The skeptics/debunkers Extraterrestrial debate position is illogical, page 1

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Topic started on 2-7-2009 @ 03:02 PM by Matrix Rising

The reason I say it's illogical because the narrative is set up not to find any evidence that there's Extraterrestrial life.

I personally believe that the evidence is overwhelming that both intelligent life and microbial life exists.

The way the narrative is set up is that any evidence that points to extraterrestrial life is dismissed or explained away. People say their open minded but how can you find any evidence when all evidence is labled unknown or it's explained away?

It's like they say,"show me the evidence" and then when you show them the evidence it has to be something else even though they don't have any idea what that something else is.

I think you should start with the assumption that extraterrestrial life exists because there's no reason to reduce life in the universe to earth 4.5 billion years ago especially with what we know now.

You have:

Eyewitness accounts, abduction cases, mass sightings, pictures, video, trace evidence and more.

Also:

Physicist talk of Parallel universes and extra-dimension.
Liquid water on Mars.
NASA sees signs of Microbial life on Mars.
Billions of exoplanets.
Panspermia and directed Panspermia.
The universe could be a hologram, quantum computer or a simulation.
Dark matter/energy could make up 96% of the universe and we don't know what constitutes it.
Theoretical models of warp drive
dsc.discovery.com...
The big void in the universe could be a sign of another universe
www.newscientist.com...

So there's no reason to reduce life in the universe to earth 4.5 billion years ago.

[edit on 2-7-2009 by Matrix Rising]

reply posted on 2-7-2009 @ 04:32 PM by merka

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
People say their open minded but how can you find any evidence when all evidence is labled unknown or it's explained away?

Right. That's about it. I dont see quite what you're getting at.

If someone see a bright light fly across the sky that cant be explained away as an airplane, ballon, helicopter or whatnot, then its not very prudent to say "oh but that's evidence of the reptilian saucer ships that come here from the center of the earth through a dimensional stargate to transport people souls to another planet where they're gonna be used as soldiers in the war against the plejadan Greys!!!". No, you label it unknown. Anything else would be illogical...

Just like it would be illogical to assume that one thing automatically validate another. Even if we do find 100% irrefutable evidence of microbial life on Mars, it doesnt mean that all UFO sightings on Earth is validated.

So I believe we where at show me the evidence? Oh and something else than what you've presented in the thread

[edit on 2-7-2009 by merka]

reply posted on 2-7-2009 @ 05:21 PM by bloodline

reply to post by merka

Gotta agree. Who doesn't want to believe in aliens? It's an exciting topic right? Isn't that why we are all here? I'd say almost all skeptics are open minded. The evidence does not seem to be overwhelming IMO. The more debunking that goes on the better for the one's who've seen real UFO's. The conjecture of aliens of different races and all that is purely silly without evidence.

Nice post merka.

reply posted on 2-7-2009 @ 06:06 PM by Matrix Rising

reply to post by merka

Who said all UFO sightings would be validated?

Your debating a strawman and your trying to debate something that I never claimed. I noticed how your post didn't address any of the questions that I put forth concerning the illogical arguments.

Again, with everything I listed give me a reason why I should reduce life in the universe to earth 4.5 billion years ago?

Again, the assumption should be that life exists elswhere in the universe based science and the evidence.

For instance, we see a picture from Mars and people say it's a face or a statue. The skeptics/debunkers will immeadiately come out and say your just seeing things and with certainty they will say it's a rock. Some claim because of Occam's razor they have to call it a rock.

That's my question, why? With what we know today and what we don't know about the universe, on what basis is a rock following Occam's razor?

Again, how can you search for evidence this way when you make definite statements on something you can't know? If you are going to call it a rock and say people are seeing things, how is this open minded?

The position is illogical because there's no basis to reduce life in the universe to earth. That's soley based on a belief system not seeking the truth.

reply posted on 2-7-2009 @ 06:46 PM by Nohup

There's a lot of evidence, but nobody knows for sure what it's even evidence of. Not only that, but the evidence selected has a lot to do with what you're trying to prove, so there's a built-in bias there.

