a grand conspiracy to suppress or deny his fantasies. The conspirators, by definition, are not to be trusted, so everything they present can be safely ignored or waved away with a "well, they would say that, wouldn't they?" Who are the conspirators? All those who threaten the fantasy by checking it carefully against reality.
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Argument from personal incredulity (see what I mean, Yazata?) Next.
How do you know they are imaginary?
Thank you. I'll take that as a compliment.
He knows that.
If denying the obvious supports the fantasy, then that's a price MR is more than willing to pay, even at the expense of making himself look like a fool. That's MR in a nutshell.
Not sure how long I have been putting that position.
Along of course with the fact that most scientists would agree that we are probably not alone, but as yet, we have no evidence for such off Earthly life...your Sagan's, Shostak's De-Grasse Tyson's just to name three.
If extraordinary evidence did show that life existed elsewhere, these blokes would be clammering at the bit in letting it all out!
Mankind's greatest question!!
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Wow. Another whiney and unprovoked flame of my character and intelligence by James R again this time under the pretext of responding to Yazata. Give him any excuse to misrepresent, belittle, psychoanalyze, insult, demonize, dehumanize, pigeonhole, and disparage me and he will be on it like white on rice. James R is the local drama queen in this thread, making the whole matter of ufos a personal vendetta he's got against me just for arguing against him all too well. He's got to attack me instead of the evidence, because there's really nothing he can say against the evidence. It's that good. And he knows it too. So I become the fool and the troll and nutcase and the conspiracy theorist and stupid moron and the fan boy he wastes his caustic and belligerent 3 post replies on instead of cooly and rationally discussing the issue of ufos themselves. I think he needs a break from ufos. Or maybe just a break from me. Maybe he'll ban me again. We're really getting to him.
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Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
”If every UFO report could be convincingly credited to some conventional astronomical or atmospheric phenomenon, there would be no UFO mystery. It is precisely because so many UFO reports cannot logically be blamed on stars, planets, satellites, airplanes, balloons, etc., that a UFO mystery has existed since at least the mid-1940s.
The most convincing UFO reports were produced in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s by airline pilots, military pilots and ex-military pilots. These men had the training and the experience to be able to distinguish between normal sky sights and highly abnormal sights. They knew what airplanes looked like, and what meteors looked like, having seen them many times. Their visual observations were frequently supported by radar data which showed essentially the same thing. They were therefore able, on many occasions, to methodically eliminate conventional phenomena from consideration when trying to identify UFOs.
In those same decades, most UFO sightings were made in the daytime and frequently at close range, when shapes and surface features could be distinguished, thus making positive identification of normal sights easier and the descriptions of unusual sights more detailed. When all normal explanations had been eliminated, the witnesses could concentrate on those aspects of the experience which were most abnormal.
These abnormal aspects included the shapes of UFOs and their behavior. Most of the UFOs seen in the daytime were said to have had simple geometric shapes--discs, ovals, spheres, cylinders--and surfaces that looked like metal. Such shapes are not only nonexistent among known aircraft, but contrary to all known theories of flight, in most cases offering control and performance disadvantages rather than advantages.
Even more unusual were the specifics of their flight performance: silent hovering, silent high-speed flight, extreme acceleration, supersonic flight at low altitude without sonic booms, and violent, very high-g maneuvers. The actions of many UFOs have suggested that they fly independently of the air and even of the force of gravity. The accomplishment of these maneuvers has been among the major goals of the world's aerospace industry for decades.
On the basis of their appearance, behavior and frequent well-kept, tight formation flights, we must face the possibility that some UFOs may be manufactured, high-tech vehicles…."---Don Berliner, UFO researcher, author, FUFOR (Fund for UFO Research), “Is There a Case for UFO’s?”
===============================================================
Peter Davenport, Director, NUFORC (National UFO Reporting Center) (Ronald Story, Encyclopedia)
“The proponents [of UFOs] offer up impressive quantities of principally eyewitness data, which although largely subjective and circumstantial in nature, is nevertheless quite intriguing…. Many of the high-quality sighting reports involve certain objective aspects, which, to an open-minded bystander, are quite impressive.
As a full-time, and serious-minded, UFO investigator, I strongly side with the proponents. It seems indisputable that the phenomenon is real, and that it falls outside the scope of “normal” human experience.
