Is faith good enough?

Let me begin this post by saying that I realise, as a new member, many people will be very skeptical of what I am about to say- ... just kidding.

I was, just as I'm certain many of you were, drawn into GR's needless hoaxing-based skulduggery, a few days ago. One of few threads I managed to keep up with, in fact. And when it ended, it was a kick in the metaphorical teeth.

That night, it got me wondering; I've been taking these things for granted, for years, and I've never really thought, properly, about them. My interest in UFOs et al. started properly, when I first read John Lear's "The UFO cover-up" disclosure-paper-thing, years ago. From then, I put two and two together, and decided that due to the massive probabilities of life elsewhere, and the time-spans involved, not to mention the human tendency to lie, there would be a very high chance of this being, at least partially true.

GR's post was like a wake-up call, I began to think that perhaps, it was all coming to fruition, and maybe, just maybe, the world would change in new and exciting ways. And then it all crumpled in on itself.

I won't lie, it seriously damaged my faith and interest in the subject. And then I realised, it was just that, that I had - faith.

I'm not a massive fan of faith; it seems a completely illogical, needlessly poetic (not a phrase I thought I'd ever say, but you know what I mean) and an "I'm different and special" way of looking at the world. Faith is not a banner to hold high, or something to be proud of - to me, it just speaks of falseness, of dreams that will never come true, because they can never be proven. And without proof ... things can't really exist ... at least according to Schrödinger.

My problem is this, I realised ... what proof do we have, for any of this? I mean, solid, irrefutable proof. I know there are statements from people, and theories galore ... and even a few of you with experiences of your own, past the regular "lights in the sky" vagueness. But even these are prone to misinterpretation. Viewers of House (House MD, in the US, I believe) know that these "alien" experiences are not necessarily proof. There are photos, and documents. But none of this is real proof, evidence that would stand up in court. What GR said was true (this bit, at least): all these things can be faked, and faked effectively at that.

Why do we believe these things? Ask yourself that.
Is it because we "know" that there is something more, out there? Is it spiritual? It it the mathematical probabilities? The "evidence", that while not good enough for the general public, is good enough for us to be certain beyond reasonable doubt?
Or is it just desire? Do we just want these things to be true so much, that we're willing to pounce upon them with belief akin to religious faith? Do we want to be special, in a special age of truth and new excitement?

I guess what I'm looking for, is reasons why you/we believe what we believe, and why others do not.

(My browser crashed here, I'm afraid, so my neatly wrapped up conclusion went a bit skewed as I only partially remembered what I'd written.)

What was the point at which something in you switched, and you started to believe these things? What specifically were you reading/looking at?
And can you admit, that no matter how certain we are - that we might be wrong?

Saying this, I still believe; but the GR affair made me aware that it was more of a desire, I really want it to be true; it opens up so many possibilities, material and spiritual. But saying this, I can't be sure. Perhaps life really is just an ephemeral waste of everyone's time?

Your thoughts - and please, no flaming, be nice.

I'm new here aswell and this seems fitting for my first post.

When I was younger I saw all the pictures, TV documentaries, etc. involving UFOs and, although this made me curious and stirred my imagination in the subject, it was never conclusive proof to me that there was anything else out there.

My main belief came when I was a little older and realised how, in the relative scale of things, we humans have not been around for so long. Another thing is that, as humans, we seem to change our beliefs in things quite alot.

An example of this is the world believing the Earth to be the centre of the universe. A small number of people didn't accept this and tried to prove it wrong and were mocked. Then, low and behold the minority of believers were right all along.

Another thing that kind of grabbed my attention was something I was told at school. My teacher said that when trains were first invented, itelects of the day thought that if the train went faster than 20 miles an hour (Or something like that), the passengers would be sucked out of the window.

It sounds stupid but it made me think that just 200 years ago people thought that, yet now we are traveling at thousands of miles an hours in space shuttles. So what we believe impossible now could be surpassed in 200 years.

I think what I'm trying to say is that, if we can advance that far in 200 years, how advanced would a race be if they had a 3000 year headstart on us. I think most people on this planet think that it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light without problem (I may be wrong there, sorry) but if a different lifeform is thousands of years more advanced than, us then why not? So is it possible that we are the minority of our day who are right, but mocked for our beliefs on the existence of extra terrestrial life.

So really what I'm saying is that, to me, it is very possible for alien lifeforms to exist simply because "If we are here, then why can't someone else be and why is it so hard to beilieve they moght be more intelligent". Of course I do have a certain amount of belief, but I don't find it unreasonable to believe we have been visited. I think faith can be enough when coupled with probablity but everyone needs something to hope for. As always we are all still waiting for that undeniable evidence to show up

Sorry I've babbled a bit and feel free to correct my mistakes as I've probably made a few but that was my thoughts on the subject

[edit on 28-6-2007 by samhooch]

No, I do not believe faith is good enough. Any real phenomenon needs stuff that can be used and examined in the here and now so it can be adequately experienced. To rely on faith alone is to tragically limit the possibilities of that real thing.

What you call faith I describe as curiosity,being inquisitive, being open to knowledge.

I rather spent my lifetime looking for something of bigger meaning than talking about how many days Paris Hilton should spend in jail. I dont care how many hoaxers are out there, we just need proof once!, I dont care if it is bacterial life on Mars or the intergalactic fleet of who knows where arriving here and asking for gas and directions. We just have to be right once!, thats why we have to be sure, and discuss and investigate and debate, over an over.

Nobody is going to stop me from wanting to know. Thats not faith, thats human nature.

