Why care about UFOs?

Great Debates
41

C3 said:

Never said they were. Don’t try to argue against things I never said. As far as Art, even a blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn (although in his case it’s mostly just nuts).

Again, never said you did. You might consider reading what I wrote before arguing against it. I very clearly said, “he was in favor of some of the nuts who were on the show.” And you accuse me of knee-jerking?

What’s dishonest here is your obvious straw man – claiming I said something that I never did say.

Finally, something we can agree on!

You assume too much. Just because we don’t have time to listen to a particular Art Bell net broadcast doesn’t mean we don’t know what we’re talking about. Meanwhile, it’s rather hypocritical of you to claim we respond that way when you repeatedly refuse to answer legitimate questions directed at your claims.

If you’re gonna be the devil’s advocate, don’t be surprised when you’re accused of being evil. If you’re going to post pro-UFO nonsense and refuse to answer legitimate questions, and then respond nastily to people who question you, it’s no wonder you’re labeled as a troll. If you want to play devil’s advocate, label it as such. Others do. The way you act, however, makes it look like you are an anti-rational-thought troll, and that is the light in which I will personally continue to see you until you show otherwise.

42

Doobieous:

A good point, Doobie, but from everything I’ve read and heard, there’s been no indication of a foreign bird being ‘Patient Zero’. I’m inclined to think if the health services had discovered this, they’d be quick to say so; one, to make themselves look more ‘on the case’, and two, to allay fears that it is the opening shot of a biowar attack.

On the other other hand, imagine a scenario where foreign terrorists already in the U.S. simply go out into the open country around New York, use a snare net to capture a flock of crows, inject them with the virus, and then release the flock. If someone comes along while they’re doing it, they just say they’re testing a new form of contraception to be used in controlling avian pests like crows & starlings.

If you want to continue this, let’s do it under a separate thread.

Dr. Fidelius: Lemme guess - You were the punk in the Anselmo Pederaste Case, weren’t you? No need to deny it! Your silence speaks volumes!

David B: Your point is valid, but only as it regards eighteenth century attitudes. A lot of them have changed since then; although it must be admitted that ‘anti-evolutionism’ as an expression of religiosity has raised its Cerberus-like noggins again. It’s always going to be easier to think of ‘extraterrestrials’ as ‘our undiscovered brothers and sisters in Christ’ as long as you think there’s also no way they’re ever going to be a voice at the end of a very long, slow, dialogue. It would be an entirely different state of affairs if a majority of people began to see reasons for thinking their ‘space brothers’ are right here, right now, and think of humanity as a vast experimental pool of ‘superKokos’ to be treated with the same disdain we have for the average Norwegian rat.

The Roman Catholic Church might have a slightly different reaction, due to their long support of intellectual attainment (despite the occasional Galileo case), but I wonder how they’d handle it if the aliens landed and claimed the planet in the name of God and ‘Pope Kodos the First’.

I also fail to see what point you were trying to make with that silly straw man ‘example’ UFO sighting. So, you’ve shown that a ‘UFO sighting’ was really just birds darting after insects in the beam of floodlights. So what? You always seem to choose the easiest cases to ‘debunk’ – and to imply that they’re all just as easy. Like they say here, some people churn for the sake of the butter, and some only churn for the sake of the froth.

43

Incidentally, as an example, was your post about Riley G and Randi an example of you playing “devil’s advocate”? It sure looked like you trolling because you dislike the way the skeptics keep shooting down your pet beliefs.

44

Damn! I hate when that happens. That should have been “they’re never going to be anything else but a voice”. My bad!

45

DIF sez:

The virus we face is, in the scheme of things, pretty mild stuff. Most people who get infected never know it. Terrorists could make more trouble by stealing and misusing the unguarded 55-gallon drums of malathion and anvil (sp?) that one of the local news stations tracked down last night in Queens. My money is on a legit exotic bird brought into the Bronx zoo. If you want to start a thread, I’ll follow. But I won’t post a list of the best ways for terrorists to operate in my city. :wink:

Livin’ on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine

46

David,
I just finished reading page 1 of the thread “Who killed JonBenet Ramsey?” and I see your point.

Time to change the signature line; my cover’s been blown . . .

47

Oops.
Delete “killed”, substitute “murdered”.
That is all.

Time to change the signature line; my cover’s been blown . . .

48

Incidentally, that short message was supposed to appear directly below my longer one, but DIF snuck in. It was directed at C3, not DIF.

DIF said:

True. I just thought it was an interesting counterpoint to those who assumed discovery of aliens would destroy all religion as we know it.

I suspect they’d fight against the “false Pope.”

Was I trying to make a point? Hmmm, didn’t realize it. I thought I was just posting an amusing UFO-related blurb I’d come across and that I thought some people would get a kick out of. I must say that I was surprised this was actually covered on the nightly news, but that’s about it. Now, if you would like to read more into it, we could notice that some other UFO reports might end up having a similar explanation. But that’s up to you.

