UFOlogy, We Need To Talk... Chris Rutkowski Editorial

a reply to: AgentShillington

Yes these tools do work in everyday life and for specific tasks, but you are going to struggle to catch a baseball with a teaspoon. Everything is designed for a purpose and how can one begin to design a tech to study these beings if we know nothing of them?

originally posted by: AgentShillington
a reply to: liteonit6969

What you are suggesting as a viable alternative to empirical research is directly analogous to the Prophetic religions of Abraham.

Answer this, if you would.

Advanced being talks to only a few and their information cannot be verified and must be trusted. Am I talking about a thousands of years old religion, or modern day UFOlogy believers?

Humans have serious daddy issues. If people don't believe in god they cling to ETs. Humans couldn't live without a far-out fallacy of 'being saved' at some point in our meaningless, boring little lives.

a reply to: Tangerine

Whats wrong with your post and society today is using the word religion when referring to something that we cannot empirically research in a scientific way. The problem is science is an ever flowing changing area where what was scientifically correct yesterday can be laughable today. Therefore how can science be used to research and provide data on something that it has not began to understand. Whats wrong with people today is they feel superior to those of past civilizations with our scientific understanding. But in reality there our so many contradictions in our laws of physics that even these "scientists" cant even agree on many subjects.

I totally understand that no one can provide tangible evidence that can offer 100% confirmation on this subject, but who really is going to provide it. The scientists (as i have said above) who are mostly funded by those with other motives or the mass, who are so preoccupied with surviving and getting by on a day to day basis that they agree with whatever is fed to them through the easy accessible media.

Im not a blind faith person who claims 100% of alien existance, neither am i religious. However at least i can acknowledge that we know so little which is worsened by our ego and ultimately blinds us from progressing as a species. And with that i can keep an open mind to see without restriction of our man termed laws, which in reality are only terms of communication....nothing more and nothing less.

originally posted by: liteonit6969
a reply to: AgentShillington

Yes these tools do work in everyday life and for specific tasks, but you are going to struggle to catch a baseball with a teaspoon. Everything is designed for a purpose and how can one begin to design a tech to study these beings if we know nothing of them?

Yeah, we've got stuff designed for the purpose of finding stuff in our skies. We've got stuff designed to pick up trace amounts of all known types of radiation in our atmosphere. We've got stuff designed to pick up images in wavelengths outside of our visible light. Heck, we even have instruments that are able to read our thoughts.

But.. somehow.. these highly advanced aliens.. keep showing themselves to people that have little social training and no means of using the information for any purpose other than trying to sell books and post on conspiracy websites?

Also, give me enough teaspoons, and not only can I catch your baseball, I could catch a submarine.

a reply to: Kandinsky

All i am offering is what is an alternative to what the OP article was working against. Spirituality is a unique thing that is subtly different within the individual, i know very little about it but want to understand more. Science like i said in past post can only be used when it has the tools to work with. I agree that those who are skeptical and point to no evidence must feel happy with their beliefs whereas i think it is wrong to say believers are like religion in that they use faith. I feel believers dont use faith or need faith as what i gather from them and myself is that how can we even comprehend beings in existence in places we have yet to discover or even begin to contemplate. The idea of beings living in other dimensions can be seen as rediculous in that there is no scientific evidence, this is not because its impossible but because we have not the tools to detect and interact with.

Again going with the cliches but why would these beings who may be so much more advanced spiritually and technologically want to interact with us, would you want to go down and interact with ants or would you look through your magnifying glass at their pointless existence?
(sorry nothing against ants, i actually find them very interesting

a reply to: AgentShillington

All i can say is i respect your opinion and you stick by your guns. pfffff pick up "stuff" in the sky

originally posted by: AgentShillington

originally posted by: Urantia1111
a reply to: CardDown

No one is forcing you to accept any video as evidence of anything, try to remain calm. All I'm saying is that, for a genuinely open-minded person, his story is plausible. He doesn't necessarily have to drive me out there and introduce me to living ETs. If his tale is as absurd as you claim, there shouldn't be the need for so many, absent an antidisclosure agenda, to press so hard to assure nobody believes a word of it.

The need to press hard against this type of story is that there isn't any evidence for it. No evidence means non-story. Why should attention go to this non-story when there are more worthy stories with more evidence that could be looked into?

