UFOlogy, in general.

Well, this is my very first post on this forum that i have been reading on an off for the past few hours, and i am glad i joined actually, but now down to the nitty gritty of things; Ever since i was in my early teens i have alway been interested in UFO's and the likes, it was only with the advent of me getting the internet that i could come across some of the wealth of information available out there, now still a young man at 25 years old i am more fascinated than ever, in recent months though i have become even more fascinated by the amount of bull thats out there.

I believe in ET's, i believe in UFO's and i believe they are in our airspace, but i m now considering myself to be a 'skeptical' believer, now i may take a bashing for this but the Disclosure Project really was of great interest to be when i saw that conference at the Washington Post but don't you think his ideas are just a little 'out there' as in totally unbelievable, i realize he has a dedicated group of followers and fans that will defend his to the end of the earth but come on, this guy cannot be serious and i have to give my two cents on this one, he is in my opinion 100% full on talking out of his rear.

i'm sure there has got to be a million posts like this but this is the forum i have joined, and i'd like to get some feedback on this.

oh and for the record, i should have called this post 'The Anti Greer' as opposed to 'UFOlogy in general' there are a lot of great UFOllogy out there it was never my intention to generalize it.

Greer is not too well-liked on ATS, so you're in good company. I would be careful of course to lump the witnesses that Greer gathered for the 2001 press conference with the man himself. Some of those people are legit in my opinion.

As for Greer, I'm not sure what to think. He makes big claims without offering any evidence. More and more people see him as a kind of millennial cult leader. What's more, his eccentric behaviour have given some cause for concern. Then again, if I were a real contactee, privy to all of this insane information, I would probably act in a way that others would find pretty strange too. There is still a spark of hope in me that Greer knows something. If you look back at history, lots of loonies have had the last laugh.

Here's my bottom line: If you accept the ET hypothesis as fact, then you have to change your criteria as to what constitutes sensational or unbelievable claims. It is absurd to state on the one hand that aliens are visiting the earth while saying on the other that anyone who claims to be in contact with them is transgressing the limits of the credible.

i agree, the unbelievable has to be believable in some cases, i'm just not into greers whole remote views/contactee kinda thing its a little way off for me! i once had a conversation with a good female friend of mine (who is christian might i ass) she said something like 'who would beleive in aliens thats crazy pfff' and my response was simply 'if you can believe in an omniscient, all seeing, all being god, then why, is the concept of ET life implausable?. anyways that was besides the point, i also think some of his guys at disclosure are legit but he's basically discredited them by pushing forward some of his really really far our views.

hehe typo 'ass' is meant to be 'add' my typin skills are a bit dodgy.

I believe that Dr. Greer started with well conceive intentions and somewhere along the line he lost his purpose. Why? There can be many answers to that which people here on ATS has discussed too much already in my opinion(try a search). He deserves a lot of credit for what he started but at the same time I believe he has brought shame and ridicule to this comunnity (like we dont carry enough of that already) and thats when people started to tune him off. I put Dr.Greer with the likes of Linda Moulton Howe, that they want to believe so bad and they want to prove people wrong so bad that they can fall for prey to sloppy research, unscrupulous characters that just want to make a quick buck or spread disinformation. I think he still has a lot to contribute to this issue as he has alredy done in my opinion.

I know what you mean, but the question remains: if you believe that UFOs are real, what makes contactee claims so unbelievable? Meaning, what's more far out than the fact that we are being visited by extraterrestrials? Shouldn't it follow from the ET hypothesis that these beings MIGHT actually be communicating with certain people?

Far from endorsing Steven Greer, I'm just trying to make a point about how we evaluate his and other claims. Being a believer myself, I think the only useful way to validate or dismiss the claims of contactees is by finding contradictions, inconsistencies and fallacies within or amongst their stories. To dismiss someone outright simply because he or she is claiming to be in contact with entities that I happen to believe exist seems irrational to me.

