I don’t think linking the two subjects together is useful if we are attempting to actually form a solid physically bound reality to either phenomenon. UFOs obviously exist as the very definition defines that fact that if YOU see something in the sky that you can’t identify then it is, by definition, an Unknown Flying Object. Ghosts, on the other hand, are a completely different set of phenomena.
May I recommend that you dial back your truculence-meter? You don’t come off as a flake, but instead as a person who wishes to be taken seriously. If I am correct, I would strongly advise you to be careful of your tone. The membership here is quite intelligent and mindful of what many of us call ‘woo’. I suggest you rethink your narrative and actually focus on your subject a bit more clearly.
Also, if you ever misuse the word ‘theory’ in the manner that you did in regards to science then you will be disabused of your incorrect usage. We have words for a reason. Definitions in context matter.
How about common courtesy squashing it then? It’s rude to invite people to talk and then talk down to them. I asked a question. Participate or don’t but there is no need for snark from anyone.
As for my job, it takes a certain kind of arrogance to tell me that I don’t know what my job is. And no, I didn’t come up with the list. I told you that. There are organizations and groups who readily provide names based on a number of things, but its not all that difficult when you look at the body of work. There’s maybe a hundred people total who’ve written prolifically on the subject. Throw out the names of the cut and paste guys who snip other people’s research and paste it together and you lose about a third. It’s a surprisingly small number of people. They belong to associations, foundations, and institutes. These are paid lecturers who have offered sworn testimony before Congress. I did not add not remove a single name from the list. All I did was choose who I thought would make a substantive contribution. And I interviewed both believers and non.
Researching to find subjects for an article is easy. You look around and usually the top ten candidates are the ones doing the most in a field. You look into their reputations and you read their work. That usually does it, but in this case the believer and the non-believer both approved of one another. When the skeptics weigh in on behalf of someone, they’re usually the real deal.
If you’re totally honest you’d admit that you haven’t read 500 pages on the subject we’re talking about and you keep declaring that no evidence exists. I used to do that on this subject to, but it’s wrong. UFOs exist. What they are and where they’re from varies on a case by case basis. People see something, they usually react in fear and they expect somebody to tell them what their sighting means. I see nothing wrong with people who do that impartially and truthfully. If you do, fine. That’s your opinion but it wouldn’t be entirely out of line for you to ease up off me a bit and accept that we’re not going to agree on everything, but you don’t actually know me. So, your judgments are not only premature, but lack the “evidence” you try and cloak yourself in. Like it or not, witness testimony IS evidence. Documentation is evidence. Some of its crap and some doesn’t mean what people might think. That’s why finding of fact without information bias is needed.
[QUOTE=RadioActiveRich]
Not pushing a theory. Just defending the rights of others to have a theory without it being crapped on by people who get their news from Google and Twitter.
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So, no evidence then. You are Just Asking Questions, etc etc. See how the word ‘belief’ would factor into your view on this?
I would rethink it if I were you. If you can’t hold your own in a discussion on a message board and think through your arguments well enough to do any better than you are doing here I wouldn’t take on a book…unless you can sell rights on the History Channel, in which case you could make millions even if it’s completely horseshit. Hm…maybe not such a bad idea, since CT and whack-a-do woo sells.
As for my REAL first name, here’s a hint…it begins with ‘X’.
Well, it IS the point…you see, if you are talking about UFOs of supposed alien or extra-terrestrial origin, there is exactly as much evidence for that as there is for ghosts. Or any other woo. Which is to say all the ‘evidence’ is anecdotal or highly speculative. Thus, they are in the same category from a skeptics perspective, and would only be meaningful to a true believer wrt a difference between them.
There are people who dedicate a huge percentage of their lives to proving Elvis is still alive, that 9/11 is a vast conspiracy by the US government, Jews or some combination of the two, and that JFK was assassinated by multiple gunmen hired by the mob and/or the CIA. That doesn’t mean they are spending their time in a worth while fashion…no more than folks who dedicate their lives to solving the mystery of UFOs. I dismiss them all based on a lack of solid evidence. Show me evidence and I’ll be more inclined to give it serious thought.
Apparently “UFOlogist” is anyone who has any thoughts about UFOs. I took a picture of a “UFO” once. I guess we’d better add my name to the list. Call me Dr. Musicat, the noted UFOlogist. As opposed to UROlogist.