People are still getting access to all the stories. This one is no different from countless others. A guy with some pictures and a story. Nobody has to believe if their criteria for credibility isn't met, but that's different for everyone. This topic is always subject to the poor signal/noise ratio phenomenon, partly because the debunkers throw so much noise out there as part of the cover up strategy.

a reply to: Urantia1111

Attention is a finite resource. To say otherwise is very naive.

a reply to: liteonit6969

Your points are well expressed.

Rutkowski's argument isn't against the study of UFO reports and it isn't saying there is no more to be learned. I could be wrong here - his point is that unusual sightings reports have become redundant in the face of chitter chatter about guys with photos of store dolls. Not specifically the Boyd story, but mindless BS in general.

ArMap is the statistician of ATS. If he was to collate the posts/stars/flags of UFO threads on ATS, I'd bet that the majority are awarded to known hoaxes, YT videos and skeptic versus believer threads. The few that address genuinely puzzling incidents don't appeal to most people.

a reply to: Flesh699

I dont want saved, to be honest a sick part of me wants this world to turn to sh*t and start from scratch. I take responsibility for myself and family and dont need God or ET to save me. When not if but when the SHTF i have taken the steps to care for those i care for in every way. Those people you say need saved from their so called boring life are products of a system that is fundamentally wrong and centered around money. Would you not want something better or hope if you worked 50 hour week just to have a small roof over you head and basic food and water. This system is breaking up families and maybe you are right some people do want to be saved, because this system is bullsh*t.

As a few have already said Chris Rutkowski could have gone much further with his dissection. But he has made some good points.

When I was much younger I definitely thought there was something deeper to the subject despite the lunatic fringe that the topic has always attracted. I didn't believe that aliens were coming here everyday for a chat about how primitive and warlike we were, destroying our planet or how we needed to get in touch with our spirituality. But I did think that secrets were being kept from us and some (if not the majority) of UFO cases may actually lead to the truth.

I still hold up that hope. However since I have dug deeper into many cases it now seems that even many of those 'classic' cases don't hold up well to a lot of scrutiny.

Certain 'personalities'' who are often guests on UFO documentaries, podcasts and certain radio shows do not help the problem. Whilst they may have been objective at first , it seems many then choose to perpetuate myths or even create new ones because solving mysteries with prosaic explanations does not sell books or conference tickets.


I think the words of another well known ATS member, you may all be familiar with, resonate well:

Ufology is still struggling to achieve scientific and popular respectability, so it is perhaps understandable that public pronouncements of ufologists would be primarily in the persuasive rather than expository vein. It can thus be observed that all the traditional tricks of the Madison Avenue advertising executive's trade are followed: appeals t o authority ("Jimmy Carter saw a UFO"; "our heroic astronauts have seen UFOs l"); assertions of the consequent ("the Universe is so large that other civilizations must exist out there!"); the bandwagon appeal ("Most Americans now believe in UFOs''); the conspiratorial appeal("The government knows all about it but is hiding the truth"); and the salvation appeal ("The people from space will come to bail us out of our self-indicted miseries"). It is not necessary at first to examine the actual validity of such statements. What is important is to recognise them for what they are: tactics of illogical persuasion.

At the same time, most of what is commonly published about ufology is undeniably nonsense... For the publishing industry and the news media, UFO stories are good business; they combine human interest, comic relief, scary stories, and swipes at government cover-ups and know-it-all scientists. It is based on such misinformation (and not a little disinformation) that the vast majority of the public has formed its attitudes about UFOs. To say, then, that "most Americans believe in UFOs" is to testify not to the scientific credentials of ufology but to the effectiveness of the media myth makers.

Few choose to look behind the myths. The much-touted "Jimmy Carter UFO", for example, was never investigated by any of the ufologists who flaunted it or by any of the newsmen who advert ised it -- they simply passed it on as a good story, a useful anecdote. Yet when one skeptical young investigator named Robert Sheaffer tracked the case down, he uncovered gross inaccuracies in Carter's four-year-old recollections of the date and location of the event, and also came up with testimony from other witnesses which helped determine an entirely prosaic solution to the account. Nevertheless, the "Jimmy Carter UFO" is still constantly being referred to by UFO spokesmen who, due to an unconscious media blackout of skeptical work such as Sheaffer's, probably do not even know or care that it has been investigated and "solved".