I think his contactees are him in deep meditation having a lucid dream. He said on exopolitics radio not too long ago that he went to mountain top, got into meditation, some visitors came and when they took off in their craft, he took giant floating moon man steps over the trees back down the mountain.


thats pretty #ing bold...

Hmm yes i see what you mean, i believe people have been abducted, whether you want to lump that in with contact i don't know, i suppose if they have any extra terrestrials at area 51 the officials there would be trying to communicate with them, does this make the officials contactees? or does this make them interrigators?

Anyway, since i posted this under UFOlogy in general, any other views on the top dogs in UFOlolgy and you opinions on them?

Hi Smugallo,

Abduction is contact as far as I'm concerned. I don't want you to think that I don't have any doubts concerning Greer. I'm very skeptical of his claims. However, I have to keep reminding myself that my conclusions regarding ET visitations have changed my perspectives on what I can consider to be too far out.

To answer your question:

I think Stanton Friedman is 100% legit. However I think he's argued for the authenticity of the MJ-12 documents for so long now that he would keep doing so even if they were proven to be fake.

I believe that John Lear is a great guy, but the claims he has been making are going very far indeed (and stretching it much further than Greer ever did)... Life on Venus? An atmosphere on the moon? Just seems crazy to me...

I think Budd Hopkins is a good investigator, though I haven't read everything he wrote.

Jacques Vallee has some interesting takes on the phenomenon and I believe he is onto something. I like his conclusion that the UFO phenomenon resides in the interzone between the physical and the psychic.

There are many other majors that I haven't read yet. Anything you'd recommend?

Hmm not sure if i can reccommend anything or anyone you probably havn't heard of yourself, i must admit i do like friedmann even although a lot of the time his talk feel rehearsed and full of false confidence, then again he does do the lecture circuit o i guess you had to be like that. As for john lear i havnt really ever looked in on him think i'll do that a little later before i kick off to bed. Atmoshpere on the moon and life on venus does seem a bit fishy to be right enough.

Whats on your stance on David Sereda? i seen the 'Nasa UFO The Smoking Gun' film on google video, kinda got drawn in with that one, even though he starts to speculate a little too much towards the end.

I'm not all that familiar with the Sereda stuff. I saw a lot of the NASA footage he popularized. Some of it is really interesting; some of it looks like it could be anything. For example, I'm not convinced about the tether incident footage: all of the larger UFOs in that shot are at the exact same angle relative to the camera.

I'll look into Sereda. I saw him interviewed once and he seemed to me like an honest investigator.

When you see a UFO land 50 feet from you, you get the distict sense that it is real.
When you have ongoing contact, you get the sense it is real as well.
As for sceptics, that's why they aren't chosen for the most part...
What makes you think they are visiting?
Where would you go in the event of a tornado?
down below perhaps?

how about you switch on your camera every night from now on...
if you are "wired" as you reptend: show us some proofs...

and not just say "that author" has said he had proofs, pictures etcetc. that proves nothing

One more thing that ticks me off, anytime i search for ufo documentaries, or film on google video, i tend to get a lot of this nonsense

video.google.co.uk...

check it out guys and get back to me on it, just listen to them talking, please tell me this isnt a branch of ufology!

Great find. Why are we bothering to research this when we have dudes like these who could just give us all the answers?

Skeptics, there's your proof that aliens do exist.

Seriously, it's unfortunate that some people use stuff like this to discredit the entire field of ufology. Even mainstream science has its crazies, but nobody is using them as an example to disprove scientific research. I think the best policy here is to ignore, and move on.

Great find. Why are we bothering to research this when we have dudes like these who could just give us all the answers?

Skeptics, there's your proof that aliens do exist.

Seriously, it's unfortunate that some people use stuff like this to discredit the entire field of ufology. Even mainstream science has its crazies, but nobody is using them as an example to disprove scientific research. I think the best policy here is to ignore, and move on.

I believe in EBE/UFO stuff. Where I have some troubles is Archaologists not finding a skeletal structure unexplained in size/shape/age or even a skull, especially after this latest Sudan find?

Dallas