A question to skeptics..what evidence would you accept?

reply to post by optimus primal

precisely. It is a sad state of affairs is it not?

this is why I just feel like giving up. No one believe's unless they see firsthand so why do they bother coming here? So they can ridicule those who have?

I feel really defeated. I honestly do.

Originally posted by NephraTari
If you can't trust yourself.. I don't think there is anything you CAN trust.

that goes beyond skeptical in my book.

No, it's called being reasonable and rational, not making ludicrous leaps of logic based on no evidence.

I saw a UFO. That is my personal experience. I cannot explain what I saw; thus the "unidentified" part. Because I cannot explain it, does not mean it is proof of extraterrestrials visiting the Earth. All it is proof I saw something that defied explaination.

That is not "beyond skeptical."

Originally posted by optimus primal

Originally posted by SaviorComplex
And I can tell you, from personal experience, that personal experience is not proof enough.

you know i see this all the time in the ufo and bigfoot forums. "personal experience isn't proof enough" "eyewitness accounts are untrustworthy because of the infallibility of humans"
and yet in this very country there are going to be people this year who are executed based solely on eyewitness account.
funny how it's good enough to get someone killed but not good enough for a piece in the proof pie of subjects like ufology and cryptozoology.

You are twisting what I said.

However, you are also comparing apples and oranges. There are worlds of difference between an eyewitness in a murder case and an eyewitness to something beyond the realm of the every day.

And that is the operative term, "beyond the every day." Murder, rape, and so forth are something tangible to us, it is part of our world as we commonly understand it, something that we deal with on a daily basis. UFO, bigfoot, ghosts and the like are not.

Plus, in murder cases, people are not sent to death row, generally, on eyewitness testimony alone. In such cases, there is other evidence, namely a body. In UFO cases, for example, it is generally eyewitness testimony alone.

No, it's called being reasonable and rational, not making ludicrous leaps of logic based on no evidence.

I saw a UFO. That is my personal experience. I cannot explain what I saw; thus the "unidentified" part. Because I cannot explain it, does not mean it is proof of extraterrestrials visiting the Earth. All it is proof I saw something that defied explaination.

That is not "beyond skeptical."

We need more people who thinks like you. Ufo does not equal ETs.

I heard many strange thing at night when I was a kid and everytime I jump on the conclusion that there was a monster in my bedroom closet.

reply to post by SaviorComplex


very true. however when other evidence besides eyewitness testimony is put forth: for instance, radar targets that move faster than is humanly possible, it's brushed away. "oh it's an anomoly, radar equipment must have been bugging out" even if said evidence is confirmed by other radar towers. as i said eyewitness testimony is only a part of the evidence pie. but it shouldn't be treated as garbage evidence.

[edit on 1-6-2008 by Circle]

We need more people who thinks like you. Ufo does not equal ETs.

I heard many strange thing at night when I was a kid and everytime I jump on the conclusion that there was a monster in my bedroom closet.

There have been many accounts of people seeing ETs coming out of, and going back into, a UFO.



[edit on 1-6-2008 by Circle]

I guess I'm a skeptic. I do think there has to be extraterrestrial life out there, but I'm equally sure that most ufos aren't alien crafts. It's very unlikely that "they" would be here in the first place, let alone flying around abducting people.

I too have personal experiences. I've seen unidentified lights in sky, but I would say two of those I would consider "ufo experiences". And ironically, they're almost the complete opposites of each other:

1) Looking out for Aurora Borealis I noticed the full moon hanging low in the sky, behind some trees in a place I had never seen it. I had lived over a decade at the same house, so I thought it was kind of strange, but I didn't pay much attention to it. However, I kept looking out the window for the Northern lights every few minutes. There were some weak aurora on the sky and the moon behind the trees - except maybe after 20 minutes or so I watch out of the window and there was no moon.

That was strange. I checked next day and even though there was full moon and at that time it was low in the horizon it was supposed to be almost on the other side of the sky. And in the ten or so years after that I've never seen the moon behind those trees. And I still have no idea what the light was. It was behind the trees so all I could see was that it was about the size and brightness of the full moon (except that now that I think of it, it propably was smaller than the moon would appear that low in the horizon). There is nothing but forest there for miles, so I can't think of any explanation for this one. And since it happened so long ago (I don't even remember the year)I don't think anybody else could find any explanation for it either.

2) It was some years after the previous sighting I'm out and notice a strange light in the nearby treeline (or so I thought). It looked like a pink stick hovering behind the trees some 300-400 meters from my location, slowly moving to the right. I went inside, got my camera and noted down the exact time and called my parents out to see it as well. We watched for the next few minutes as the light moved slowly ahead and strated to go behind a hill. At that point I ran after it, trying to get a picture to prove I haven't gone completely mad... Of course when I got to the hill there was nothing to see. The light had vanished.

Now, I know the terrain and that there is only dense forest there, nothing man-made could move so evenly among the trees - let alone something as big as the light was. So I was pretty sure that there just couldn't be any rational explanation, but it's my nature to trying and find something...

And talking to my astronomer friend it hit me. It was the freaking MOON. THe moon was a very small cresent that night and "hanging by it's claws" as they say, meaning the cresent was almost horizontal. I had the exact time of the sighting as well as the bearing, so a little checking proved that the moon at my latitude was setting at that time and at that direction. And not only that, the speed the light had moved matched the speed the moon moves in the sky. Also the atmosphere often colors the setting moon as red.

So, sorry for the long explanation, but now you know where I'm coming from. I can't even trust myself as an observer when I know how weird ordinary things can look in the right circumstances. I know exactly what I saw and I know that if I hadn't had that experience I would make the same mistake again - there is just no way I could have known what it was without knowing all the facts.

Personal experiences aren't rubbish, but they alone can't prove extordinary things. The more independent sightings there are the better. And if they are backed up by images from several cameras and several vantage points then we're starting to have very solid proof of what the people saw and conclusions could be made what it was.

To prove aliens are here it would have to be something extordinary that could not be explained any other way.