For instance, if you're trying to prove that UFOs are evidence of alien life, you'll probably stick to the basic flying saucer pictures, maybe abduction reports, and so on. You probably won't even consider ghost photos or eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot to be part of the evidence for UFO aliens.

But what if they are? What if Bigfoot and ghost reports represent a different aspect of manifestation of the same phenomenon? A kind of "leak" into this reality of other realities? Suddenly, you're throwing out a lot of perfectly good evidence because you want to prove a particular kind of thing, and won't be bothered with anything else. No matter how you look at it, that's not only illogical, it's also bad science.

The only logical thing to do is look at the available evidence and see what it adds up to. All the available evidence. And at the moment, we just don't know what it adds up to. There's too much evidence to say that there's nothing odd happening. But there's not enough of it to say for sure that there is absolutely ET life.

There's just as much, and maybe even more evidence to suggest that a lot of UFO activity has to do with human time travelers than it does with ET intelligence. And if the "answer" to your questions can either be ET intelligence or time travelers, you don't really have a definitive answer, do you? You're in a position where you just don't know. And that's where we stand. We just don't know. Could be ET. Could be time travelers. Could be something else.

It's illogical to come to a conclusion when there are still equally plausible answers out there, including "I don't know."

[edit on 2-7-2009 by Nohup]

reply posted on 2-7-2009 @ 07:00 PM by cripmeister

reply to post by Matrix Rising

You're making the conclusion that: if there's intelligent life elsewhere in the universe then aliens have visited planet Earth. That's totally illogical. Don't you agree?

reply posted on 2-7-2009 @ 07:19 PM by Histopherness

I would have to agree that the assumption that life exists elsewhere should be made. To assume otherwise would take more faith then not. I can't agree the abductions, sighting, pictures, etc are proof. None of those have been shown to be empirical.

Here is my alternative.

The only other life we are going to see visiting us is other intelligent life. So the vast majority of life in the universe we will be unaware of until such a time we can go visit it.

The distances are huge, so a technology superior to ours will be necessary. If you were to study an ant colony and you didn't want them to notice your existence do you think you could keep it from them? I'd say yes. Same with a superior tech.

Technologically advanced life and travel will require heavy metals. Iron, titanium, i.g. as well as fuels etc. These thing do not exist on earlier planet formations. It took the explosion of early stars to seed the galaxies with this matter older stars and any systems around them would be mostly hydrogen, helium, and a few other light elements. So any intelligent life in the universe would not be much older then ours; cosmically speaking. The likelyhood that an intelligent life that is so vastly superior to ours, and has a bent on exploration, and somehow came to be aware of our planet is exceedingly slim.

reply posted on 2-7-2009 @ 09:28 PM by PoetofTime

Thus the problem with people not believing simply because they cannot see it.

reply posted on 2-7-2009 @ 09:33 PM by Matrix Rising

reply to post by Nohup

What other plausible answers?

I just said the assumption should be made that extraterrestrial life exists based on what we know now. I havn't seen any reason to reduce life in the universe to earth 4.5 billion years ago.

I never said these ET come from here or there because I never claimed to know their origins. So your debating a claim that was never made.

I said that Extraterrestrials exists and this assumption has to be made because you can't reduce life in the universe to earth based on what we know now.

It's just like the multiverse. I have never seen another universe but I can make the assumption with Dr. Alan Guth and Professor David Deutsch that the multiverse exists based on what we know now.

Again I have yet to here why I should start with the assumption that life in the universe is reduced to earth 4.5 billion years ago.

So I don't have to remain in a state of constipated possibility to start with the assumption that Extraterrestrials exist.

The skeptic/debunker wants to remain in a state of limbo forever. We can never come to a conclusion based on the available evidence and all possibilities have to be equally possible. That's illogical. We always reach conclusions based on available evidence.