Another glaring example of the total disregard for authenticity of evidence by most ufologists is the oft-repeated assertion that "astronauts have seen them too". Dozens of accounts have been collected of space pilots seeing and photographing UFOs; more than 20 such stories were featured in Hynek's Edge of Reality, a book which was billed as a "progress report" on the state of ufology. Yet not one of these cases has any relevance to "true UFOs", as they are for the most part frauds and hoaxes conjured up by unscrupulous writers and UFO buffs (several blatant photographic forgeries have been identified in these stories), or misunderstandings by citizens concerning the meaning of ordinary space jargon, or in a few cases, reports of passing satellites which in no way appear to be extraordinary. Yet with selective omission of explanatory data, with exaggeration, misquotation, or even fabrication of alleged "voice transcripts", and with deliberate accusations of "government cover-up", such stories form a major pillar of the public's "belief" in UFOs.

.... The burden of proof, which customarily lies with the claimants of super normality (or, in a criminal trial, of the guilt of the accused, who is "innocent until proven guilty"), has been shifted to the skeptics, who are in the case of UFOs required to disprove the evidence. In the Carter-UFO and the astronaut-UFOs, it was the skeptics who investigated and solved the cases -- while ufologists assumed the cases were authentic until proven otherwise (and most still believe so). .............


What is ufology?

If ufology is not a science, what then is it? It might be considered as a protest movement against the impersonality and specialization of modern science, which has all but eliminated the role of the "citizen-scientist'', the amateur investigator who in the past contributed substantially to the development of science through part-time dabbling. Belief in UFOs is also an undeniably attractive "ego trip", a posturing of inside information and secret lore, the possession of which puts its intimates apart from and above the rest of the unimaginative world. Such speculations demand more scientific attention of sociologists.

Nor would it be fair to judge ufology by the quality and quantity of the outright crackpots whom it attracts -- other fields, such as medicine, religion, education and economics, have certainly attracted crackpots as well. Yet it cannot be overlooked that ufology seems to have attracted more than its fair share of cranks, and that it has failed to police adequately its own ranks in this regard.

Where is the "ufology" movement likely to be after another 30 years?
..........................................

Source and FULL article : New Scientist magazine, London, October 11, 1979

We can look back 5 years and answer that final question.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Yes i got the same from the OP article, but this idea of so much more sightings/hoaxes/believes etc is more a product of the spread of technology used to communicate these things. Almost all phones have a camera and any incident can be shared and discussed instantly before rational thought can process the info. I dont think ufology has deteriorated due to lack of progress and knowledge but because of the ability to instantly share and comment on a ufology without taking time to process the info and take a logical approach to it. Furthermore once a incident is posted it is forever available and can be constantly brought up for use to promote either agendas.

I think i should maybe research some of the works of the author of the article in the OP and maybe try to gain a better understanding of his work. But again i think these types of threads are good for ufology because only by discussing these issues are we able to move forward and gain some focus of where its going.

originally posted by: liteonit6969
a reply to: Flesh699

I dont want saved, to be honest a sick part of me wants this world to turn to sh*t and start from scratch. I take responsibility for myself and family and dont need God or ET to save me. When not if but when the SHTF i have taken the steps to care for those i care for in every way. Those people you say need saved from their so called boring life are products of a system that is fundamentally wrong and centered around money. Would you not want something better or hope if you worked 50 hour week just to have a small roof over you head and basic food and water. This system is breaking up families and maybe you are right some ple do want to be saved, because this system is bullsh*t.

I understand what you're saying and I meant humans as a whole. We've always needed something to answer our questions, so we make # up....if humans didn't have deep rooted daddy issues, aka that hope some force will come save the day and point us in the right direction, we would have no leaders and probably actually use our brains and achieve something other than a happy meal and coke. So what I'm trying to say is that ufology is basically modern religion to people that think the idea of 'god' is so stupid and ancient. Ufology is just another turd for people to worship. Not that I don't think ET is out there, I do, but it is all really one in the same thing.

Astronaut Gordon Cooper relaying a story about a Disc landing at Edwards
AFB right in front of him as he filmed it, comes to mind.
He wrote the UN about it.I don't know about others opinions but certainly
Cooper isn't your everyday witness nor does he strike me as a liar.

