ufo skeptics - your understanding of ufos, please?

my goodness people.

assuming that 80% of the believers out here were once skeptics who finaly concluded that alien visitation is real, and assuming that 20% of the believers had a shock and awe experience of seeing a craft which catapulted them into believing without ever experiencing a skeptic standpoint, we can conclude that a majority of us are skeptics or at some point were skeptics.

the very nature of the word, weather writen or spoken (skeptic) seems to have a characteristic of 'aggressively rejecting'... but allow me to convince you to see the word or even the 'ats members' who deem themselves skeptical in a new light.

one common thread between all of us here on ats is that we would rather investigate and find answers on our own. nobody here likes to be told what is and what is not. One small facet to the skeptic is one which excersises constructive critisim on a case by case bases. if the clues do not add up, they then conclude that the case has no conclusion.

and yes I myself tend to lean towards acceptance (aka believing) that the case which holds profound testemony and 'new age evidence' (not so solid evidence) can be concluded as alien visitation.. but the posibility that the case can be debunked will always be listened to by me. Its ignorant to shut out both posibilities.

in the near future i feel that there will be a new type. something similar to 'on the fence' who is both a skeptic/acceptor.





[edit on 1/7/2009 by LordThumbs]

I think there are gross misconceptions about 'believers' and 'skeptics' in this thread.

This is what skepticism means (in scientific terms):



Anyone who does not make use of scientific skepticism in regards to the UFO field is most likely unable to differentiate from a real photo or video and a fake one.

Can we all agree that skepticism in regards to this field is a requirement in light of the amount of hoaxes, fakes and disinformation that most likely is out there?

On the other hand, how does one believing in something excludes him from being a skeptic? I believe there are ET craft flying around in our skies, but I will never stop looking at the evidence and the cases from a scientifically skeptical point of view.

If a photo, a video, a story, a trace case doesn't hold up to scientific investigation, so what? I say good, there are too many hoaxes and fakes out there and it's about time we filter out all the crap. But it certainly doesn't change the fact that I believe ETs are visiting Earth.

Skeptics on this thread seem to be talking about misconceptions that 'believers' have of skeptics, that think of skeptics in some sort of stereotype. Aren't these so called 'skeptics' doing the same about 'believers'? Stereotyping?

It all comes down to how does one look at the evidence, presents it or investigates it. If someone does not look at the evidence or doesn't do research on it from a scientifically skeptical framework, he is doing it wrong, whether he thinks of himself as a believer or a skeptic.

True believers have no place in the scientific investigation and discussion of the UFO phenomena. But neither do pseudoskeptics.


[edit on 7-1-2009 by converge]

reply to post by IronMan

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You're making assumptions lumping all skeptics into one corner so you can make one reply fit all. That's just kinda lazy.

I'm a skeptic of most UFO sightings. However, I am for a reason I've not seen here ( or possibly missed due to the namecalling ).

I don't think life is rare. I don't think we are the most advanced form of intelligence in the universe. I also am pretty sure there is nothing special about Earth that would merit these super-intelligent beings traveling at the speed of light for hundreds of years. Then, if they were smart enough to master traveling at the speed of light for billions and billions of miles for decades and more, why would they dance over Phoenix for thirty seconds and shoot back off to space? We don't have any evidence of any UFO's making very typical calculated moves. Fear? Hell, they could just butt in on any frequency they want and say hello. We can't shoot a missile beyond our atmosphere and they know that. As limited as our capabilities are, we're sending hello messages all over the place. Why assume no other alien culture would feel compelled to do the same or reply?

Mods --

Since it turns out this is another skeptic-baiting thread from our friend "weneedtoknow" can it please be closed?

Considering only well documented cases or witness reports, I think UFOs may be several things:

- man-made crafts
- man-made representations of crafts (something like a hologram, for example, only more sophisticated)
- natural phenomena (things like electric discharges or other electro-magnetic events, for example)
- living creatures from the Earth's high atmosphere
- anything that represents an unknown natural event (we know that we do not understand matter completely)
- anything from other dimension or parallel universe
- alien crafts
- alien creatures

I do not have any real reason to accept one of the above possibilities over any of the other on the cases I consider unexplained. In the same way, I do not consider any of the above impossible as an explanation of at least one of the cases I consider unexplained.

It is also possible that the above possibilities are all wrong.

Also, let me say that I do not consider myself in any of the two types of sceptics you presented "(the ones who are either convinced there is no intelligent life outside earth, or even the ones who want to believe, but just need more proof)", I am convinced of the possibility of intelligent life outside Earth advanced enough to travel to other planets, and I do not want to believe anything, I just want to know.

Your "magnetic protection" would be needed only in the case of crafts with passengers, but even in that case, why did you suggested something as "magnetic protection"? As we do not know what is behind gravity, it may be something as easy as taking an anti-gravity (or in this case, inertia) or something completely impossible.