I appreciate both your input and your advice, but I think if you stroll around the forum here you’ll find that I am not the only person being treated inhospitably. I see people slapping each other around all over the place and that would be fine except that we either invite or accept an invitation into a conversation and the very first comment is a snarky “look how smart I am” instead of something meaningful. People want to dissect every tiny word when they know full well that their dissection moves drastically off topic. That’s not a sign of intelligence, although I have no doubt it’s there, it’s a sign of insecurity. I haven’t pretended to know anything I don’t and I’ve been as fair as possible to all sides of this, but people jump in, read a response without reading any of the preceding text. Normal for a forum? Yes. Courteous, intelligent, or informed? Nope. So, how about you let people find their way here a little bit and give them the benefit of the doubt once in a while? Perhaps that intelligence you speak of can sniff out the subtext and not linger on the obvious. The light may be better at your place, but when you come to someone else’s it’s a tad rude to blame them for that tiny little moment it takes to extend some courtesy - dim lighting at the new guys place notwithstanding. Again, sincerely appreciate your input. Hope you appreciate mine in the spirit in which it is intended.
I’ve answered my share of questions. You don’t read the thread I guess. Just look for your name and jump in? Read the thread and ask away, but how about asking about what I’ve actually said and not what you THINK I said or might have said?
How could I know that? Nobody has said as much and I can’t help but notice you didn’t bother even answering the question? With all that knowledge you’re talking about, it sounds like you’re exactly the person to answer the question. No?
You haven’t answered anything, just danced around a lot and waved your hands. You basically won’t be pinned down about what, exactly UFOs might or might not be…but you are open to anything. That’s fine as far as it goes. I don’t think anyone here is saying that there are no such thing as UFO, in that there certainly are unidentified (to someone) flying objects. You seem to want to bring this up as if it’s some deep revelation, while it’s really just an attempt at verbal judo and clouding the water. What people in this thread are objecting too, and making the UFO - Ghost - Other Woo connection to is UFOs as extra-terrestrial/alien in origin. THAT is the part that’s without evidence. As another poster up thread said (to paraphrase), if they AREN’T of alien/extra-terrestrial/supernatural origin, why would anyone really care? If they are basically just natural phenomena or top secret military/CIA in origin, that’s interesting, sure, but that isn’t the general thrust of someone talking about UFOs…and while you dance around it, I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s not YOUR actual thrust either.
In the end, all you’ve been asked to do is lay down a solid, non-handwaving position and some evidence, and thus far you’ve not seemed inclined to do that, save for a long list of supposed UFO experts…unless I missed one of your posts. Since in general your posts seem focused on dancing about, I might have missed something, as it’s hard to take anyone really seriously when they are doing so much dancing, hand waving and water clouding, so feel free to give me a post number of something you have given in this thread where you WEREN’T doing that.
You should really read about the long dead Adamski. That is a guy who was either delusional or a liar. He made the mistake of claiming his alien friends told him facts about Venus - all of which are totally wrong. Any list with both Klass and Adamski on it is fairly worthless.
May I suggest you look for a copy of “The Great Airship Mystery?” It is out of print, but your library may have it. In the 1890s there was a large number of reports of powered dirigibles cruising the United States, with many claiming close encounters with the pilot - who came not from Arcturus, but from New England. There were sightings by multiple people, basically all the UFO stuff up to and not including anal probes. Tons of eyewitness evidence - far better than UFO eye witness evidence. The same kind of reliable observer in many cases.
And of course we know full well that there were no airships. Some of the later cases were clearly frauds, but tons were never “disproved.” The evidence is absolutely convincing - and absolutely bogus. Read that book, and then you might want to reconsider your statement above.
Maybe it does, but I think I know what I’m talking about. It also takes a certain kind of arrogance to say “the job of a writer is this,” as if no other professional writer in the history of literature would dare do anything other than what you’re doing. It’s a goofy thing to say and I don’t agree with it because it’s wrong. Then there’s the matter of why you’re saying “writer” and not “journalist.” It sounds like you’re making claims about journalistic impartiality and misapplying it, but you’re not using that word for whatever reason.
I don’t know what you’re saying about the list at this point; I thought you implied you compiled it. And you said you wouldn’t remove a single person about that list, and you said you found out who they were and why they were regarded as experts. Doesn’t that suggest some kind of evaluation and judgment? I am trying to understand (without prying too much on a personal level) what you wrote about and how you did so without coming to any conclusions - and why conclusions about who is credible aren’t opinions. There are ways to put your opinions into a piece without saying “My opinion is this.”
