Guybrush

I'm a sceptic. Among other things, that means I try to maintain some kind of criteria for what I'm prepared to believe in. Based on what I know about the universe, the hypothesis that intelligent aliens having visited planet earth does not pass the criteria. As I wrote earlier, assuming that the idea is pure imagination, well, as long as there's no evidence to conflict with that assumption, then it's one simple assumption which is congruent with what we know about reality. People have active imaginations and are sometimes manipulative. If you accept that aliens visited our planet back then, you have to make a whole new set of assumptions about our universe to fit that hypothesis into your world view. The chances of you believing in something which is not true rises dramatically. Put simply and bluntly, I believe in not bull****ting myself.

Saying there is proof and that I just have to go find it, well .. that's not really a convincing argument. I have to say my motivation is lacking.

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Neapolitan

Being skeptical is just anohter way of not saying "no," but not necessarily saying "yes" or vice versa. Beside you can't be skeptical on a hypothetical without given some creedence to what you say you are skeptical of, like say if someone says she is skeptical of unicorns that doesn't mean that she flat out denies unicorns exist, it's just means she doesn't believe in them now because there's a lack of evidence, she might believe in them if she sees them (that is if there's not someone trying to trick her by like glueing of a horn on a horse). Like she don't want to say "no" to their existence because is working under the assumption there could be a slight chance unicorns might exist. So being a skeptic you believe in the real possiblity of ancient aliens?

And another thing, Skeptism should not be dependent on critea, what happens if your cirtea is too low, you could be gullible to awlful lot of things, if your critea is too high you might not believe in anything, eg like those who are in the Flat Earth Society, their critea is soo high, that they're tremendously skeptical of a slightly bulging spherical Earth.

You are working form the assumption the so-called ancient aliens were ETIs from another planet in this Universe. There are other possiblities too, you know. What about the multi-verse? One scenario is that these ancient aliens or modern day aliens could be extra-dimension beings. If they were to come from this Universe, traveling these vast distances, there are many problems that can arrise from Einsteinian Physics eg traveling the speed of light (C), but if they are from another dimension they could just side-step Einstein's Physics altogether. The don't have the difficulty of traveling near the speed of light in space-time (and by doing so ever increasing their mass), but they can easily move from one dimension to another in their extra-dimensional vehicle.

I'm skeptical as well (like you are) to many things that I hear from pseudo-scientific communtiy and/or the world of para-normal scieince. Ancient aliens is not a modern day phenomena. Though it is one of the more popular modern day theories put forth, a lot of it is base in myths and legends from the ancient world, hence the moniker "Ancient Astronauts."

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Guybrush

^Neapolitan, I doubt you are sceptic like I am because, and I don't mean to offend, but there are methods to being sceptical which I think you may not have heard of or at least don't apply much in your daily life. There are optimality criterions which let you choose one hypothesis over another even when you don't know which one is correct. Have you for example ever heard of occam's razor?

You are correct in that if I see evidence of the ancient astronauts hypothesis, I may change my stance. I probably will if it becomes the most parsimonious explanation. Saying that these aliens may come from another dimension does not really make it much easier to accept. You then have to assume that the multiple worlds hypotheses are true, that beings are able to somehow cross over from one world to another and you still have the problem of explaining why we don't see these extradimensional creatures, their architecture, their technology and so on today. You know, why isn't our world more like Half-Life video game series?

I'm not saying these hypotheses can't be true. I don't know that. What I'm claiming is that the chances of them being true are much more slight and believing in them requires a range of explanations relating to them, and many of those could turn out to be wrong. Not that I study aliens, but let's say I could, then I would more likely do so when the support for their existence is so great that it should not be ignored. I wouldn't just do it out of the blue. That's when you say the ball is in the believers court - it's they who have to convince us, not us who have to "look harder".

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P A N

tore, you seem like an intelligent person. i would like to explain my position on this in a way that you might understand.

i live in canada. in my first post in this thread (at least i think it was the first one... and in this thread) i mentioned PAUL HELLYER and his associates. Paul Hellyer is the former Canadian Defense Minister and also served as deputy PM under Trudeau. my father has known who paul hellyer is for probably 40 or 50 years. he's not some random dude citing stuff he's heard on the net or creating far-fetched notions pertaining to beings from other planets/dimensions/densities. he's been a functioning member in canada's government for several decades, and many people see him as a staple in our system in one way or another.

anyway, i was looking around at some stuff a buddy showed me when i stumbled across a video of Hellyer speaking at the Exopolitics conference. up until that point, i was probably more skeptical than you. then i took some of what he said, some names he'd mentioned, and took it some steps further, and now i think if i denied the likelihood of any of what he claims, i would be lost.

i'm not going to try and convert you. i've heard many MANY things pertaining to this subject and in order to have any understanding at all, you need to go do the research yourself. many hours of it. it's very complicated and not something i or (likely) anyone else on this forum is qualified to talk to skeptics about.

in order to get a skeptic to believe in aliens, one would need to get one to pay the skeptic a visit. i don't have the resources for this. and i especially have no interest trying to get someone to go see for themselves when they just wanna hang out on music banter and express their opinion which has been influenced only by opposing biases.