Strong evidence suggests that we are dealing with a phenomenon that is being caused by palpable, solid objects whose characteristics are not of human design, and whose behavior is suggestive of intelligent control.”
http://www.ufoevidence.org/NewSite/Papers/UFOQuotes.htm
The most convincing UFO reports were produced in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s by airline pilots, military pilots and ex-military pilots. These men had the training and the experience to be able to distinguish between normal sky sights and highly abnormal sights. They knew what airplanes looked like, and what meteors looked like, having seen them many times. Their visual observations were frequently supported by radar data which showed essentially the same thing. They were therefore able, on many occasions, to methodically eliminate conventional phenomena from consideration when trying to identify UFOs.
In those same decades, most UFO sightings were made in the daytime and frequently at close range, when shapes and surface features could be distinguished, thus making positive identification of normal sights easier and the descriptions of unusual sights more detailed. When all normal explanations had been eliminated, the witnesses could concentrate on those aspects of the experience which were most abnormal.
These abnormal aspects included the shapes of UFOs and their behavior. Most of the UFOs seen in the daytime were said to have had simple geometric shapes--discs, ovals, spheres, cylinders--and surfaces that looked like metal. Such shapes are not only nonexistent among known aircraft, but contrary to all known theories of flight, in most cases offering control and performance disadvantages rather than advantages.
Even more unusual were the specifics of their flight performance: silent hovering, silent high-speed flight, extreme acceleration, supersonic flight at low altitude without sonic booms, and violent, very high-g maneuvers. The actions of many UFOs have suggested that they fly independently of the air and even of the force of gravity. The accomplishment of these maneuvers has been among the major goals of the world's aerospace industry for decades.
On the basis of their appearance, behavior and frequent well-kept, tight formation flights, we must face the possibility that some UFOs may be manufactured, high-tech vehicles…."---Don Berliner, UFO researcher, author, FUFOR (Fund for UFO Research), “Is There a Case for UFO’s?”
===============================================================
Peter Davenport, Director, NUFORC (National UFO Reporting Center) (Ronald Story, Encyclopedia)
“The proponents [of UFOs] offer up impressive quantities of principally eyewitness data, which although largely subjective and circumstantial in nature, is nevertheless quite intriguing…. Many of the high-quality sighting reports involve certain objective aspects, which, to an open-minded bystander, are quite impressive.
As a full-time, and serious-minded, UFO investigator, I strongly side with the proponents. It seems indisputable that the phenomenon is real, and that it falls outside the scope of “normal” human experience.
Strong evidence suggests that we are dealing with a phenomenon that is being caused by palpable, solid objects whose characteristics are not of human design, and whose behavior is suggestive of intelligent control.”
http://www.ufoevidence.org/NewSite/Papers/UFOQuotes.htm
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Bells
Staff member
Hearing sounds from an aircraft depends on various factors.
Secondly, you contradicted yourself later on in this thread by linking hot air balloons as being silent crafts (they fly over our heads most days, they are not silent or quiet, by the way)..
But the obvious aside, you still have not answered the question.
You are making a factual claim on something that is unknown and unidentified.
In other words, it is no longer a UFO if you have already identified it:
You have repeatedly identified them as being not of this world, not something that humans have ever constructed.. Which means you have identified it, which means it is no longer a UFO.
Hence my question, how do you know any of this? What proof do you have for any of it?
And the follow up question is, why are you still referring to it as a UFO, when you keep identifying it as something that "defies anything humans have ever constructed"?
You keep saying it's a UFO, and you keep identifying it as being not of this world, with no proof whatsoever.
You have identified it. Stop claiming it is a UFO.
Now, onto the next contradiction..
You say this:
And then:
Behold the unscientific wonder of hot air balloons!
Do you see the contradiction you set for yourself?
Aside from the fact that these things are noisy.. I know this because they fly over my house several times a week. Usually at dawn.. *shakes fists at sky*.. When we are all asleep..
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
None of that negates what I said:
Look, if we place your response in the context of my statement, we get:
"craft observed making audible sound happens way more often than craft observed not making audible sound".
"craft observed having visible wings happens way more often than craft observed not having visible wings".
True to both! So what? No one is contesting this.
Most craft I observe make an audible sound - only rarely can I not hear the sound. Yet I assure you once again, they do make sound.
Most craft I observe I see wings - only rarely can I not see wings. Yet I assure you once again, they do have wings.