You forgot to mention the possibility that the crafts (if they are really crafts) are piloted by robots or by themselves (in which case it would be the same as being piloted by robots, the robot being the whole craft). In that case, the craft would have to keep only its own limits.

The "control waves" that you talk as a possibility of controlling the crafts also shows that you have not enough knowledge of how these things work, if you had you would know that we are surrounded by hundreds or thousands of "waves" every second of our lives, and they do not interfere among themselves (only in some cases).

Ahh... you've never seen an orb. If it had someone piloting, they hadda be about the size of a mouse. To this day, that whole incident freaks me out....

reply to post by elliotuk90

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It continues to bother me that the notion of skeptic versus believer is the way we need to look at this matter as opposed to notions of Curios versus Disinterested. Let me elaborate.

I have been a skeptic in the past, and now I suppose most people would feel compelled to label me a believer. and I have seen both sides of that coin.

I have a scientific background. I am what most people would call a "really smart person". Somebody who can explain most things, somebody who can even speculate on what the likely explanation is for most things. Somebody who can build and fix things, complex things. Somebody proud to be smart and who feels like he is better than other people because of it. I am not going to deny that being smart has, for most of my life, been one of those things that sustains my ego. It would be foolish to deny that.

I write software, and sometimes in dealing with software testers I often have to listen to them speculate on what they think the cause of a problem is, So I believe this process has given me insight on how fallible the human mind can be. In other words, I am not at all surprised when people come up with ridiculous explanations for things. And I guess I take some sense of personal pride on somehow been "ABOVE" them as I know what's really inside.

The UFO subject has the interesting property that one can find countless examples of misidentification, hoaxes and just plain lunacy. All that can go wrong with the human mind in terms of explaining something with little data will and DOES go wrong in this field.

So it was with great shock when one night, with all my scientific knowledge and understanding I heard of one case, the case of Parviz Jafari, and I could not come up with an explanation. I suppose I could have felt compelled to doubt his testimony, because, after all, my entire world view revolves around the fact that I am a mother#ing genius with an IQ of about 160, and so, he must have misidentified what he was looking at, otherwise there is something in the world that I don't understand, and, you see, that can't be, can it?

So there is a small number of cases that have me convinced of the existence of something in the skies that cannot be explained by conventional science. The case of the Belgium triangles is another. Do I know for sure that these are craft that traveled from another star? no I don't. But whatever they are, they are too interesting to ignore.

I still to this day remain on the fence on many aspects of the UFO phenomenon. I happen to find abduction accounts extracted by hypnosis hard to believe because I don't know who came up with this process, or understand how it works, let alone the lack of physical evidence.

Psychic predictions, telepathy, and other, let's say, new-agey UFO ideas absolutely turn me off and kill my interest. Anything that requires that I make my mind "Receptive" before I can experience a phenomenon, is outside of my realm of interest. You don't need to be receptive to experience a great deal of things that happen around us. I expect the UFO reality, whatever it is, to be the sort of thing that one does not need faith to experience.

But on a limited number of cases, there is evidence compelling enough that I cannot resist to look into them further.

I don't have any problem with a skeptic position. Skepticism is a healthy thing.

I don't even have a problem if a skeptic decided that they personally don't wish to look into anything UFO related. I'd like to call that the "lazy" skeptic, the one who says, "Listen, when you find evidence that is beyond circumstantial, you let us know, otherwise I don't care to look into it" Nothing wrong with that position either. Why bother with something that has no direct influence on you or your life.

What I do have a problem with is the person who prematurely assumes they know the answer to a case where not enough data exists in an apparent effort to terminate the discussion. I likewise have a problem with anybody who uses the UFO subject as a forum for ego based debate, a debate in which the outcome is "who is right" as opposed to "what is the truth".

The claim that "There must be a simple explanation for it" is a faith based statement, a statement that, even when no enough evidence exists to explain a phenomenon, and even though some evidence of intelligent control and advanced propulsion may be there, that one needs to look for no further information because one would be disappointed to find a mundane answer. It is a statement of open disinterest and FAITH in an established world view. There exist no guarantees in this world that would ensure simple explanation to anything.

Now after reading my post, there must be some people who see the case of Parviz Jafari and either believe they already know the answer to what he saw, or they decide that the answer is probably mundane so they won't even bother to look at it. I feel sorry for them. I really do. They are just as pathetic as people who are automatically convinced of the validity of the case without looking at it. People who draw conclusions with the least amount of information possible. Wouldn't you feel sorry for them?

There will be people who feel compelled to google his name and see what turns up. Well, if anybody comes up with an explanation, I'd be glad to hear it. Same goes with the Belgium sighting of a flying triangle in late 1989. As well as the case in Stephenville, where a large object left some uncanny radar tracks (FAA data was released and analyzed by MUFON)

Anyway, stop trying to put a label on yourself, this isn't football.