Neapolitan

I'm skeptical of that are more than one method of skeptism, I think if you yourself applied the Law of Parsimony to Skeptism you should be able to come up with only one method of Skeptism, right? I think the best definition of a Skeptic is do not emphatically say "yes" or "no." Well it's not a defintion so much as it is a rule of thumb of how to speak without being corrected. This way you will never be taken to task for saying something. By saying that I am skeptical of aliens I think will eliviate any pressure on me to prove there are aliens than if I would of said "Yes, there are aliens." I mean that is tremendous amount of stress to prove there are ETIs visitng Earth especially since there is this vast international conspiracy for the suppression of evidence. Now if I said "No, there are no aliens." and then they land, well then my credibilty would be shot. I might not be taken seriously anymore, it would be analogous to a Police Officer who gets caught in perjury, his/her testimony will always be taken as questionable whenever he/she is on the witness stand.

Honestly I haven't so much heard of it, or really know the true definition of it, and what it's applications and ramifications are. Though I have seen it used quite often on another forum (no one here on MB) by atheist. I am quite amused that they used it so much in their arguements taken into consideration of the fact it is attributed to a Fransican monk, William of Okham.

The question of life on other planets, isn't the same as the question of ETIs interfacing with Earthlings, or however they would consider us to be, that kind of contact would be classified as something like Close Encounters of the Fourth (or Fifth) kind. I think you first have to start off with a certain criterion of what life is possible statically in outerspace. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to find the probabilty of life in outerspace, you could just use something like Drake's Equation to do that, mabye throw in a couple of more variables to narrow it down to meet your criterea.

Well most of the evidence of creatures from outerspace so far is unverifyable, second handed, mere speculation. I see for the most part that those who are indeed true believers are basically paranormalist begging for recognition from a more academic scientific community for their UFO hypothesis. I don't mean to sound harsh, it just my skeptism speaking. But I can not rule out thinking about it hypothetical the possiblity of ETIs. So since I would look for a more practical explaination of the evidence brought forth so far, esp. by shows on the History Channel and the paranormal society in general, I think the question of ETIs poses a interesting philosophical debate.

Is Paul Hellyer a Freemason? Most of the American presidents and founding father, etc who believe in the Plurarity of Worlds, ETI's or spoke of UFO as an worth investigation (like Gerald Ford) were in fact Freemasons.

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Darkest Hour

Great Series, and how is anyone supposed to explain the pictures 600 years ago that ufo's in them? The evidence is quiet overwhelming aliens have visited earth before.

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Freebase Dali

If there was actual evidence of intelligent alien life-forms visiting earth, and none of that evidence was conjecture or biased/infuenced opinion, I don't think this thread would even exist. It's pretty solid logic that until you can actually prove something like this exists, it doesn't. Or, at least if it does exist and you're just unable to prove it, you should stop being moronic with statements that presume you can.

Guybrush

When I look at that picture, I don't see why it has to be a picture of a UFO rather than, say, God. Maybe the beam of light is his eye in the sky who's attention is focused on the woman in the picture. I mean, why would a UFO beam at her? Is that really the only explanation?

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noise

yay, let's interpret art out of context!

that painting is The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius by Carlo Crivelli. i've seen it, it's in the National Gallery in London. it's a spectacular painting, and is easily one of my favorites of all time.

it was painted as an altarpiece for the church of SS. Annunziata in Ascoli to celebrate Pope Sixtus IV granting the town self-government in 1482.

that's Mary inside the building. archangel Gabriel outside, along with Saint Emidius, the patron saint of Ascoli. notice he's holding a plan of the town, commemorating the event.

when you actually take the time to understand where images like this are coming from, it becomes very difficult to support absurd claims about ufos and aliens. the divine light illuminating Mary from the heavens is most certainly not an alien laser blaster. pardon my bluntness, but anyone who says so is an idiot.

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Guybrush

Brilliant post, noise

I agree with your blunt statement. Something which is impossible to not notice on musicbanter is that whenever there's talk of conspiracies or UFOs and the like, there are some usernames that come up as supporters. There are some people who I get the impression are less critical and more likely to swallow wild UFO claims whole. Their approach to this sort of "stuff" - whether it's Obama's plans for putting americans in concentration camps because he's the antichrist or that corn circles are being made by visiting aliens - with a sort of general approval and acceptance. Since various wild claims and theories are being supported by the same people over and over, it leads me to think there's something about the people who believe in them rather than the claims themselves.

If I were to put it blunt, I would just say these people are idiots.

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