Question for ufo skeptics

This is what i dont get.,,,,


Barring the couple of dodgy billy meier aspects (the canister and the `alien girl pictures`), the main problem with his pics that you moaned about were `oh they are too good to be true`.


Then you moan about the average everyday pic of a ufo being `too blurry and unclear`

Ive seen many many quality ufo cases with genuine looking footage, credible evidences, yet people will come up with the lamest debunk ever, making THEMSELVES appear like morons.

Its goten to the point where i have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of skeptics.

The skeptic who wants to believe, but they just need physical or `see with own eyes proof`, which is fine....

But then you get the skeptic who NO MATTER what, even if a ufo would land on the whitehouse lawn, would still scream `i dont believe it`! or `hoax`!

You see some people can not face the fact that the little narrow bubble that they live in could not be the be all and end all of whats around us, and will therefore chose to purposely create hoaxes, disinfo or put down and ridicule any good and genuine ufo cases!

Please dont reply and take everyone of my words and analyse it with some witty remark and try and turn it against me,
You know what ive said here is 100% true

weneedtoknow!

Welcome back!

sometimes people will do everything in there power to not believe.

If it doesn't exist it can't hurt me.

It will never matter to a sceptic how much evidence you bring to the table, Especially when its online like ATS.
You bring a photo of an ET , UFO or an alien artifact you get the sceptics saying " Photoshopped, fake, Lantern" etc.
You give them a tape of a conversation between you and an Alien they say " its gibberish, its a five year old speaking " etc.
You give them , in their hand an alien artifact or an alien book , they'll say " its fake, you made it up".
There's no way online , on the phone, on TV you can ever give a sceptic any evidence they will believe.
They ONLY way for them to change their minds is for them to be either 'contacted' or 'abducted' . and then the process begins all over again as another sceptic falls inline to fill the void.

I have never seen an Alien, I dont think Ive seen a UFO but I do believe they exist....there are too many stories, pictures, abduction cases, high level officers that have reported strange objects etc....why is it impossible to believe.....millions of people believe in Jesus....I believe Jesus existed but not quite sure about him being the son of god...(unless we all are)...

People generally need convincing....afterall, we live in a Science age where most things have an explanation....but even today, there are things that Science cant explain.....

I think ya`ll got a sceptic confused with being a DEBUNKER.

I believe in alien life elsewhere in the universe, but i consider myself a skeptic.
As a skeptic, I entertain the possibility of the evidence being true, enough to research it, and make my own satisfactory conclusion. I just refuse to blindly believe.
Losts of evidence out there but not a single shred of proof YET.

A Debunker, comes in with the motive of shooting it down even before seeing any evidence.

There is a difference.

Originally posted by eufoseekere
Its goten to the point where i have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of skeptics.

The skeptic who wants to believe, but they just need physical or `see with own eyes proof`, which is fine....

But then you get the skeptic who NO MATTER what, even if a ufo would land on the whitehouse lawn, would still scream `i dont believe it`! or `hoax`!

This is true of every conspiracy-related or paranormal area though, not just UFOs/ETs.

I think I read, several years ago, there was some movement to adopt the British spelling of 'sceptic' for general, more open-minded 'the jury is still out' form of scepticism and the U.S. spelling of 'skeptic' for a more strident, 'out to debunk from the very start', take on an issue.

It may have been the other way around, but it was a move towards differentiating between two radically different stances.

I'm glad you made this post because as a skeptic who has seen a dreaded black triangle, I think some things need to be addressed. First when I approach a photo or account or video or whatever of anything have to do with UFO's, ghosts etc., the first thing I try to do is educate myself on the possibilities of what the mundane explanations of said phenomenon could be. If the phenomenon can reach an 80% of the criteria for the certain mundane explanation then as a rational person I must conclude that it "probably" is of mundane explanation. Too many believers do the exact opposite and see that 20% as ABSOLUTE proof of the paranormal explanation. This is truly disengenious and only serves to hurt the field of paranormal research and earns us the label of wackos. If you can discount mundane explanations, not by just proclaiming through your beliefs but scientifically and rationally, then you might have an honest to goodness "paranormal" or "UFO" event. Photographs are now one of the worst ways to stake your claims to a paranormal or UFO event becasue of digital media and the overabundance of misidentifications, camera artifacts,malfunctions and misuse as well as hoaxing. This has now carried over into video. Contrary to alot of belief within the "beleiver" community there are people who genuinely enjoy pulling the wool over thier eyes, for either monetary purposes or just S's and giggles. As for myself I don't enjoy seeing people duped by unscrupulous people just trying to get a kick. Which is why I urge people to look at the mundane first before making that leap of faith to the paranormal. If you can validate the phenomenon as stated above then I will be right beside you backing the research all the way. But if you decide to jump right to" dust particles in this photo are actually departed souls" conclusion without looking at the mundane first, then expect me to be a skeptic. Real skeptics want to keep the believers honest and are actually working with you. If you find the physics of photography or science in general boring or just can't grasp, thats fine. We accept that, even ask questions, we will answer. We want the same thing you guys do, the truth. But bashing us because you didn't take the time to do your homework and ask questions is not right. Now as for the Billy Meier photos, IMO those photos are just TOO perfect. But thats just me.
P.S. I am in no way the smartest person or most technically knowledgable on this forum, but I will do the bookwork. This seperates the true skeptic from the "troll" or pseudo-skeptic.

