Apollo 14 astronaut claims aliens HAVE made contact...

[Phil Ayesho]

You're assuming they have a capitalistic economy and scarce energy resources like we do. They may well not.

No, I am assuming the same laws of physics apply to their reality as to ours. Capitalism has nothing to do with it... creating energy, harvesting energy, requires WORK. Beings must invest time and effort into gathering energy... the more energy... the more effort it represents. Enough energy to travel between stars in a reasonable time is vastly more energy than you are conceiving of.

No matter what their technology... its a huge investment in effort.

Governments abroad are spending billions on fusion and China may have a working fusion reactor within a year. If that's the case, and fusion (which is a real energy source) is within our grasp, then energy will cease to be scarce on Earth.

You are being hopelessly naive. Sci-fi can present a future world of limitless enegry... but there is no such thing.

Nevermind billions... trillions of dollars will be spent trying to invent fusion reactors... THAT IS PART OF THE COST... that is part of the effort.
Once we figure that out.... they will not be cheap to build... ( the cost reflects the difficulty of building one)
As fast as we can AFFORD to build them... or need for energy will grow..

An even more technological culture than ours ( space aliens) will have an exponentially larger demand for energy...

If you wanted to get to the nearest star you could NOT use fusion... you simply can not carry enough fusible hydrogen... Fusion is too inefficient...only a tiny fraction of the energy is released...

No... you would need to use antimatter... that is the most compact and higest efficiency you can acheive in terms of energy storage and release...
But the biggest particle colliders in the world have not yet managed to generate an entire gram of antimatter.

So... the antimatter you would need would require the expenditure of ten times that much energy to create and store...

Really... the numbers are astronomical. We could fuse the entire contents of the Earth's oceans and not end up with enough antimatter to travel to another star at relativistic speeds.

No intelligent species would undertake such an endeavor to play dipshit games with some lesser species.

Humans are the only species with an actual economy. My guess would be that the aliens would function as a society more along the lines of bees or ants, acting highly cooperatively. I could be wrong about that, I don't know.

Your guess is silly. Human are the only animals with an economy because we are the only animals with industry... with technology.

What can we REALLY know about space aliens? Well we can know that they EVOLVED... like us. Because they evolved they HAVER to understand such concepts as competition over resources.

THAT results in an economy.
NOTHING is free.

That's a false argument. Whether or not someone believes in God does not mean aliens exist or not. They will exist or not no matter what someone believes.

Its not a false argument. It is analogous example that association with NASA does not preclude believing in imaginary things for which there is no evidence.

There is no evidence of God. There is no evidence of space aliens.
Even rocket scientists and astronauts can believe in malarky without any proof.

I don't think anyone is saying the only country trying to hide this is the US. Other countries are doing so as well. It is not unreasonable to assume that the aliens are cooperating with governments on Earth. I can see why they too would not want people to know.

YOu can?,... pray why? and please donlt give me the old chestnut about how people would fly into panic...
No... they wouldn't. Via media, people are rather accustomed to the notion of space aliens...
Far too many folks imagine they are already here... and are not flying into panics...

There is no reason on earth why ALL governments would agree to suppress it when all governments can not agree to anyhting else.
There is no credible reason whatsoever to keep it a secret.

The weakness of these arguments is that they're still nothing more than beliefs. They are unprovable. Just as bigfoot, loch ness, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, ghosts, and God believers can't prove their beliefs, so you can't prove yours. The most you can do is say you believe their existance is highly unlikely.

You are making a common logical error. The fact that you can not prove a negative does not make things without evidence MORE likely.
I can not prove you DON'T have an invisible and intangible penis sticking out of the top of your head...

But, given the total lack of evidence... you have to be a fool to decide that the lack of proof means it COULD be there.

Lack of evidence does not make the position of belief equally valid... in fact, total lack of real evidence makes the position of belief insupportable.

It makes the position of disbelief SUPPORTED.

If your a reasoning person... you must conclude that the avaialbe evidence points to there being no visiting space aliens.

( Please undertsand, I have no doubt that there probably ARE intelligent races elsewhere in the universe... I am saying there si zero real evidence they are HERE.... visiting.)

Even then, I'd say some of those are more likely to exist today as not. Bigfoot and Nessie (don't forget Champ!) are creatures who were known to exist in the past. So when we talk about them, we're talking about living fossils. Easter Bunnies and Santa Claus figures, I argue, are far less likely. Ghosts may even have an explanation that works. I don't know, but then neither do you. That's one of the fun parts of discussing enigmas.

