Why don't people take UFOs and ancient astronauts seriously?

Post Reply New Topic

as far as ancient astronauts are concerned, the only one i can think of is a chinese emperor (or some sort of noble) who sat in a chair that was equipped with many rockets (fireworks really) that were detonated, and there was no follow up description of the trip by the "ancient astronaut" as far as i know.

as far as UFO's are concerned, i am undecided, but i do not think we have been visited yet, and i think there is only a slim chance that humanity will ever meet any intelligent non terrestrial life form.

i do believe there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe because if earth is the only place it exists, then it would be a miracle, and i do not believe in miracles. there is some inevitable mechanism that leads to life, and that mechanism is real in every location within the universe.
it is inevitable that given the vastness of universal "opportunity" to occur, the most unlikely things will occur many times.
does it take 3.5 billion years for life to evolve from single cellular to intelligent? i am not sure. it seems at first, teeth and brawn rule. but intelligence is superior to teeth and brawn, and if it developed earlier in history, then the dinosaurs may never have prevailed.

i think though that the "teeth and brawn" stage of evolution has to come before the "think and vanquish" stage of evolution because the "think and vanquish" stage is a response to the "teeth and brawn" dominance.

whatever be the case, i expect it would take some billions of years of relative planetary stability for intelligence to occur in a species that is it's winning attribute.

we are at the stage where we are about 80 space years old. our first radio transmissions left the planet about 80-90 years ago, and so if there is anyone within 90 light years of earth who is advanced enough to intercept our exceptionally feeble transmissions and realize it is intelligent, then they would take another 90 years to tell us they heard what we said.

the chances of life of that advanced capability within a 90 light year spherical radius is exceptionally slim i would think (for reasons that require too many words for me to define).

i do not know what the odds of there being extra terrestrial life in a communicable distance from us are, but i am almost sure they are infinitesimally slim.

let us say there is a civilization at this instant 6,345,419 light years away that has the capacity to come to this planet. they would not choose to do so for another 6,345,329 years, because that is when they would first become aware of our existence (due to our first radio transmission 90 years ago( the signal from us would be outrageously weak as it passed them)).

i really do not know. there is so much more to say but it is 2:07 am and i should choose to start posting earlier.

edit: corrected 6,314,329 to 6,345,329.
.

Last edited by b9 on 03 Aug 2011, 11:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

Quite so.


Like surgeons washing their hands.

Like the proposition that the earth goes around the sun.

Like the idea that a knife blade of flimsy copper might be better than skilfully chipped flint.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Many ideas are stupid until suddenly everybody believes them and the OLD belief is viewed as laughable.

It is wrong for a researcher to get enthusiastic about a hypothesis beyoind what the dat warrant.

It is stupid to laugh at what may turn out to be essentially accurate.

Wasn't it discovered in the 90's that solar systems are actually a common thing? We most likely have been visited by an alien race from another planet before, but the government is right in withholding this information for now due to humanities severe xenophobia, people would go simply nuts, the religious system would collapse, people would be deathly afraid of this information if it were confirmed. There is much more going on here than we think.

Saying life exists elsewhere in the Universe is one thing.

Saying intelligent beings piloting vehicles from other solar systems to earth are visiting us, and have altered ancient human history is something else.

The alien equivalent of bacteria probably has evolved elsewhere in the milky way galaxy ( I consider that to be an "ordinary claim" , but there is a long haul from that to saying that humanlike saucer jockeys are abducting your nieghbors and tagging them with implants to keep tab on our migratory patterns for the Alpha Centuri Fish and Game Bureau ( thats what I call an"extradinary claim".

Remember the phrase is not "extraordinary claims are always wrong."
Its "extradinary claims require extrordindary proof"

There is a difference.

i am sorry but i do not subscribe to your evaluation. you may not care but that is irrelevant.

fallen angels or ufos
yoga or alien clanneling
alien abduction or demon possession

taking off your alien religion glasses, look at the alternatives, before considering something unexplained

Which brings us full circle to...

... to you.

I also do not subscribe to the religious aspects of UFO-logy. Any claims that are faith-based are irrelevant from a material perspective, and any claim beyond, "I saw something flying in the sky, and I don't know what it was" must have either valid material evidence to support it, or the claim is merely a faith-based assumption about something unknowable.

Many ideas that seemed improbable turned out to be true. This does not mean that all improbable ideas should be treated as though they may someday be proven true. To do that requires a level of gullibility I'm not willing to endorse. There is also the problem that many improbable ideas are incompatible with each other. So which do you choose?

I could probably do it. Actually anybody can in a pinch, I think. A few years ago I was really into the Inuit and their progenitor cultures, especially their tool making skills. To that end I have used the ancient flaking technique to make stone age style tools and others from later generations of stone-tool making culture such as the Inuit- though they are one of the few American cultures to use iron extensively, that being meteoric in nature



I tend to think that the 'technological age' is actually hundreds of thousands of years old. Our species and its ancestors and cousins (like the unfortunately extinct Neanderthal) have all been thinkers for a long time. The Neolithic naturally is when things started to really change but long before that we were shrewd and cunning

I am actually of the opinion that the Ancient Astronaut theory is a relic of the colonialist time. The 'White Mans Burden' postures that White people are naturally the center of the Human universe and the rest are incapable lesser peoples. This assumption justifies thinking that non-Caucasian cultures were incapable of megalithic engineering, social mobilization and advanced mathematics and thus required help. This kind of thinking is also behind the parts of the book of Mormon where Joseph Smith describes the lost 'white' native cultures that were probably responsible for the large ruins present in America. Even before him many assumed that construction techniques in the Americas were not original to them and were brought there from other cultures.