[edit on 23-2-2009 by djvexd]

What I find interesting about skeptics is their ability to judge the non-existence of aliens and alien visitation using human understanding.

We are a primitive life form.

Once some explained to me the reason why aliens do not make themselves openly known.

The reasoning was like this: Imagine you were a South American indian that lived in the forest and then Albert Einstein came along and started explaining nuclear physics.

The worst thing that could happen would be the fact that he just wouldn't understand, but what if the indian did understand, he would question his very existence and would probably go into cultural shock.

Aliens, UFO's, ghosts and psychic phenomina are for the open-minded those that know their is more to us than this three dimensional world.

We judge everything we know to be true based on earthly facts, which we barely understand ourselves.

I read on one site that it would be impossible for aliens to travel here because of the vast distances of space and time.

At the speed of light it would be near impossible, but light isn't the fastest thing on earth.

Thought is.

Imagine sitting on the porch at your house and then standing on Mt Everest?

No time goes by at all, so imagine you could travel like that?

To us we don't understand it, because our 3D understanding doesn't permit it.

But these aliens travel like that, in and out of our dimension, that's why they do not burn up in our atmosphere at high speed.

How can you show up on radar if you are there, but not there?

The fact that some of the most credible people on earth have witnessed these beings, etc is proof in itself.

These people have their professional reputation a stake and are prepared to be lambasted for their testimony, but they do it.

What does a skeptic sacrifice?

I pose this question to all skeptics:

Prove to me you exist?

If you read De Kant, you'll realise that question is more complicated than you think...

I don't loop myself into the Believer or Skeptic descriptions fully. I consider myself a Skeptical Believer. I believe in other life out in the universe, I even believe in the possibility that we have been visited. My problem is in the proof that has been provided so far is not, in my opinion, of good enough quality. Yes there are people who have come forward making claims of this and that, but the body language in many interviews inclines me to think they are lying. Others seem to believe what they are saying, but their experience could have been necessarily involved aliens although they believe it to be.
I don't want 100% proof; I just want what I would personally consider believable proof. (not all people are going to agree what level of proof they need)
With technology these days, you can come up with some movie quality fake pictures/video, most aren't even that good. Others are truly unidentifiable objects, but that dose not necessarily mean alien.
There are people providing these unidentifiable object images as proof of aliens because they can't be identified mans they must be alien. That is a big jump to make. Where they may very well be alien in origin, we do not possess enough knowledge about current top secret military projects of any country to discount that they are just that. Some are so blurry that you can’t make anything out that they could even be known aircraft.
I tend to go into many threads with an open mind hoping that this time I will find the answers I seek, only to be disappointed in what I read in some cases, which leads me to start asking questions, and once in a while.

I hope this provides some of the insight you are looking for.

I believe the ET hypothesis is the most likely for a very, very small percentage of UFO phenomena. For this reason I think the probability of intelligent ET visitation is greater than 50%. But I consider myself a septic no matter how it is spelled.

However the only correct approach to anything like paranormal (I hate that word, something either exists or it doesn't) phenomena is to absolutely exhaust (by exhaust I mean disprove) every possible, no matter how unlikely, prosaic hypothesis. Then what you have left is the possible and therefore most likely hypothesis.

That is the problem with posts that begin, "debunk this...etc". Debunk what? You cannot debunk a UFO sighting. All you can do is disprove prosaic hypotheses. By definition a genuine UFO will remain unknown. So the most satisfying conclusion I can ever reach is "I do not know."

Another disclosure; I'm not sure I would be certain of the ET hypothesis if a UFO landed in my yard, and the ET climbed out and shook my hand. Once I had made sure I had not been drinking, or recently had a bump on the head, I would probably still think it was a clever reality television prank.

It is really hard to prove things, and even harder to disprove things entirely. There's a distinction between math proof and scientific proof. Math proof is, in some respects, easier to quantify than scientific proof, because a statement has to be true in all cases. To disprove a math proof someone has to show a single example where the proof is no longer true.

With scientific proof, a theory or hypothesis is proposed and then evidence is checked to see whether it holds true and the conclusions support the hypothesis. Ideally scientific evidence should be gathered so the biases and methods used to collect that data are transparent, and published. That means peers can check the methods used to collect the evidence, the references, and check for themselves. Science has its roots in natural philosophy; the idea that nature could be studied objectively and natural solutions could be found. Science is a term that wasn't used until the 19th Century.

