Show Me A Sceptic That Does Not Believe In Aliens

reply to post by Xtraeme


"You know what that makes you? A disbeliever. That's all I was trying to figure out. You disbelieve on faith. Congratulations you're no better than a person who believes in aliens."

You act like I haven't seen all that evidence. And you act like the only place to get it is from this forum (links, etc.)

You would, of course, present undeniable evidence for little space buddies here. There is no better forum.

Or maybe the same old ka-ka, repeatedly warmed over, is impressive to you, but not to anyone who thinks about it. That's the problem with being a True Believer, you stop thinking after a while and just go on faith.

Have fun with that.

reply to post by Gawdzilla


Heh, you really have a hard time distinguishing between UFOs and aliens don't you? Well when you actually want to own up and be a proper debunker feel free to shoot down some of the harder UFO cases (again not aliens).

I wish I could say it's been fun.

No worries, I'll even let you have the last word.


[edit on 10-4-2009 by Xtraeme]

reply to post by Xtraeme


Better minds than I have already shot down everything that has come up, why should I repeat all that. "Keep the faith, baby."

I believe that there is other life throughout the universe, but if we base our existence on a random act of nature the odds are extremely low that there is an intelligent space fairing race within 10,000 light years of us. This makes us maybe not alone in our galaxy, but still very lonely.

With that said I do not believe that aliens are visiting us or have even an idea we exist. If someone wanted to ponder on whether we were not random but seeded, or we could travel through other dimensions that connect every point in the universe, or we could travel much faster than light speed as a living person, or finally that god has made many races, I would say under any of these other conditions we have aliens around us.

But the problem is none of these are provable at this time, and a random act of natural is all we have to go on, so until something else is provable or someone throws a dead alien up on my kitchen table I will believe we are alone.

reply to post by Xtrozero


"With that said I do not believe that aliens are visiting us or have even an idea we exist. If someone wanted to ponder on whether we were not random but seeded, or we could travel through other dimensions that connect every point in the universe, or we could travel much faster than light speed as a living person, or finally that god has made many races, I would say under any of these other conditions we have aliens around us."

The mutation that made humans different from other primates was probably an accident. But . . .

Originally posted by Gawdzilla
reply to post by Xtraeme

 

"Keep the faith, baby."

I know I said I would let you have the last word, but man this is just too good:

reply to post by Xtraeme


And I knew you wouldn't keep your word. Predictably.

Originally posted by Gawdzilla
reply to post by Xtraeme

 

And I knew you wouldn't keep your word. Predictably.

Heh, we're all hypocrites together no?

reply to post by Xtraeme


No, you're in a class by yourself.

But seriously folks, back on topic. Why are True Believers blind to the fact that the "evidence" to date wouldn't convince anybody who wasn't predisposed to believe in it?

I do not believe in the slightest possibility of alien life.

I believe that in the beginning, God created, and we are the centerpiece of his creation and the heavens declare His glory, and to measure the passing of time.

Originally posted by Cakewalk
I do not believe in the slightest possibility of alien life.

I believe that in the beginning, God created, and we are the centerpiece of his creation and the heavens declare His glory, and to measure the passing of time.

So, the whole bloody universe was built as an ego-trip? How marvelous for the Crown of Creation! We hummin' beans are very, very special, ain't we?

Question, however, if you please. How come 99.9999% of what the Great Sky Fairy created is just plain empty vacuum? Seems he's not very good at this kind of thing, is he?

I'm quite conscious of the fact that I probably appear to be an avowed sceptic in many threads on a variety of topics. However, I actually believe in a multi-hypothesis regarding 'aliens'. I believe that there is both ultra-terrestrial and a more 'nuts and bolts' extra-terrestrial elements to the issue of UFOs and/or alien visitation. To me, there's no reason why it should be an 'either/or' situation, particularly as neither scenario alone goes very far as to rationalising the whole phenomenon.

It's one thing to be dismissive and sceptical regarding many of the claims that appear here and another to be completely dismissive of the whole field outright. I hope there aren't too many 'believers' that are confusing the two things.

