The Skeptics Dilemma

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows


Hi there,

When I was saying 60 years of ufology did not take us anywhere, it's because I think Ufology does not have the tools to collect exploitable & interpretable data & facts about UFOs & UAPs.

Off course, statistics were made, but are they reliable, how can the margin error be defined with accuracy when it comes to human testimonies ?

All these questions take us to one single answer/solution imho => Collecting data & facts thru research assisted by state of the art electro-optical (and/or other) systems & protocoles.

Like I said it before, studying reports and coming to a classification system is not reliable enough and only allows us to speculate. In my country (france) that is what the GEIPAN does and it's not taking us anywhere so far. Do we really want to make assumptions for the rest of our life, or do we want to go further ?

What I want ufologists to understand (skeptics included) is that there's one and only way to go further and it's called SETV, OSETI, S3ETI, SETA.

This is what they are trying to do in Hessdalen (Norway) for example, this is what Scott Stride of the JPL wants to do as well just to name one serious researcher.

The ETH cannot be presented or tested by ufologists because not only they don't have the tools and the methods to collect & gather empirical data thru observation but they also don't have the tools to test their hypothesis if they ever come up with one.

This explains why I will always remain skeptical of the ETH presented by ufologists.
Is it because I am being close minded ? Nope, it is because I did learn and study marine biology & physical biology & with some great professors and researchers in the US (Scripps & NOAA & UCSD & SBCC). I do understand how a research program works, that's all.

Now, I've seen UFOs (3) myself, and I am not talking about some lights in the distance and I used to be a pro-ETH after that, so I can understand some of the "mechanisms" that influenced "you" but one thing I realized is that ufology is a dead end for many reasons and one of them is because it is not a science, nor does it want to become one.

As one of our ATS member said before (I'll keep him anonymous) :

"Ufology allegedly refuses to play by the rules of scientific thought, demanding instead special exemptions from time-tested procedures of data verification, theory testing, and the burden of proof. Ufologists assert the existence of some extraordinary stimulus behind a small fraction of the tens of thousands of UFO reports on file. The cornerstone of the alleged proof is the undisputed observation that a small residue of such reports cannot at present be explained in terms of prosaic (if rare) phenomena. Yet this claim is invalid: it is clearly not logical to base the existence of a positive ("true UFOs exist") on the grounds of a hypothetical negative ("no matter what the effort, some UFO reports cannot be explained")."



Most pro-ETH I talked to (not all of them) do not seem to understand this and I would add that even some skeptics do not understand it neither because they (some) also think that studying reports is enough to come to a conclusion or to state that the sociocognitive-psychological model can explain it all.

I don't think so at all.

Cheers,
Europa aka Buckwild

Scott Stride on "The Space Show" : www.thespaceshow.com...


[edit on 20-3-2009 by Europa733]

Originally posted by platosallegory
The answer is, you don't have to have physical evidence of something to weigh it within reason.

Okay. Name one thing that was accepted as being real before there was physical evidence. Not scientific theories or hypotheses, those are something entirely different. Name one "thing" that collectively humanity has accepted the existence of based on witness testimony and pictures.

People see elves, hellhounds, goblins, trolls, lake monsters, Bigfoot, Mothman, the Dover Demon, flying witches, pterodactyls, thunderbirds, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, demons, the Jersey Devil, and UFOs and "aliens." These other phenomena are very similar to the phenomenon of UFOs/ETs and these are what it must be compared to, not to theories which evolved from scientific experiments and research.

People have been seeing anomalous "things" of every description for as far back as we have written history, and further. Not ONE of these things has been accepted as real prior to physical evidence. There are scientists right now arguing for the continued existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and the Thylacine. They have pictures, audio recordings, and their own accounts of seeing these creatures which are already proven to exist in the past, just not in the present, and yet the scientific community does not acknowledge the continued existence of either for lack of better evidence. As I said before, the existence of the giant squid was not truly accepted until we had a body, in spite of all the sightings, photos, videos, and "trace evidence" (on whales).