Very interesting topic for me for years now...no doubt a safe one to be on either side of the fence, highly doubt we will know one way or another for some time, maybe long after we are gone....
Kudos to the folks who work so hard on this.
Do feel life is outside of our Earth, a wet mushroom or fungus under a rock, or something that can build a starship, don't know.
Whatever the answer, won't effect my life, religion, family.
Don't hold your breath on this one, life is too short.

Hi

For me it has nothing to do with faith, faith goes far beyond that. This subject has nothing to do as far as I`m concerned with faith.

Faith is the belief in anything, without the proof needed to prove it.

It doesn't matter what the subject matter is. And therefore, our belief in UFOs, EBEs and the like, is very similar to a religion, or searching for signs of God.

There are so many different theories that would fit with our current situation - humans as an extraterrestrial experiment; as a vehicle for "souls"; as just meaningless but incredibly complex blobs of proteins.

Being open to knowledge; being inquisitive, is something different than faith. Curiosity is a brilliant part of the human instinct, and has gotten us this far down the road to wherever our final destination is, as a race. But when curiosity is mixed with faith, the only result is gullibility, and deceit. False beliefs. And hoaxes.

There can't be any scientific view on these subjects, if people's beliefs are clouded by hopes. It ruins the "fair test" scenario that is crucial to the scientific method. Saying that, without some objective data to deal with, there is really no way to prove the probabilities involved with this sort of subject. We should be using the null hypothesis or there being no extraterrestrial life, and work from there.

All we have at the moment, is subjective opinions, and data that could be faked.

Also: what, do you think, is the reason these beliefs aren't widely held?
Government conspiracy? Or, something more earthly and psychological. And is the difference in us, or them?

Originally posted by pk1yen
Faith is not a banner to hold high, or something to be proud of - to me, it just speaks of falseness, of dreams that will never come true, because they can never be proven.

Excellent post, pk1yen! I agree we should not hold faith up as a "good" thing. I often say, "I *don't* want to believe - I want it to BE TRUE."

I think you'll find that many (not all) of the believers in this forum have a certain very telling thing in common: they tend to believe in LOTS of things. UFOs are just their main schtick, but they'll also defend just about any other alternate belief that's out there, as if, in this universe, "anything goes." They also tend to see their disparate beliefs as being connected on some deep level (conspiracy theories find fertile ground in minds that have the gain turned up high on their pattern-recognition bits) IMHO, this isn't a sign of a person-of-faith or an open-minded person, but rather an uncritical thinker with a prescientific view of the world who notices connections between things that nobody outside of this community would notice.

I fully agree.
Faith is an admonition to believe what someone can't explain at any given time.
As knowledge increases "faith" must decrease.
Ancient Polynesian people had faith in the volcano god.
That is no longer the case. I don't want to negate anyone's faith in god or anything else.
But I do say that an increase in knowledge means a decrease in faith and I hold myself to that as well.
I've never seen a UFO or an Alien. I think they exist due to the huge numbers of reports. But I don't know that they exist and I certainly don't have faith that they exist. I may not accept the "swamp gas" explanations but by the same token, anyone can say anything

Very interesting post pk1yen.

Originally posted by pk1yen
My problem is this, I realised ... what proof do we have, for any of this? I mean, solid, irrefutable proof. I know there are statements from people, and theories galore ... and even a few of you with experiences of your own, past the regular "lights in the sky" vagueness. But even these are prone to misinterpretation.

[...]

Why do we believe these things? Ask yourself that.

It's a reality. We (the general public) don't have solid irrefutable proof, but taking it account a number of things it leads me to believe in a high possibility of alien visitation/existence.

For one, the Government(s)/Military have a very schizophrenic attitude towards the subject.
They publicly deny, attack, debunk and ridicule the subject and the people involved, but then we find out (through FOIAs and etc) that they are in fact very interested in the subject and investigating it.

They denied the existence of Area 51 until 1997, even though employees of that facility sued the Government in 94, not to mention that the base was/is in plain view of everyone who wants to look at it.

If they deny the existence of something that's in plain view of everyone, could they be hiding/denying the existence of alien visitation? Yes. But obviously these things are not proof.

However taking all these things into consideration and the people's accounts (including high ranking government/military officials), the mathematical probabilities, the fact that we have such little knowledge about the universe, and so on, I believe that there's a high possibility of alien existence and visitation.

I give the matter an open-minded scientific approach. I think that's completely different from a 'faith' approach.

Even though I recently have seen a UFO for myself, long before that I already thought of the subject in the same way I just described, so the sighting really didn't change anything for me in that matter.

I think you are (too) worried about how you are approaching the UFO/alien subject pk1yen, but that's not a bad thing in my prespective.

If you take the faith part away, with what are you left? I'm sure you have at least curiosity and want to know the truth. And let me ask you, isn't that the way every scientist approaches ANY subject?

Because faith is not going to give anyone proof of anything, only science and you already understood that as well.

So my advice to you is to keep up the 'search', with a scientific approach to it, with a will to know and discover the answers.

If someone uses faith to keep them on that track, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I just don't think something like this will be proved by faith. And that's what you (and most of us, I would think) are after.

I dont think that the majority of people that expend their time here, believe in UFO by "faith"(at least thats not the case for me), I believe in the possibility of life on other places in the universe.That's the key word for me.The people that believe in UFO's by faith wont even bother to discuss the issue, the same way a christian wont discuss the divine existance and resurrection of Jesus Christ and other things said in the Bible.

If you have a blind conviction or faith that UFO's or intelligent life exist, then I dont see why you will keep coming back here.