When does evidence become proof?

Originally posted by CallMeBlu

Originally posted by Malcram

IMO, At this point, it is only extreme prejudice, narrow-mindedness, or slavish deference to the pronouncements of 'powers that be' - whether they be political, religious or scientific - that holds back the fact of ET piloted craft in our skies from being accepted as a rather obvious truth.


[edit on 10-3-2009 by Malcram]

UFOs and ETs are completely different subjects, when are you people going to get that? Do you assume USOs are ETs as well? The evidence for UFO phenomenon is overwhelming...the evidence for ETs is virtually non existent. Even when you take into account witnesses who see the occupants of a UFO, you don't know the occupants are extra-terrestrial. You "believers" are simply creating a strawman for pseudo-skeptics/debunkers to attack.

Get a grip.

What makes you think ET's and UFO's are "completely different subjects"? I'm not saying that every UFO is an alien craft piloted by ET's, I've never said that, but only that some are. You are assuming I make that assumption. LOL

So they are not "completely different subjects" they are related, they overlap, at times. The quote of mine you posted doesn't say that I think all UFO's are Alien craft or ET piloted, because I don't. I know that some people do constantly make this assumption, so I understand your frustration. But I didn't do that.

For me personally, I'd start thinking about it around 11, and I'd be convinced around 15 and 16, and definitely by 17. I've seen a lot of discussion about evidence, proof, skeptics, and etc. in this thread and others, and here's my theory on the subject.

The scale of evidence required to believe something goes up concurrently with the strangeness of the event or thing.

For example:

1. "I saw a guy riding a red bicycle."

Totally mundane. Why not believe it? In everyday conversation we routinely believe such mundane, ordinary things that people tell us without any additional evidence.

2. "I saw a guy riding a horse on the street."

Slightly unusual, but within reason. This sort of thing does happen from time to time. If we know the person and they're generally honest in our experience, we'll probably believe it without any additional evidence, although we might ask some questions and want more information.

3. "I saw an eagle in the middle of downtown sitting on a light pole."

Something that is more or less mundane, but significantly out of place. We are likely to question our friend's judgment ( "Are you SURE it was an eagle?" ) but not too likely to disbelieve that he at least saw a large bird. Another person corroborating the story, or seeing a picture of it on the 6 o'clock news, will be enough to convince us.

4. "I saw a pink dolphin!"

A recognizable animal or event, but with a somewhat bizarre twist. If we've never heard of a pink dolphin, we may well ask what our friend has been drinking or smoking. If, however, we've seen pictures and video of a pink dolphin in Florida on the news and the internet with an explanation of its unusual color (it is an albino), and know that our friend was in Florida for spring break, we may well believe him, especially if he's got a picture or a corroborating witness.

5. "I saw a pterodactyl!"

Yeah, right. We know what a pterodactyl is, or at least what one used to be, but they're supposed to be extinct. We'll probably think our friend misidentified a large bird or perhaps even a large kite. Even a few halfway decent pictures and an additional witness may not convince us that it was really a pterodactyl. There better be some really good evidence before we buy this story.

6. "A dragon ate my horse."

Sure, buddy. And the men in white coats are coming for you when? We still know what a dragon is, or what one supposedly is. We have a concept of "dragon" based on mythology and legend, but they aren't supposed to be real. At this point many people will already be at the "bring me the head and I'll consider believing you" stage.
We may still think our pal may have seen something resembling a "dragon" because we expect him to have the same concept of what a "dragon" is as we do.

7. "I saw an alien."

Umm .. what? Exactly what did you see? A grey? A big slimy thing like the Alien movies? A "predator" thing? A little green man? An "ET phone home" critter? What?

The problem here is that we don't have a common conceptual definition for "alien" or "ET." Also, every concept of "alien" that we have is purely from someone's imagination. We really have no idea what an alien should or would look like, so how are we supposed to evaluate whether our friend saw one?

How did our friend decide that what he saw was an "alien"? Did it tell him it was from another planet? How do we even know that an alien wouldn't look just like us and we'd never know it if we saw one?

Here is where a lot of reasonable people are going to want to see a body, or DNA, or something that "proves" that what our friend saw is not of this world.

UFO believers say that we judge UFO evidence unfairly because, if this same person was the one who saw the guy on the red bicycle, or the eagle, we would probably have believed him without question. And yet, human beings all do this. We decide whether to believe something based on the strangeness factor of the event.

