Believe in aliens/UFOs?

Great Debates
41

To be as nifty as possible - the naivity in question stems from people who ignorantly try to approach/explain the subject from the very basic levels of human understanding that they possess, or with the limited & everchanging knowledge attained through means of conventional science. It’s kinda’ like being shown a picture of an infamous “gray (big-headed hollywood-esque alien w/ large, dark eyes)” for the first time, noticing it’s lack of reproductive organs, and then assuming that it couldn’t reproduce… at all. In essence, the explanations & theories we use to explain the unvierse are nothing more than mere assumptions derived from a network of “super-smart” bugs living on a micro-sized rock in the middle of nowhere.

Again; the evidence exists - and in large quantities - however, not all of it is authentic. It really just comes down to it being one’s own job to deduce from the existing shreds and formulating logical conclusions. Many science-types are sooo ridiculously close-minded when it comes to acknowledgement of the phenomenon, and this is primarily due to their arrogant ways of thinking, a la “if i haven’t been taught it at school, then it abso-fucking-lutely cannot exist!” It however, is ALSO due to three very rare whims of intelligence that - unlike scientific knowledge attained through education - cannot be bought: common sense, deductive reasoning & the gift of pattern recognition. Other science-types, like astronauts Edgar Mitchel, Gordon Cooper & Buzz Aldrin, or aerospace engineers like Dr. Robert Wood - and a plethora of other famous scientific characters - are well aware that the phenomenon is real & staring right at us. Infact, over 400 government, military, and scientific officials came forth on May 9, 2001 in a historic national press club conference conducted by Steven M. Greer, in what was known as the “Disclosure Project.” The purpose of this conference was to hear & record witness testimony offered by those 400+ top-ranking officials surrounding their personal knowledge/sightings of ufos/aliens (disclosureproject.org).

I’ll admit, my intial intention, as downright & dirty as it may sound, was to advertise the website on various forums, not to partake in long, drawn-out debates on the forums I advertised the site in. I advise the skeptics once again however to pay visit to it, as it contains lots of info. pertaining to common questions that are often asked, like whether or not “all ufo sightings have been explained,” or “best single pieces of evidence validating the alien/UFO phenomenon,” or “why a small percentage of crop circles are infact of et origin.”

I’m out & gone.

Chris reznor :slight_smile:

42

Pal, if you can’t spare the time for us, we can’t spare the time for you.

43

So you’re spamming us? Buh-bye.

44

Where are they? Did they come all this way to hide? Did they send out drones to scout for habitable planets, or just roll the dice and get lucky that Earth fills the bill.

Where is their ship? It must be large enought to carry all of those flying saucers everyone is seeing.

And that would be hundreds of thousands of years. If not millions. One light second is 186,000 miles. The nearest star system is 4.2 light years.

I just did the math using a calculator and got 5.865696 × 10 to the Twelth power miles in one light year. Yeah, probably millions of years to get here. Maybe a mathmetician can help me out.

45

While I’m not the moderator for this forum, rather than can your ass, I think it’s more fitting to let you remain here, with the ability to post. You’ll perhaps find that people here take this as a challenge. They try their best to give you factual arguments, something that you don’t do.

A wager–you’re not “out and gone.”

46

Oh, I’d say he was out and gone long ago. Do I win?

47

I usually regret this, but the truth is the truth…

I saw one. Had about five minutes, maybe less, to observe. Naturally, out in the boondocks, no one around but me. Did my best to observe rationally, made difficult may the alarms going off in my head “I’m seeing UFO! A real, honest to God UFO! Which I can’t, because they aren’t, but there it fucking IS!”

I’ve always been pretty willing to accept the existence of life on other planets, seems silly not to. And I always had an interest in the subject since a minor flap in Waco, Texas, when I was a child. Always took the position that 99.99% were certainly nothing of the sort. But I saw the other one. And thats pretty much that. Do I believe that what I saw wasn’t from around these here parts. Yeah. Do I admit the possibility that I might be hallucinating, deranged, or otherwise addled. About as much as you do, I suppose. (I’ve had hallucinations, I know what they are like…)

So, WTF? Two possibilities, really. One, that Uncle Albert is wrong, or that the cosmic speed limit has a loophole. Another is that the constraints of time are not as relevent as we think. A third that I lean to for no good reason is the “Neumann machine”, a self replicating robot that propagates itself and passes its exploratory mission along as part of its programming. (Which you can totally destroy by making it admit an error, infinite loop-de-loop.)