This just happened to jump out at me as I was reading through the thread:

Really? Is THAT what happened? He filmed a UFO landing himself? Then he wrote to the UN about it? Really?

Sorry, but you got the story wrong, and it's a very good example of how stories morph and change into something that did not happen and get told as if they did, then used in an attempt to prove, well, something. In this case I guess we're supposed to believe that this high-profile and imminently credible witness saw a UFO land and filmed it, THEREFORE UFOs must be real, or contain aliens, or something.

Except that that story never happened the way it is told here in this forum. You do the research. Figure it out.

And that's one of the very serious problems about Ufology. People treat myths as facts and they wind up believing in crap.

originally posted by: schuyler
And that's one of the very serious problems about Ufology. People treat myths as facts and they wind up believing in crap.

Even after a myth is shown to be just a myth, some keep believing it as it fits their agenda.

originally posted by: liteonit6969
a reply to: Tangerine

Whats wrong with your post and society today is using the word religion when referring to something that we cannot empirically research in a scientific way. The problem is science is an ever flowing changing area where what was scientifically correct yesterday can be laughable today. Therefore how can science be used to research and provide data on something that it has not began to understand. Whats wrong with people today is they feel superior to those of past civilizations with our scientific understanding. But in reality there our so many contradictions in our laws of physics that even these "scientists" cant even agree on many subjects.

I totally understand that no one can provide tangible evidence that can offer 100% confirmation on this subject, but who really is going to provide it. The scientists (as i have said above) who are mostly funded by those with other motives or the mass, who are so preoccupied with surviving and getting by on a day to day basis that they agree with whatever is fed to them through the easy accessible media.

Im not a blind faith person who claims 100% of alien existance, neither am i religious. However at least i can acknowledge that we know so little which is worsened by our ego and ultimately blinds us from progressing as a species. And with that i can keep an open mind to see without restriction of our man termed laws, which in reality are only terms of communication....nothing more and nothing less.

I agree that we know little. I referred to ufology as a religion for some people not because it's a literal religion (that involves a supernatural deity or deities) but because it mimics religion. For example, some religious people attribute the unknown to God and some ufologists attribute the unknown to ancient aliens. In both cases, beliefs are claimed to be facts. Those who challenge beliefs are called agent's of Satan by some religious people and government disinformation agents by some ufologists.

a reply to: AgentShillington

I have made no such assumption in this thread. Seriously, for someone who claims to be open minded, you certainly have made your mind up about me after a single discussion. Please stop making me the target of your posts.

In "some other thread" you dismissed an experience I had with the paranormal as some "guards messing with kids at Juvenile Hall".

So my "limited" experience with you is one of dismissal about events others report. Just so others know. How can people who are shy tell their own experiences not be put off by that kind of posting?

I want to hear others and I strive to get some who think they may be put down to come forward. You are entitled to your own beliefs about these things and everyone can debunk a photograph or blurry video.

Please stop "dismissing" others stories. Personally, thats where we find the similarities in the experience and compare notes in order to try and understand more about it. If you don't like what others are recounting, just leave it dismissed in your own mind, mmm-kay?

a reply to: AgentShillington

But.. somehow.. these highly advanced aliens.. keep showing themselves to people that have little social training and no means of using the information for any purpose other than trying to sell books and post on conspiracy websites?

Like you would have a clue "somehow" how these "advanced" beings work or travel, play and even exist.

Like you say if they are "advanced" and all…

Do you actually "believe" (now I said believe) that all accounts of "unknowns" are otherwise mistaken, misled, pranked, hoaxed, whatever? How do you know that?

Be sure to include links to all the evidence that every case is "BS". Otherwise troll and be trolled.

a reply to: AgentShillington

Attention is a finite resource. To say otherwise is very naive.

Thank you, you just didn't call someone "naive".

I'm paying close attention to you. In a very de "finite" way. You are new here. Your handle "agent" "shill"-a- "ton" is pure sarcasm about anything to do with conspiracies from the get go. So is your join date.

You must have seen there will be members who see through the ruse and call you out on your "empirical" beliefs.

a reply to: AgentShillington

But i thought id bring your attention to say your own naivety is infinite, and you could better use what little resources you have.