How can the standard for "proving" that ETs exist and are visiting Earth be less than the standard for proving that a known, studied species is still here and not extinct?

Why isn't dark matter/energy labled supernatural. What about extra dimensions, parallel universes and the universe as a quantum computer. All things that some have accepted without it being proven.

The key word in that sentence is "SOME." Many people have not accepted these theories as truth, and in any case they are not the same thing. Conducting an experiment and observing the results to be the same, time after time after time, can not reasonably be compared to someone seeing a UFO or claiming to have been abducted by aliens.

Why don't these things require extraordinary evidence? Why does this only apply to ufology and the paranormal?

It doesn't only apply to ufology and the paranormal. As I've said above, it applies to anything and everything that people see and hear but have no physical evidence for, including unknown or extinct species of animals, spontaneous human combustion, ball lightning, "earth lights," etc. There is a huge difference between mathematical or scientific theories that arise out of research and experiments and "things that people see."

You don't need extraordinary evidence just evidence.

Correct. Evidence. Measurable, testable, examinable physical evidence. A live specimen, a body or body part, a piece of a machine or craft, etc. The same standard which is applied to other "things that people see and experience."

I should be able to look into ufology and the paranormal the same way I study extra dimensions or parallel universes and the skeptics doesn't require extraordinary evidence for those things.

No. They are not at all, in any way, shape, or form, the same thing. We can't mathematically predict when or where a UFO will appear. We don't need UFOs or aliens to exist in order to have a particular set of observed scientific data make sense. The scientific theories you are talking about are theories which are suggested as a way of explaining the results of experiments which otherwise don't make sense. These experiments can be repeated over and over again and show the same results. This type of theory or hypothesis can not be compared to unexplained sightings or experiences that people have.

reply to post by Heike

elves, hellhounds, goblins, trolls, lake monsters, Bigfoot, Mothman, the Dover Demon, flying witches, pterodactyls, thunderbirds, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, demons, the Jersey Devil

None of these things have been captured on radar at the same time as being witnessed on the ground.

None of these things have been reported as being engaged by military aircraft and officially documented in government files.

None of these things have been seen simultaneously from multiple viewpoints by trained observers.

None of these things have sustained a barrage of artillery fire for an hour over a major city.

None of these things have caused medically documented deleterious effects on the people who witnessed them.

The evidence for the UFO phenomenon puts it in a different class from all these things.

reply to post by MarrsAttax


So there is more evidence that UFOs exist than there is evidence for some other phenomena. That doesn't give any indication of what they are or where they come from. It merely provides stronger evidence for the fact that they materially exist outside of the minds of the people who have seen them.

Furthermore, you are still comparing apples to oranges. Nearly everything else on my list (excluding pterodactyls and thunderbirds) are NOT aerial phenomena. Anything that is not aerial is not going to be caught on radar or engaged by jet fighters whether it's real or not.

Besides, lake monsters have been caught on sonar which is essentially the underwater equivalent of radar, and people have reported documented ill health effects from Bigfoot encounters, vampire visitations, demon and ghost attacks, etc. They've shown people who were scratched by some "entity" on TV. I also need to dig around some when I have time, because I think one of those "flying humanoids" in Mexico showed up on radar. There are also assorted cases around in which the military is reported to have tangled with Bigfoot or Chupacabra.

In fact, nearly all of your evidence for UFOs/aliens being different from all the other stuff is based simply on the fact that UFOs happen to be primarily an aerial phenomenon and the others are not.

Originally posted by MarrsAttax
reply to post by Heike

 

elves, hellhounds, goblins, trolls, lake monsters, Bigfoot, Mothman, the Dover Demon, flying witches, pterodactyls, thunderbirds, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, demons, the Jersey Devil

None of these things have been captured on radar at the same time as being witnessed on the ground.

None of these things have been reported as being engaged by military aircraft and officially documented in government files.

None of these things have been seen simultaneously from multiple viewpoints by trained observers.