The problem with dealing with people is that the evidence we produce is not reliable. Modern statistics, not political statistics, often concerns itself with trying to work out whether there are problems with the way things are measured. There is a lot of scope for problems. For instance; a poll asking people how optimistic they feel – but the poll only asks people on Mondays. People could rightly point out that people may feel more optimistic later in the week. There are many places errors like that can slip in. In medicine they use double blind randomised controlled trials to try and avoid bias. They show the lengths needed to go to reach a conclusion about something when measuring people. Even then it's difficult, and things can go wrong.

And the same applies to personal experience.

I once saw what I assumed to be some kind of secret aircraft or test flight – but if I believed in aliens visiting earth I would say I saw an alien UFO.

Both explanations could be wrong.

I'd been partying hard that night. It could have been an ordinary plane casting a shadow on a cloud. I could have dreamt it, and the large amounts of alcohol messed with my head. Someone could have put '___' in my drink.

I think those are unlikely. I saw a UFO. I don't think it was alien though. Just because I'm unfamiliar with an aircraft's flight characteristics doesn't lead me to the conclusion of aliens. What I think is likely is irrelevant when it comes to proof. It could have been alien.

In order to convince people I'd seen anything, let alone aliens, the evidence would have to be transparent. I would have describe the time, location, direction, how many drinks I'd drunk, and provide quality photographic evidence. Even then I shouldn't be believed. I could have made it up. I could have photographed something with a natural explanation. I could have Photoshopped it.

If there were multiple witnesses, I'd expect people to believe I'd seen something, and nothing more. What biases do the witnesses have? Who are they? I'd expect the same level of scrutiny to be applied to them. After all: They could be my friends – whose to say it's not a hoax? Or for profit? Or that we all religiously believe in alien UFOs, and would therefore be more likely to say so?

I think a reliable witness is a myth and that all witnesses should be scrutinised equally. I don't think people are liars, or generally bad people, but we all get stuff wrong, all of us.

For me, the most convincing cases are when witnesses say they don't know what they saw. They are less biased than observers who believe in alien UFOs. Many people who believe in alien UFOs search for things that confirm their theories, and disregard evidence to the contrary. That is wrong thing to do when searching for the truth. It's very difficult to be objective – that's why science evolved (and it's not perfect, because it involves people).

Check everything, trust nothing, be sceptical.

[edit on 23-2-2009 by jackphotohobby]

reply to post by eufoseekere


It is difficult to make out anything with a blurry photograph or video. In Mr Meier's case, the photographs and films are quite clear, and that makes it easier to analyze the details.

I agree with your argument that simply dismissing a photograph because it is too good to be true is wrong. I think it gives a good opportunity to analyze and gauze information from such photographs.

The debunkers (who are different than skeptics) don't even look at the extra evidence when discussing a case.

Can you please link to one place where someone has put forth "they are too good to be true" as a an attempt to debunk them and not as a simple description.

If I knew about a possible ponzi scheme, I would describe it as too good to be true, but I wouldn't base my investment on that alone.

[edit on 23-2-2009 by Tiloke]

The skeptic who wants to believe, but they just need physical or `see with own eyes proof`, which is fine....

This is more than just skeptical. This person will not even accept good evidence...they want physical proof, so until they see it with their own eyes...it doesn't exist. It's surprising this person believes the Earth is round, unless of course, they're an astronaut and saw it for themselves...

But then you get the skeptic who NO MATTER what, even if a ufo would land on the whitehouse lawn, would still scream `i dont believe it`! or `hoax`!

This is a debunker, who will always devise a mundane explanation, even if it doesn't fit the facts, and ignore the evidence that is contrary to this conclusion.

However, there is another type...the skeptical believer... this person accepts that there is a lot of evidence to suggest extraterrestrial visitation, but also accepts that the vast majority of cases are misidentifications or deliberate hoaxes (with a small amount of just plain nutcases thrown in)..

I happen to fall in the latter category.

As for Mr. Meier....he's got at least 3 PROVEN instances of fraud (i.e. the Asket/Nera hoax, the "time travel" photos from a magazine, and the "wedding cake" UFO utilizing one of his garbage can lids as a base for the model). So, it's certainly not hard to understand why he's labeled as a fraud...is it? (if you've ever seen his "ray gun" pics, you'd laugh your arse off....)

Some people just like the power of sitting in judgement and watching others squirm as they make them jump through endless hoops. Some people just like to put others down and sneer. Some hardline scepticism is just a cover for acting like a mean spirited brat, just as some true believers are woolly headed fantasists. ATS seems to be troubled more by the former than the latter.