The Questions "Most Hardcore Believers" Cant Answer

Well i guess this is a flip to the other thread...I mean most hardcore believers (and let me make this totally clear from the start IM NOT BASHING ANYONES BELIEFS nor forming any opinions of my own) cant even answer the most simple of questions such as "where is the evidence"?...Which in my opinion is a absolutely rational question for such a extravagant claim....So what do you guys think when the questions flipped and the questions falls on the believers what are some of the questions that they just cant answer when it falls on them

Good Day
Skept!cal

About the Alien topic, I don't consider myself as a "believer" but as a "thinker".

Universe is 13 bn yrs old, Earth is 4 bn, Mankind (Homo Sapiens) is about 50 000 years old.

Logically, such a process has likely happened elsewhere, and on planets that offered life conditions far before the earth ever existed.

Sometime thoughts are more proofs than facts are...

Originally posted by skept!cal
Well i guess this is a flip to the other thread...I mean most hardcore believers (and let me make this totally clear from the start IM NOT BASHING ANYONES BELIEFS nor forming any opinions of my own) cant even answer the most simple of questions such as "where is the evidence"?...Which in my opinion is a absolutely rational question for such a extravagant claim....So what do you guys think when the questions flipped and the questions falls on the believers what are some of the questions that they just cant answer when it falls on them

Are you talking about UFO's, aliens or both? Because to say there is no evidence for UFO's is being in complete denial.

Aliens is a different matter. The evidence is lacking and pretty sketchy at best. And when evidence is presented it is quickly dismissed as fake. So then the question arises: When is there sufficient evidence?

Futhermore most skeptics talk of extravagant/extraordinary claims. We as humans being alone in this vast universe would be extraordinary, not the other way around.






[edit on 29/7/08 by Fastwalker81]

Well I believe...Where is the evidence ? I don't know. I am opening minded about it. I believe simply because I choose to believe. I think there are far more possibilities of there being other beings out there than there is possibility of there being no other beings out there...

So, I guess, you're right, in the end I cannot answer you question. I could say that I believe any evidence if any did or does indeed exist, could or would be supressed. But I don't want to be seen as some kind of raving....conspiracy theroist. And NO, I am not saying that conspiracy theorists are all raving, I am just saying that many people see them as being that way.

[edit on 29-7-2008 by RealMckoy]

Originally posted by Rigel
Universe is 13 bn yrs old, Earth is 4 bn, Mankind (Homo Sapiens) is about 50 000 years old.

Logically, such a process has likely happened elsewhere, and on planets that offered life conditions far before the earth ever existed.

It is possible, but then again...maybe not.

Consider the process by which stars and solar systems are created. A star explodes, spreading it's material across the galaxy. In certain areas, this material coalesces, forming into new stars and thus solar systems. This happens over and over, the complexity of the elements within these new systems increasing each time, and along with it, a certain fecundity. On Sun is a third generation star, that is: two generations of stars lived and died before ours was born, and in fact lead to it's creation.* Earlier generations of stars and the planets that formed around them do not have the complexity of elements and chemicals necessary for the formation of life. It is possible intelligent life in the galaxy may not be much older than humanity.

(*Of course, this is a very simplified version of what happened)

Its not that im saying their isnt ANY evidence i.e. sketchy videos and testimony...its just when you talk to alot of ppl here at ATS about them having repeat experiences..its just funny when you ask for a single shred of evidence such as photo, video, SOMETHING, and they refuse or beat around the bush about why they cant give such evidence..all im saying is show us SOMETHING as far as evidence goes to get more ppl on board...i do find some credibility to some accounts such as HIGH ranking officials w/ testimony, and find that alot of the astronauts, and cosmonauts accounts very intriguing...cause when its ppl of these nature they are trained officials who when they see something that baffels them then it should truly baffel us...i dont know im just ranting...any thoughts

Good Day
Skept!cal

I feel the same, I want to believe, I want to log on here one day and there to finally be a creditble photo or video for me to view. Not of lights in the sky and big ???'s.

I find the annoying thing being the "hardcore believers" arrogance on the subject. It's like they think everyone else is foolish for not believing without a shred of solid proof.

