Why don't you believe? (@Non-Believers and Skeptics)

reply to post by randomtangentsrme


The entire point of the thread is calling out the skeptics and non believers.. so we can understand what it is about reality that they DONT believe.

We already know how crazy people are who DO believe. This thread IS NOT ABOUT THOSE PEOPLE. Clearly read the title and the OP to understand this

While I'm a believer in UFOs and alien visitation, I will say that I do not believe in other dimensions (in the sense of alternate realities, parallel universes, or a "multiverse") especially as an explanation for these things. I think the "other dimension" explanation is a poor excuse, and just seems to be explaining one unknown with another. As Arthur C. Clarke's third law goes: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Just because something disappears or reappears doesn't mean it's phasing in and out of other dimensions.

I can't say I'm entirely convinced that other dimensions as such do not exist, but I feel like it's unlikely, and completely unnecessary for explaining other phenomena.

As for as psychologically why I believe this, I'd say it's because I'm a nuts and bolts kind of person. Dimensional travel just seems too much like science fiction and magic.

That said, I was a non-believer of the subject of UFOs and aliens as well, until I actually confronted myself with the data and the evidence. And I mean actual data and actual evidence, not the stuff that floats around ATS.
Also, anyone who is expecting video or photographs of UFOs as "proof" is kidding themselves. The proof already exists for UFOs, the question now is only whether they're extraterrestrial or something else.

That's quite a broad-brush you're painting with there. You go all the way from aliens to multi-dimensions in the same paragraph. It might be helpful to narrow your aim there rather than include the entire universe of possibilities in one rant. Let's just take one small aspect of this to use as an example. Look what skeptics and "non-believers" are being asked to believe and see if you can figure out why they are reluctant to do so.

* Billy Meier not only took pictures of alien beam ships, he also traveled back in time to see dinosaurs and is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. But his Peleadian girlfriend, Semjase, turns out to have been a guest on the Donna Reed show and his dinosaur pictures was lifted from a contemporary book, Meier's picture of a ray gun is actually a toy model you can get on e-Bay

* Dr. Jonathan Reed captured an alien and put it in a refrigerator. His picture of an alien craft is a toy model.

* Truman Bethurum met a UFO captain named Aura Rhanes, a cute Latin-looking woman who wore a beret at a jaunty angle. She was from the planet Clarion, which is on the other side of the moon so we can't see it.

* Steven Greer "vectors in" UFOs all the time on his camping trips, which cost hundreds of dollars to join. The UFOs land right in front of you as buzzers from various "detectors" go off. Only problem is that they are invisible. His web site once had a picture of a common woodland moth as an "alien light being."

This is but a drop in the bucket of what you might call “UFO Fraud,” out and out charlatanism regarding the phenomenon. There’s a lot of it, some of it told very convincingly, that you must get through on your way to believing. Take a look at ufowatchdog.com. It’s old and outdated, but it gives you an example of the depth and breadth of the fraud we are all facing. There are hundreds of intentional fakes and frauds out there, no question. They’ve been caught red-handed.

Add to that the thousands of UFO encounters that turn out to be diving seagulls, reflection of interior lights, street lamps, aircraft both known and unknown, planets such as Venus, lanterns, car lights on the next hill over (Thanks, Roxanne!), meteors, and completely natural phenomena. These are not reported by people who are being intentionally deceptive. They are just mistaken.

But many are insistent. They can’t believe they were mistaken. I remember years ago seeing a “UFO” in a picture I thought was damned good. It defied explanation until someone here pointed out it was a diving seagull. It helped that the picture was taken at the seashore, but he pointed out the eyes, the tail, the wings, all in the perfect shape of a flying disk. And I said, “Oh, crap. fooled again.”

The next time it happened years later I took one look at the pic and said, “That’s a diving bird.” The perpetrator of the pic insisted it was a UFO, to the point of calling me names as a dreaded skeptic who refused to believe, kind of like you are doing in your rant, OP, except this was specifically directed at me, personally. This guy did not have the experience of a diving bird before, so his mind refused to interpret it that way. I had, and so because of that experience I was able to identify it as a non-UFO. You don’t need to invoke the term UFO if you don’t have to.

Now what about all the rational people who have seen things? What about them? I agree. Pilots, police officers, people with reputations to lose have encountered unidentified phenomena. They certainly remain unidentified, but we also have to weigh those kinds of encounters against other explanations.

The first legitimate question is: Why do you insist they are aliens? Surely you do not know that for a fact. Despite some truly irrational cries from certain quarters, “UFO” does NOT MEAN “alien craft.” There’s an extremely good chance unexplained UFOs are from here. In fact, we KNOW that to have been an absolute fact in the past. The SR-71 Blackbird was seen and called a UFO many times by ground and airborne observers, an explanation the US Air Force thought was just fine. Secret aircraft are naturally seen as UFOs. Our ubiquitous triangles are another example. It’s an open secret.