One vital point has altered over the years in the big questions about life. Used to be we considered life to be very rare and delicate, requiring exquisitely defined conditions. We find differently these days, life can muscle its way into very inhospitable environments. Darwinian advantage: no competition.

In an infinite environment, whatever can be done, will be done. We should be more surprised to see no hint of extraterrestial life than its opposite.

Further, I rather suspect that DNA did not evolve exclusively on earth, but floats about in the dust of space, like spores seeking a petri dish. I don’t think something as complex as DNA could have evolved on Earth as quickly as it would have had to, since the timeline for rudimentary organisms keeps getting pushed back further and further. Panspermia is the (rather unfortunate) name given to my opinion.

The “sighting” hasn’t changed my world view that I can tell, anymore than yours would be altered by spotting a Chevy Nova. Part of me wishes I hadn’t, but not the part that loves wonder and surprise.

48

I’ll answer this out of order. How long to get to Alpha Centauri? Using a ‘gravitational slingshot’ from Jupiter you could probably get up to 150,000 mph and it would take about 17,900 years to reach. But you better figure out how to slow down before you get there.

If we assume ion propulsion drive isn’t just deep in the realm of science fiction and the technology will only get better, then:

30 years to Alpha Centauri.

I said I don’t think there are flying saucers buzzing our planet.

Did they come all this way to hide? How should I know what their thinking would be. For all I know the asteroid belt is filled with alien artifacts and/or probes. Maybe they got here 100 million years ago but they’re so different from us and so much more advanced than us they burrowed deep into Europa and they’ve been patiently waiting there ever since.

Perhaps they’re so advanced they’ve developed bodies or containers for their consciousness which allow them to live for tens of thousands of years or more. Maybe they’ve figured out all the mysteries of the universe and the only thing left for them is to observe other forms of life and they’ve necessarily become so incredibly patient that a 10,000 year trip between stars is nothing to them.

Like I said, Earth has oxygen and if you’ve got powerful telescopes anyone could have seen our planet probably teeming with life from 1000’s of light years away millions & millions & millions of years ago. No need to throw dice. Send probes to solar systems with oxygen water planets, for instance.

49

LISTER: What do you believe in, then? Do you believe in God?

RIMMER: God? Certainly not! What a preposterous thought! I believe in aliens, Lister.

50

Levdrakon,

Oh. So you do math. Well pooh on you.

Thanks for the lesson.

51

Not really. Space is big, and we haven’t been around all that long. Certainly I agree that the chances are darn good that other life, even intelligent life, exists in the universe, even our very own galaxy. But them finding us, or us finding them, are likely many, many years down the road.

52

Do you mean years or light years? :slight_smile:

53

If you guys had any scientific sophistication, you would know that galactic time is measured in parsecs.

54

Hey! elucidator is George Lucas!

55

Couldn’t you have waited until someone posted me a snotty and condescending correction?

56

Ok, I’ll help . . .

:rolleyes: For someone called “elucidator”, you sure spread misinformation. Anyone with a smidgeon of scientific knowledge knows that parsecs are a unit of distance, not time. You embarrass yourself and the board by posting such nonsense. The goal of the board is to fight ignorance, not spread it !

57

I thought I was sufficiently snotty and condescending. Did you want to be confused with the creator of Revenge of the Sith?

58

[ /Moderating ]

Following samclem’s suggestion, I’m not going to make this disappear right away, in case anyone else wants to have some fun with it. If Creznor changes his mind and returns to attempt to discuss this, we may let him stay. If he was serious that he was just spamming, he’s toast.

59

At last! A member of the Conspiracy confesses!

:wink:

60

Perhaps aliens have kidnapped Creznor and are examining him anally. :eek:

Mind you, I did like his appeal that the conclusive evidence for aliens is that several hundred peole attended a UFO conference.
What did they talk about? (since there’s no evidence!)
Does the thousands who regularly attend Star Trek* gatherings prove that the Enterprise exists?

*No offence to Trekkies!