A UFO interview I did 34 years ago

originally posted by: Brian4real
a reply to: DeathSlayer

In a court of law, it would be called "testimony". Of which, (depending on the source) is good enough to end someones life.
I never understood how 2 or 3 credible people say they saw a UFO, no one believes them or thinks theyre crazy. On the contrary, if 2-3 credible people say they saw person A kill person B, its goood enogh to have that person put to death.

PLEASE stop using alien/UFO courtroom analogies! There is nothing common in comparison between witnesses of UFOs, and crimes in a criminal court case of people or identification of cars or vehicles and convictions. Eyewitnesses of a crime focus on the identity of the already establish fact of people and vehicles. They exist as a fact. We know what cars are... We know what people are. In question is their identity.
We have zero scientific evidence or fact of what UFOs are. Misidentification happens often even with multiple witnesses. I continue to go back to the Yukon case where 20+ witnesses describe a "mothership," when in fact what they witnessed was a rocket re-entry. How many of those people do you think have admitted they were wrong when faced with evidence? Many people stand strong in their conviction forming an emotional connection that they are right and refuse to let go. So the degree in which someone tells a story isn't a good barometer either.

And yes, I know there is way information required to impose a death sentence. This is just as an example

Yep, the process required to convict and sentence someone to the death penalty isn't as simple as hearing eyewitnesses stories then convict without any kind of supporting scientific evidence. Death penalty cases generally use double the amount of lawyers and are up 5 times longer than regular criminal cases. If eyewitness testimony held the weight you claim, there would be no need for long expensive trials.

If you want to realistically compare and argue the weight of eyewitness testimony of UFOs or aliens, you have to do it in a similar category. That would be testimony of bigfoot, ghosts, Loch Ness monster and so on. These are cases that also have plenty of stories, videos, photographs, etc. but have yet to provide any strong scientific evidence.

I do give the OP a flag/star for at least getting away from people posting mind-numbing Mars/moon rock threads.

My dad once saw a large, round, red thing float down out high out of the sky when he was out in his backyard doing some gardening. Because he lived near Omaha, Nebraska, and Strategic Air Command headquarters, and because he was a practical guy, he was under the impression that it wasn't alien, but instead some kind of delivery system used by SAC to drop film or messages or samples of stuff out of high altitude or orbit back to headquarters. I never heard of such a system, but a guided inflatable sphere might actually be a good way to drop stuff out of orbit if you weren't in a big hurry. No heat from atmospheric friction. Just slowly float it down.

This is the type of stuff I love to see on ATS. Good work for just being a kid! Were you interested in UFO's because of a sighting or just because lol? I my self have seen 2 possibly 3 UFOs in my lifetime it is a very strange experience.

a reply to: Blueracer

This is cool!!! This type of post -- UFOs, etc -- is why I visit ATS, not for the politics. Thanks for posting!

originally posted by: Ectoplasm8

originally posted by: Brian4real
a reply to: DeathSlayer

In a court of law, it would be called "testimony". Of which, (depending on the source) is good enough to end someones life.
I never understood how 2 or 3 credible people say they saw a UFO, no one believes them or thinks theyre crazy. On the contrary, if 2-3 credible people say they saw person A kill person B, its goood enogh to have that person put to death.

PLEASE stop using alien/UFO courtroom analogies! There is nothing common in comparison between witnesses of UFOs, and crimes in a criminal court case of people or identification of cars or vehicles and convictions. Eyewitnesses of a crime focus on the identity of the already establish fact of people and vehicles. They exist as a fact. We know what cars are... We know what people are. In question is their identity.

No, witness credibility hinges on the whether the witness can be believed and does NOT only focus on the identity of "people and vehicles". As an attorney, I see this every day. Often, physical evidence is nonexistent and the only source of information we have are witnesses. What did the witness see? What did they hear? Was it a gunshot, a firecracker or something else? What WAS that something else? We often don't get all the facts from a witness because they can only remember so much and that's it. BUT, in the case of UFO witnesses, we can at least say they were there, they saw an object that looked (for example) like a saucer with windows and that they could clearly see humans or human-looking beings because they were only 50 feet away. We don't need to establish that "science" has determined that such beings exist -- all we need are the statements of honest, credible witnesses who also (hopefully) have a history of having been trained in observation, such as pilots, military people, scientists, etc. How such factual information is interpreted is another issue, but interpretation is open to any reasonable explanation. Intelligent life visiting Earth is one of many such reasonable explanations and if most people want to interpret a sighting as such I can accept that until we find definitive evidence otherwise. We don't need "science" to tell us what these witnesses saw because "science" wasn't there and to reject such testimony is the height of arrogance and ignorance. There is much more to this universe than our human scientists have ever identified or recognized as existing. We should not wait for science to catch up with and acknowledge what is out there and we should never reject testimony from witnesses to UFOs simply because "science" hasn't stamped "APPROVED" on whatever it is they may have seen.