UFOs - The Disclosure Project:Sirius

[RichLB]

All the reasons they give as to why the government would cover it up comes across to me just like an Oliver Stone interpretation of history. I find all the reasons they say the government covers it up as ridiculous. I believe if the government - any government from any country - that actually has had a space ship land, the last thing they would do is cover it up. Crackpot interpretation.

Gee, if there was an economic or military advantage to back engineering alien technology, I think the first thing the government would do would be to keep it secret. The incident at Roswell (and hardly an isolated case) gives ample evidence of government cover up. First the military and towns people claim an alien craft has crashed, then after the passage of some time the government claims there was no crash and it was a weather balloon, and finally they cordon off the area using armed military. After that, several covered trucks arrived to cart off the debris along with a military escort. All that for a weather balloon? Talk about crackpot explanations! In this case the government takes the prize.

[RichLB]

You say "I agree alien visitation is but one explanation for the phenomena, but I'm not aware of an alternative one." That's exactly my point. The fact that nobody can explain it doesn't mean there isn't an explanation. And the last thing on my list of explanations would be aliens. Crackpot explanation.

Then, how about one, just one, of the other explanations from that list of yours?

[RichLB]

You can't have it both ways. You mention that we earthlings believed the earth was flat once and that we later found out that was untrue. Well, I guess you're trying to expose two notions - that what the majority believes might be nonsense and we ought to let true science explain reality. As I mentioned before (and invite you to disagree if in fact you do), the presence or past visitation of ET's to the planet earth is not accepted as scientific fact by any significant percentage of scientists anywhere.

Actually my use of previous beliefs that the earth was flat was a response to the statement that majority rules when determining what is real. And, actually, I do disagree about the number of scientists who rule out alien visitation. In fact, several nations (USA, Russia, England, Norway, etc.) have ongoing programs staffed by reputable scientists and with budgets of several billion dollars harboring the belief that UFOs are real.

[Gaybutton]

Then, how about one, just one, of the other explanations from that list of yours?

Atmospheric phenomena, aircraft misidentified, hoaxes - and crackpots . . .

See: http://curiosity.discovery.com/question ... nation-ufo

[RichLB]

Then, how about one, just one, of the other explanations from that list of yours?

Atmospheric phenomena, aircraft misidentified, hoaxes - and crackpots . . .

Ok, let's explore your list.
Atmospheric phenomena - Clearly the culprit for many of the UFO claims, but hardly persuasive. I don't think clouds and inversion layers are recordable on radar and I doubt the military would send jet fighters in an attempt to intercept a cloud. I think this one deserves a spot at the bottom of your list.
Aircraft misidentified - Again, quite possible for some reports, but aircraft larger than two or three football fields and that can fly several thousand miles an hour is a pretty far fetched notion.
Hoaxes - Again, there are many of these - some even quite sophisticated. I have far more faith in observers to believe that serious investigators can be taken in by a pie plate dangling from a fishing rod.
Crackpots - Yep, tons of them. But, surely you don't believe high ranking military, university scientists, elected government officials, air plane pilots, and even a couple astronauts fall into this category, do you?
How about providing an alternative explanation that covers some of the "real" reports. I'd love to hear how the Phoenix lights are explained, the 1942 Los Angeles attempts to shoot down unidentified craft, why the military took such pains to protect a weather balloon at Roswell, how radar can detect objects and follow them if they are not there, why airline pilots would report being followed by alien craft and risk being fired, and the list goes on. C'mon. Drag out that list and give me a decent explanation.

[Gaybutton]

Drag out that list and give me a decent explanation.

You make it much too easy for me. Everything on your list is perfectly explainable by what I've already said. And since when are crackpots limited to the civilian population? I don't dispute that many people really have seen things that we have no answers for - yet. But to leap to the conclusion that the explanation for any of it must be alien spacecraft? To me, none of it makes any more sense than saying if I masturbate to nude photos of Ernest Borgnine, then aliens must have implanted something that controls my urges. Crackpot!

Jimmy Carter - I certainly would not dispute that he saw what he says he saw. Did he attribute it to alien spacecraft or did he say he doesn't know what it actually was?

If and when any of the alien spacecraft explanations can actually be proven and accepted by the scientific community as fact, that's when you'll make a believer out of me. Until then, all we really have are nothing more than guesses. I actually hope that it can be proven that aliens have visited Earth. I'd love for that to turn out to be true. All my life I've hoped to live long enough to know irrefutable proof has been discovered that life does exist on other planets, even if it's nothing more than bacteria. If it turns out that Aliens are visiting Earth, no one would be more excited about it than I. But to date, none of this so-called proof is anywhere near enough to satisfy me. You know why? Because none of it is proof. It's theory. It's conjecture. But it's not proof. To me, the reality is that people are putting two and two together and coming up with five, and they're doing so because they want an explanation, but can't come up with anything else.

I see an analogy to the development of the atomic bomb. Before it was made, it was only theoretically possible. It became fact on July 16, 1945 - the day the bomb was tested and it worked. Alien spacecraft visiting Earth is theoretically possible too, but until Kxhtyxxig from the planet Ua Ala Eeki is addressing a joint session of congress, I see nothing that changes theory and conjecture to fact. You believe in aliens. Fine with me, but your believing it doesn't make it fact.

[RichLB]

If and when any of the alien spacecraft explanations can actually be proven and accepted by the scientific community as fact, that's when you'll make a believer out of me. Until then, all we really have are nothing more than guesses.

Ok, GB, let's go back to the original question. What would constitute proof to you. I assume you will accept less than an alien addressing a joint session of Congress - or would you? As far as I can tell, every measure of scientific proof has already been presented, but naysayers counter by anecdotally presenting occasions (and there are many of them) of erroneous claims - masking the authentic phenomena and attempting to paint them all with the same brush. By the way, it is now admitted that Project Blue Book was designed to do just that through misinformation debunked over and over. So, other than personally meeting an alien, what would you require to feel the case has been proved?

[Gaybutton]

what would you require to feel the case has been proved?

Live news coverage on CNN would do very nicely - clear, irrefutable news coverage of an alien space ship. Seeing the actual aliens live. People claiming to be "in the know" about coverups have an obvious agenda. I don't really need to explain the way people with an agenda present their cases, do I?

You keep missing the point. I am not denying facts and I am not denying these people saw what they say they saw. What I dispute is their interpretation of what they saw.

[Bob]

A bit futile getting led into the game of attempting to prove a negative to a true believer. Somewhat akin to trying to tell the Greeks that there is not and never was a thunder god and/or telling a Thai that there really are no ghosts. If you're a true believer, it makes it a whole lot easier for the brain to either dismiss or totally discount what the general scientific community thinks about a matter. And he doesn't even accept that notion (that the general scientific community refutes his claims)!

[RichLB]

People claiming to be "in the know" about coverups have an obvious agenda. I don't really need to explain the way people with an agenda present their cases, do I?

Don't you have it reversed? What agenda could those who support the notion of UFOs being of alien origin have? I can see what those "in the know" have to gain by their denials (military advantage, preservation of the enormous profits of the military industrial complex, avoidance of possible public panic, preservation of the geopolitical alignments, etc.) but I'll be damned if I can see what agenda those who support the idea might have.