Took the words right out of my mouth i couldnt agree w/ you anymore...its like were the ones that are horrible for simply asking for something...but your right they do have an arrogance to them that reeks of bad brut

Skept!cal

last friday night my cousins and i watched the dorothy izatt documentary (www.capturingthelightdvd.com) and we sort began with a debate. to make a long story short i want to bring some accountability to the thread..even though we dont personally know eachother doesnt give us the right to try and go over the top each and every post. we really should actually work TOGETHER and come to mutual conclusions if we plan on really debating and probing these situations. i know what your thinking seems impossible right?

the earnesty on the part of "some"believers is to convince a skeptic to believe, this is admirable but its also a dead end approach. as a former skeptic i decided to read articles and listen to testimony in the silence of my day and i finally realized that puzzle pieces started to fit together and that certain ah ha moment just happen to come my way. i struggled with the fact that i didnt have solid evidence to actually believe but at the same time, i realized that the DEMAND for proof was just a request by some other man, and so i "lowered" proof expectation.

the existence of ETs is a very real possibility weather you think they're just out side your bedroom window or half way across the known universe.

A skeptic and a believer are granted the same potential to live a full and harmonious life dispite what goes on our skies above. being the first to PROVE or DISPROVE the existence is not a note worthy goal. the journey as i mentioned above is far more honorable..

didnt mean to sound so buddhist guru like, but i hope this post finds you well.

If I tell you that the sky is blue and you are blind, you can only believe me, you trust only after everyone you talk to claims it is blue. Yet still it is only limited to a belief system like all the rest.

If you come to the conclusion that the sky is blue and then one day sitting at the shore with your companion you state that the sky is such a beautiful color of blue and they tell you, no today the sky is gray. Does this change anything?

It is the same thing with UFOs and aliens. You can listen to a million stories but until it becomes your personal experience it is just a belief or a denial.

So whats the point? Why do blind people insist on arguing over the color of the sky or if there is something to the UFO phenomena?

The facts and evidence are somewhat easy to find. For one, grab a pair of nightvision goggles and stare up into the sky at night, eventually you'll see something you can't explain. UFOs do exist, whether they are alien we only have evidence through testimonials, no tangible proof. Seeing how coming across hard proof would be rare as it is, it would make it quite easy for any large organization such as a world power's government to quickly apprehend you and confiscate or seize the proof.

Something I'd like to point out is that we don't actually know what conditions must be met for life to exist, only what conditions must be met for life on earth to exist, as we have had no first-hand experience on other planets other than mars (which is still second-hand actually), there very well could be other forms of life which live in dead space, or on gas giants, life could exist without water or light or heat for all we know. So with all the expanses of our universe, with virtually unlimited numbers of planets, many similar to earth, it's not only possible but probable that life exists somewhere else in universe, given the age, it's also "possible" that life outside earth could be more intelligent. Maybe we are the first intelligent life to roam the universe, maybe we're the dumbest intelligence in the universe. But now I'm ranting and off topic.

Originally posted by skept!cal
"where is the evidence"?...

Skept!cal

That one is easy to answer! You are asking the wrong people! Ask your government, they have tons of "evidence" that they might provide for you to review. The thing is, skeptics don't help the believers in that they stop any real investigating of government and other organizations by agreeing blindly to what these organizations say. Give us a chance to prove that there is tons of "evidence". Let’s all unite and make the hearings on UFOs and Aliens visitation a reality and stop this he said she said nonsense. I mean, if you guys are so secure on that there are no such things as UFOs or Alien beings then give us a chance and unite with us to simply put pressure. After that, if they are real or not, will finally tell who was right all along. I as a believer would unite 100% with any skeptic to find out the truth. Even if the truth is not what I expect it to be. If they are not alien, and they are not real, so be it. It will actually be beneficial because in that case I would simply accept the truth and move on. But it would be worse to simply drag this issue on and on till eternity. Going insane in the process.

I'm going to bash you lyrically so good, OP. That's right.... alien rap contest. Skepticahs VS Beleevahs!

Well okay I have something serious to add to the discussion. Take me into account. Instead of automatically assuming I'm a hallucinating crazy attention seeker that jumps to conclusions about street lamps or Venus (sadly, I used to think Venus was a UFO when I was younger...so something being said about people who mistake Venus for UFOS. It DOES happen that way sometimes. I stopped being interested in UFOs for years and years when I discovered rational explanations that fit exactly everything I used to see).... instead of assuming the worst of an anonymous guy like me, try listening.

I would really honestly like to see you think about "Where's my camera?" when a giant rectangular black ship larger than a football field is hovering only 100 or so feet above you, or when you come face to face with an alien being that you have absolutely no frame of reference to other than props in movies staring you down in your room at night. I think these guys are just a wee bit more advanced than us. So... would there be a likelihood that they have a quarantine happening right now, and that people running around with pictures of aliens meant that somebody wasn't doing their job?

