The Aliens Are Coming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[GiantGreenBean]

And when I say aliens, I mean aliens, cat people, greys, reptoids, giant eyestalked snailoids, human-like aliens, and god knows what else.

UFO Terms

Galactic Friends - Channeled Updates

Extraterrestrials and UFO Phenomena: May 2007

[Briareus Delta]

OMG. Well, I hope that they're not expecting to find intelligent life when they get here.

[Connavar]

Hahahaha



They will be shocked how stupid the humans are!

[Gothic_Angelica]

Maybe they're just looking for some light entertainment

[scalem X]

I think it's a form of betting. Hey Zod how you think this next planet will go down?
Well nuclear war is one to 11 versus giant scale global warming last I checked.

[ScottSF]

crackpots, all of 'em. I think the public mixes up two very different issues.

1) the chances of extra terrestrial life in the universe: highly likely
2) the chances that we've been visited by intelligent extra terrestrial life: highly unlikely and no solid convincing evidence to date. In fact most sightings and phenomena have an easy rational explanation but these folks won’t even admit they are wrong when face with irrefutable evidence. Most abductions can be attributed to a real physical condition called sleep paralysis. Also, memories recovered through hypnosis are unreliable. Sigh, I wish folks would stop wasting time on this nonsense and humans could work together to actually explore space and learn things much more interesting than these fabrications.

[mosaix]

Good post Scott

[Nikitta]

Originally Posted by ScottSF

Sigh, I wish folks would stop wasting time on this nonsense and humans could work together to actually explore space and learn things much more interesting than these fabrications.

Or even better: explore our own planet some more. Last I heard, we know less about the bottom of the deep ocean than we do about the surface of the moon and there are countless of unknown species in the rain forest. I know it sounds odd when said in a Science Fiction forum, but I kind of think that's more important right now. People talk about finding a way to terraform other planets when we can barely keep the one we have terraformed and that was terraformed when we got here.

Sorry about the rant. I just couldn't resist.

[ScottSF]

By all means, rant away. It’s interesting and fun to let the threads go where they will. I know the UFO/Abduction crowd can be entertaining and I’m sure the thread was started as tongue in cheek fun. My initial point is that the time and resources that go into this sort of thing can better be spent on legitimate science which I find much more fascinating. I also get very frustrated when people continue to pursue proven hoaxes, i.e. crop circles.

On the bigger issue of exploring space vs. exploring earth, I think we could and should do both. Now, if we have limited resources I agree that focusing earth understanding and maintenance would take precedence. When, however, I think of wasted resources, folks going around looking for Bigfoot doesn’t hold a candle to the amount of wasted resources go into humans hurting each other. Maybe a good reason why if any aliens did have interstellar travel they haven’t bothered to pop in and shy, hi. When I’m driving around, I know a ghetto when I see one and keep driving until I find myself in a safer place. I don’t think, however, we need to completely understand the earth and work out all our earthly problems before we expand and populate other planets. In fact the study of other planets helps us understand our own. For example we can see the greenhouse effect at work on Venus or better appreciate the importance of the magnetosphere when we see what the lack of a strong one did to Mars. And the big question about extra terrestrial life I think is the most important scientific question. If we find so much as a blade of local grass or a microscopic swimming blob on another planet the implications are vast and. . . I’m out of time. Interesting tangent, maybe a different thread in order. . . Feel free to rant!

[Interference]

Originally Posted by ScottSF

folks won’t even admit they are wrong when face with irrefutable evidence

There is no such thing as irrefutable evidence. Will you admit you are wrong if you are shown similarly circumstancial evidence that Aliens are visiting us? Clearly not, because you haven't. Yet you expect others who have first-hand experience of something to bow to your greater wisdom and say, "you're right, it didn't happen to me and I don't have the memories and the radiation burns that seem to suggest it did. They must be psychosomatic tissue reactions!"

Originally Posted by ScottSF

Most abductions can be attributed to a real physical condition called sleep paralysis.

Please say 'many' and not 'most', it is likely to be a more accurate statement. Perhaps there is no other explanation than a medical one to explain the vividness of some abductees' recollections, but no one has yet provided irrefutable (to borrow that improbable word again) proof that all abductees - nor even most - are self-delusional.

I personally doubt the likelihood of alien abduction. I doubt the likelihood that any alien civilisation has been around long enough to develop sufficient technology to bridge the distance between their star system and ours. But I doubt even more that I know everything that's happening in the huge vastness of spacetime that we often call our Universe. I will not hazard a guess, either, just now. People who believe they have experienced something inexplicable don't need my guesses any more than they need my derision.

I hope aliens are abducting us and gutting our cattle. It would help the world to make a lot more sense than if someone was making it all up.

Originally Posted by mosaix

Good post Scott

Hmmm. Must update my dictionary. The word 'good' has clearly been re-defined ...

[ScottSF]

1) “There’s no such thing as Irrefutable evidence.” If you define Irrefutable as “undeniable” then you are correct. Humans can deny anything from the holocaust to evolution if it doesn’t fit their world view. The ability of someone to deny doesn’t change the truth but I will change “Irrefutable” to Solid and Compelling. A good example would be crop circles. Plenty of people who called themselves “experts” and got some media attention said these phenomena couldn’t be faked. When the guys responsible for the hoax went public and actually filmed themselves making a crop circle believers were shown the video the next day still wouldn’t accept it. There are plenty of examples like this.

2) “Will you admit you are wrong if you are shown similarly circumstantial evidence that Aliens are visiting us?” If the evidence was compelling and generally accepted by the scientific community then yes I would admit I was wrong. I would change my position from “it’s highly unlikely that extra terrestrial intelligent beings visited us” to “the evidence is sufficient to believe we have been visited.” Time and time again I see claims of extra terrestrial debunked by simple explanations.