Originally posted by Gawdzilla

Originally posted by Cakewalk
I do not believe in the slightest possibility of alien life.

I believe that in the beginning, God created, and we are the centerpiece of his creation and the heavens declare His glory, and to measure the passing of time.

So, the whole bloody universe was built as an ego-trip? How marvelous for the Crown of Creation! We hummin' beans are very, very special, ain't we?

Question, however, if you please. How come 99.9999% of what the Great Sky Fairy created is just plain empty vacuum? Seems he's not very good at this kind of thing, is he?

Believing that aliens are around us and/or made us for some speical purpose seems to be about the same as people saying we are speical in god's eye. Oh, the government is in a conspiracy with some of these aliens and both grander events and mass depopulation is ahead of us….might as well be reading the bible here, just swap the name god for aliens…hehe

Originally posted by XtrozeroBelieving that aliens are around us and/or made us for some speical purpose seems to be about the same as people saying we are speical in god's eye. Oh, the government is in a conspiracy with some of these aliens and both grander events and mass depopulation is ahead of us….might as well be reading the bible here, just swap the name god for aliens…hehe

That's probably closer to the truth than you realize. The same characteristics are displayed by both camps, "only the names have been changed".

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Galaxy-gazing scientists surely wonder about what kind of impact finding life or intelligent beings on another planet would have on the world.

But what sort of effect would it have on Catholic beliefs? Would Christian theology be rocked to the core if science someday found a distant orb teeming with little green men, women or other intelligent forms of alien life? Would the church send missionaries to spread the Gospel to aliens? Could aliens even be baptized? Or would they have had their own version of Jesus and have already experienced his universal or galactic plan of salvation?

So does E.T. have a soul?

And if we encounter aliens, what does that say about humanity, our place in the universe, our relationship with God? Will aliens have their own religions? Do human believers have the same duty to share their religious beliefs with aliens as they do with fellow humans?

Those are the kinds of questions that Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit astronomer and member of staff of the Vatican Observatory, wanted to address when he recently authored a 48-page booklet on the religious implications of discovering extraterrestrial life. Entitled Intelligent Life in the Universe? Catholic Belief and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life, the booklet deals with the questions that Brother Consolmagno often encounters when talking to Catholic groups about his work with the observatory.

A man whose job title includes the words "Vatican" and "astronomer" can only expect to have such questions thrown at him. But should the day ever come that we actually do encounter an extraterrestrial civilization, these questions will take on a significance that far transcends the occasional post-lecture bull session amongst a few catholic astronomy buffs. Suddenly, everyone will be asking them.

There are those who would argue that the first and most important questions we should ask an alien civilization are:

Do you believe in God?

and

What do you believe about God?

Others might argue that our first questions to the extraterrestrials should be about science rather than theology. Or maybe the questions should be even more practical than that: Are you friendly? Do you mean to kill us or enslave us? Did we mention that we have nukes?

But irrespective of the order, it's clear that inquiries into the spiritual lives of our friends from the stars will be of universal interest. What might we expect to learn about them, and from them?

To begin with, the question of whether aliens have souls is a non-starter. If they are intelligent, sentient beings, they get the same presumptive metaphysical accoutrements as we. In other words, if you tend to think that humans have souls, chances are you'll extend that to aliens. If you think that we don't, then you'll almost certainly think that they don't, either. Yes, a few fundamentalists will insist that we have souls and they don't, and a few total flakes will insist that they do and we don't -- but the overall debate about the existence of the soul will be largely unaltered.

Sorry, something odd happened when I went to edit that strange typo in my earlier post and in doing so it created a new one (forum bug?).

Please ignore/mods delete post.



