DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
The photograph itself may be real, the item in the photograph may be real. If we first accept those two things, that still does not mean its not something mundane, seen under unusual conditions.
Why does the government hide UFO's?
- Thread starter darksidZz
- Start date
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
When all the mundane things are ruled out, we infer extramundane things. That's basic logic. Then over time we gather more evidence showing these same extramundane causes. It builds its own case over thousands of sightings and photos.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
It would be, if all the mundane things were ruled out.
No. This is where you're wrong. The photo of this unexplained thing does not contribute to the explanation of that unexplained thing. Each case must be assessed on its own merits.
If I spot an unidentified animal in the jungle eating a warthog, and then a week later spot an unidentified animal in the jungle sucking nectar from a flower, I do not draw the conclusion that there is an animal in the jungle that eats warthogs and nectar.
Bad science. No cookie.
Magical Realist:
If you want to have an honest discussion about Joe Nickel, as opposed to merely trying to slander him as you are wont to do, then I suggest you start a thread in which we examine an actual article written by Joe Nickel, looking into the truth or otherwise of your claims that he ignores evidence and acts dishonestly.
I expect you will not do this, because you know at some level that what you are saying about him is false.
I don't know that your favorite UFO sighting is not an alien spaceship.
I don't know that your favorite ghost sighting is not a real ghost.
I have not claimed that the light in the sky, or the fuzzy blur in the photo is not a real thing. I do not deny the "evidence".
I question your interpretation of the evidence (which, I add, is of typically poor quality, often of dubious provenance, and open to multiple interpretations).
It follows that I have no "firm convictions" about UFO sightings in general. My interpretation of the evidence varies from case to case, based on the evidence itself.
As for the UFO phenomenon in general, I am not aware of any compelling evidence that convinces me that alien spaceships are now visiting or ever have visited Earth.
Certain cases have been plausibly explained this way. Possibilities remain possibilities until they are shown to be untenable.
I personally looked at several of your ghost videos and proposed a number of possible explanations. None of them was silly or unlikely, and all of them were based on the evidence at hand. You were unwilling to discuss my explanations, and effectively dismissed them out of hand. What does that suggest to you? To me, it suggests that you're unwilling to seriously consider any alternative explanations other than ghosts.
You have a bee in your bonnet about Joe Nickel - somebody, by the way, that I have never described as my "hero".
If you want to have an honest discussion about Joe Nickel, as opposed to merely trying to slander him as you are wont to do, then I suggest you start a thread in which we examine an actual article written by Joe Nickel, looking into the truth or otherwise of your claims that he ignores evidence and acts dishonestly.
I expect you will not do this, because you know at some level that what you are saying about him is false.
Look. I'll put it in bold this time:
I don't know that your favorite UFO sighting is not an alien spaceship.
I don't know that your favorite ghost sighting is not a real ghost.
I have not claimed that the light in the sky, or the fuzzy blur in the photo is not a real thing. I do not deny the "evidence".
I question your interpretation of the evidence (which, I add, is of typically poor quality, often of dubious provenance, and open to multiple interpretations).
It follows that I have no "firm convictions" about UFO sightings in general. My interpretation of the evidence varies from case to case, based on the evidence itself.
As for the UFO phenomenon in general, I am not aware of any compelling evidence that convinces me that alien spaceships are now visiting or ever have visited Earth.
You refer to "the phenomenon", but what does that mean? The phenomenon of taking photos of unidentified things in the sky? That's real enough. Beyond that, we have very little of substance, although there are many identified flying objects from photos previously said to be UFOs.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Wrong. The universe does not reset to zero with every new ufo sighting. We know things now over years of studying this. Black triangles. Saucer-shaped craft. Abduction experiences. Residual burnt marks in the grass. Radar speeds of up to thousands of miles in a matter of a second. And this substantial body of knowledge and evidence informs and enlightens us about the phenomena and what it might be. That's basic science.
That just exposes your vast ignorance of sightings and evidence obtained over the decades. Samples of heat and radiation exposed ground. Radar returns of high speed craft. Physical effects on eyewitnesses ranging from microwave burns to paralysis and headaches. I'm not going to reeducate you in this field every time we discuss it. I have posted much information about all of this over the years, even getting some threads shut down for it. Study the phenomenon itself. It's real and has defined characteristics just like the paranormal does.
Last edited:
Classified aircraft, faked photos, unverifiable anecdotes, misidentified weather balloons, crop circles, radar "ghosts".
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
LOL! Now you know why I ignore most your posts. You just make up shit and leave it at that. Like you did in the ghost thread. Come back someday when you're really serious about studying this subject.
Last edited:
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Right. It's possible purple glowing bats may fly out of my ass at any moment. Or not. Who knows James? Everything is just so friggn "possible" because I just made it up! Who needs facts when you can just make up possibilities!
in the first video that you posted in post #46, at the end of it--the last scene(from 10:40 to the end)-- is OBVIOUSLY a commercial plane. after that, i simply could not carry on with the other videos--somethings are simply to ridiculous.