-rrr

SOURCE

To use a sporting analogy, skeptics don't support a team. Neutrality and objectivity are mistaken for being for or against UFOs. It's a mistaken belief or misinterpretation by 'believers' that we 'choose' to dismiss, challenge or oppose any understanding of UFOs.

With some exceptions, it's evidence of that neutrality that a skeptic would even be interested in UFOs and post comments on ATS boards. In my own experience, being a 'believer' is a transitional period preceding skepticism. I remember all too well the hype about Cydonia and Face on Mars. I recall all the false facts and the application of mathematics to prove the link between Giza and Cydonia. The 'evidence' at the time was compelling. The subsequent images did more than shine a light on the reality of that 'Face.' They shone a harsh light on the manipulation of the information, the willingness for self-deceit, the nature of liars and my youthful lack of critical thinking. The new images showed there was nothing there...

I learnt an embarrassing lesson in gullibility.

I've seen a genuine UFO (red light zig-zagged across the clear night sky in seconds) and it remains just that; unidentified flying object. There's no more information to be gained from the sighting. Many genuinely unexplained UFO sightings occur each year across the Earth. Skeptics accept that as a fact.

Adding layers of narrative, extrapolation and significance is for the believers, but is ultimately redundant. Enjoy it as fun, speculate for fun, but as soon as people start to make assertions without evidence don't complain when a skeptic asks those questions...

How do you know it's intelligent?
How do you know it's alien?
How do you know what propulsion system is used?
How do you know it's in league with Governments?
How do you know it isn't our aircraft?
How do you know it isn't stealth aircraft?
Etc, etc, etc...

If we had strong evidence that a UFO was ET in origin, skeptics would accept it and amalgamate it into our knowledge. Then we'd begin the process of asking more questions...

Here we go again, the classic atypical classification of either you're a 'skeptic' or you're a 'believer' It's not that simple.

UFOlogy is one of the most intriguing subjects when one delves really deep into the serious research and genuine government documents. Although I'm inclined on the side of Jaque Vallee when he stated that there is large interconnected group of scam artists and sensationalist hoaxers in UFOlogy, I still feel that there are genuine researchers out there who usually go unnoticed.

I'm not gonna get in the game of providing evidence but there is obviously a cover up going on in government and intelligence circles regarding UFOs dating back at least 60 years. Of course it's not as massive a cover up as the believers and scam artists make it out to be, but there is definitely something going on IMHO.

Always be skeptical in the sense of being logical and using common sense, but don't close your mind to the more than likely probability that there are sentient intelligent beings other than humans that are either part of Earth or have visited from a planet elsewhere in the universe.

You know, as hard as it is to accept even half of what a guy like John Lear has to say.. you have to wonder and consider if he's right about anything he's says. Although I think his credibility gets flushed down the toilet since he supports alleged hoaxers like Meier and Adamski.

Maj

It's hard to accept anything John Lear has to say. I remember that whole edited posts soap opera he made here on ATS with Biedny, Ritzmann and Springer (or SkepticOverlord). And then what did he do? He went on Project Camelot and gave an 'interview' distorting all the facts, claimed ATS was government operated and the owners were NSA agents and so on.

Since then, Lear to me stopped being a guy who probably had some interesting information to share to a likely disinformation agent. He probably was never trustworthy in the first place but after witnessing that affair with my own eyes and seeing how he distorted it, lied about it, nothing he says or said can be trusted.

Let's not forget Lear was a CIA agent. He doesn't deny this, never did and has told many stories of his days as an agent. Let's also not forget that when he showed up on the UFO scene he was telling (and expanding) on those Dulce stories that clearly originated as disinformation given to Paul Bennewitz by Richard C. Doty and others of the AFOSI.

Now I don't remember exactly who said it, it could have been Lazar or someone else, but I recall someone saying that "[Lear] would tell you the most incredible stories just to see your reaction" or something to that effect. I also remember Lear's 'motto' here on ATS and it was something like "[I] wasn't happy until [I] ruined someone's day".

Bill Moore speaking of Rick Doty said he was someone that "would plant the most outrageous lies on you just to see what you did with it". Sounds familiar?

Taking all this into consideration, I believe Lear is either a disinformation agent for the AFOSI, or he's at least reading from the same playbook.

I have much the same beliefs as a lot of people who have posted on here. I believe that nearly all the craft seen are human made, also lights seen are probably scientifically explainable. Governments have always used the ideology that tested craft are UFO's or extraterrestrial. Think back when the SR-71 was released to the public eye, they had been testing it for 20 years prior to that and it still stands as the fastest known craft by mankind. This plane's introduction date:

Introduced 1966
Retired 1998

So, what else do we have now? We must have something ahead in technology within that time period. I have yet to see a UFO video that I actually believe to be of extraterrestrial origin. I think it is viable for another race to be living on another planet, but it's pretty hard to fathom that these beings are visiting us from millions of light years away just to fly their craft around our planet and never be caught (as in physical characteristics of the being) on camera. But this just leads to further discussion, as if they are flying millions of light years they would most probably have a way of not being seen.