Sorry again.... ALL evidence of Nessie are known frauds. There is the simple facts of biology. Living things eat, the breed, they excrete.
They LEAVE evidence.

In a world where the Coelacanth was FOUND in the deep deep vastness of the ocean.. an animal of that size in a tiny little lake would have been found.

We do have real problems. This is just one of them. I firmly believe aliens have visited Earth because someone who would know told me that it was so and that person was not lying to me because I confirmed it with another person who would know for the same reason.

Sorry, pal... that is NOT evidence... that is narrative. I donlt care how many people "tell" you they know.
People LIE. All the time... and worse, people misconstrue. They are poor observers.
ONLY people who believe in ghosts SEE ghosts.

That tells you that because they believe... they interpret their experience falsely.

This is why science is not built upon narrative... its built upon demonstration.

The only evidence you can provide is evidence that you are willing to invest belief in a yarn.

To me, aliens are an open secret. Given the evidence presented, I have far more reason to believe in aliens than I do in the Sea Peoples, Vlad Tepes, or the Colossus. History says these things existed at one time, yet I've never seen any evidence of them. All I have to go by are some pictures and anecdotal stories from people who lived in pre-modern times and who certainly believed in ghosts, gods, and monsters.

People today believe in monsters and gods... that is why your "hearsay" testimony is suspect and does not constitue evidence. People today often bleive in imaginary things...

That makes what you were "told" less than nothing in terms of proof.

Um... you presented no evidence at all. Evidence is tangible or repeatable.



Once more... given the COSTS of space travel... there is no compelling nor believable reaosn for any intelligent beings to make such a trip to skulk around.
There is no tangible evidence of actual space aliens and all purported evidence falls neatly into the exact parameters that you would expect of a fraud or a delusion.

indistinct, ambiguous, or faked.
The only reasonable explanation is that all 'evidence' that is gathered that is clear and in focus... is clearly NOT evidence of space aliens.



Your 'wish' that the universe be more interesting than it is... your wish that there be SOME super powerful agent of control is no different than any other religious delusion.

A dream of importance... a fantasy of control...

 

[Deno]

I know this is all warped but the eye in the sky and camera idea don't fly with me. There are many thing we know exist but we can not see them. And I still say just because aliens may have not been here ever still does not mean they don't exist. Anyone that has seen photos from the hubble telescope knows how many different galaxies there are with untold number of star in them all with something orbiting them. And they spend money to see if life ever existed on Mars, now thats a waste of money there.

 

[2322]

Not very enlightening, at least as stated, Jason, and perhaps naive.
Not to offend, but it sounds like a variation of, "My daddy said ... and he would know."
(But maybe you can add some useful additional details ...)

Quite true. This is why I do not offer it as evidence. If I can't reveal the source then you don't know if it's a cartomancer or a past president of the United States (seeing as I refuse to receive calls from the current one :biggrin1. I have promised not to say who it was until (if ever) he or she makes a public statement about it. Both the source and the confirmer have always publicly denied knowing anything about it, which adds to their credibility in my opinion.

I don't know about the Sea Peoples, but there is a lot of reason to believe in Vlad Tepes and the Colossus. Those are virtual certainties ... not to say that the popular notions we have about either is correct in any detail.
Are you saying you have far more reason to believe in aliens than in either of those?
Maybe you do.

Why? The people who chronicled stories about all these events are long dead, had a very rudimentary education compared to even an ordinary elementary education today. There are no physical traces of Vlad, the Colossus, or the Sea Peoples to confirm the accounts of them. Nobody who wrote about them swore they were telling the truth, and in many cases we don't even know who they were. In some cases they were relying on second-hand hearsay.

Mitchell and Cooper were experienced observers, both have bachelors degrees in aeronautics, were psychologically and physically tested, and Mitchell has an earned Doctorate in Astronautics and Aeronautics from MIT. These are two highly trained men speaking about something of which they would be in a place to know and are educated in the area of the dynamics of flying objects.

If we consider the sources, which are more credible?

 

[JustAsking]

It is arrogant to believe that we are the only sentient life in the universe.
Given that, it is likely that we could have been or will be visited by an alien species.
So far, none of the reported sightings over the years are credible.
Conspiracy theories have little value.
If we are being visited, someone produce the ship's log, please. Otherwise STFU (figuratively speaking, of course).

 

[mickswim]

ed mitchell is a very smart guy - i think i'd place some weight....