None of these things have sustained a barrage of artillery fire for an hour over a major city.

None of these things have caused medically documented deleterious effects on the people who witnessed them.

The evidence for the UFO phenomenon puts it in a different class from all these things.

Excellent post!

I couldn't have said it better myself and I think it's pretty obvious that other people are proving my initial point over and over again.

When it comes to things within ufology they can't weigh it within reason like we do in every other walk of life.

They can't do it because they want to be able to throw out goblins, fairies, easter bunny or whatever it may be and compare it to things within ufology. That's just intellectually dishonest.

How many times have we heard the fairy and goblin line in this thread?

How many times have they tried to belittle eyewitness accounts in this thread when eyewitness accounts are used every day in courts, police investigations, science and more?

This is the whole point of my post.

We always weigh evidence within reason as to what's most likely and what's less likely.

So yes, it's just like science.

Some people think that the universe is a quantum computer and that's the most likely answer.

Some people think we live in parallel universes and that's the most likely answer.

Some people think we live in a holographic universe and that's the most likely answer.

Some people think we are simulations and that's the most likely answer.

These things are not coming from kooks or science fiction writers. This is from Professors from MIT to Oxford.

If you don't weigh the evidence within reason you can keep these things unexplained and unidentified forever.

If you don't weigh these things within reason, you can throw out any illogical possibility like goblins or the easter bunny and compare it to evidence within ufology like eyewitness accounts from police, military, pilots, astronauts, high ranking government officials and more.

We should just throw out all these things as quirky stories that don't mean anything.

I refuse to do something that's so illogical. We always weigh these things within reason.

We always weigh the credibility of the witness.

Any lawyer worth his salt would love to have these kind of eyewitnesses in a case. But when it comes to ufology the goal is to belittle eyewitness accounts and at times even belittle these men and women.

reply to post by Heike

Name one "thing" that collectively humanity has accepted the existence of based on witness testimony and pictures.

People see elves, hellhounds, goblins, trolls, lake monsters, Bigfoot, Mothman, the Dover Demon, flying witches, pterodactyls, thunderbirds, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, demons, the Jersey Devil, and UFOs and "aliens." These other phenomena are very similar to the phenomenon of UFOs/ETs and these are what it must be compared to, not to theories which evolved from scientific experiments and research.

Your point was originally that the case for UFOs, like these other phenomena, is based purely on 'witness testimony and pictures'.

By pointing out that there is physical evidence for some of the phenomena you are not disproving my point you are only negating your own original position.

If physical evidence exists for lake monsters, for example, this elevates them to the same category as UFOS it doesn't demote UFOs to the same class as werewolves.

How can you not see that all you are doing now is insulting the witnesses of other phenomena just as you claim the "bogus skeptics" are doing to you?

U.S. Presidents have seen ghosts.

Lake monsters have been caught on sonar.

There has been physical evidence for Bigfoot, Chupacabra, ABC's (alien big cats), and certain other cryptids.

People have suffered physical harm and health effects from contact with ghosts, demons, and some cryptids.

Cryptozoology IS a science every bit as "good" as UFOolgy, and demonology is also a science.

By insulting every other "fringe" science except the one you ascribe to, you make your own mindset and closed mindedness painfully obvious. It is you who are determined to believe that UFOs are alien spacecraft and want the evidence for such to be evaluated differently from every other similar phenomenon.

UFOs are not special. They are an aspect of the world and human experience that we don't understand yet. Most people acknowedge that there are unidentified flying and aerial objects in our skies, but only a few people such as yourself claim to have sufficient evidence to prove what these objects are, and you do so by lowering the standards of evidence to accommodate what there is.

As I and others have repeatedly said, UFOs and UAPs and the entities sometimes associated with them will not be proven to be extraterrestrial until there is tangible PHYSICAL evidence which can be examined and tested by multiple people. Nothing less is - or should be - PROOF of their nature or origin.

Edit to add:

We always weigh the credibility of the witness.

