Ufologists - Stark Raving Moonbats?

[Sukerkin]

I can't really put this in the US Political forum, much as I'd like to for the fun of having it sit with Beck's love-in/smack-down thread and it's not really entertainment, so I reckoned the Study was the place for it.

After all, it might be worth a discussion rather than just shrugging off the very idea that there could be other space-faring civilisations - there's more chance of that than there being an overtly vengeful Creator Deity such as Beck believes in after all, tho' I suspect that neither would show up on radar very well :lol:.

I saw a bit of this 'documentary' on Sky earlier and was intrigued enough to dig it up on the Net. It's about 3/4 hour long but sort of interesting, despite it's annoying 'melodramatic' presentation style:

https://sites.google.com/site/paranormalzonex/UFOs/ufos-aliens-ufo-092

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[granfire]

compared to the other species of Moonbats those are lovable.

 

[Twin Fist]

i am open minded to the idea that thisplanet has been visited by other species

 

[seasoned]

I have always been fascinated with the idea that there was/could be, someone else out there.

 

[jonbey]

Total nonsense.

There is an area in the UK (Rendelsham Forest) where many people kept thinking they saw UFOs. People flocked there for years. Eventually the military admitted it was them, messing about with new tech.

People generally make weird stuff up when they do not understand what is really happening and after many years of the made up stuff being repeated people become convinced it is all true......

 

[Sukerkin]

The odds really are against there being a space faring species that evolves in the same galaxy as us and reaches a sufficient technological level to come and visit whilst we're still around as a species - but it truly is a fascinating idea.

I like to think that if we ever stop bickering with each other and put the resources we 'waste' on war into space exploration, then one day we'll be 'out there' ourselves. If we are and we detect some signs of life elsewhere I also like to think we'd make the effort to go and have a look ... and not just to wipe out the competition (which is what we did to the other sapient species on our own world, sad to say ).

 

[Sukerkin]

For a few years in my teens, overlapping the period in which I kicked what I these days mentally term the 'God Delusion' into touch, I was seriously researching the UFO phenomenon. For a long time it seemed that there was such a weight of anecdotal evidence that there just had to be something to it.

But there's a reason why I conflate religious/mythic creatures (e.g. Big Foot) belief with belief in star-faring extraterrestrial intelligent life. It's that there's no proof of it, there is only assertion and supposition. There seems to be a mass of evidence and there are indeed unexplained things that have been observed ... but ... that evidence is almost all 'eye witness' reports with not a lot to corroborate them.

One thing that had a big impact on my deciding that, wonderful as the idea was, it was unlikely that we were being visited by alien races, was that the nature of the sightings 'evolved' with the media. People become subliminally 'programmed' to 'see' certain things when what they see is not at all clear. So the reports of space ships and the creatures piloting them changed over the decades.

Ghost stories often grow from such mis-perceptions too. Mind you, I do have to confess I have personally witnessed some very 'weird' things in my life that I cannot account for with logic, science or engineering. So I hold my hand up and say that, inconsistently, because of those personal experiences, I am not quite so ready to dismiss such theories as that there are other dimensions we do not directly perceive. One day perhaps I'll be able to explain them.

My favourite, personal, UFO sighting happened a few years ago. I think I've talked about it here at MT before but essentially I finally figured out it was the lights of a military helicopter running a gun tracking manoeuvre on the car I was in as we drove down the motorway at night.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I believe the chances that life exists in other parts of the universe are staggeringly high.

I believe the chances that we've been visited by life from other parts of the universe are likewise staggeringly high; in fact, it's probable.

The thing is, I believe that alien life was microbial. Not intelligent. Not L.G.M.

It is possible that the universe is more alive than not alive; life appears to be staggering in its diversity even on this planet. And I think it would be foolhardy to presume that there could be no other intelligent life anywhere else. But I think the odds of any one of those civilizations finding and visiting us are about the same as our finding and visiting them. The first faint electronic emissions from our planet have only traveled 111 light years, and they have spread out and dropped in signal to the extent that they are most likely indistinguishable from background noise. How would they find us? Why would they come here?

I'm not saying it's not possible, but I suspect it is improbable, that we have been visited by intelligent beings from elsewhere than earth.

 

[JohnEdward]

:s193:Scientologists have already spoken to the existence of alien life. Aliens exists and are among us. Scientologist are the ones to know. These guys in the video just haven't figured that out.