So I guess there is another part of why I think the Ancient Astronaut theory is patronizing rubbish

I was targeting those people out there who study crop circles and crap when they could be devoting the same intellectual energy to doing something useful. It galls me that perfectly intelligent people can get so caught up in these goofy fringe cults.

If these fringe cults only drew imbeciles, I wouldn't have anything against them. I would say, "it gives them something to do. While they're tracing crop circles, they aren't raping children." But the hell of it is that most of the people who get involved in these dumb UFO religions have above-average intelligence or better, and I see it as a terrible waste.

It's not the idea so much I object to as the time wasted on it. On the other hand, it might serve as sort of an inspirational wing of the pro-science movement, so maybe I'm being hasty in condemning it.

The wreck files: Have scientists found a crashed flying saucer on the seabed?

Unidentified object is sitting on the ocean floor between Sweden and Finland

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... eabed.html

I just don't get why is the idea we have been visited such an extra-ordinary notion? It's much more compatible with modern science than angels, demons, fairies, or whatever, yet people consider it equally ridiculous. I'm not saying angels and fairies and demons don't exist btw, I'm just saying there's nothing extraordinary about the idea of ET visitation to this planet, so I don't think it requires 'extraordinary' evidence to be a theory worth consideration.

I'm not seeing the logic here unless everything we see in life is a faith based assumption unless we provide material evidence. What is the difference between I saw something flying through the sky that I couldn't identifiy and stating I saw someting swimming in the ocean I couldn't identify.

In neither case do we know what it was, we can only speculate, but it doesn't take the kind of religious faith that I think you are talking about, to know when somone observes an unidentified object flying through the sky or some type of water creature one cannot identify in the ocean, regardless of the orgin or taxonomy.

The speculation as to what something is, may be faith based, but the actual observation of it doesn't have to be. My personal opinion is I doubt that we have been visited by extra terrestials from my scientific understanding.

But, If I actually saw something well beyond my understanding of what is currently scientifically accepted, I would either have to accept my perception as illusion or seriously try to figure out what it was. If there was no terrestial solution, then the only thing other than questioning my perception, would be a question of wow, is this another interesting military development or could it really be an alien spacecraft.

As was mentioned before in the thread a great deal of the observation of UFO's have been part of testing of military technology that the general public wasn't made aware of in advance.

At that point in time it was not unreasonable to suggest that the objects might have been extra-terrestial in nature; people simply didn't have any other explanations, other than it was an object created by God, that many of the scientific minded here, might see as less reasonable than an object created by an extra-terrestial.

I live near a military base, and these kind of things have been going on for decades around here; obviously there is a link here with the military. But, there is no doubt that the many reports of an observation of UFO's were real, even though they were likely unidentified military aircraft.

Life is not much fun without a little mystery and curiosity about the mystery, it keeps us young at heart and interested in life. As long as people enjoy mystery and have a sense of curiosity about their environment, we will always have speculation about this.

I don't see where the mystery and curiosity about environmental observations hurt anyone, unless someone in high office goes Orson Welles on us, suggesting we are actually being attacked by Aliens when we're not.

As to why so many people don't take it as seriously anymore, I think it is partly because so much of the mystery has been debunked by science. Also, I think it is because, we have so many things to keep us engaged and entertained these days, there isn't as much time or motivation for the neighbors to get around a table on a dark night and discuss the mysteries of the unknown.

It's what people used to do as part of their entertainment, gets the blood flowing faster, and makes one feel a bit more alive. Might be a little sad, but it's no longer that much a part of life, except for places like this on the internet.

It's not quite the same in front of a computer screen, as it is on a pitch dark night, at the beach, among friends. Back in those days it was pure wonder and imagination, now we can bring up actual pictures for and against the phenomenon using the resource of "Google".

The Airforce has provided a great deal of entertainment for people in the last Century, it's almost been an unwitting collateral duty. I won't close my mind to the possibility, no matter how unlikely I think the possibility is.

There is no doubt in my mind that we understand only a tiny part of a full understanding of the reality of the Universe we observe.

If one thinks we understand enough of physical reality, to completely dismiss possibilities like this, I don't see that as a logical viewpoint, from what I understand of the human condition and the relationship of it with the rest of reality, provided both by science and personal observation/opinion.

Last edited by aghogday on 03 Aug 2011, 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You still can't explain ALL UFOs as military craft. Not even close.

Military craft is not the only possible 'normal' explanation, either.

But actually, rather than claim "one of the many cases would have to be true" you actually have to find that one case that can't be explained by other means, and has very well certified unaltered evidence throughly tested.

That's the "residue" argument. http://theness.com/roguesgallery/index. ... laughable/