For years there have been stories of Black Florida Panthers prowling in our wilderness, but there's never been any official record they exist.
Source
I haven't been able to quickly locate the exact number of years that these big black cats have been being reported in Florida, but I think it's been at least 5 or 6. So, for that long people reported seeing large black felines but no concrete evidence of their existence could be found. Then they caught one. It turned out to be a melanistic (black) bobcat weighing about 20 lbs., and officials now agree that there is a population of them living in Florida.
Witnesses reported:
- a cat. Yes, it was a cat.
- Black. Yes, it was black
- not a domestic cat. Correct, it was not.
- Very large, panther size. Oops - only a normal sized bobcat.
Although witnesses were incorrect about the size of the cats, they got most of it right. And despite years worth of sightings, no credible prints, hair, scat, photos, or video surfaced. So a small group of cats - without technology or superior intelligence - managed to elude the people who were looking for them, and avoid providing any good evidence of their existence, for years.
Why, then, is it so impossible to believe that a group of theoretically intelligent creatures, possibly with advanced technology, manage to prevent leaving concrete evidence of their existence?
And although we know that witnesses are not 100% reliable about what they've seen, our black cat witnesses were mostly correct about what they saw; it was a black cat that wasn't an ordinary domestic cat. Why, then, can we not also believe that all the hundreds (thousands?) of UFO and alien witnesses probably also have it mostly right? They've seen something that isn't a conventional aircraft, bird, Venus, etc.
The melanistic bobcats of Florida are but one example of anomalies which were seen by witnesses for years before they were proven to exist. Cryptozoology is full of examples.
I personally, therefore, conclude that lack of "good evidence" does not mean that UFOs and/or aliens don't exist. All those people are seeing something, and history suggests that, collectively, they are probably at least 'mostly right' about what they are seeing.
In conclusion, I submit that it is not reasonable to assert that all the people who have seen aliens or UFOs can't be seeing something that is a real phenomenon just because there isn't adequate concrete evidence to convince the skeptic, and the skeptic who says otherwise is going against logic, reason, and historical fact in order to decide that they can't be real.
No, I have not proved that they do exist. I have merely made what I think is a good argument against being able to conclusively say that they don't exist.
[edit on 27-7-2008 by Heike]
I am sorry you get disappointed every year
waiting for santa to show that is not our fault.