I just find the whole subject interesting, but more interesting in a human science understanding, rather than jumping to the conclusion that aliens are flying these craft. Hence my signature.

Not true. Timeline (abridged):






Yes, we must have incredible aircraft now, but I don't buy your premise that everything can be explained by man-made technology.

For example, what did we have back in 1942 that would have triggered the Battle of Los Angeles?

Also, you point out that the SR-71 was built in the 60s and it still remains the fastest airplane ever made. But can it hover? Is it silent? Since early UFO history there have been reports of hovering and silent craft, long before and after the SR-71.

Where are those craft? If they are really our craft, how come they were never revealed or even used in armed conflicts?

I find it funny that to some people the idea of a cover-up of extra-terrestrial beings, craft or even a crash is ludicrous because the "government can't keep a secret", but apparently they don't have a problem with the government keeping the secret for almost 60 years of hovering and silent craft.

Not directing this at you in particular Zemouk, but just pointing out that man-made aircraft hardly explains away all reported UFOs.

Well the info was taken from wiki, but I did read somewhere that the SR-71 was being tested way before it's release date. As for other unexplainable reports, yes I agree they may not be able to be explained on current science or technology... BUT what I am saying is what I have seen in a evidence stance is that most UFO reports have been scientifically proven as things we know to happen or tested craft. For the other reports which have next to no evidence all we can take is that persons perspective on what happened. I find it very odd that no-one has ever caught a Alien Being on camera.

Many craft undergoing testing at the moment are Unmanned craft, which brings to view the point about human bodies not being able to withstand the g-forces of some seen craft. I find the whole subject very interesting non the less and I would love to see good proof of another race, it would be great. I found this series of videos very interesting:

YouTube Link

I have no doubt that most UFO reports are 'debunkable', as I don't think most UFOs are alien craft either. I contest that some might be, particularly in light of what our technological limits seem to be, or were, at a certain given time.




I think this quote on your first post responds to this:






It's also not unlikely that some of the reported UFOs, even assuming they might be extra-terrestrial, could be unmanned craft or probes of some sort. At least it would make sense to send probes to other worlds. We do it.

But just for how long do we have unmanned craft capable of doing the things people have been reporting and seeing UFOs do?

It always brings me back to this point.

Even though we certainly have technology more advanced that it is publicly acknowledged, do we have the technology to do the things (some) UFOs apparently do? And since when did we have that technology?

And why isn't that technology known? And how is it less likely that the Government would be able to cover-up an ET craft crash for 60 years, than to cover-up hovering and silent craft for the same amount of time?




Who wouldn't? But let's get realistic, it's probably not going to happen any time soon. All we're left with is to keep investigating with the optimistic goal of eventually figuring it all out.

"And I think the ufo world if for immature folk who think they are the lead in a movie".......HILARIOUS.
YOU ARE FORGETTING SOME OF THESE UFOOLOGISTS WHO -ARE- THE LEADS IN THEIR 'MOVIES'.
I have come across an FYI, that -yet- -another- ufo-hunting cable TV show is in the works, 'starring' ufo true believers Stan Friedman, Peter Robbins, and that one goofball who was 'the leading man' in 'Sci-Fi Investigates'.

reply to post by simonecharisse

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Should be interesting.. when's this show premiering? .. Anything is better than UFO hunters.

Second line on topic

[edit on 10/1/09 by Majorion]

It sure is.
I guess it boils down to whether or not you think the UFO subject
deserves serious,scientific,objective,impartial,dispassionate,analytical investigation and study.

To my mind,people who are of the opinion that the UFO subject is
'just a lot of silly nonsense' are incorrect and misinformed (and possibly just enacting out a conditioned response).

reply to post by elliotuk90

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Anyone who posts about "skeptikz post here lolz" is mentally challenged. Threads like this insinuate that if someone debunks a UFO photo, they are instantly labelled as a "skeptic" and are therefore subject to flaming and childish insults.

So why don't you zealots give it a rest?

[edit on 10-1-2009 by KIRKSTERUK]

Majorion, this new TV series is called 'UFO America: First Contact'.
To learn more, merely google 'AlienCasebook: ufo america first contact.'
Boy, that sounds like it's gonna be a scientific objective SHOW, don't it?

< Continued from my previous: I noticed that one of the very -first- comments this person (blogging about the new show) says, is how "FUN" it was to hobnob with the crew. so this show will be fun, first and foremost.