 

[HamYai]

Putting your basic point aside for the moment, STD, it's actually true that FAX machines have been around for a long time, far longer than most people realize.
A kind of primitive FAX machine called the Pantelgraph, a French invention, was made in the 1860s and actually put into commercial use.
RCA established the first transAtlantic facsimile service in the 1920s.
The military used FAX machines during the Second World War.
Newspapers have been using FAX machines for nearly 40 years ... not a patch on what is available today, but nonetheless quite adequate.

Thanks for the history lesson.

But if I'd tried to describe a fax machine to (anyone but) you, 40 years ago...

 

[mickswim]

ed mitchell is a very smart guy - i think i'd place some weight....

and wally schirra's son told me his dad talked of the same thing ...

1987 - san francisco

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

It is arrogant to believe that we are the only sentient life in the universe.

But not arrogant to suspend belief either way?

Given that, it is likely that we could have been or will be visited by an alien species.

Isn't this more of a leap? Saying 'likely'?
Maybe 'could very well have been, or may very well be visited ...' would be more defensible.

So far, none of the reported sightings over the years are credible.
Conspiracy theories have little value.
If we are being visited, someone produce the ship's log, please. Otherwise STFU (figuratively speaking, of course).

Basically, that's my hunch, JA.

 

[2322]

No, I am assuming the same laws of physics apply to their reality as to ours. Capitalism has nothing to do with it... creating energy, harvesting energy, requires WORK. Beings must invest time and effort into gathering energy... the more energy... the more effort it represents. Enough energy to travel between stars in a reasonable time is vastly more energy than you are conceiving of.

No matter what their technology... its a huge investment in effort.

Not true. Chopping down a tree and burning it requires less effort than building a solar panel. Which will give you more energy? The tree!

You are being hopelessly naive. Sci-fi can present a future world of limitless enegry... but there is no such thing.

You know Phil, if you made your attitude less hostile and disdainful, I'd actually pay more attention to your arguments.

You are making an unsupported supposition based upon nothing. As technology increases, so does our ability to extract energy from previously unavailable or unknown sources.

Nevermind billions... trillions of dollars will be spent trying to invent fusion reactors... THAT IS PART OF THE COST... that is part of the effort.
Once we figure that out.... they will not be cheap to build... ( the cost reflects the difficulty of building one)
As fast as we can AFFORD to build them... or need for energy will grow..

The more demand there is for fusion reactors, the less they will cost. The rule of economies of scale will apply. As our technology and knowledge about the process increases, so the costs will also decrease.

An even more technological culture than ours ( space aliens) will have an exponentially larger demand for energy...

If you wanted to get to the nearest star you could NOT use fusion... you simply can not carry enough fusible hydrogen... Fusion is too inefficient...only a tiny fraction of the energy is released...

Perhaps they have found a more efficient process? Perhpas they do not travel through space at all, but interdimensionally.

No... you would need to use antimatter... that is the most compact and higest efficiency you can acheive in terms of energy storage and release...
But the biggest particle colliders in the world have not yet managed to generate an entire gram of antimatter.

So... the antimatter you would need would require the expenditure of ten times that much energy to create and store...

Really... the numbers are astronomical. We could fuse the entire contents of the Earth's oceans and not end up with enough antimatter to travel to another star at relativistic speeds.

Antimatter is fascinating stuff. I'm no physicist, but again, I wonder if they aren't creating and using wormholes or some such thing.

No intelligent species would undertake such an endeavor to play dipshit games with some lesser species.

Your guess is silly. Human are the only animals with an economy because we are the only animals with industry... with technology.

Again, your first statement is an unsupported assumption. WE do precisely these things with all the other species of the Earth we study. We observe them, abduct them, we test them, we even attach strange devices to them so we can track them. We do EXACTLY to other species what the aliens are allegedly doing with us.

We're not the only species with technology. Other primates and some birds have been observed taking objects, modifying them, then using them to accomplish a task. That's tool-making. That's the definition of technology. These animals even teach others to do the same thing. That's education.

What can we REALLY know about space aliens? Well we can know that they EVOLVED... like us. Because they evolved they HAVER to understand such concepts as competition over resources.

THAT results in an economy.
NOTHING is free.

A moment ago you seemed very certain as to what they wouldn't do and now you're stating you don't, "...REALLY know." Finally! Something we do agree on! :biggrin1:

I agree that exploration is expensive but you know what? We do it too. There are starving people here on Earth, we have problems, but still we devote enormous sums to space exploration and searching for life on other planets. There is something in us that makes us take the risks and spend the resources to make it all happen. Will life on Earth vastly improve because we find a few microbes on Mars? No. We just want to know. It would not surprise me if the aliens do the same thing.