Yes, we do. Are you now, therefore, as convinced that ghosts are real because a US President has seen one as you are that UFOs are ET?
I am a veteran myself, and I have seen a few pretty weird things. Are my accounts any more credible because of my military service?
And how many times have eyewitnesses been wrong? How can 15 witnesses to an accident have all seen something slightly different?

Seriously now, be honest - you are more likely to believe a person who tells you they saw something unremarkable albeit a bit odd - like red fox in a suburban neighborhood, for example - than person who tells you they saw something really unusual like an alien or a dragon.

We may always weight the credibility of a witness, but we also always weigh the probability of the event they witnessed.


[edit on 20-3-2009 by Heike]

Originally posted by Heike
Furthermore, you are still comparing apples to oranges.

Hi Heike.

With all due respect, I think it is you who is "comparing apples to oranges", in that your attempt to liken the ET/UFO phenomenon to the things on your list pretty much completely unravels as soon as the the quality and range of evidence for both is compared as well when we consider the very nature of the phenomenon itself.

And why did you set the parameters at the beginning of you last post in this way:

Okay. Name one thing that was accepted as being real before there was physical evidence. Not scientific theories or hypotheses, those are something entirely different.

First of all, there is physical evidence. However, there is no reason why there can't be a "scientific theory or hypothesis" that there at ET's visiting earth and accounting, in many cases, for the UFO phenomena, is there? Further, there is no reason why this could not become accepted as "true" even without physical evidence, just as many other theories become accepted "fact". Why rule out that scenario when asking the question?

[edit on 20-3-2009 by Malcram]

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
reply to post by Phage

 

The extraterrestrial hypothesis is no different. It is not falsifiable. It does require extraordinary evidence to be proven.

Huh? Extra dimensions and dark matter are things we would never be able to touch, were as an extraterrestrial we would if they do exist and are here. Well, they were to reveal themselves and allow us to touch them.

Apples and oranges my friends apples and oranges.

A falsifiable hypothesis one which can be proven false. The extraterrestrial hypothesis is not falsifiable. It cannot be proven that extraterrestrials do not exist. Conversely, the only way to prove they do is by "touching" one or by means of similarly extraordinary evidence.

Originally posted by Malcram

Originally posted by Heike
Furthermore, you are still comparing apples to oranges.

Hi Heike.

With all due respect, I think it is you who is "comparing apples to oranges", in that your attempt to liken the ET/UFO phenomenon to the things on your list pretty much completely unravels as soon as the the quality and range of evidence for both is compared as well as by considering the very nature of the phenomenon itself.

And why did you set the parameters at the beginning of you last post in this way:

Okay. Name one thing that was accepted as being real before there was physical evidence. Not scientific theories or hypotheses, those are something entirely different.

First of all, there is physical evidence. However, there is no reason why there can't be a "scientific theory or hypothesis" that there at ET's visiting earth and accounting, in many cases, for the UFO phenomena, is there? Further, there is no reason why this could not become accepted as "true" even without physical evidence, just as many other theories become accepted "fact". Why rule out that scenario when asking the question?

Another excellent post.

The goal is to belittle the evidence so they don't have to weigh it within reason and that's pretty obvious.

They want to lump all these things together and that's illogocal.

There's evidence for bigfoot that has to be weighed.

There's evidence for things within ufology that has to be weighed.

There's evidence for parallel universes that has to be weighed.

There's evidence for dark matter/energy that has to be weighed.

The problem is they don't want to weigh these things within reason so they can lump them all together and belittle the evidence.

So bigfoot, ufology, the paranormal, all eyewitness accounts, all pictures, all video, fairies, goblins, the easter bunny, santa, elves, the great pumpkin are all lumped together.

We can't weigh these things within reason. Ufology has the same evidence as the great pumpkin according to them.

It's truly illogical.

Originally posted by Phage

A falsifiable hypothesis one which can be proven false. The extraterrestrial hypothesis is not falsifiable. It cannot be proven that extraterrestrials do not exist. Conversely, the only way to prove they do is by "touching" one or by means of similarly extraordinary evidence.

