Skeptic misses point behind UFO book

a reply to: 111DPKING111

I don't know what the Westall kids saw or even the kids at Broadhaven. Or what could have been the craft in 54. I really would like to know a lot more about these cases to form a definitive conclusion. I have no problem with it being a UFO as that is exactly what it is. But there is simply no evidence I can point to (yet!) that proves aliens exist and visit earth.

If you can't form any other conclusion than it was aliens then surely that's just as closed minded as believing it can't be?

UFOs could be a terrestrial phenomena that we simply don't understand and even at times interact with our brains in a very strange way. Perhaps people are witnessing (for want of a better word) a 'timeslip' or 'dimension slip'. Or maybe this universe is really not quite as it seems and our grasp of reality can be manipulated and distorted by man made technologies that we are never made aware of. Of course, yes. it could also be alien visitation until we prove otherwise.

There are probably other possibilities that I can't think of. At the end of the day the evidence is just not there to substantiate it was anything but 'unknown' at present. But the unknown factor is what makes it interesting to me.

originally posted by: EnPassant
a reply to: JimOberg



Do you have a link to your article listing those points you disagree with in Keane's book? Thanks.

The 2010 piece in NBC's page is at www.nbcnews.com...

The ten cases I selected from Kean's uncritical reprinting of the 'Weinstein list' is here:
www.nbcnews.com...
...and so far as I can remember, nobody has disputed that these cases do seem to have plausible prosaic explanations.

A study showing how often witnesses can misperceive a fireball swarm as a large structured object with lights,
www.jamesoberg.com...

A famous Soviet pilot case [Minsk, 1984] with a prosaic explanation:
www.jamesoberg.com...
and www.nbcnews.com...
anbd www.jamesoberg.com...


My original 1998 essay on pilots as observers
www.zipworld.com.au...

originally posted by: TrueMessiah

Who do you think the "old gods" were and where is this evidence of fairies that outweighs ET? Just curious.
Also, aside from religious text, (text that can also be seen to substantiate ET), where is this "extra" evidence of angels?

People say that they see angels all the time, or talk to them, or save them...How is ET anything different than any other faith base belief?

Its all faith and speculations anyway you look at it.

a reply to: onehuman

True unidentified flying objects exist, of that there is no doubt.

Extra-terrestrials are one of many explanations put forward to explain the unexplainable, and many who are not brainwashed or socially conditioned think ET's in fact are the best explanation.

If ET's are interacting with our planet, it is unthinkable that facets of the government/military are unaware of it.

Given the above, it follows logically there is a huge suppression of such, including of the media and science. Paid debunkers would logically be part of that suppression.

Of course this is all hypothetical and I'm not accusing anyone of anything.

For one, I will believe an ex-CIA director over some bureaucrat when it comes to statements about the ET interaction with earth:



www.abovetopsecret.com...

Oh, there is this little film as well, still not definitively proven fake, or not replicated:

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

The only reason it's not been proven a fake to you is because you don't want it to be a fake.
Also it has nothing to do with the discussion in hand.

a reply to: Xtrozero

See there you go with the alien believer elitist attitude. Like the only reason a person doesn't accept aliens is because they can not handle the concept and would curl up in a fetal position if they ever saw one, unlike you the brave alien hunter...lol I think my biggest issue is once a person decides they believe they do not look in any other direction but aliens...

See there you go accusing me of an alien believer elitist attitude. How predictable.

I think my biggest issue is when people accuse anyone talking seriously about alien contact of being a "believer".

How offensively small minded. You can save the "believing" for Jesus and the Easter bunny. When it comes to alien contact, there is no belief necessary.

You see, folks, posters like this think the issue of alien contact is decided in two camps;

1. People who BELIEVE aliens are here.

2. People who DONT BELIEVE aliens are here.

Not quite.

There is a third category.

3. People who KNOW aliens are here.

I am in the third category, not by choice, but by the circumstances of my life. I know for a fact that aliens are here. I've never had the luxury of speculation, of having to guess about aliens.

Aliens abducted my mother long before I was born, and so they abducted me, too. And my brothers, many times, I first remember being taken in 1966.

This poster mocks me, calling me "the brave alien hunter". Almost, except I wasn't very brave, and it was the aliens who were hunting me.

originally posted by: JimOberg
A study showing how often witnesses can misperceive a fireball swarm as a large structured object with lights,
www.jamesoberg.com...

Thanks for the links. I hadn't read that article from October 2014 yet.

originally posted by: Scdfa
1. People who BELIEVE aliens are here.
2. People who DONT BELIEVE aliens are here.
3. People who KNOW aliens are here.