 

[JohnEdward]

Don't know if there is alien life out there, thought I heard Mars had a bacterium or something like that. Man has been around for how many millions of years, you'd think by now something would have welcomed us to the neighborhood.

 

[Makalakumu]

What about alien abductions?

 

[Touch Of Death]

It is a thousand times more likely that there is a race of volcano people living in the center of the earth, than aliens flying here from other solar systems. Unless you count the astral gate at the center of the earth as flying. LOL
Sean

 

[Jenna]

I think Ufology is a perfectly valid discipline. I think it is also symptomatic of our need to feel we are not stranded alone here.

I guess the chance of there being life elsewhere in the universe depends on the scale, chemical- and bio-diversity of the universe itself. Obviously the larger and more biodiverse the universe is, the greater the statistical probability of chance factors in fortuitous environs coming together to form life.

As for us here ever having had visitors from beyond, I guess it is not such a step from single-celled lifeforms to faster-than-light devices of transport or teleport, given sufficient time to evolve.

 

[Jenna]

One question I always have concerning the existence of ETs is, how would a broad-daylight, here-we-are-come-and-prod-us, plain-for-all-to-see visit from another part of space change your worldview (if at all)?

Thank you, Jenna.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

One question I always have concerning the existence of ETs is, how would a broad-daylight, here-we-are-come-and-prod-us, plain-for-all-to-see visit from another part of space change your worldview (if at all)?

Thank you, Jenna.

Not much. There still won't be anything good on TV.

 

[cdunn]

A real visit would require a rewrite of our fundamental physics textbooks, because we would have to have something very, very wrong if someone gets here via Faster-Than-Light propulsion. This is possible. Not highly likely, but possible.

That said, strange trees of life have almost certainly taken root beneath the light of alien suns. Perhaps even now, as the harsh light of their green parent star boils away into twilight, minds we can only barely comprehend lean over bodies we can never imagine, and peer up through the skies to see the stars, and wonder, as we do, if others can live among them.

Yet, I admit that there is a certain thought, lodged in my mind. It is a sort of fear, not that we are alone, but that we are among the first. During the first few billion years of its existance, the universe was very elementally poor. Carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, sulfur, calcium, sodium, potassium, iron, nickel, all the elements of life and technology, all took billions of years to accumulate. We are born, like the mythical phoenix, of the ashes of those far away lights that blaze the very hottest. But this takes time. I fear, on occasion, that it will be us that is the first to go to our neighbors, and being even slightly advanced before them, I believe that we will not be benevolent.

 

[granfire]

A real visit would require a rewrite of our fundamental physics textbooks, because we would have to have something very, very wrong if someone gets here via Faster-Than-Light propulsion. This is possible. Not highly likely, but possible.

That said, strange trees of life have almost certainly taken root beneath the light of alien suns. Perhaps even now, as the harsh light of their green parent star boils away into twilight, minds we can only barely comprehend lean over bodies we can never imagine, and peer up through the skies to see the stars, and wonder, as we do, if others can live among them.

Yet, I admit that there is a certain thought, lodged in my mind. It is a sort of fear, not that we are alone, but that we are among the first. During the first few billion years of its existance, the universe was very elementally poor. Carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, sulfur, calcium, sodium, potassium, iron, nickel, all the elements of life and technology, all took billions of years to accumulate. We are born, like the mythical phoenix, of the ashes of those far away lights that blaze the very hottest. But this takes time. I fear, on occasion, that it will be us that is the first to go to our neighbors, and being even slightly advanced before them, I believe that we will not be benevolent.

Dunno, I think it's against the laws of probability to assume we are the only ones.
Or the first
And with our past track record of conquest, I think it's safe to assume that there will no benevolence found....
(Or in return we probably should not expect any)

 

[RandomPhantom700]

Regarding UFOs and the existence of extraterrestrials. Do I think there's other intelligent life out there? It's probable; I'd hate to think that we exist in such a giant universe and are the only ones actually out there. However, I remain a skeptic concerning the various UFO "sightings" and alleged alien experiments, and think that there's more earthbound explanations for their experiences (i.e. optical illusions, denial of a more serious encounter, boredom, etc.)

 

[Xue Sheng]

 

[Big Don]

What about alien abductions?

You fool! There are no alien abductions, only false flag operations by the government.