- #631
Proton Soup
- 223
- 1
kasse said:Thats off topic.
depends. i think maybe he means panspermia.
kasse said:Thats off topic.
WaveJumper said:You contradict yourself - you use the term unidentified flying object, then you say this unidentified object didn't exist.
Proton Soup said:depends. i think maybe he means panspermia.
kasse said:True, it may well be, but that's another discussion.
Is there life in the universe, and if so has it visited Earth?
Godwin!kasse said:Yes, but that doesn't make it rational. I also understand why people are religious, nazis etc. People want to feel being part of something bigger.
When it comes to UFOs (i.e. flying saucers), I think believing in this is even lower than religion, because - unlike religion - it's not something that's been imposed in your childhood, but a really bad decision you've made on your own based on no evidence.
kasse said:When it comes to UFOs (i.e. flying saucers), I think believing in this is even lower than religion, because - unlike religion - it's not something that's been imposed in your childhood, but a really bad decision you've made on your own based on no evidence.
That's kind of what I was trying to say.Ivan Seeking said:Indeed, you are the one suffering from a religious bias.
Ivan Seeking said:Given that most scientists now recognize ball lightning as a genuine phenomenon, there is little doubt that some UFO reports are really ball lightning reports. Also, I tend to think that there may be other similar phenomena not yet recognized, that are mistaken for something else.
Pythagorean said:I tend to be skeptical of individual accounts myself, but the question of whether there's life out there can't be answered yet at all.
In my opinion, there is most likely life out there (heck, did you know http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/science/space/16obvacu.html" ?.
However, when it comes to "intelligent" life being out there, I'm not so sure...
...and then when we come to the question of whether it's visited Earth, I'm even more skeptical. But I also think it would be awesome, so I'm happy that there's people investigating it.
But with all the near-misses to-date of these visiting ETs, one expects that merely time and chance will conspire against them and eventually result in an incident that is so public as to be virtually irrefutable.Ivan Seeking said:Unless some visting ETs wish to make their presense generally known, I don't think this can ever be completely resolved. Of course, I could be wrong.
DaveC426913 said:But with all the near-misses to-date of these visiting ETs, one expects that merely time and chance will conspire against them and eventually result in an incident that is so public as to be virtually irrefutable.
Ivan Seeking said:If we could consider anecdotal evidence as scientific evidence, this would be a done deal. But no account can be taken as proof of anything. And I've never seen the evidence that would throw me over the cliff. Still, when you find millions of people yelling fire, it doesn't hurt to look for smoke.
Unless some visting ETs wish to make their presense generally known, I don't think this can ever be completely resolved. Of course, I could be wrong.
But we might find some interesting things along the way. For all of the compelling reports that exist, if there are no ETs, then it would seem that there are some fascinating phenomena yet to be identified and quantified by science.
Pythagorean said:Well yes, if we could consider anecdotal evidence, we might look at all religion and the millions yelling fire there, too. I don't agree with Kasse that believing in UFO's is somehow "lower" than believing a religion. They're both hard to falsify at this point, but accepting religion would change a lot of different assertions about reality (depending on the particular religion) while accepting UFO's wouldn't change much at all in terms of physical reality.
Pythagorean said:Well yes, if we could consider anecdotal evidence, we might look at all religion and the millions yelling fire there, too. I don't agree with Kasse that believing in UFO's is somehow "lower" than believing a religion. They're both hard to falsify at this point, but accepting religion would change a lot of different assertions about reality (depending on the particular religion) while accepting UFO's wouldn't change much at all in terms of physical reality.
Ivan Seeking said:Also, we don't find any reports of God encounters at the NSA.Even anecdotal evidence can be relatively weak, or strong.
baywax said:Hi Py,
There's a huge difference between the UFO phenomenon and the religious phenomenon. Religion is probably the first form of government in the tribal situations that were taking place 40, 50, 100,000 years ago and earlier.
Book reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0810941821/?tag=pfamazon01-20
(Siting such sites as the Chauvet Cave in France)
The first "shaman" figured out when the moon would be "missing" or "full" and this supposed fortune telling gave the shaman the power to become the tribe leader by decree. This position was useful because one man or woman suddenly had the ear of the entire tribe. So, religion grew from there as a control mechanism... bringing about morals and customs that perhaps helped the community and most certainly helped to maintain the religion.
Today this phenomenon has diversified to a great degree and so have the claims, the sightings, the stigmata, the floating angels, faces on the toast and in the grease stain not to mention "miracles".
The UFO phenomenon began when humans could comprehend the fact that a structure could fly. There's no one really telling us what UFOs are doing here... there's plenty of them trying to on the net. You know, they channel them and write huge papers on what they're here for. They're like the first Shaman trying to cache-in on the people's ignorance of celestial mechanics, but in the case of UFOlogists, they're just guessing and they're saying anything that will make them seem important (OK, a bit like religion).