49

DavidB:

Were you directing the counterpoint to me? I think my comment was limited to saying it would be ‘big trouble’, not that it would ‘destroy’ all religion AWKI. Certainly, it would change it radically.

As for what the Catholics would do, I think it would come to what you say, but the next question would be, which Pope? Suppose ‘Pope Kodos’ would allow for female priests, married priests, contraception, etc., claiming a ‘superior message’ from God and citing his/her?/its more elevated position as justification, in much the same way the Church itself justified the extermination of Native American religions?

I took your ‘point’ to be that you thought it was amusing. Which it wasn’t, it just kind of lays there. So, some bumpkin misidentifies a light and then finds out it was, indeed, a light. Thud. Where’s the punchline? The fact that some local tv station seized upon it as a filler-feature says far less about the UFO phenomenon than it does about the desperate state of local television news. What, no local basketball games that night?

50

DIF said:

No, I was directing it at Markxxx, who had said: “If a UFO was proven it would destroy all religious thinking as we know it.” But you could have found that out if you read back in the thread…

Which Pope? Both, probably. There would likely be some sort of schism, with some Catholics believing in the new alien pope, and some continuing to believe in the old earth pope. It would be an interesting study in sociology to watch.

Well, gosh. I’m sooooo sorry. From now on I promise to run all possibly amusing posts by you to check on your humor scale, since you are obviously the arbiter of what is or is not amusing.

51

DavidB said:

Poor, poor, put-upon DavidB – it must sometimes be a real strain trying to come up with ways to score some typically petty dig while technically staying ‘within the lines’ of being a moderator.

So, what now? Everyone who replies to one of your postings, when it contains a half-assed obscure reference to a previous message, has to re-read the whole thread? Yeah, right – or you could simply C&P the line you’re to which you’re responding, which you clearly know how to do . . .

I’ll resist the urge to C&P your “I’m sooooo sorry” line and say that it would make a good summation of your entire life. :slight_smile:

As for your promise ‘to run all possibly amusing posts by you’ – naw, David, no need for that. Just run them by the nearest average plant, because it would have a better sense of humor than you display, and know that your ‘amusing UFO-related blurb’ was neither amusing or particularly informative. All it truly was, was another feckless attempt to say, in effect,“There! You see how easy UFO sightings are to debunk! And they’re all just that easy!”

For real hilarity, people could try reading some of the tortuous ‘explanations’ Phillip Klass has come up with for sightings over the years . . .

You don’t prove anything by hitting the slow pitches, David.

52

You just don’t get it, Dif. It is not up to David B, me, or anyone else to disprove anything. Every time it is done, you will pop up with,“Well, that just disproves THAT example, not this one!”. If you are going to make an incredible claim, that an alien intelligence has travelled an incredible distance and in all likelihood has defied the known laws of physics to do so, it is up to YOU to prove it. If you don’t have the proof, please go away, because we already have an overabundance of gullible “true believers”.

53

And not only can these aliens cross trillions of miles of empty space and routinely defy Newton’s laws of motion, but they’re also too stupid to know how to stay out of Earth’s atmosphere.

Funny, too, that they usually choose to reveal themselves to people whom no one is likely to believe anyway.

The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.

54

No, STUPID, you don’t get it, and never will, so why don’t you go find another butt to crawl up? There’s all kinds of valid, verified, reliable photographic evidence, from still photos to film to videotape, of UFOs that prove incontrovertibly that these things exist and are seen over every continent, virtually every day. It’s for you and other denialists to come up with genuine proof (and not carefully selected ‘examples’ that wouldn’t convince anyone) that they’re just some sort of ‘natural phenomenon’ that’s existed throughout thousands of years of human civilization without ever re-appearing in the same place under the same conditions.

The proof is there, for anyone with a truly open mind (and not one that’s already been filled with garbage). All you can offer is ‘scoffistry’!

55

Absolutely, DIF. There is not a soul on this board that does not accept the existence of UFOs.

The question at issue is, are they ETVs (see my post on p.1 of this thread)?

David and numerous others, for their own reasons, are enormously skeptical of this idea. My impression is that you, C#3, and a few others, buy into the idea.

I’m neutral. I don’t need ETVs for anything. It would be wonderful if they did prove out to be real. And I’ve seen enough phenomena that can only be “explained away” by contorted logic to allow that some UFOs could be ETVs.

But, on balance, I’d have to say that, yes, the burden is on those alleging that some UFOs are ETVs to prove their case, and against some strong skepticism, because what we know to date militates against the likelihood of interstellar voyages. This does not rule them out, but it does make them improbable. And the improbable requires a bit more evidence to be accepted than does the fairly likely.

If you told me a black-and-white-striped donkey-like animal had been seen west of Palm Beach, I would assume a zebra had escaped from Lion Country Safari as my working hypothesis. If you told me a twenty-foot bipedal lizardlike creature had been seen there, my working hypothesis would involve the intoxication of the observers, or something else that would impugn the veracity of their observation.