How would touching and ET provide "proof" of ET's? How do you know it's not a human mutant? How do you know it's not an advanced robot? How do you know it wasn't an hallucination? Touch proves nothing. And say I did touch one and it really was an ET, what use is that "proof"? No one would believe me.

The request for such extraordinary evidence usually seems rather like little more than a set up to me. A brush off. Because even when it arrives it is of no actual use. And I think that in many cases, the people who require such "extraordinary evidence" know that full well.


[edit on 20-3-2009 by Malcram]

Originally posted by Malcram
1)
A falsifiable hypothesis one which can be proven false. The extraterrestrial hypothesis is not falsifiable. It cannot be proven that extraterrestrials do not exist. Conversely, the only way to prove they do is by "touching" one or by means of similarly extraordinary evidence.
2)
How would touching and ET provide "proof" of ET's? How do you know it's not a human mutant? How do you know it's not an advanced robot? How do you know it wasn't an hallucination? Touch proves nothing. And say I did touch one and it really was an ET, what use is that "proof"? No one would believe me.
[edit on 20-3-2009 by Malcram]

There have been "reports" that imply that if you touch one of them, you will get really ill...

Falsifying a hypothesis means that we try to determine the conditions that will produce the same results that are not the ones we originally assume.

So to falsify the hypothesis: Aliens Exist,

we would have to determine "what else" would produce the effect that gives us the notion that Aliens Exist.

Then we can use that data on specific cases to see if it "fits".

We already know what "what else" means for us.

[edit on 20-3-2009 by akalepos]

reply to post by platosallegory


"We always weigh evidence within reason as to what's most likely and what's less likely."

This sounds correct to me simply because of the elusive nature of what it is that we are trying to determine of a certainty.

We have no choice.

As long as Mom and Dad are sneaky enough to play Santa, we never know the truth until we are told or we catch them at the tree...

so we continue (not me in particular) to investigate and attempt to collect real hard evidence. Until we do so, we are stuck with what we have, which is ROUGHLY no more pro evidence than con evidence.

Our community needs genuine infiltrators and verifiable to a "T", whistle blowers, in order for us to get that evidence.

Originally posted by Malcram
However, there is no reason why there can't be a "scientific theory or hypothesis" that there at ET's visiting earth and accounting, in many cases, for the UFO phenomena, is there?

No, it's not the same thing. Let's take a simple example that we all (hopefully) understand - the "theory" of gravity. Before we had this theory, we all knew that things fall when you let go of them, but we didn't have a theory to say why. Anyone, anywhere, anytime, can drop something and it will fall. Why? Because of gravity. So the theory of gravity was developed - and eventually "proved" - to explain WHY things fall.

The theory of dark matter explains why matter acts in certain way under a certain set of circumstances. Anyone with sufficient training and the equipment can duplicate the experiment and get the same result.

What set of consistent, observed facts does an "ET theory" explain? What experiment can you do that requires the presence of an alien spacecraft or an alien to make sense? What results or data can you produce to support this theory and remember, they must be data that are reproducible by anyone given the same circumstances.

After the theory of gravity was proposed, a lot of "scientists" dropped a lot of things and measured the results. If you are proposing an "ET theory," what experiments can we do to get measurable results which support your theory?

Originally posted by platosallegory
So bigfoot, ufology, the paranormal, all eyewitness accounts, all pictures, all video, fairies, goblins, the easter bunny, santa, elves, the great pumpkin are all lumped together.

We can't weigh these things within reason. Ufology has the same evidence as the great pumpkin according to them.

It's truly illogical.

This is not only illogical, it's not true. The Great Pumpkin, the Easter Bunny and Santa are being thrown in by YOU to make my case seem ridiculous. We are not discussing children's fantasies nor myths and legends.