Its not a false argument. It is analogous example that association with NASA does not preclude believing in imaginary things for which there is no evidence.

There is no evidence of God. There is no evidence of space aliens.
Even rocket scientists and astronauts can believe in malarky without any proof.

They sure can. You have decided that you will believe some things but not others simply based on your belief system that precludes any evidence of such things. You have made an a priori determination.

YOu can?,... pray why? and please donlt give me the old chestnut about how people would fly into panic...
No... they wouldn't. Via media, people are rather accustomed to the notion of space aliens...
Far too many folks imagine they are already here... and are not flying into panics...

Another difference of opinion. I think people would do some weird things, you don't.

There is no reason on earth why ALL governments would agree to suppress it when all governments can not agree to anyhting else. There is no credible reason whatsoever to keep it a secret.

I previously listed a bunch of good reasons why aliens would be kept secret. I also stated that not all governments are involved.

 

[2322]

You are making a common logical error. The fact that you can not prove a negative does not make things without evidence MORE likely.
I can not prove you DON'T have an invisible and intangible penis sticking out of the top of your head...

But, given the total lack of evidence... you have to be a fool to decide that the lack of proof means it COULD be there.

Lack of evidence does not make the position of belief equally valid... in fact, total lack of real evidence makes the position of belief insupportable.

It makes the position of disbelief SUPPORTED.

I didn't say that lack of evidence supports existence. I said that you cannot prove those things were untrue.

If your a reasoning person... you must conclude that the avaialbe evidence points to there being no visiting space aliens.

( Please undertsand, I have no doubt that there probably ARE intelligent races elsewhere in the universe... I am saying there si zero real evidence they are HERE.... visiting.)

Sorry again.... ALL evidence of Nessie are known frauds. There is the simple facts of biology. Living things eat, the breed, they excrete.
They LEAVE evidence.

Reasonable people can reasonably disagree. I can't demand any rational person believe what I do. Nor can I conclude that there are no visiting aliens. Not all evidence of Nessie is a fraud. Some of it is merely inconclusive while some of it is outright fraud.

In a world where the Coelacanth was FOUND in the deep deep vastness of the ocean.. an animal of that size in a tiny little lake would have been found.

Again, a false conclusion. The pseudoryx was discovered in Vietnam only in 1993 and it's a cow-sized animal. There is a giant turtle unknown to science living in a tiny lake in a park in downtown Hanoi, a city of 3,000,000. Then there is my favorite, the bloop, a creature far larger than any known whale, apparently living somewhere in the Pacific.

Sorry, pal... that is NOT evidence... that is narrative. I donlt care how many people "tell" you they know.
People LIE. All the time... and worse, people misconstrue. They are poor observers.
ONLY people who believe in ghosts SEE ghosts.

That tells you that because they believe... they interpret their experience falsely.

Certainly people lie, but so many people lying so consistently over such a long period of time? I think it far more likely many are simply mistaken. What you say about ghosts in not true. Some people who did not believe in ghosts have witnessed ghostly phenomenon and become convinced that they do exist.

Again, just because you don't believe these things exist doesn't make them untrue. You have predecided that any reported incident for which you have no rational answer must be delusion and yet you have no facts to support your incredulity.

Why is it people who say, "pal," usually aren't?

This is why science is not built upon narrative... its built upon demonstration.

The only evidence you can provide is evidence that you are willing to invest belief in a yarn.

People today believe in monsters and gods... that is why your "hearsay" testimony is suspect and does not constitue evidence. People today often bleive in imaginary things...

That makes what you were "told" less than nothing in terms of proof.

Um... you presented no evidence at all. Evidence is tangible or repeatable.

Millions of scientists have believed in deities. Does that make all them all delusional? A true scientist will search for facts but won't dismiss anecdotal evidence until what that evidence supposes is proven or disproven. As you point out, without definitive testing, no reasonable conclusion can be made and that includes negative conclusions. I do not believe that science, as yet, can determine or test everything. What I want to know about ghosts is what is causing the phenomon. Ghosts are a universal phenomon going back to the dawn of man. There must be some explanation for them. So far, no branch of science has said what they are or what their causes are. While ghosts may not be the spirits of the dead, we also can't say they are either. Until then, I will consider the jury to be out.