[edit on 12-4-2009 by Goathief]

Gawdzilla & Xtraeme

If I may jump in here, both of you seem to be splitting hairs over the issue of the ambiguity of the term UFO. Let's assume a UFO is strictly an observational phenomenon, a unidentified light seen moving in the night sky. We should not extrapolate anything further than that, just a moving light viewed at night. Next, let's establish the fact that people do see things moving in the night skies that they are not able to identify. Because of the fact that people are raised in a multiplicity of different beliefs, dosn't detract from the fact that they will imply interpretation upon the light that they see moving at night, they will and have for thousands of years. Here is a brief survey I compiled back in 1991 concerning the names which have invariably been applied to this phenomenon of ghostly moving lights seen moving at night; The Ignis Erraticus - A Bibliographic Survey of the names of the Will-'o-the-wisp.

This catalog of names is representative of an emmense body of folklore which has attempted to explain the nature of these anomalous lights. A vast majority of the names refer to terrestrial borne lights with a few refering to heavenly borne lights such as St. Elmo's Stars, Castor & Pollux & Helle and Phryxus. As you may well see in the survey, these names imply beliefs about the lights with these beliefs being expounded by the body of lore which is associated with the names. In antiquity, a Will-o'-the-wisp and a Jack-o'-lantern were considered seperate tales because of the implied observation made in the names, "wisp" vs. "lantern." The bearer of the wisps and lanterns also infer beliefs such as Will, Jack and Hob being synonyms for the devil. When and where these lights were seen, generally, will reflect the current belief structures of that particular time and place.

Now, let me make the bridge between Jack & Will and St. Elmo's Stars to that of the modern UFO. Jack & Will were nocturnal sightings made on land, St. Elmo's Stars were nocturnal sightings made at sea. Let's break this down occupationally now, sightings made while moving on land and sightings made while moving on the seas. In the early 1940's a new mode of nocturnal travel was being pioneered, night flying. Did Jack, Will & St. Elmo's stars successfully adapte to this new form of nocturnal transportation? Indeed, the foo fighter, the baka bomb, Me-262, Me-163, Robombs, Search light fighters, Kamikazes, Buckets of Blood and Scarecrows were names which were coined by nocturnal aviators. As is the standard above, beliefs as well as time and place are also infered in the names for this phenomenon. By the early 1950s the terms foo fighter, Baka Bombs and Me-262s were supplanted by the terms Flying Saucer and Mig-15. Then came Edward Ruppelt's UFO.

Here I would like to take off the chains and step back from Plato's cave wall and attempt to explain that what we see on the cave wall is not reality, that they are mere shadows seen by the prisoners.





[edit on 12-4-2009 by Rotwang17]

reply to post by Rotwang17


"We should not extrapolate anything further than that, just a moving light viewed at night. Next, let's establish the fact that people do see things moving in the night skies that they are not able to identify. Because of the fact that people are raised in a multiplicity of different beliefs, dosn't detract from the fact that they will imply interpretation upon the light that they see moving at night, they will and have for thousands of years."

The first sentence is contradicted by the rest of the paragraph. Or didn't you notice that?

Originally posted by Rotwang17
Gawdzilla & Xtraeme

If I may jump in here, both of you seem to be splitting hairs over the issue of the ambiguity of the term UFO.

[edit on 12-4-2009 by Rotwang17]

Not only splitting hairs, but to keep splitting the same split that's already been split when there's nothing to split but let's pretend we never had this discussion.

I don't think he cares about any of this stuff. I think it's just a teenager showing he can talk back to grownups.

reply to post by Salt of the Earth


I know asking for evidence is a major crime here. That's one of the reasons I do it. The other would be that if you are ever going to get the respect for this field that you crave, you're going to have do a lot better at being critical of evidence provided and learn to eliminate the nonsense.

Originally posted by Gawdzilla
How come 99.9999% of what the Great Sky Fairy created is just plain empty vacuum? Seems he's not very good at this kind of thing, is he?

It's not vacuum. It's aether, and quite heavy, heavy enough to hold the stars and planets in their orbits.

Check out the thread that's going on now on geocentrism.

But if God wants to put spaces between his creations, does that make him a dud, that you, a mere creature of his handiwork, should mock him?

The Bible says: The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.