I've seen beings and craft. I'm open to the possibility that maybe this was some sort of government psychological warfare test... but that seems more out there to me than actually seeing what I saw. "Are you sure you weren't hallucinating?"

Yes.

reply to post by LordThumbs


LordThumbs, you took the words right out of my mouth.

The vast majority of things in our universe can only be judged by degrees of probability. And while I don't usually make extraordinary claims, I don't validate my experiences through the approval of others either.

Setting up the path for others to explore is much more productive. Let them experience it, (or NOT experience it) for themselves. I see that the vast majority of skeptics (actually psuedo-skeptics) choose to evaluate info from an etic standpoint only. Until they try to evaluate info from an emic standpoint their viewpoint will be incomplete.

reply to post by Flux8


BELIEVERS/ACCEPTERS= those who are convinced by the testemony of the KNOWER and the "acclaimed" evidence brougt forth.

KNOWERS= someone with first hand experience in the presense of a UFO and or ET.

SKEPTICS/JOURNEYMEN= who are on a path to becoming an ACCEPTING individual to the phenomena (assuming they are actively researching casestudies)

I believe that there are those who KNOW and i myself would like to become a KNOWER in the near future.

trying to stay ON topic here, by saying; a question that i would find very difficult to answer would be "why havent they landed on the white house lawn" for a believer its hard to really be open about this...heres something about a beliver that a skeptic should be aware of. Believers have im assuming more "eyeball" time with casestudies and books writen by the abducted. examples jim sparks, alex collier, whitley strieber etc. and some of the details in these accounts are very very interesting. but when it comes time to talk about the testimony of these people we cant just say "oh jim sparks knows the aliens wont land cause they tried to have a contract with the government but they breached it by creating more weapons after back engeeniering" a skeptic will would laugh in my face if i said this... so there is a real urgency for believers to have skeptics just "read" the material thats on the table so that when we say rediculous things about the ET agenda we can be critisized in a more logical/ethical/down to earth way.




[edit on 03/06/2008 by LordThumbs]

reply to post by skept!cal


1. Betty and Barney Hill:
torn dress
unknown substance on dress
circular marks on car that made compass go crazy (witnessed by many people)
radar confirmation of object in sky near the abduction by Pease AFB
2. Flatwoods monster case:
The boys and Mrs May were physically ill by odor
Pungent odor was detected by police investigating
Oil around area and on Mrs May's dress
No crater made be meteor (which is what skeptics use to explain it)
Craft moved from one point to another
Spot was found where object landed, with a path of the mysterious oil from the landing place to where the being was sighted
The boys and Mrs May were taken to separate areas to draw the alien and produced drawings of the same creature
The boys and Mrs May were terrified of what they saw, no owl could do that.

There are many cases with physical evidence a craft landed.

reply to post by skept!cal


Hi Skept!cal,

First I think it's good for everyone (skeptics, believers, and fence-sitters) to be reminded of the definition of skeptic.

Skeptic - One who practices the method of suspended judgment, engages in rational and dispassionate reasoning as exemplified by the scientific method, shows willingness to consider alternative explanations without prejudice based on prior beliefs, and who seeks out evidence and carefully scrutinizes its validity.

ufoskeptic.org

Personally I have never witnessed any "supernatural" phenomena. However, I have an aunt who witnessed a five foot metallic disc fairly close in Peru during the 1960s. I have detailed in this thread why I think she was telling the truth.

Aside from the "family tale," I don't see a reason for many of these people to lie. We are talking about esteemed individuals within our society/culture. Many people consider Reagan the best president of modern times and he saw a ufo. The guy who discovered Pluto saw one and believed in ET. I could go on, but most of you are aware of how widespread this phenomenon is! I know enough about the laws of physics to know men can't design solid objects with mass that can move like UFOs reportedly can.

To me that is evidence enough. I know it isn't enough for a lot of folks. The fact that they apparently never leave behind a beer can for us to study and find a dna sample is unfortunate but not really surprising. This intelligence would appear to be of a magnitude far beyond us. Therefore, I would guess there's a good chance that our mainstream reductionist methods of "proving" might not apply in full to this phenomenon.

As on the other thread, I'm going to quote a scientist by the name of Bernard Haisch. Some Thoughts on Keeping It Secret:

Over the past 50 years, the highest courts have accepted and upheld the precedence of national security over the First and Fourth Amendments. So even if the public wanted to know, that would not constitute a legal need or right to know. The elite are doing their patriotic duty by trying to control the situation within the established rules of national security."