Once more... given the COSTS of space travel... there is no compelling nor believable reaosn for any intelligent beings to make such a trip to skulk around.
There is no tangible evidence of actual space aliens and all purported evidence falls neatly into the exact parameters that you would expect of a fraud or a delusion.

indistinct, ambiguous, or faked.
The only reasonable explanation is that all 'evidence' that is gathered that is clear and in focus... is clearly NOT evidence of space aliens.

Your 'wish' that the universe be more interesting than it is... your wish that there be SOME super powerful agent of control is no different than any other religious delusion.

A dream of importance... a fantasy of control...

Again, what you suppose we already know to be untrue. We know intelligent species do spend scarce resources bouncing around space looking for life because we do it. We also don't know if there is tangible evidence or not. Some people claim there is, but that evidence is closely guarded. If it is delusional, then why do we have astronauts, scientists, military personnel, peace officers, and so many average people reporting these things? Are they all delusional? Are they all spending vast amounts of time and money on a conspiratorial fraud that has run for over 60 years and must involve millions of people? Or are they experience an unknown phenomenon for which there is as yet no explanation? Which is more likely when you apply Occam's razor?

"Dreams and fantasies?" Hmm. I don't think so. Thank you for the pseudopsychological evaluation though. I'll accept it for what it's worth.

 

[Calboner]

why do they allways do an anal probe when they take me to the mother ship?

Ah, a question that rings down the ages!

Cartman: Okay, that's does it! Now listen! Why is it that everything today has involved things either going in or coming out of my ass?! I'm sick of it! It's completely immature!

—South Park, season 1, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe"
​

Putting your basic point aside for the moment, STD, it's actually true that FAX machines have been around for a long time, far longer than most people realize.
A kind of primitive FAX machine called the Pantelgraph, a French invention, was made in the 1860s and actually put into commercial use.
RCA established the first transAtlantic facsimile service in the 1920s.
The military used FAX machines during the Second World War.
Newspapers have been using FAX machines for nearly 40 years ... not a patch on what is available today, but nonetheless quite adequate.

"A fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached!" —Abraham J. Simpson

I know this is all warped but the eye in the sky and camera idea don't fly with me. There are many thing we know exist but we can not see them. And I still say just because aliens may have not been here ever still does not mean they don't exist. Anyone that has seen photos from the hubble telescope knows how many different galaxies there are with untold number of star in them all with something orbiting them. And they spend money to see if life ever existed on Mars, now thats a waste of money there.

If anyone in this thread has defended the view that there are no intelligent beings besides ourselves anywhere in the universe, I have missed those posts. What is at issue is whether there is reason to believe that space dudes have crossed interstellar space to buzz around our planet.

 

[transformer_99]

I shudder to think that there are/would be ET's. We'd probably try to find a way to make them work cheaper than the Chinese and the Mexicans. When you really look at it, as vast as the universe really is, our capability to travel much beyond the moon and it's orbit is pathetic. For the longest time of the existence of mankind, we thought the world was flat. It took another 400 years to glide @ Kitty Hawk and after going to the moon we've pretty much given up on that. We've sent a probe to Mars, that'll never come back. And not long ago, we declassified Pluto as the 9th planet. That one alone disrupted everything I knew to be true up to that point, now I just don't trust anyone, anymore. They lied to us ! :biggrin1:

 

[Phil Ayesho]

I didn't say that lack of evidence supports existence. I said that you cannot prove those things were untrue.

That doesn't mean anything. What would you consider proof that they were untrue?
People who WANT to believe in idiocy are always claiming this, as if it were in some way pertinent or significant.
Its not.

The lack of evidence is NOT indicative of something being possible. Lack of evidence is a strong argument for something being nonsense.
Its the fundamental flaw in religious thinking... that something with NO evidence of being true at all is "possible"


In the absence of evidence... the default position of the reasoning mind 'disbelief'...
I don't have to 'prove' things that are not true... I am not the one making a an extraordinary claim that something is true... YOU are.
Those making such claims are the ones who must demonstrate that they are true.

Lacking evidence... spinning a yarn is just fiction.

Reasonable people can reasonably disagree.

No... reasonable people employ reason. They can disagree in so far as BOTH have evidence in support of their position.
A MOND theorist can reasonably disagree with a Dark Matter proponent... the available evidence supports EITHER theory

You have no argument for how your 'hypothesis' is even possible, much less feasible.
You are simply making a claim based upon 'evidence' that is ambiguous, or faked.