Actually, studying collected alien spacecraft would be rocket science.
only if they were rockets.Actually, studying collected alien spacecraft would be rocket science.
No, options are still mutually exclusive. Either the government knows something and is covering it up or it doesn't know anything and therefore isn't covering anything up. It can't be covering something up that it doesn't know.
And the UFO nuts fall down sharply in column A. Area 51/Roswell is the clear example: UFO nuts believe the government found and is hiding an alien spacecraft at Area 51. It doesn't matter if they understand how it works or not, just analyzing it would tell them it is an alien spacecraft.
Are you referring to the picture on the cover of the video? Did you watch the video? Near as I can tell, that was a joke and wasn't in the actual video.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Right. So there shouldn't be any dispute about whether ufos actually exist. They obviously do. Not everything in the sky is identified.
Probably most reports these days aren't ever conclusively identified. All that the debunkers ever seem to do is propose their own hypotheses about more mundane things that might conceivably be responsible. That's not entirely unjustified, as I discuss below in my comments about Hume on miracles.
I fully agree. So does MR in fact. He said as much in his post #5. All he got for his trouble was another flaming from the board's fundies. MR suggested that there might be something else at work here that we don't understand or perhaps even suspect. I agreed that's possible in my post #38.
Right. All ufo reports have to be bullshit. They have to be fake. They can't be anything else. Our debunkers don't really know that's so, they are just assuming it on the basis of their faith in their own worldviews.
Exactly. They don't even appreciate that the sightings themselves are a fascinating phenomenon, whatever their ultimate explanations might be. (Probably multiple explanations, some physical and some psychological.)
The sightings are extraordinary by their nature, they certainly aren't normal. Their abnormality is what got them noticed in the first place.
I agree that they aren't close to being sufficient evidence to pull down the entire scientific world-view.
But I'm not convinced that most ufo enthusiasts want to do that. That's how the ufo myth differs from earlier religious visitations in the skies. The ufo myth is expressed in sorta-"scientific" terms: spaceships! space aliens! It isn't Jesus, Mary and the Saints any more. I personally look at ufo belief as a species of contemporary popular religiosity that attempts to repackage the miraculous in what seem to be present-day terms that people today are more comfortable with and find more authoritative.
I think that what the ufo myth fundamentally seeks to do is to re-inject a sense of magic and the miraculous back into everyday life, a necessary quality that people feel that mechanistic science and scientism has stolen from them. The idea that amazing, wonderful, transcendent and potentially life-changing things are happening around us that most people don't even suspect. (More recently the ufo myth has taken on dark political overtones as well, as it has started emphasizing government conspiracies and coverups. The emphasis sometimes shifts away from the manifestations of transcendence towards expressions of alienation.)
I can't argue with that.
That sounds like a restatement of Hume's argument against miracles. But not quite. Hume defined 'miracle' as a violation of the natural order. Then he argued that since the natural order describes what is most likely to happen, any violation of that order is going to be unlikely by its nature. (That's why miracles are signs and wonders.) So... there will almost inevitably be some natural explanation possible for a supposed miracle that is more likely than it's actually being a violation of the natural order.
The difference in the case of ufos is that nobody seems to be suggesting that they are violations of the natural order. Aliens using advanced technology to visit earth doesn't directly contradict our understanding of science, let alone science as it might be conceived by a more advanced civilization.
I guess that I would agree with you that ufos being alien spaceships is an "extraordinary claim". But what does that mean? A claim with an intrinsically low probability? But do we really know that? How can we assign probabilities to things like visitations by space travelers? I'd personally say that my intuitive guess is that the probability is exceedingly low, given the distances involved and so on. (I'm also influenced by my argument regarding humanoid aliens.)
But having said that, remember that MR isn't exactly arguing that ufos are alien spaceships. He's suggested that they might be something totally unexpected. How does one assign probabilities to that? Arguably, the probability that something amazing will someday surprise humanity might be close to 1. It's just that the probability that contemporary ufo reports are that something is probably a lot lower.
I'd like this one twice if I could.
I think you misread post #5 or are limiting the scope of the statement. MR does, in fact, believe that unexplained + unexplained = alien spacecraft. He said so explicitly in posts #62 and 65 (and has said it a number of times before).
No one has ever claimed that. You're doing what MR does: creating crazy strawmen.
That's an overreach. Many people who don't know much about airplanes or planets or photography see things that aren't normal to them, but may be normal to people who have more experience with such phenomena.
C'mon!
Way to make a joke too real and spoil the fun: rocket science is aerospace engineering, which encompasses all things that fly in the atmosphere or space. Including actual rockets and anything else that flies.