My impression is that, if the above is true, there may be more involved than simply the knowledge that intelligent beings exist on other planets, and that some are able to come here to observe us. I think that at this point in our development, most of the world's cultures could accept such information without catastrophic societal consequences. I conjecture that what is at stake has to do with the possibility that reality may be far more complex than our modern scientific notions of space and time and matter. Mystics might be quite happy with other levels of reality, but for civilization built around commerce and technology entirely grounded in physical reality, news of other realms that intelligences beyond our own may be adept at manipulating could be quite disruptive. Too great a shock to our collective reality could lead to chaos, and this justifiable fear could be a rationale for decades-long secrecy.

Op the questions you are referring too, have been asked and answered the best anyone could, they are just not answered to the satisfaction of those who didnt really want to know the answers, or have already made their minds up and answered it for themselves.

Ive always asked the question, why do those who think it is so fantastic that it cant possibly be real, why do they think that way?

And i ask it not to try and prove their existence.

We as a race have a fatal floor which i think holds us back, and that is we seem to think that we are all powerful, and nothing can compare to us as the Human race, maybe its just so fantastic it becomes unbelievable and some Human brains wont accept the fact its true.

Almost like when you see a really nasty graphic war picture, it shocks you so much you dont want to see it again, but you do, more and more, until you become conditioned to the idea and become capable to look.

Im obviously not saying this for everyone, because some accept they are real, some people still cant look at the pictures of war.

On the whole grand scale of UFO believers, conspiracy theorists, or anything else controversial, ATS is very much a minority.

Less and less pictures and video's are being posted on ATS and other sites like it, because of the recent tendency to instantly put them down as fake, some people who i know use ATS, have to post elsewhere to stop the story , pictures and video's from being lost without real investigation, somewhere in amongst those items could well be the real deal, maybe not Alien but UFO's none the less, the story of them has to be protected from being forgotten until they have been investigated.

And yes most of the pictures and video's are fake, however look at who is posting them mostly, same day registrations, and those with a beef against staff.

Someone earlier today suggested a week wait from registration to image posting, perhaps he was right, would it stop the post and run brigade?

I don't think "Where is the evidence?" is a good question because it's only your job to go looking for the evidence yourself. A lot of people act like its someones job to provide evidence for them while they sit around and don't research themselves.

Most of us have already passed the "Earth is the center of the universe and humans are the only intelligent life" stage.

We all know 9/11 was an inside job by now but I'm pretty sure you can't provide enough evidence to convince the judge.

Theres still many species in the ocean that we don't know about because we don't even have the technology to go that deep in the ocean yet.

The odd's are in 'Life's' favor.......as of 11/2007:

Your inquiry is definitely in the minds of many scientists who are trying to obtain a good estimate for the number of galaxies in the universe. The methods used to achieve such number varies, and therefore, the results would vary, too. Also, as new and improved technology becomes available, astronomers can detect fainter objects that were not seen before. These objects that have come into view will in turn change the estimated number of galaxies.
For example, in 1999 the Hubble Space Telescope estimated that there were 125 billion galaxies in the universe, and recently with the new camera HST has observed 3,000 visible galaxies, which is twice as much as they observed before with the old camera. We're emphasizing "visible" because observations with radio telescopes, infrared cameras, x-ray cameras, etc. would detect other galaxies that are not detected by Hubble. As observations keep on going and astronomers explore more of our universe, the number of galaxies detected will increase.

imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov...

And it is estimated the the qpproximate number of stars in the universe is (as of 1997):

This is a very good question! There are too many stars for scientists to actually count one-by-one, so other methods of estimating the total number of stars are used. We believe that there are on the order of 1021 stars in our Universe. If you write that number out, it looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. This is a lot of stars!

imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov...

To think that 'we' are on the only planet where lifeforms have come to exist...is.....well.............very egotistical and shallow. As mentioned Homosapiens have only been around ~50,000 years. 'We' also assume that life can only form under 'our' conditions'. Though 'we' are surprised at some of the very extreme areas on our planet where life is found.

So as far as life existing elsewhere......I bet: YES; now wether some are visiting us....I don't know...but there are alot of strange stories/sightings from people who have actually traveled in space (near space/moon)


Something a little more updtaed: www.thekeyboard.org.uk...

[edit on 29-7-2008 by ferretman2]

[edit on 29-7-2008 by ferretman2]