We are discussing the similarities between other unexplained phenomena which credible witnesses see, photograph, videotape, record (on audio), find
"trace" evidence of, and suffer effects from and UFOs/ETs.

You are hurting your own case with this double standard. By scoffing at the real experiences of other people who have seen, photographed and videotaped things which were not UFOs but cryptids, spirits, or other unexplained phenomena, you are demonstrating that you are a worse "Skeptic" (for anything other than UFOs) than you claim some people here are.

There is quite as much good evidence for the existence of a non-human primate, whether you call it Bigfoot, Yeti, Yowie, Sasquatch, or "OMG what the hell IS that?" as there is for aliens. You don't want to take that evidence seriously, but you want everyone else to take ET evidence seriously.

That is seriously a double standard.

Originally posted by Heike
How can you not see that all you are doing now is insulting the witnesses of other phenomena just as you claim the "bogus skeptics" are doing to you?

By insulting every other "fringe" science except the one you ascribe to, you make your own mindset and closed mindedness painfully obvious.
[edit on 20-3-2009 by Heike]

Platosallegaory didn't belittle or insult either the evidence or those who hold "fringe beliefs", at least not that I saw. Why would you say that? All he did was point out that the evidence for these things was infinitely less abundant, wide ranging and credible that the evidence for ET/UFO's , and he's absolutely right. That alone should qualify the issue to be treated differently, at least in that it should be 'first in the queue' for serious investigation by virtue of that abundant and credible evidence, ahead of the other things on your list, rather than tossed into the "fringe" pile of other phenomenon largely ignored by society and science, except as a source of amusement.

Edited to add. I just saw the comment of platosallegory that you posted which I gather you misunderstood to mean that he was belittling the beliefs of "fringe" science by including Father Christmas and other fantasy characters in the list. Actually, these are things introduced by skeptics earlier in this thread, not by platosallegory. He is simply repeating their claims as a way of demonstrating their attitude. But I see how the misunderstanding occurred.

[edit on 20-3-2009 by Malcram]

Originally posted by Heike

Originally posted by Malcram
However, there is no reason why there can't be a "scientific theory or hypothesis" that there at ET's visiting earth and accounting, in many cases, for the UFO phenomena, is there?

No, it's not the same thing...

What set of consistent, observed facts does an "ET theory" explain? What experiment can you do that requires the presence of an alien spacecraft or an alien to make sense? What results or data can you produce to support this theory and remember, they must be data that are reproducible by anyone given the same circumstances.

If you are proposing an "ET theory," what experiments can we do to get measurable results which support your theory?

Wow. I think those are really interesting questions. I hope this question gets taken up and seriously considered. I think this could be the turning point in the thread. But before anyone tries to answer. How would you feel if an answer was found to your question? Are you open to there being an answer and would you welcome it? Or do you have an absolutely closed mind to the idea and simply want to prove that it can't be answered? You can understand why I ask this, because few questions are asked in sincerity at ATS and so when answers are forthcoming, the questioner, is often poised to trash it no matter how legitimate it may be. If you are open to there possibly being a solution to the conundrum you posed - and this is a genuine question - can you think of any way to solve it?

[edit on 20-3-2009 by Malcram]

As I was replying, I saw your edit, Malcram, so I'm changing my post accordingly. Yes, I did think that he was the one saying that Santa and the Easter Bunny etc. should be lumped together with all other "paranormal" phenomena except UFOs and ETs. Which is totally unfair to every person who's ever had to change their britches over being surprised by a Sasquatch.

You see, I'm not a skeptic. I've seen a UFO, and it was quite impressive. Furthermore, I'm fairly sure that humanity still doesn't have the technology to do what "my" UFO did (shine light through the roof & ceiling into a house).

In any case, most of your skeptics are not saying "there's no such thing as a UFO." Of course there are UFOs! But UFO means unidentified flying object; if it were identified as an alien spacecraft we wouldn't call it a UFO any more!