While true in principle, I would suggest the likelihood for UFOs far outstrips those for cryptozoological sightings, merely by the very nature of the sightings. Not the least of which is the potential for multiple witnesses over a very wide area compared to single or few witnesses in very remote, inaccessible locations.baywax said:This is what we could say about the Sasquatch, the Yeti, the Ogopogo and the Lock Ness Monster. These sightings and claims have been around longer than alien UFO claims and there are still no evidences other than the usual hoaxes, videos and snap shots.
Pythagorean said:I think I agree more or less. There's a spectrum of rationality in any study. Of course, religion has elements that are irrational by definition. A more rational approach to a god would be deism, but the purest form of deism has no regard for human morality or choices, so it would probably be useless in most politics.
With UFO's, you can find anything form rational investigation to alien cults awaiting the mothership and forming suicide pacts.
My favorite was an older friend of mine who put the two together: The aliens created us. That's why they make obscure visits... and he alleges that the Aborigines in Australia have a different genetic code (which they do) because they were a sort of 'prototype' of the human race. He frames it in a scientific light and it's an interesting enough idea;
Anyway, I guess that's a sort of his version of "intelligent design", heheheh.
Abstract
The mitochondrial DNA (mt-DNA) variation of in the Walbiri tribe of the Northern Territories, Australia, was characterized by high resolution restriction fragment length polymorphism (HR-RFLP) analysis and control region sequencing. Surveying each mt-DNA for RFLPs with 14 different restriction enzymes detected 24 distinct haplotypes, whereas direct sequencing of the control region hypervariable segment I (HVS-I) of these mt-DNAs revealed 34 distinct sequences. Phylogenetic analysis of the RFLP haplotype and HVS-I sequence data depicted that the Walbiri have ten distinct haplotype groups (haplogroups), or mt-DNA lineages. The majority of the Walbiri RFLP haplotypes lacked polymorphisms common to Asian populations. In fact, most of the Walbiri haplogroups were unique to this population, although a few appeared to be subbranches of larger clusters of mt-DNAs that included other Aboriginal Australian and/or Papua New Guinea haplotypes. The similarity of these haplotypes suggested that Aboriginal Australian and Papua New Guinea populations may have once shared an ancient ancestral population(s), and then rapidly diverged from each other once geographically separated. Overall, the mt-DNA data corroborate the genetic uniqueness of Aboriginal Australian populations.
DaveC426913 said:While true in principle, I would suggest the likelihood for UFOs far outstrips those for cryptozoological sightings, merely by the very nature of the sightings. Not the least of which is the potential for multiple witnesses over a very wide area compared to single or few witnesses in very remote, inaccessible locations.
On one afternoon in September 1926 more than 70 people saw the same dark mysterious reptilian creature swimming just below the surface of Lake Okanagan near Okanagan Mission Beach. The creature was seen to turn like a drill as it moved through the water and to emit a small splash with a flick of its tail before it disappeared. Could those 70 people have all been mistaken about what they saw? Or did are they prove of the existence of Lake Okanagan’s fabled water serpent, Ogopogo?
Ivan Seeking said:If we could consider anecdotal evidence as scientific evidence, this would be a done deal. But no account can be taken as proof of anything. And I've never seen the evidence that would throw me over the cliff. Still, when you find millions of people yelling fire, it doesn't hurt to look for smoke.
Unless some visting ETs wish to make their presense generally known, I don't think this can ever be completely resolved. Of course, I could be wrong.
But we might find some interesting things along the way. For all of the compelling reports that exist, if there are no ETs, then it would seem that there are some fascinating phenomena yet to be identified and quantified by science.
CEL said:Sightings of UFOs remember me of the dragon in Carl Sagan's garage: http://richarddawkins.net/social/index.php?mode=article&id=35
Ivan Seeking said:Funny, not me, but then I certainly know a lot more about this than Sagan did. And Dawkings is a man with an agenda.
?CEL said:Wow! I did not know that we had a genius in this forum.
Ivan Seeking said:Funny, not me, but then I certainly know a lot more about this than Sagan did. And Dawkings is a man with an agenda.
If I had seen what some of these guys say they saw, then I would likely jump to the same conclusion, and I think that is true of most anyone here.
LightbulbSun said:Oh...my...god...not this stupid myth about Dawkins having an agenda. Ok, I just need to stop replying to your posts cause it's so full of misinformation half the time.
N468989 said:we evolve at a rate X. if they evolve at rate X^N (N>>0) it is possible! that they will visit us or have visited or will visit!
Sagan did not know more about everything than anyone. But he knew a lot about astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.DaveC426913 said:?
Sagan knows more about everything than anyone??
You have to be a genius to know more about a specific subject than Sagan?
baywax said:Its nice to speculate along the illusionary linear path of evolution but your equation must include the percent of probability for natural disasters and societal upheaval that take place during what appears to be the progress of an evolution or development of a civilization.