You have some physicist that accept Copenhagen while others say Parallel universes. Some think the universe is a quantum computer and some think the universe is a hologram.

These scientist don't have to be absolutely certain to reach a conclusion based on the evidence because they weigh the possibilities and come to a conclusion as to what's most likely.

So again, I think the skeptic/debunker position is illogical because it makes little sense to reduce life in the universe to earth based on what we know now.

We draw conclusions based on the available evidence in all walks of life. It seems like just with extraterrestrials we have to remain in a perpetual state of possibility. That makes no sense.

reply posted on 3-7-2009 @ 01:17 AM by merka

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
So again, I think the skeptic/debunker position is illogical because it makes little sense to reduce life in the universe to earth based on what we know now.

We draw conclusions based on the available evidence in all walks of life. It seems like just with extraterrestrials we have to remain in a perpetual state of possibility. That makes no sense.

Isnt that the point? We dont know now. Its very logical to reduce knowledge of life in the universe to earth based on what we know. In this case, 1+1 equals 1. Something unknown combined with something unknown is still something unknown.

Regarding perpetual state of possibility, that's pretty much skeptisicm for you. Question everything. That doesnt mean dismiss everything. If a saucer landed in the white house lawn, you can still question it. Are they aliens? Just because its a saucer that's landed on the white house lawn? What's your basis for that claim? Uh... That'd be Hollywood science fiction movies from the 50's. Not exactly a good foundation to build on. You dont deny the fact there's a freakin saucer on the white house lawn, but there's a possibility they could be from Earth, they could be dimensional, they could be undescribable, they could be anything BUT from this universe. Or they could be from Mars... Which technically only proves life in the solar system and we're back to square 1.

[edit on 3-7-2009 by merka]

reply posted on 3-7-2009 @ 01:32 AM by jd140

From what I understand about the way we came to be (if you don't buy the god theory) is that the right mix of compounds mixed together and out we came through billions of years of evolution.

The chances of the right compounds mixing together in the perfect condition is astronomical.

Whats the chances of this happening more then once?

reply posted on 3-7-2009 @ 04:45 AM by Daisy-Lola

I'm not sure I understand exactly what youre getting at.

Are you stating that all skeptics and debunkers dont believe in alien life. I'm a skeptic and I believe in the existence of aliens. I'm waiting for the 'Holy Grail' of evidence. But what that evidence is, depends on the views of the skeptic. For me, it would be meeting an alien. On that day my belief will change to knowing. Same as you don't believe in shoes. They're there, on your feet. You don't need to believe in the shoe for that.

The 4.6 billion year thing is also a bit puzzling to me as well. Life is theorised to have originated on Earth between 3.5-4 billion years ago.
Out of that time, humans, as we know them, only originates about 60,000 years ago. 60,000 compared to 4,000,000,000 years is hell of a difference.
A higher intelligence could have originated earlier if the factors were right (some believe they did, but thats another story), OR never at all. It's all probable. If we're wiped out like the dinosaurs, will something as/more intelligent evolve?

Drakes Equation takes these factors and more, into consideration. Even that is under a rethink

Then you come to lights in the sky. I don't get excited about fuzzy blobs of light on video, as all I see is a fuzzy blob of light. We're still discovering things about our planet. What we perceive as a UFO today could be a rare natural phenomenon that requires investigation, or it could be a ship from another world/dimension.

Also:

Physicist talk of Parallel universes and extra-dimension. - Still not proven
Liquid water on Mars. - Evidence of liquid water on Mars, not proven life is in it.
NASA sees signs of Microbial life on Mars. - Still under much debate
Billions of exoplanets. - As far as we understand, the right one has to be in the HZ
Panspermia and directed Panspermia. - hypothesis
The universe could be a hologram, quantum computer or a simulation. - sigh
Dark matter/energy could make up 96% of the universe and we don't know what constitutes it. - I still have trouble believing in that
Theoretical models of warp drive - Theoretical
dsc.discovery.com...
The big void in the universe could be a sign of another universe - "is beyond the present understanding of cosmology." from the opening paragraph of your linked article

Is there anything I haven't covered?

reply posted on 3-7-2009 @ 06:16 AM by Sam60

There is a big difference between a skeptic & a debunker.