For example... people claiming homeopathy is efficacious are deluded, or they are defrauding...
"reasonable people" can not "disagree"... because supporting homeopathy is failure to employ reason.
Making crap up, or believing in crap made up by others... especially others who stand to make money out of folks believing crap is NOT reasonable.
Its gullible.

Again, a false conclusion. The pseudoryx was discovered in Vietnam only in 1993 and it's a cow-sized animal.

See... you keep trying to talk like you know something about logic... but you don't.

Happening upon unknown animals that no one was looking for is not analogous to an 80 year search conducted by hundreds if not thousands of people, actively seeking evidence for an hypothesized animal... especially an animal who was never mentioned prior to the publication of a known hoax. ...And especially animals that are confined to a small, searchable area.

No one was even looking for the psedoryx...no one was even looking for a coelacanth or the okapi.... and yet we STUMBLED upon EVIDENCE of them.

Whereas the same is NOT true of bigfoot, nessie, mokele mbembe... all of them animals that teams of people have invested tens of thousands of hours searching for... with what result?
Not one single scale, scat, or strand of hair... no bones, no offspring no evidence whatsoever.

That is how damning your own argument is of your own case... we trip over evidence of animals we had no idea where there... contrasted to concerted and sophisticated searches for particular aninmals that yield no evidence at all over decades or centuries.

Then there is my favorite, the bloop, a creature far larger than any known whale, apparently living somewhere in the Pacific.

Okay... in this statement you reveal yourself as an absolute rube.. someone who places credence in even the stupidest most ridiculous ideas that people can spout.
The bloop was a noise... recorded A few times in the pacific. 11 years ago. It has not been heard since.
There is no evidence it was made by an animal... no evidence it has ever happened again... no evidence it ever happened before...
It could as easily have been produced by a ocean floor release of gas as by some experimental military device.
It could even have been an artifact produced by feedback in the recording equipment.

Next you're gonna tell me how the people if MU sank atlantis on purpose....

Certainly people lie, but so many people lying so consistently over such a long period of time?

WHAT? You are arguing against me, yourself?
You are telling me that folks can not so consistently lie? and then that all the various members of the various govenrments thru several generations nevertheless has managed to the that very thing?
In fact... you don't need folks to lie if they are deluded... as are you. You spread lies about space aliens... but you don't believe they are lies... see how easy that works?

BTW... this is how religion get perpetuated, too. Rubes who don't realize they are peddling a delusion.

I think it far more likely many are simply mistaken. What you say about ghosts in not true. Some people who did not believe in ghosts have witnessed ghostly phenomenon and become convinced that they do exist.

Sorry.... that is incorrect. ALL people who think they see ghosts believe in the survival of the soul after death... i.e. they believe in ghosts.

No people who do not believe the survival of the soul see ghosts... they see things that they ascribe to other causes... or that they call 'unidentifiable"

Again, just because you don't believe these things exist doesn't make them untrue.

Quite right... its the total absence of evidence in support and the ridiculously unreasoanble nature of the claims that makes them untrue.

I don't believe in them because they are untrue.

You have predecided that any reported incident for which you have no rational answer must be delusion and yet you have no facts to support your incredulity.

No... I said that 'reports' are anecdotal and hearsay. They are NOT evidence.
Sorry,... they are just not evidence.

The Doctor doesn't say... "I hear tell that someone I know knows someone who said they once saw someone cured by this pill..."
they say "clinical trials have demonstrated that this pill is efficacious."

Photographs are evidence. Physical traces are evidence. an Alien hair, skin cell, monkey wrench or other artifact would be evidence.

Bullhit is just bullshit... you can SAY anything.. you can believe anything...
So what? what the hell can you DEMONSTRATE to be true?
Those things are the only thing reasonable people invest belief in.

Why is it people who say, "pal," usually aren't?

I don't know... maybe its the secret sign that the real space aliens use in conversation to find out if they are talking to another space alien...

Yeah... that sound reasonable...
BTW- you failed to give the proper recognition coed so you won't be invited into the galactic crusier...

 

[Phil Ayesho]

Millions of scientists have believed in deities. Does that make all them all delusional?

Yes, it does. It makes them delusional about God.

A true scientist will search for facts but won't dismiss anecdotal evidence until what that evidence supposes is proven or disproven.