Now, do you really, really think there is sufficient evidence to make an extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs more likely than

1) Black ops
2) A civilization that lives in/under the oceans
3) Time travelers from our future
4) Secretive biological entities which live somewhere in our atmosphere
5) residents of a hollow earth

??

We really don't have enough specific evidence to postulate their origin, or even that they're "intelligent" at our level.

When a rabbit instictively runs a zig-zag pattern to evade a fox, that looks pretty smart, doesn't it? But we know rabbits aren't intelligent.

Granted UFOs maneuver in ways that convince us they aren't, say, analogous to falling leaves, snowflakes, meteorites, etc. In other words they move in ways that cause us to think that either they or their operators are animals. But they could be giant cephalopods of the sky as easily as they could be visitors from Alpha Centauri.

Where is this conclusive evidence that makes a human-level intelligence from a planet other than Earth the most likely explanation?



[edit on 20-3-2009 by Heike]

reply to post by Malcram


Malcram, I'm the last person you'd call a skeptic. I don't quite believe that all of our politicians are reptilians, but short of that I'm quite open-minded and interested in everything. I belong to a paranormal investigation team and we're hopefully going on a bigfoot hunting expedition later this year.

But I'm sensible and logically grounded enough to see that the evidence does not conclusively point to a human-level intelligence from off-planet.

The contactees? Well .. having seen some pretty weird stuff myself, I hate to call anyone crazy. If only they all had the same story! But they don't. So either the "contactees" are all telling the truth and there are like 30 or so different ET races visiting us, or some are genuine and some aren't (how the heck can we tell???), or none of them are. And I don't have the knowledge or experience to sort that out, so I tend to gently set the contactee stuff aside for now and say "Look, I don't not believe you, but I can't tell who's the real deal here and who isn't, so you're all going to have to wait outside for now."

So, other than contactees, what evidence is there that points exclusively towards off-planet human-level intelligence?

reply to post by Heike


First off, I wasn't belittleing anything. I'm willing to weigh all these things within reason.

If you have evidence for bigfoot present it and lets weigh it.

If you have evidence the lochness monster present it and lets weigh it.

If you have evidence for a holographic universe, present it and lets weigh it.

What I will not do is lump things all together to try and belittle the evidence to prove a point.

What you hear from bogus and pseudo skeptics throughout this thread is that things like fairies, the easter bunny, the great pumpkin(I added that because I like Charlie Brown), santa and more.

That's illogical. You can't weigh these things all equally because they all have different evidence.

Secondly, you talked about dark matter/energy and again your wrong.

There's a set of facts to support the E.T. hypothesis.

There's eyewitness accounts from police, pilots, military and more. Video's, pictures, abduction cases, trace evidence, radar and more.

You build a hypothesis from this set of data.

Do you deny these things occured?

Again, we are not making this stuff out of a vacuum. There's alot of evidence to build a hypothesis. This is how science, investigations and more work.

We build a hypothesis based on a set of observed facts.

The mistake that you are making is that you are trying to debate a claim that nobody has made.

Nobody has said that extra-terrestrial and extra-dimensional beings are the only explanation that can be accepted for these these things.

I said when I weigh these things within reason the E.T. hypothesis is the most likely explanation for these things.

If you have another explanation then present it but to try and lump all these things together to try and belittle the evidence for things within ufology is illogical.

Again, there is a set of facts to build a hypothesis on. You are just debating against a point that was never made.

I think I alluded to this before but I think part of the problem we face is the fact that there may be some things that are true which are not open to scientific scrutiny, at least not at the present time.

I agree with Phage when he says the ETH is not falsifiable. However, does that mean it can't be true? No. And it doesn't stop real scientists in SETI from scanning the heavens. Likewise, it shouldn't stop us from investigating UFO reports and conjecturing what may be the ultimate cause (it's fun if nothing else).

Also, it may be that we can circumvent this problem. I have a new theory called the NETH - the No Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis. This is most definitely falsifiable. I have already cited evidence in my previous posts that supports the view that the theory is false


[edit on 20/3/2009 by MarrsAttax]