I read that list as follows:
1. People who BELIEVE aliens are here.
2. People who DONT BELIEVE aliens are here.
3. People who make extraordinary claims with no extraordinary evidence to support them.

reply to: Xtrozero

See there you go with the alien believer elitist attitude. Like the only reason a person doesn't accept aliens is because they can not handle the concept and would curl up in a fetal position if they ever saw one, unlike you the brave alien hunter...lol

You also have to remember, there's a need by certain "believers" (oops) to try and distance themselves from the stereotypical uneducated country bumpkin and tin foil hat wearing crowd. It's a place where grammar and spelling corrections become the barometer of intelligence. I guess whatever you need "folks" to make yourself feel superior to a group anonymous members of a message board. *shrug*

a reply to: Scdfa

Pilots are terrific eyewitnesses. So are cops, astronauts, military personnel, and almost everyone else. That's why eyewitness testimony is regarded so very highly in our judicial system that people are sentenced to both life and death by witness testimony. Eyewitness testimony is on the whole extremely reliable, not infallible of course, but extremely reliable, and depended upon not only in courts of law, but in virtually all facets of society.

You're wrong on two points. First is comparing eyewitness testimony of any crime committed- in a courtroom setting, to eyewitness testimony of aliens or UFOs in general. The foundation is already set for accusing any defendant of a crime. Human beings, weapons, emotional states, burglary, murder, rape, etc. are all provable facts with a history of scientifically studied physical evidence and proof. It gives the reasonable assumption that any crime could be committed by any human. On the other side, there has been zero scientifically studied physical evidence of an alien being. There's no foundation to even accuse and build a case upon an alien being performing any action. They're two totally different type of categories that can't be argued together to make your point.

It's easy to show how ridiculous that comparison is by placing both scenarios into the same category. Give a case to a jury claiming a murder was committed by either defendant X- a human, or defendant Y- an alien. Without a single piece of physical evidence in the history of this phenomena, how would a jury further believe a story of an abduction, interaction, or murder- in this example? Unless you had a case that in itself provided undeniable evidence of alien life, there is no case and there is no comparison. It's a lame, weak argument. Eyewitness testimony of the giant squid might be the better Earthly comparison. A tale that went on for centuries, only to be proven a fact by physical evidence in the late 1800's. Starts out a tale with many stories, ends a fact based on physical evidence of the physical claims. That's how it works.

Go to the next step with your claim that eyewitness testimony is "extremely reliable". Is this a studied fact by you, or a personal opinion?

After a year of sifting through the scientific evidence, a committee of psychologists and criminologists organized by the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) has now gingerly weighed in. 'This is a serious issue with major implications for our justice system,' says committee member Elizabeth Phelps, a psychologist at New York University in New York City. Their 2 October (2014) report, Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification, is likely to change the way that criminal cases are prosecuted, says Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who was an external reviewer of the report.

As Loftus puts it, 'just because someone says something confidently doesn't mean it's true.' Jurors can't help but find an eyewitness’s confidence compelling, even though experiments have shown that a person's confidence in their own memory is sometimes undiminished even in the face of evidence that their memory of an event is false.

...given the increasing number of people convicted with eyewitness testimony who have been subsequently exonerated by DNA evidence. Some 75% of the wrongful convictions for rape and murder, including a number that led to people being scheduled for execution, were based on eyewitness testimony.

Source

From the report above:

Eyewitnesses play an important role in criminal cases when they can identify culprits. Estimates suggest that tens of thousands of eyewitnesses make identifications in criminal investigations each year. Research on factors that affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification procedures has given us an increasingly clear picture of how identifications are made, and more importantly, an improved understanding of the principled limits on vision and memory that can lead to failure of identification. Factors such as viewing conditions, duress, elevated emotions, and biases influence the visual perception experience. Perceptual experiences are stored by a system of memory that is highly malleable and continuously evolving, neither retaining nor divulging content in an informational vacuum. As such, the fidelity of our memories to actual events may be compromised by many factors at all stages of processing, from encoding to storage and retrieval.

I could go on quoting reliable sources and studies stating eyewitness testimony is not what you claim. Also, given the fact that people lie and fabricate stories for one reason or another, you have no more idea than anyone else if you're being lied to. Your personal experience does not make other stories true by default. Especially in lieu of physical evidence.

The issue of pilot reliability as witnesses of non-aircraft sightings was already well known in the 1930s, look here:

In a brief 1936 paper, Harvey Nininger poked fun at the meteor observing skills of pilots.

Source URL: adsabs.harvard.edu...