Again... you talk like you know something but you don't.
A true scientist DISMISSES and DISTRUSTS anecdotal evidence. A true scientist would set up an experiment to determine the veracity of anecdotal claims.
No true scientist accepts anecdotal evidence as evidence of anything at all.-
oh, and neither does a court.
If you saw it... its testimony... if you tell me someone else saw it... its hearsay.
And hearsay is so likely to be false or inaccurate that its dismissed entirely.
Only a fool credits hearsay.

As you point out, without definitive testing, no reasonable conclusion can be made and that includes negative conclusions.

No that's not what I said... what I said was that in the absence of any positive evidence the ONLY reasonable conclusion is negative.
You DO NOT accept postulates for which there is no evidence.
period.

What you keep glossing over is that there is AMPLE evidence that "ufos" and space aliens are not real.

My hypothesis is that IF there were NO space aliens visiting earth you should expect ALL evidence claimed to fall into certain categories of fraud, mistaken identification, or ambiguity so fuzzy as to be unidentifiable.

This is because, if there are no space aliens to leave evidence... ALL clear and honestly intentioned evidence gathered would point clearly to terrestrial or ordinary phenomena... BECAUSE ALL CLEAR sourcable evidence show no spacecraft or aliens... it is discarded as not being evidence...
therefore the only evidence remaining will be ambiguous and indistinct.

Its a GOOD hypothesis. It accurately predicts observation.
Thus far, all UFO evidence has followed the prediction above.
ALL evidence.

That means that this theory... that there are no space aliens, has STRONG evidence in support..

More than enough to form a conclusion.

What I want to know about ghosts is what is causing the phenomon. So far, no branch of science has said what they are or what their causes are.

Um... again, you are talking BS. We absolutely know what ghosts are. It is a well understood and scientifically replicable phenomenon called Pareidolia.
And it explains such things as why those who do not believe in the survival of the soul after death never think they see ghosts... When faced with ambiguous information, you will tend to jump the the perceptive conclusion that best supports your prejudice, rather than clearly asses the ambiguity of the perception.

While ghosts may not be the spirits of the dead, we also can't say they are either. Until then, I will consider the jury to be out.

Yes, we can say what they are... delusions and misunderstandings born of active imaginations and the result of your brain trying to re-inforce its world view by choosing to perceive the world in a way that agrees with your pre-conceived notions...

This is what they are... there is no evidence whatsoever that ghosts are anything other than this.
The jury is not out... they left... the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. you are sitting there with your fellow delusionals in an empty courtroom waiting for a jury that already went home.

Science can not help you make sense of the world if you refuse to accept its findings.

We also don't know if there is tangible evidence or not. Some people claim there is, but that evidence is closely guarded.

Again, claims, narrative.... Only in conspiracy theory is the lack of evidence considered confirmation of the perfection of a conspiracy.

Here's the prediction of actual science. IF there is NO evidence being held in secret, then you can count on the fact that none of it will ever be brought forward ( because there isn't any) and that believers will continue to claim that it is simply being held in secret by the most perfectly compliant multigenerational conspiracy in history.
You also have no evidence that human beings are even CAPABLE of such coordinated effort.

If it is delusional, then why do we have astronauts, scientists, military personnel, peace officers, and so many average people reporting these things?

What percentage of any group you chose to name believe in God? In Miracles? In chiropractic? In reflexology? In George Bush? Why do people pray despite clear evidence it doesn't work? Why do they read horoscopes?

Your statement supports MY argument, not yours. Human beings clearly self-delude almost universally.

THIS IS WHY SCIENCE CAN NOT TRUST THEM... its WHY we experiment... go thru peer review and demand that experimental results be verified.

People are poor observers... You can watch a video of folks playing with a basketball and, if your are told to count how many passes are made, you will not even see a gorilla walk into the middle of the people, stand and look at you, and then walk out of frame...

People see what their brains DECIDE they are seeing based upon their belief system and the familiarity of the pattern they are perceiving.

This is why scientist double check each other's work... fooling ourselves is the thing we are MOST likely to do.