A mother, for example, may believe that the mean kid down the street busted her kid's bicycle, but when he tells her that a monster did it, she immediately accuses him of lying. Why? Same kid, same busted bicycle. It's the strangeness factor, and we use it constantly in our daily life.

The employee who is late due to a flat tire will be believed without too much question, especially if we look at his car and see the "emergency spare" on it. If the same employee says he's late because a UFO buzzed his car and killed the battery, do you believe him or not? Every story that someone tells us, we judge the truth of it based on the reliability of the witness and the strangeness factor of the story.

It is, therefore, quite unreasonable for the "believer" to argue that "skeptics" should believe in UFOs and aliens on the same amount of evidence required to believe in the pink dolphin or the giant squid. We know what a squid is, and we know they exist. We've probably seen - or eaten - one at some point in our lives. It's not that much of a stretch to believe in one that's just .. bigger!

We do not, however, "know" that aliens exist, or what their appearance or characteristics might be. Pragmatically speaking, the idea that someone saw one is even harder to believe than the pterodactyl, because at the very least we have real scientific evidence for what a pterodactyl is, what one looks like, and that they did exist at some time in the past.

For aliens - extra-terrestrial intelligent beings - everything we have is fiction which came from someone's imagination. We have nothing at all scientific or historical to tell us what an alien is supposed to be like. Yes, we can compare current sightings to cave paintings and hieroglyphics, but we don't really know what the ancients were depicting. There is quite as much "historical evidence" for dragons, unicorns, and gargoyles as there is for ETs, and yet we don't believe that any of those are real.

So, why shouldn't there be a higher standard of evidence needed to convince me that ETs are real, and here? The strangeness factor is off the charts, and not comparable to anything else.

reply to post by Heike

Very good post. It's very reasonable to investigate more carefully extraordinary claims. Some people will disagree and point out that it is hard to define what "extraordinary" means.

BTW I have seen a red dragon last week. I have pictures! (It's a cloud)

Wait you mean dragons arent real? Wait a minute you must be joking i see vids and pictures on the net all the time.There is recorded sighting though out history. Even encounters where they attacked towns with hundreds of witnesses!
To say that is just silly you deny all the evidence proving there existence i think you must be a government agent and doesnt want the truth to come out to avoid panic! I assure you i can prove they exist beyond all doubt i have an several images taken by NASA. All though the ones from mars seems like they edited them out! I can show you where they removed it from the pictures.

Sorry couldnt resist

Well if someone saw a mythical creature lurking in the woods, i would not try to refute the evidence, heres why I believe that: "Seeing" isnt believing, "Believing" is seeing because you can only see what you believe. The reason we seem to see something before we believe it is an illusion created by our own mind because the neo-cortex of the brain is responsible for what you are seeing in the first place. So scientifically, you would have to believe something before you can even see it. Athiests are all about scientific evidence, in this case the phrase? "believing in something that doesnt exist" doesn't make any sense.

The differences between evidence and proof... Ah well, that's very difficult to draw a line. But I'd like to point something.

Many times, in courts, the proof is the set of all evidence, because there is not one proof.

Most research is conducted based on evidence of something. Not on proof.

Now, many times, we must also notice that many "proofs" are disputed, which is fair. What is unfair is to dismiss the whole set of evidence at once, saying it doesn't constitute something coherent and worth research.

If I had to be the judge of the "ETs are visiting the earth" case, given the amount of evidence, I'd say they do.
If I had to be the judge of the "ETs are abducting people" case, I'd probably ask for more investigations, but I'd tend to agree too.

Who said that when everything reasonable was found to not be the reason for something, then we must consider something unreasonable or even impossible to be it?

reply to post by MarrsAttax


I would believe them if pictures were taken. In Mexico there were pictures and reports of flying witches - equally bizarre. Space aliens coming here, based on all the reports previous of the 20th century, is not that hard to disbelieve. I can't say that I believe the videos of flying witches in Mexico.

Yet, if 1,000s of individuals all claimed the same thing without publicity which was a major event in their lives that changed them forever, they worked with the few abduction researchers and it was figured out that everybody was having the same experience which indeed had physical evidence.

So if people said they saw dragons abducting them under hypnosis I would believe them.