"In my several years of experience in plotting the courses of meteors to determine their point of landing, I have never yet been able to use the report of an air pilot."

a reply to: JimOberg

That has nothing to do with whether or not they can describe the appearance and motion of UFOs. Estimating the exact point of landing of meteors is not something pilots need to be able to do, either to properly fly a plane or report UFOs.

originally posted by: Scdfa

See there you go accusing me of an alien believer elitist attitude. How predictable.

Lol, read your first post to me....

How offensively small minded. You can save the "believing" for Jesus and the Easter bunny. When it comes to alien contact, there is no belief necessary.

You see, folks, posters like this think the issue of alien contact is decided in two camps;

1. People who BELIEVE aliens are here.

2. People who DONT BELIEVE aliens are here.

Not quite.

There is a third category.

3. People who KNOW aliens are here.

I am in the third category, not by choice, but by the circumstances of my life. I know for a fact that aliens are here. I've never had the luxury of speculation, of having to guess about aliens.


Aliens abducted my mother long before I was born, and so they abducted me, too. And my brothers, many times, I first remember being taken in 1966.

This poster mocks me, calling me "the brave alien hunter". Almost, except I wasn't very brave, and it was the aliens who were hunting me.

I guess your word is all the proof we need then. One would think that you might understand why someone like me doesn't believe we have had any contact yet, and most likely will not anytime soon. Maybe we are more like minded than you might think then. When aliens move from speculation then they will be real, for you it seems they have done that already...

Thread swarming with known skeptics...Oberg, Gortex, Arbitrageur, etc...LOL

I've never had any problem with the existence of cases for which no prosaic explanation has been found -- just in assuming that this MUST mean that no such explanations can possibly exist. Simply thinking about other mysteries of our world -- murders, kidnappings. airplane disasters, missing socks -- should suggest that NOT knowing ALL the explanations doesn't prove there must be EXTRAORDINARY explanations for some events.

This isn't necessarily a personal rebuttal but sort of a general comment but using your quote to represent(possibly unfairly) the opinions of a sizeable camp.
I guess what you say isn't such a bad way to look at things depending on how far you are taking it. Some people are extremists either way no doubt, but it seems to me you might be saying that until one specific case is proven 100% beyond a reasonable doubt to have an extraordinary explanation then every case MUST be assumed as having any number of ordinary explanations that we either aren't aware of yet or just haven't proven yet. Fair enough, but one could just as easily and reasonably say that with so many unexplained cases out there until all of them are proven to be 100% beyond a reasonable doubt to have ordinary explanations then it's safe to assume there is some extraordinary cause for at least some of them that we haven't discovered yet. I don't think that makes a person some sort of UFO elitist or propaganda pusher and I don't think it's any different than what you said above.

originally posted by: Ectoplasm8
reply to: Xtrozero

See there you go with the alien believer elitist attitude. Like the only reason a person doesn't accept aliens is because they can not handle the concept and would curl up in a fetal position if they ever saw one, unlike you the brave alien hunter...lol

You also have to remember, there's a need by certain "believers" (oops) to try and distance themselves from the stereotypical uneducated country bumpkin and tin foil hat wearing crowd. It's a place where grammar and spelling corrections become the barometer of intelligence. I guess whatever you need "folks" to make yourself feel superior to a group anonymous members of a message board. *shrug*

There is nothing wrong in believing. It is how our brains are hardwired. We live in the abstract world most of the time, so we are very comfortable in believing with nothing physical to support that belief. But when a person like Scdfa decides their only reply to me is one to just pat me on the head and say all will be fine little one just close your eyes with some kind of all knowing attitude, makes me want to just say Really? Without even knowing who I am...lol

BTW pilots suck, I know I been one for like 35 years...

Scdfa

Yes, and I suggest you cling to your worldview just as long as you possibly can.

Good luck, we'll try to talk about aliens softly, so as not to disturb you. You might want to look into a white noise machine, and some heavier curtains.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I read that list as follows:
1. People who BELIEVE aliens are here.
2. People who DONT BELIEVE aliens are here.
3. People who make extraordinary claims with no extraordinary evidence to support them.

See this, folks? I had written that there are people who KNOW aliens are here, but this poster can't admit that.

There is a gap in logic, in reasoning that occurs time and again with those who would deny that alien contact is a reality.

These people are so invested in denying alien contact and alien abduction, that they are simply unable to bring themselves to admit this simple fact:

That if alien beings are here, then the people who encounter them would be in a position to KNOW aliens are here.

The deniers can't admit it that anyone would ever be in a position to KNOW about aliens. They want this debate kept to a level playing field where everyone is just offering opinions, but nobody really ever knows.They can't stand the idea that that there are people who are not GUESSING about aliens. It drives them crazy if you suggest it, and it didn't take long for one of them to attack me for it.