 

[Skull Mason]

Phil, is that the kind of shit you would say if you were in ancient mesopotamia and a local stone mason told you the earth was round, or that Earth actually went around the Sun? You said yourself you believe there is life out there, so if there is, do you really think they are as lazy, self centered, and money hungry as we are? Were all past civilizations on Earth based upon money and power? Is that how the native americans lived? Why do you think any intelligent civilization out there would be anything like us? I guess you haven't read about Planet Serpo, they didn't even have money on their planet...

http://www.serpo.org/

 

[2322]

You continually claim there is no evidence when there is. You even say, "photographs," then deny that such things exist when there are plenty of photographs. Some are fake, but others are inexplicable. The bloop was indeed attributed to an animal:

Phil Lobel, a marine biologist at Boston University, Massachusetts, doubts that giant squid are the source of Bloop "Cephalopods have no gas-filled sac, so they have no way to make that type of noise," he said. "Though you can never rule anything out completely, I doubt it." Nevertheless he agrees that the sound is most likely to be biological in origin.-CNN.com

I'm sorry, but you are just perverting scientific principles to fit your claim, denying evidence you yourself claim is necessary to consider, and slinging insults at me. I suppose you're operating under the rule of, if you can't attack the facts then go after the person, in which case, I'm out of here.

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

Why? The people who chronicled stories about all these events are long dead, had a very rudimentary education compared to even an ordinary elementary education today. There are no physical traces of Vlad, the Colossus, or the Sea Peoples to confirm the accounts of them. Nobody who wrote about them swore they were telling the truth, and in many cases we don't even know who they were. In some cases they were relying on second-hand hearsay.

Well, there are very good reasons to believe that Vlad the Impaler existed and that there was a statue built in Rhodes. The stories about Vlad range greatly in the descriptions of horrific cruelty, the German accounts being much the most savage, but we know his year of birth and death, the dates of his various reigns, and some detail about family history and style of governance.
The Colossus is described in various ways, but we know through a number of sources when it was built, when it fell, who the architect was, and some details about the construction.

Mitchell and Cooper were experienced observers, both have bachelors degrees in aeronautics, were psychologically and physically tested, and Mitchell has an earned Doctorate in Astronautics and Aeronautics from MIT. These are two highly trained men speaking about something of which they would be in a place to know and are educated in the area of the dynamics of flying objects.
If we consider the sources, which are more credible?

For me, the earlier sources are more credible.
It's not that I'm saying Mitchell and Cooper are not credible ... it's that it's hard to assess their credibility.
If it's so widely known in certain circles that visitations are a fact and have been occurring for a long time, how is it that the secret has been so successfully kept?
That's what raises my skepticism.
This would be an extraordinarily difficult secret to maintain.
You could be right, Jason.
I find it all very intriguing.
But some part of me seems hard-wired to refuse to buy in.
(Maybe I lived in Missouri in an earlier life.)
I'm waiting for more information.

 

[TheWB]

no cnn/msn/cbs/fox/yahoo/etc. news = we don't believe u you need more people

 

[Skull Mason]

If it's so widely known in certain circles that visitations are a fact and have been occurring for a long time, how is it that the secret has been so successfully kept?
That's what raises my skepticism.
This would be an extraordinarily difficult secret to maintain.

Well I think that is kind of the point, it is not a secret and has not been for a long time. It is just the no one believes it until they see it on one of the mainstream news channels (and if you have been paying attention recently they have been covering UFOs and other phenomena such as drones on FOX and msnbc and CNN, larry king live has devoted a few shows in the last month to it).

I mean, at what point do you consider the secret to be out? At what point would you say, "oh, the secret is out"? Usually when people talk about it, the secret is out. If I fucked my neighbor Elliot's wife, and the entire town was talking about it, whether they believed it or not, it is a secret no more.

We've been talking about it since 1947 at Roswell (and as a human race for far longer), so it has been out for a long long time. High ranking military and government officials for YEARS have been talking about it. Death bed confessions have happened. A former PRESIDENT has spoke of it, and another mentioned it during his farewell speech. The Arizona governor saw a UFO that thousands of other people saw that day flying over Arizona (similar to the craft that was seen by hundreds of people over Stephensville, Texas and yes was on CNN. Do you really think that every single military and government official, old as hell, have anything to gain by it, aside from being labeled crazy?

Go to google videos and watch The Disclosure Project. The secret has been out.

 

[ZOS23xy]

For me, the earlier sources are more credible.
It's not that I'm saying Mitchell and Cooper are not credible ... it's that it's hard to assess their credibility.
If it's so widely known in certain circles that visitations are a fact and have been occurring for a long time, how is it that the secret has been so successfully kept?
That's what raises my skepticism.
This would be an extraordinarily difficult secret to maintain.
You could be right, Jason.
I find it all very intriguing.
But some part of me seems hard-wired to refuse to buy in.
(Maybe I lived in Missouri in an earlier life.)
I'm waiting for more information.

Ah--how long did the companies of Big Tobacco keep the secret of tobacco and lung cancer before they admited it was true...?

60-70 years? Longer?