Those are opinions and conclusions! And there’s nothing wrong with doing that because you have to do it to write. So denying you did it is ridiculous.
I certainly haven’t. You surely know more about the field of UFOlogy than I do. I take issue with your thought process and evaluations, not you familiarity with the field.
Yes, it is. Witness testimony tends to be unreliable and is often crap, but it is a kind of evidence. It’s not convincing evidence that these phenomena are what a lot of people say they are.
Appreciate the recommendation, but how does knowing that a particular UFO case is fraudulent (or EVERY case for that matter) make the conversation about that healthier if we’re lumping it in with an entire OTHER phenomena? My question speaks specifically to the health of the two conversations. Many here seem not to want to engage in either and that’s fine, but very much beside the point. If evidence and finding of fact brings about an intelligent and truthful end, wouldn’t it make sense to simplify the encounter rather than mix it up with something that I see as entirely unrelated?
I’ve probably read tens times as much as you on the subject…unless you were stretching the truth just a bit about only being on this subject for three weeks.
You made a statement of fact that there is hard evidence. What is it?
Because there are many similarities between old fraud cases and new fraud cases. People, even credible people like the clergy, once believed in demons and witches who were everywhere. No hard evidence was ever presented. Do we still believe in demons and witches today?
Claims made by modern “paranormalists” parallel these. “Eyewitnesses” make claims, but no hard evidence is presented. Why should we believe these? Haven’t we learned that fantastic claims are always there, but without good evidence, there’s no reason to panic and every reason to doubt?
To put it more succinctly, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and fucks like a duck, then maybe it really is a fucking duck. Your UFOs are no more than our old witches and demons dressed in new clothes.
I should point out that nobody at the time even dreamt that the cause of the Battle of Los Angeles was an extraterrestrial craft - they all thought it was the Japanese, which is why they were so determined to shoot at the sky on that occasion.
This is a perfectly natural reaction to the threat of invasion or bombing, and one that happened in Europe a lot a few years earlier. In fact the start of this event may have been something as simple as the release of some balloons by persons unknown for target practice or similar - a set of balloons with a flare attached was seen at one point, but no-one seemed keen to accept responsibility for causing so much mayhem.
You are right, though, that this is a freaky UFO sighting, seeing that the ‘flying object’ was ‘unidentified’, and thousands of people were witnesses - although there may not have been any actual object there for the greater part of the sighting. Any balloons that might have been there will probably have been shot down or blown away early on, leaving nothing more than an illuminated smoke cloud. That is why I prefer the term ‘unidentified aerial phenomenon’ (UAP) to UFO; saying that it was an ‘object’ is prejudging the situation.
**RadioActiveRich **so far there are no good examples of what you are claiming is good evidence of UFO’s, the evidence of one of the ‘most telling’ cases according to you has almost no confirmation going for it, specifically: the Malmstrom Air-force Base.
So, no, not healthy to rely on hearsay before one gets to even link that to the more iffy paranormal items.
One of the morons who was writing on criptids back in the 70s was trying to claim that they were associated with UFOs, in that both of them came through some sort of interdimensional rift. He was trying to explain why we never seemed to find their bodies anywhere [you know the argument about bigfoot - if they exist why haven’t we ever found a dead one]
{I picked up a box of whacked out books at a yard sale, got lots of fun crap, Von Daniken, Fortean stuff, and a really fun book on alchemy - Morning of the Magicians. I always thought parts of it would make a great woo TV series, a modern science student deciding to do something on alchemy as a paper for extra credit and getting some sort of great run around pulled on him by St Germain himself. }
It is entirely possible that the phenomena known as UFOs (or, more precisely Unidentified Aerial Phenomena [UAPs]) is tied to some pattern recognition glitch in the human brain. Where we see spaceships from Planet X, our ancestors saw phantom airships, and their ancestors saw elves and fairies. If so, then it is possible that the entire framework of seemingly disparate ideas is, at its root, the same. This may well be something similar to apophenia (false pattern recognition).
The human mind is strange realm to delve into and occasionally illogical constructs are encountered that can only be understood by standing back and finding basic commonalities. In this, therefore, it might be reasonably asserted that these two apparently dissimilar ideas (UFOs and ghosts) have a common origin.
See how the word ‘belief’ would factor into your view on this?