And folks, the people who would tell you that aliens are not here are simply guessing, for all their posturing about "science" and "unreliable witnesses testimony" and "anecdotal evidence". They're just guessing, and they are guessing incorrectly.

Hey, a lot of people who say aliens are here are just guessing too. But not all of them are guessing, there are a great many people who are in a position to know that aliens are here. People in official capacities, response units, and the perhaps millions of contacted and abducted.

I happen to be among them. I KNOW aliens are here, and I assure you, that knowledge comes at a heavy price. You might not like that, but bear this in mind; I would be doing you a great disservice were I to pretend that I did not know aliens are real.

originally posted by: mirageman
a reply to: 111DPKING111

If you can't form any other conclusion than it was aliens then surely that's just as closed minded as believing it can't be?

Well I confess it took me quite a long time before i would even consider this possibility.

UFOs could be a terrestrial phenomena that we simply don't understand and even at times interact with our brains in a very strange way. Perhaps people are witnessing (for want of a better word) a 'timeslip' or 'dimension slip'.

No doubt it could even be something crazier than aliens ( at least for me, time travel is purely science fiction). If alien sitings didnt exist, a vast majority of people would still believe in alien cultures. The same cant be said for timeslips (not even sure what that is = ) ...)

Or maybe this universe is really not quite as it seems and our grasp of reality can be manipulated and distorted by man made technologies that we are never made aware of.

Stop reading HUME ! hehe. You are way more open minded than me, I cant tell you how far away I am from this possibility.

I am mostly with you however, I am just defaulting to what I consider the next least crazy solution, aliens it is for me.

I have been pondering this pilot issue that seems to be up for debate here. I don't think we can generalize them into one or the other category either. Especially when you take Air Force pilots and throw them into the mix. I would like to think they would have a good idea of being able to identify other types of aircraft. I would think it is almost a job prerequisite, certianly in a war type setting. I mean really, they are under attack for example and they are just going to say ummm I'm not sure what it is but I'm guessing it is a jet of some sort? That sounds a little silly to me.

Even one of our moderators Zaphod seems to be able to identify aircraft pretty quickly are at least make a educated guess in many of the post he responds too. Not to mention it seems many members here and I as well respect his thoughts and two cent input.

Of course you will have the flip side as well which is kind of scary actually. Pilots that just like to fly and wanted a job without ever being in any type of air service. Granted, they probably wouldn't have a high percentage of being able to identify what they have seen.

So we obviously have two camps with this as well IMHO. I don't think points of argument should rest solely on that.

I'm also trying to figure out why radar hits that coincide with these sightings are a bit overlooked. We seem to get lost in the pilot argument. Again there can be false readings I suppose, but odd as well that they occur at the same time.
One case, the Japanese cargo flight to Alaska that has been debated for a long time. The tapes and recording of it disappearing. If I recall they had very large radar hits that night.
One other one I have wondered about as well is what was showing on radar back in the 50's over Washington, D.C. That they felt the need to scramble jets for. Didn't those just disappear at high speeds as well?
One more just for this point. What about the time we almost went to war with Russia because of a radar hit. What was that all about?

That's just two points of things, we haven't even discussed things like what sailors have witnessed at sea and have come forward about.

I just don't think it is all really so cut and dry as the denying camp tries to come across. To me there is just so much over a history of time that points too it. Just makes it sort of like where there's smoke there's fire to me.

originally posted by: Jonjonj
a reply to: JadeStar

So then, what is it? I know what I think, I do in fact think it was probably military. That of course leads me to the conclusion that the US military are hiding tech that is not only groundbreaking but earthshattering. Shame on them, and anybody who defends their right to hide such tech, the world being as it is.

So the US military has these highly secretive triangle craft, whose supposed existance still hasnt been acknowledged 26 years later, and they just openingly/casually fly them around for months in Belgium for everyone to see? If you watch this video at 4 minutes in, you get some idea of their activity. Doesnt seem military to me.

originally posted by: 111DPKING111

originally posted by: Jonjonj
a reply to: JadeStar

So then, what is it? I know what I think, I do in fact think it was probably military. That of course leads me to the conclusion that the US military are hiding tech that is not only groundbreaking but earthshattering. Shame on them, and anybody who defends their right to hide such tech, the world being as it is.

So the US military has these highly secretive triangle craft, whose supposed existance still hasnt been acknowledged 26 years later, and they just openingly/casually fly them around for months in Belgium for everyone to see? If you watch this video at 4 minutes in, you get some idea of their activity. Doesnt seem military to me.

Exactly. Sounds logical.

Occam's razor says aliens.