Scepticism and the UFO

reply to post by Aliensun


The only reason that anyone believes that a UFO crashed at Roswell was because the base PR officer told the press that to cover up what really happened. Do you believe everything that Army press officers tell you?

data5091
There are too many cases where everything as it relates to ufo's that cannot be explained in any other way, so as to be the possibility that we are dealing with extraterrestrials, not from our solar system.

There is still a lot of debate about exactly when it's determined that something "cannot be explained any other way." There is also come debate about exactly where on the list of potential explanations "aliens" should be. To some people think the list goes something like this:

* Black project aircraft
* Aliens
* Interdimensional creatures (including time travelers)
* Demons or other boogie men like fairies and leprechauns
* Unknown

When the list probably, logically should go like this:

* Unknown
* Black project aircraft
* Other things never proven to exist

Way too many people are very quick to jump from "unexplainable" to "alien," or even equate the two. That just ain't right.

DJW001
The only reason that anyone believes that a UFO crashed at Roswell was because the base PR officer told the press that to cover up what really happened. Do you believe everything that Army press officers tell you?

The Army never makes mistakes. Don't you know that?
Never mind that the acronyms SNAFU and FUBAR were pretty much Army inventions.

I am always amazed that of the tons of people outside at any given time, the witnesses to unidentified craft are usually very minimal, even unique. I'm not being dismissive here, but rather wonder at many reports in part because of this. Yes, I do know of reports at the other end of the spectrum too. However in all cases, I have to wonder about military craft testing and exercises. Are those triangles ours? Why would they not be? Cloaking, uncloaking, sharp right angle turns, hovering, stopping on a dime, we know these are not technologies of the future any more. So what is the truth? If humans cannot endure faster speed than Mach 6, then what about drones that might and zoom out of sight? And are those triangle sightings seen all over the world now or only in the US (until other countries copy them or attempt to?)

Our magnetosphere is weakening and collapsing in places, according to scientific reports I've read. Can the orbs be related to this? We've all heard of those mysterious lights being seen over a fault line before an earthquake. I recall one along a railroad track in New York State that had me fascinated. Can this phenomenon also affect people's brain waves so that they too are affected by dreamlike scenarios and lose track of time until those brain waves return to normal? Could the foo fighters of old be somehow related to aerodynamics, (something beyond my knowledge base)?

I am receptive to the notion of UFOs, but I await more concrete proof. First-hand subjective accounts seem real to the one relating it of course, and I seldom doubt that they saw something, but what was it they really saw? Could there be a practical explanation offered rather than the rush of some people to the religious fervor of blind belief?

Great topic for discussion, not to mention great replies.

I think a lot of folks here are on the same page as I. Not to reiterate others, but by definition, a skeptic cannot accept unfounded conclusions - it isn't a matter of denial so much as lack of good evidence supporting a reason to a given phenomenon.

In the case of UFOs, the mystery is vast. I've witnessed them, yet I question what exactly I've seen. I can't simply jump to the idea that they are flying saucers piloted by beings from a near or far star, nor can I accept the idea that what I've seen can be explained by some earthly phenomena that I'm mistaking for a UFO out of simple ignorance.

Are they military? Perhaps. This, to me, is the most likely explanation for many UFO sightings. As to how the technology was discovered, we flip back right around to the basic definition of a skeptic: There is no good evidence to reason that the military attained such technology from a UFO crash or contact or secret operations involving inter-dimensional channeling using copious amounts of halluncinogens and a kazoo band.

What is apparent and beyond skepticism, as the OP suggests, is that the phenomenon exists. People see UFOs. What are they? Where do they come from? These aren't questions that are up for a definite answer. Any and all explanations past the fact that "the phenomenon exists" are conjecture, speculation or pure folly. Some are better than others, such as the military craft idea (by no means my own idea), which is why I tend to lean towards the more earthly explanations in my personal experiences with the phenomenon.

And please, to anyone that has had an abduction experience or direct sight of beings that are obviously not human, I'm not trying to discount your experience; I'm simply stating my point of view.

I can understand why someone could think something was real based on the eyewitness testimony alone. Once there are so many reports, it becomes more and more difficult to say that ALL such reports are false. I especially like this train of thought for the sasquatch phenomenon, since many try to discount witnesses, which becomes harder when more and more people are filing reports.