I would describe myself as skeptical & critical, but I'm not simply a debunker. I look at every case with an open mind.

Therefore I think there is a problem with your position because you must differentiate between the two.

reply posted on 3-7-2009 @ 11:35 AM by DoomsdayRex

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
The reason I say it's illogical because the narrative is set up not to find any evidence that there's Extraterrestrial life.

You have not provided anything that is illogical on the part of the skeptic. If evidence presented can be explained through other means, if there is a problem with the evidence, then is not illogical to point out those problems or voice the other explanations. It would be intellectually dishonest to ignore those problems and other explanations if they do not fit your hypothesis.

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
I think you should start with the assumption that extraterrestrial life exists because there's no reason to reduce life in the universe to earth 4.5 billion years ago especially with what we know now.

No, you shouldn't. At the same time you should not assume it does not exist either. Because we just do not know. We cannot dismiss the possibility that other life exist and we cannot dismiss the possibility the universe is empty.

You should be engaging skepticism as a position, presenting evidence and building a case to support your position that alien life is visiting the planet. Instead, you are attempting to make skepticism/debunking a label. Employing it as a label allows you to dismiss and ignore any question or argument a skeptic has.

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
It's like they say,"show me the evidence" and then when you show them the evidence it has to be something else...

And thus you are engaging in the same behavior you accuse skeptics of. Since you already believe they will not accept any evidence you present, you can just ignore them.

reply posted on 3-7-2009 @ 01:35 PM by Matrix Rising

reply to post by Daisy-Lola

Your post proves my points.

Physicist talk of Parallel universes and extra-dimension. - Still not proven

Your debating a claim that was never made. I never said anything about it being proven. People come to conclusions based on the available evidence all of the time in all walks of life.

Again, it's illogical to reduce live in the universe to earth based on what we know now so you have to start with the assumption that life exists in the universe.

Again physicist from Dr. Michio Kaku to Professor David Deutsch have reached the conclusion that parallel universes and extra dimensions exist. My point is, you can reach a conclusion based on the available evidence. We do it all the time when it comes to Extraterrestrials the skeptic wants us to remain in a state of perpetual possibility which makes no sense.

Liquid water on Mars. - Evidence of liquid water on Mars, not proven life is in it.

I quote what NASA scientist said before we found liquid water on Mars. "Where there's water, there's life."

We found liquid water on Mars a planet right next to ours so it's just a matter of common sense when there's billions of exoplanets in the universe and we are finding planets in places where scientist thought planeta didn't exist like around red dwarfs.

NASA sees signs of Microbial life on Mars. - Still under much debate

See above post.

Billions of exoplanets. - As far as we understand, the right one has to be in the HZ

Wrong again. An earth like planet in the habitable Zone called Gliese 581c.
www.planetary.org...
Here's some more exoplanets in the HZ.
www.planetarybiology.com...

Panspermia and directed Panspermia. - hypothesis

Very good theories that I think make more sense than the magical soup being struck by lightning.

The universe could be a hologram, quantum computer or a simulation. - sigh

Again, I think you need to study these things because you apparently don't know why physicist from Oxford to M.I.T. accepts these things.

Dark matter/energy could make up 96% of the universe and we don't know what constitutes it. - I still have trouble believing in that

Not a matter of belief. When we measure the energy density of the universe visible matter or what's called baryonic matter only makes up 4% of the matter in the universe. I'm not saying that dark/matter/energy is the answer but the observation is not a matter of belief.

Theoretical models of warp drive - Theoretical

Theoretical yes, but saying that means nothing. You have to provide evidence as to why the calculations are wrong or why the physics isn't sound.