Now let’s take this a step further. I do not know ANYONE who does not acknowledge the idea that somewhere in the universe, perhaps many places in the universe, there exists what we would call alien life. Nobody. So where are all these people you claim exist? What are their names? Aren’t you making a grand generalization that you accuse others of making?

And just for the record, where do you get your information? How do you know what aliens would think? Have you ever been on one of these starships? Ever spoken to an alien? WHERE, precisely, are these extra dimensions you want us to believe in? All you have are your own beliefs, with nothing to back them up. When you can tell us where Clarion is, write back.

reply to post by LoveisanArt

First off, let me state that I HAVE experienced unexplainable aerial phenomena. Twice, I have seen flying craft whose movements could not be explained by conventional explanations. Airplanes, jets, rockets, satellites, meteors, etc. But that does not make them alien in origin. It just puts them outside of conventional explanation.

Secondly, I spent a good portion of my life as a devout believer in a cult. While I see the value of intuition in my life, I have learned not to live by my beliefs and feelings. Evidence is important to me. I won't be a member of another cult. Especially a UFO cult.

As to the rest of your post, it is subjective. And that's OK. I'm a very openminded kind of person. I'm willing to consider things most won't touch. But considering something, and buying into it are two different things.

You ask why I'm not a believer? The same reason I'm not a disbeliever. There are other explanations to what I have witnessed, read, and viewed in images and video. Yet I don't rule out your explanation either.

reply to post by spacedoubt


This. I believe that there was a time that ufology could have evolved into a legitimate scientific field of research. However the second aliens became the de facto answer for any anomalous object in the sky and anyone who believed differently became a shill/disinfo agent/ignorant/etc the possibility of this ever happening disappeared.

Originally posted by LoveisanArt
The first posts I recieve of "skeptics" is full of "I have not seen". This is exactly what I said in the OP. I didnt ask for sarcasm or anything, quite frankly you all went off topic..

WHY dont you belive. Just because you havent seen? Or something in your mind or consciousness that believes its impossible for it to exist?
Your individual Life, your personality; what is it that makes you think the life you are living doesnt involve other realms or beings?
The topic isnt about lack of evidence; its about you personally, what you feel about this aspect of reality.

How do you prove a negative? Isn't the burden of proof on those claiming such stuff? Nice try OP to flip the concept, but to me, an epic fail.

No, imo people haven't gone off topic. You asked why people are skeptical and they have answered you the best way they can.
But to try and add to your topic. I used to be very optimistic re say, extraterrestial beings, but then I started to think.


Look at the huge number of co-incidences for life to get started then reach a level of thought and reasoning here on earth. a few points, hopefully others may ad to this.

Glodilocks zone ( I know this is expanding all the time but it is still a factor)?

The fact that to get the moon there was a massive collision that ended up forming our moon at just the right distance and size as to slowly move away from the earth to let the spin of the earth stabilise and the tides occur?

Then the tides themselves to bring about (what's it called ? ) circadian rhythm ?,

The need for such beings to be able to travel across vast distances of space in a life time seems to suggest they would have to spend generations in space just to get here ?

The idea that the speed of light has been broken ?

The idea that these beings are existing at the same time as we are ?



Each of the probabilities here are so very small and when (not added but ) multiplied together, imo, they are possibly getting close to the number of stars in the known universe.

At one point, "logic" told me that there "must" be others "out there" but as time goes on, I have changed this view to one of skepticism

But please OP show me the error of my ways. In all sincerity, that would be great.

Originally posted by yourmaker
Aliens are real because we are real.

the distance of space travel combined with the likelihood of technological prowess while maintaining a moral society is just too much relative to our own species..

sure we can send a robot to mars but that is no where near the same capability as moving a few people there.
add in the distances between stars and it's laughable..

You have not experienced reality off the curvature of the Earth, you speak in a manner that feels when humanity was born the universe was born..

Alien beings who were operating like we are today, but eons and eons ago. HAve deffinately mastered space/time travel.

But you havent experienced this, so you dont understand it, so it cannot exist. Science cant travel to the Pleiades in a few hours, so its impossible... until science figures it out.. (which could take eons and eons).,

So debunking and skepticism is based on what we have experienced, what we know, what we have perceived.
Since you havent experienced ETs and space/time travel it cant be apart of reality, what we calll "Life"?

hmm.. yea mentality like that makes it easy to control an entire population

Originally posted by ArMaP

The following is my opinion as a member participating in this discussion.

Originally posted by Klassified
For some, "skepticism" has become just as much of a religion as Christianity, or any other religion. Anything that goes against what they believe to be true, they will reject.

That's not scepticism, scepticism is not about rejecting things, is about doubting about their existence. That's why I can never really say that something does not exist, I can only really say that I find it likely or not to be real.

edit on 24/11/2012 by ArMaP because: to add the "this my opinion" thingy

Exactly ArMap. That is why I put the word skepticism in quotes. Because they aren't real skeptics. extra DIV