And sticking with the same example, it is true that out of the thousands of bigfoot repots, there are going to be a certain percentage that are hoaxes, and a certain percentage that are misidentifications. However, I wouldn't expect this percentage to be all that large. And for the phenomenon to be false, the total of those two numbers would have to 100%, and I don't find that plausible.

It is possible for a witness to misidentify a known animal, and bear with me as I am getting to the connection to UFO's, but it does occur. Especially if there are obstructions such as trees between the eyewitness and the subject being viewed. However, there are a large percentage of cases where the sightitng was in the open, at a relatively close range. This makes misidentification much less likely, especially across a wide number of reports. This is because the differences in alleged sasquatch and other animals are quite striking, and are not that easy to misconstrue. And I know, because I saw one once myself.

So let's apply this same type of analysis to the phenomenon of UFO's. We know that Unidentified objects exist, although we cannot say if they are alien in origin, like you said. But unlike with the bigfoot phenomenon, when an eyewitness is seeing lights in the sky, there are many more potential objects that could be seen than for a sasquatch. A bear is the only thing that sort of approaches what a bigfoot looks like, but even they don't look very similar. But with lights in the sky, when that is all that can be seen, which happens in the majority of UFO cases, you have a whole host of other phenomena that could potentially explain the sighting.

And for that exact reason, a larger percentage of reports must be discounted as misidentifications. I used to watch jets and sometimes prop planes land on the air force bases I was stationed inside, and I can say that at night a conventional airplane can occasionally appear quite unconventional. Especially if it is doing specific maneuvers.

Most people are accustomed to looking at things on the ground, and can fairly accurately judge distances and sizes and whatnot. But in the air this is not true. Most people couldn't tell 500 feet from 2000, or a mile from 10, as they are not accustomed to making such judgements. And our brains, when looking at lights in the sky, has a tendency to try to make a shape from it. So if a person saw a configuration of lights, they might assume that a craft had these lights along the various edges or corners of the craft, just as an example. This is highly inaccurate.

I distinctly remember thinking I saw a UFO one night, as I was watching this ball of light in the sky, just sitting there. Then it started getting bigger as I watched it. I was thinking, this couldn't be a plane, for obvious reasons. Finally I didn't want to sit there anymore, as the light wasn't doing anything. Sometime later I went back outside and looked in the same area, and what do I see...I see a freaking cargo plane, which looked kind of like a C-130 to me flying quite low and heading over my head. Sine the plane was coming towards me, and because I could see it from so far away, it just looked strange. There might have been other factors that made it look strange that I don't even know about, but it turned out that is what happened.

And I am probably more used to seeing planes than many other people are, people who have seen strange lights in the sky. And I can still be easily fooled apparently, so that means many others can too. I've seen jets dropping flares on multiple occasions, and if they are travelling directly away from you, as an example, the configuration is going to look different than if they are flying perpendicular to the direction you are facing. And even flares can look strange sometimes, although generally once you've seen what they look like it is pretty easy to spot them.

But one of the trickiest things involving aircraft, especially high flying jets, is the way they can maneuver while flying. They can be at angle to an observer such that the lights, say on the wings, look to be appearing and disappearing, or rapidly changing positions. Or a light seems to suddenly change size or color, simply because a new face is presented to the observer.

I am not saying this is an explanation for all cases, but for some. Then there is the fact that we don't even yet understand certain phenomena. Ball lighting for instance, or the possibility that static electricity in the clouds, or other forces, can produce lights that we don't know about. I have long believed that seismic activity causes visual aerial phenomena, and I believe that scienists are starting to understand this fact. So even weird lights in the sky could have a mundane explanation. Aliens need not be the explanation, even if the eyewitness cannot pinpoint exactly what is causing the lights.

So my point is that one can easily misidentify lights in the sky, and will do so much more often than they will misidentify something on the ground. But within the UFO casebook there are other sightings besides lights in the sky. And such reports would be better suited for proving the validity of aliens in my opinion. So I will agree that there are aerial phenomena that stump people, I cannot say that aliens are the cause of these. And there are probably other causes that I have failed to even address in this post.

So this type of eyewitness evidence is not concrete, unless the witness actually saw a solid craft, and not just the lights, with their brain filling in where the craft should be. I am not opposed to the idea of aliens out there in the universe, and am not opposed to the idea of aliens visiting earth. I think that out of the volumes of eyewitness accounts, at least one of them has to authentic when it discusses having had contact with an alien ship or alien being. So only a fraction of a percentage of reports need to be accurate for the claim to be true. That is not a tall order.