Matter of likelihood.

56

Polycar:

I’m not at all sure I’d agree with that assessment, Poly. DavidB & his princelings seem pretty set in denying even the possibility they could be anything other, in absolutely 100% of all cases, than misidentifications. That is not what I’d typify as accepting the existence of UFOs.

As for what I believe about them – I will ask you to retrace the several threads that have been generated on the subject to which I’ve posted. I think if you do, you’ll see that I have, several times, taken pains to make it clear I don’t claim to know exactly what they are; if I occasionally referred to them as ‘extraterrestrial vehicles’, it was only within the immediate context of the dialogue that was going on; I prefer to refer to them as NFOs (nonidentifiable flying objects) to differentiate them distinctly from the countless misidentifications that clearly do take place. However, you can see how far that got me. I don’t ‘buy into’ any idea other than that they exist, and they are unlike any other natural phenomenon science has discovered and, ultimately, been able to explain. That they should remain unexplained, given the heights which human intellect and technology and the natural sciences have achieved, indicates to me a clear case for believing that, whatever they are, whoever (if anyone) is apparently piloting them, wherever they come from, it ain’t from these here parts. That makes them, in the most technical sense, ‘extraterrestrial’. It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily time-travelers, trans-dimensional, interstellar, whatever. It just means *they *ain’t[b/] us.

As for ‘need’ – who the hell needs UFOs?! It might be wonderful if they’re real – assuming that you mean by ‘they’, their occupants – and if they’re really friendly. I can think of several scenarios where they might not be.
But do I ‘need’ them? I’d be pleased as hell if they’d all, one day, just suddenly stop showing up, anywhere in the world . . .

Well, no, not actually pleased as hell. Actually, a sudden total lack of sightings for an extended period would have its own set of attendant worrisome thoughts. Maybe if they gradually petered out to nothing, okay.

Hmmmm. Not trying to rag on ya, guy, but don’t you mean “what we think we know”?

And please – don’t confuse this issue with any others, like cryptozoology and the like. This is just * this*, this is not about that, or that, or that other thing there . . .This is just this.

And would you put that goddam gun away and stop wavin’ it around!!!

57

DIF, my sincere apologies. I should have recalled your NFO statements, and mis-remembered a C#3 assertion as yours, and consider myself foolish for having done so.

Okay, then, let us pose the question to the skeptic contingent: Making clear that we are not assuming anything about their nature, is it correct to say that a percentage of unidentified flying object sightings are not explicable by information available at present, and it would require the sort of twisted reasoning that a fundamentalist would apply to the data for evolution to explain those particular sightings? In short, are DIF’s NFOs (which he defines as nonidentifiable flying objects, italics being mine, not his) a valid concept?

Are there, in short, more things in heaven and earth than are explained by your philosophy?

58

“David B. and his princelings”? Oh, that’s priceless. You know, with paranoiac ranting like that, you almost completely sacrifice the right to be taken seriously. You think I had no opinion on the matter before I ever heard of David Bloomberg? Puh-leeze. Well, I suppose that makes you C#3’s mouthpiece.

Anyway, Polycarp, I’m willing to come down on the side of nonidentified flying objects, but not nonidentifiable* ones. One does not imply the other. And, in any case, as I’ve said before, I take issue with DIF saying “Occam’s Razor comes down firmly on the side of extraterrestrial spacecraft.” I don’t think it’s nearly as firm as he would like it to be; and as I mentioned, it’s an explanation that explains nothing.

59

DIF said:

The debating skills shown in this statement almost scared me away from entering into this thread. Almost.

DIF said:

[SARCASM]First, do you have ‘still photos to film to videotape’ from ‘thousands of years’ ago that ‘prove incontrovertibly that these things exist’? I’d love to see those.[/SARCASM]

Second, I would assert that when two people disagree with the explanation of an event that is not simply explained, the burden of proof is on the party whose explanation requires the most deviation from the scientific principles that we accept. Moreover, considering the number of these sightings that have been explained ‘incontrovertibly’ with an accepted scientific explanation, and, to my knowledge, not one of these sightings has ever been proven to be extra-terrestrial in origin, that further places the burden of proof on those who claim the latter.

Have you considered just how difficult it would be to prove that something shown in ‘still photos to film to videotape’ is not extra-terrestrial with no evidence to analyze except the film? I would assert that it would be even more difficult, if not impossible, to prove from this same evidence that it WAS extra-terrestrial.

The large numbers of these phenomena you refer to and the fact that science can not explain them away (from lack of evidence or whatever) does in NO way prove your case that they are extra-terrestrial. It merely shows that there are UFO’s. Why you seem to think the burden of proof is on the skeptics to disprove an outlandish claim made from no hard evidence baffles me.

60

DIF said:

You haven’t learned yet that this type of behavior is unacceptable? Either cool it or watch your messages get deleted again. It’s that simple.

David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator