Lance Quazar said:
No, you're incorrect. The "mainstream thinking" is that we don't know. That is the default, mainstream "accepted" point of view that you feel so terribly, terribly persecuted by.
There is nothing wrong with saying that you don't know. And most scientists actually do believe it is highly likely that there is life elsewhere in the universe. Billions and billions and all that.
That is why legitimate scientific efforts to find alien life like SETI exist. That is why we're interested in exploring Mars and the Jovian moons and are searching for evidence of life in those places.
You're assumptions here are just completely wrong.
No one is saying we're alone. There's no arrogance, at least not on the part of the scientific community. No one is saying definitively that we're alone, simply that we lack any evidence to the contrary. However, the search for LEGITIMATE scientific evidence continues.
However, a few blurry photographs of supposed UFOs or anecdotal stories about "abductions" (even the most famous cases of abductions have been proven to be fake) don't qualify as real proof. Nor does a lot of made up nonsense about lines on a map.
It all goes back to this - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Talk to me when you have some real facts.
I'm afraid you're buying into scientific dogma. There are not only a "few blurry photographs". There are thousands of crystal clear ones, high-rez video, landing trace cases, and much, much more. There *is* extraordinary evidence. The problem is science has become like a religion, entrenched in dogma, further entwined with funding and politics. They turn a blind eye to evidence that is right in front of them, usually to defend their positions, their grants. This has been constant throughout history. By taking that stance you just prepare yourself to be proven wrong, like those who doubted the existence of so many animals, the feasibility of the locomotive, electricity, cell phones, and so on.
Take for example John Mack. A Harvard psychiatrist who started studying alien abductions, and came to the conclusion that these were real experiences. He was blackballed at Harvard for it. So, even someone as highly trusted as a frickin' Harvard doctor can be called a kook if he dares to look at the evidence. With that kind of pressure, of course most mainstream scientists are going to keep quiet and hold to the party line. But all that really does is discredit the establishment and those, like you, who seem to regard it as an authority. Given the party's line's track record for backing the right ideas, ufology has far better odds of being true in all its endeavors.
"Blurry photographs". THAT in itself has been disproven. It's not about evidence. It's about mind-set. All we get from the Hubble telescope about deep space is "blurry photographs", yet we accept it as real, simply because it fits into the mind-set of mainstream academia. And, Lance, science is not so open-minded as you think. Privately, most scientists do indeed lean towards extra-terrestrial reality, but publicly, they deny it. Otherwise, why is a simple photo of a UFO met with so much skepticism that the establishment creates a mind-set that reduces thousands of good photographs into a "couple of blurry ones"? You buy their BS hook line and sinker, then accuse ufologists of exactly the same behavior. Someone is not given a hard time if you take a picture of a lenticular cloud, or a Siamese doughnut, or a drive-by shooting. So, why does a UFO photo get flak? Because the mainstream says "NO!" that's why. That's not exactly an open-minded attitude.
And, if I may ask, how have the "most famous cases" been proven to be fake?
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". That's just Carl Sagan using a catchphrase instead of scientific principle. Science is supposed to search for answers to any question, not require "extraordinary evidence" up front. Sagan and others defend SETI and such Silly Efforts To Investigate because they don't want to look like fools, having put their money on the wrong horse. Sagan's Cosmos series and other "promotional endeavors" (something this thread has often accused ufologists of, I might add -- Sagan, I guess, is no less of a huckster than any ufologist then) would be at extreme risk of being made to look impotent and worthless were an alien found in our back yard.
There *is* extraordinary evidence and the "experts" simply refuse to look at it. And even if there wasn't any evidence, to get "extraordinary evidence" there needs to be an "extraordinary investigation". Ufologists do what they can. They make the effort. The fault is with the scientific community who do not use their greater resources to look at the evidence that exists. And, what might be that evidence? Here's some of it:
1) Project Blue Book Special Report 14. A valid government document about UFOs. Even after all the whitewash and pathetic debunking, the document still admits that over 700 cases are "unexplainable". In science, you do not say "okay, good enough, we're mostly right, so, we're right". A hypothesis has to be 100% or it's not valid. So, how do over 700 UFO sightings going unanswered qualify as 100% solved?
2) Pieces of metal held in private hands that labs refuse to analyze.
3) Crop patterns with no footprints, mutated plants at a cellular level, created in seconds by invisible men while cameras tried and failed to catch them.
4) Cattle mutilations, with laser-made cuts, zero blood, no tracks around the carcass (even those of the animal itself), accelerated decomposition, predators won't go near it, sexual organs surgically removed, and the animal's bones broken due to being dropped from a great height.
5) Radar tracking of UFOs released by the Belgium Air force, and THEY are the ones who say it is a UFO.
6) Brazilian infra-red drug traffic cameras picking up entire formations of UFOs.
7) The tens of thousands of sightings over Mexico City since 1991, including one which flew in-between buildings in 1997, while on tape, and burned the buildings it came closest to, witnessed by 62 people.
8) Three former United States Presidents filing UFO reports (skeptics often like to point out how witness testimony is invalid, because it's always hicks and kooks).
9) Ancient testimony, including cave paintings in Spain, Mongolia and Arizona, a 14th century Fresco in a European church, crop circles reported in the 17th century, Alexander's sighting, Egyptian sightings, and so many, many sightings in the Bible. Why does everyone see the same ships?
There *is* extraordinary evidence. At the same time we humans have an extraordinary capacity for denial.
I'm afraid it is your assumptions, Lance, that there is no evidence, are the assumptions that are completely wrong.