3) “You expect others who have first-hand experience of something to bow to your greater wisdom. . .” Of course I don’t, I would expect them to do the same thing I would and try finding the best explanation by learning as much as possible. The problem I have is people immediately jumping to a fantastical explanation. These strange logical jumps that say I can’t explain what happened so it must have been aliens/ghosts/space ships etc. I approach problems from a position of skepticism. Even things I experience myself are subject to the elecro-chemical reactions in my brain that can be influence but other factors. I can believe the validity of an experience and still be skeptical of the explanation.

4) re: sleep paralysis explanation “Please say ‘many’ and not ‘most.’ Good enough, I’ll go with ‘many.’ And your right, there is no way to prove that all supposed abductees are self-delusional. I’ll just maintain that there is no compelling evidence for me to believe any of these stories, especially when there are so many logical mundane explanations. I’ve had perfectly vivid dreams in my life and anyone can have a psychotic episode under the right circumstances.

I never claimed to know everything either. I only spoke of probabilities based on logic, critical thinking, and evidence. I know for a fact that human perception is very limited and that’s why we make all sorts of tools, i.e. telescopes, microscopes, i.r. cameras etc. to expand our senses but I’m quite sure there’s much more to the universe that we cannot begin to perceive. That, however, doesn’t entitle accept any far fetch idea without scrutiny.

After making some good points and helping me better express my position your last sentence troubles me: “I hope aliens are abducting us and gutting our cattle. It would help the world to make a lot more sense than if someone was making it all up.”

Why would alien abductions make MORE sense? You say this after you doubted the likelihood of abductions. Every culture has it’s boogieman that become part of its collective psyche. What’s so wrong with people using the local myth to put a name to their fear? That makes a lot of sense to me. Humans are very good at recognizing patters but this works against us sometimes and we can see patterns that aren’t there.

Thank you for your post.

[Interference]

Originally Posted by ScottSF

Why would alien abductions make MORE sense?

Simply and solely because the alternative is messy, psychological and prone to misinterpretation which prolongs the discussion of whether something can happen, as opposed to (if abductions were proven) why do they happen, which to my mind would be a far more fascinating question - if they were actually happening.

On the broader issue ...

While I acknowledge that fantasy and misinterpretation can become so entrenched by mis-remembering and repetition, that the chemical life of the brain is even less understood than the ocean bed, that hypnotic regression is about as useful as tying a knot in your hanky the minute you see a UFO, I have to wonder if they can, individually or together, result in 100% of the extreme events reported, as the debunkers would ideally have it. It only takes a single uncategorisable event to raise the question of an alternative extra-terrestrial/dimensional/temporal explanation.

The only 'abductee' I ever knew was an alcoholic. Which came first? The trauma or the DTs? I don't know, though the event he relates happened when he was 4 and has recurred at roughly 7 year intervals since then. Is it biochemical, physical or a constructed fantasy? It doen't matter, it's his conviction that these were his experiences, and I will not make light of the real pain he feels.

The contradictions of the evidence are, in my view, such that I personally find it impossible to come down on one side or the other with absolute certainty. I doubt but I don't deny the possibility. And the 'rational explanations' that permeate the media are often even less plausible than the possibility they aim to refute. And there actually aren't as many thoroughly and realistically debunked events as you might think.

As a person with a creative mind, I am able to imagine scenarios that satisfy me up to a point; derived from reading, from television documentaries and from the odd stories you pick up second and third hand if you live long enough. My ideas can only be notions and they can only provide an explanation of sorts that go some way towards satisfying me as to the existence of ghosts, goblins and greys. As someone with an inquisitive mind I occasionally wonder how right or wrong my suppositions might truly be. As someone with a rational mind, I would like a definite answer one way or the other. As someone with an open mind, I'm prepared to weigh evidence and wait.

[ScottSF]

Thanks again Interference, I realize that out of frustration my original post start out with "crackpots, all of them." Weather someone had a psychotic episode, sleep paralysis or any other traumatic experience that they were at a loss to make sense of, it was wrong of me to make light of their suffering. The frustration I spoke of was concering people that make websites and people, news letters etc. that start with the assumption that we've been visited and will take any kind of anecdotal evidence to propagate these ideas without any real scrutiny. Even more upsetting are people who continue to pursue proven hoaxes, i.e. crop circles. That's, the worst kind of closed mindedness.

I'm open minded too and can't wait for whatever discoveries come out in the remaining years I have with witness them. The advances we are making in astronomy and the increasing number of probes we are sending has me on the edge of my seat and I would be elated at the scientific discovery of a microbe for the implications.

[tangaloomababe]

Well people believe in alien abductions or alien invasions or just aliens in general because it gives them something else to think about or believe in and there are those who have made it a religion. So its really just like God, neither are real until you see the hard evidence.
Call me a sceptic but until either actually comes up and introduces themselves with a drivers license or passport showing there destination I am an NON believer.

Actually I have the tiniest belief in aliens, I mean how could I not think with all that universe out there that we would be alone. What would they look like, how advanced are they. No idea as long as they dont have the same mentality we have towards raping our earth.

[Interference]

Originally Posted by ScottSF

"crackpots, all of them."

I think that's what got me, all right.

Jeez, everybody here's so darned nice, can't even get a good fight going!

New subject:

Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else think it's odd that on a SciFi forum there are so few people who believe in the existence of extra-terrestrial biological entities? tangaloomababe is absolutely right, in my opinion, that aliens perform a similar function to God, and in fact to Fairies, Faeries, Succubi, Incubi, Demons and Angels. They can't be proved, they can't be disproved, and if enough people need them, they will exist for those people. Will the next socio-religious crusades take place on the moon, do you think? Or mars?