The big void in the universe could be a sign of another universe - "is beyond the present understanding of cosmology." from the opening paragraph of your linked article

If you read the article, it's not saying that cosmology could never understand this. That's what theories are for.

It was predicted that we would find a huge void in the universe by the theory. This void would be the signature of another universe.

The theory predicted that a void would be found 500 million light years across with a red shift of 1. The void found was 900 million light years across with a red shift of 1.

Again, my point is that there's more than enough evidence to start with the assumption that extraterrestrial life exists in the universe. There's NO reason to reduce life in the universe to earth based on what we know now.

reply posted on 3-7-2009 @ 01:38 PM by Hawkwind.

reply to post by Matrix Rising

Do you realise how many of these kind of threads exist on A.T.S? There's usually at least one a week and it's always the same old arguements, it's like watching a wheel go around and around.

reply posted on 3-7-2009 @ 01:50 PM by Matrix Rising

reply to post by Hawkwind.

Again, skeptics/debunkers have not been able to answer the simple question. Why is it logical to reduce life in the universe to eart based on what we know now?

Skeptics/debunkers always claim that the position that we are the only life in the universe is a logical position and I say based on what? They say Occam's razor says that everything has to be explained as just rocks or weather balloons and again I ask based on what? On what basis do you make this assumption?

reply posted on 3-7-2009 @ 02:03 PM by Essan

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
reply to post by merka

Who said all UFO sightings would be validated?

Your debating a strawman and your trying to debate something that I never claimed. I noticed how your post didn't address any of the questions that I put forth concerning the illogical arguments.

Actually it is you who started by debating a strawman.

Given the money spent in trying to find alien life, on what basis can you claim that

The reason I say it's illogical because the narrative is set up not to find any evidence that there's Extraterrestrial life.

???

Virtually everyone agrees there is likely to be alien life - but we cannot yet prove it because we have not yet found it.

UFOs are a different matter - the likelihood of aliens visiting Earth just now and being from a planet with identical chemistry and biology and circling an identical sun to our own and having almost identical technology to our own is pushing coindicidence a bit far. And there is anyway no evidence that this is what UFOs are. But we do all think there is alien life.

But when we find anything beyond the microbe stage we expect it to be very alien indeed.

reply posted on 3-7-2009 @ 02:15 PM by Hawkwind.

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
reply to post by Hawkwind.

Again, skeptics/debunkers have not been able to answer the simple question. Why is it logical to reduce life in the universe to eart based on what we know now?

Skeptics/debunkers always claim that the position that we are the only life in the universe is a logical position and I say based on what? They say Occam's razor says that everything has to be explained as just rocks or weather balloons and again I ask based on what? On what basis do you make this assumption?

Out of all the sceptics on this site I would ''guess' that only about 10 percent would say there is no life in the universe, probably less. I made a thread once trying to dismantle the myth of sceptics not believing in life in the universe, most sceptics will say there has to be life elsewhere in the universe from a mathematical point alone, it's just that most sceptics do not believe that life has visited earth simply because the only evidence available is crappy video footage and pics and hearsay/testimony. When it comes down to it, out of all the thousands of sightings and stories and abductions there is stil absolutely nothing at all that can be counted as real proof, nothing.

reply posted on 3-7-2009 @ 02:18 PM by bloodline

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
reply to post by Hawkwind.

Again, skeptics/debunkers have not been able to answer the simple question. Why is it logical to reduce life in the universe to eart based on what we know now?

Skeptics/debunkers always claim that the position that we are the only life in the universe is a logical position and I say based on what? They say Occam's razor says that everything has to be explained as just rocks or weather balloons and again I ask based on what? On what basis do you make this assumption?

I believe in life all over the universe. No skeptic I know of reduces the arguement to such simple terms and believes there is life just on earth. Who is arguing that life is just on earth?

Your above post is extremely sophmoric.

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