Alien life? -- your take on the subject

Set thanks for the Arthur Sullivan quote, and commentary.

Makes me proud to be an Englishman!

Wolf, I was never in the military, and hence remain sane.

"McDivitt later complained to flight surgeons that his eyes were very
red and teary at this part of flight. "I didn't think I was going to be
able to hack it", Mc Divitt reported to earth the following day. A large
accidential urine spill a few hours before the sighting had not helped his
eye sight."

Yea, I skipped my medicine today, and you're the one arguing about f'n aliens.

Good one, chief.

Complacent cynicism in full effect in this thread, ladies and gentlemen. Still, some pro debunkery has been decloaked by your servant.

Wolf

Not wrestling at all, they're clear and present. The only use for a 2x4 around here is to knock some sense into the clearly senseless.

truth
Hey, guys, should'nt we mellow out a bit wth Wolf. He's not trying to get us to send him "love gifts" to finance UFO research. He's merely sharing his enthusiasm with us. And do take note that his whole argument centers on the presence, absence, and quality of EVIDENCE. We can argue about the quality of his evidence, but at least he is not referring us to sacrosanct scripture which is beyond criticism--at least if we want to avoid Hell.

I'm not sharing enthousiasm, I'm trying to give relevant information.

It's simply unreasonable to refuse this much testimony, from people with high military educations, longlife NASA careers, and similar experiences across the globe, as valid. If former astronauts, in all courage, claim there is an extensive cover up of the UFO subject, because that subject is too shocking for the authorities to be able to divulge publicly, or because of other hidden agendas, you can either assume out of hand that they're lunies -- for which there is no evidence -- or think they are sane, rational persons speaking the truth. Pick one. The shift in your wordview that one of those two possibliities presents should be irrelevant to your choice.

well, on second thought...........

But can be a consequence of your choice.

truth
Looks like enthusiasm to me--with a sharing of information as well.

Sixty million Frenchmen can be wrong, and frequently are . . .

You've got an alleged 450 witnesses . . . witnesses to what? How many just want to get video-taped? How many are delusional? How many are paid actors? How many are lonely and want attention? These questions quite apart from the reliability of any of them as witnesses, in consideration of variations in visual acuity, propensity to conflate a sensory experience, the accuracy of their recollections. That neither they, nor you, nor i can explain why they saw what they saw, or believe they saw, or allege they saw, can positively state that what they saw is evidence of alien visitation, and to that extent, it is not at all unreasonable that some one doubt this constitutes weight of evidence. You sing the UFO fanatics song to the effect that no one can explain away all of the testimony with misapprehended natural phenomena; were i to calmly state that i cannot "explain away" any of the testimony, it still would not authorize a contention that any of the testimony arises from alien visitation. This is what is meant when i, and Steve and so many others state that those making extraordinary claims have the burden of proof. "That many people can't be wrong" is only proof to an elementary school child, not to an adult, for whom life requires at least of modicum of the ability of critical thought if one is to succeed sufficiently well to enjoy a little comfort.

Quite apart from any of that, 450 people is one sixtieth part of one one thousandth of one percent of the population: roughly, 0.000167% of the nation's population. On that basis, you're obliged to do much better than "that many people can't be wrong."

My this is bubbling along nicely.............

jLN; you have to give Steve the benefit of the doubt;
anyone who puts the milk into the cup first cannot be of questionable character!

like say........... an Admiral or two!

The thing about evidence

is that it should be evident.

Well, lets not get 'picky'!!

Evidence we don't need no evidence. The Truth is Out there.

Hey Osso, BGW, and all.

I think the chances of there being alien life somewhere is about 50/50. I can't even begin to imagine the immensity of the known universe, let alone the unexplored. So I would contend that we may not be alone, although I would be hard put to provide the evidence needed to prove that.

Could be if there is alien life, they may not want to meet us. Who knows?

Hello, Joanne

Thanks BGW. The angle at which the little finger is crooked is also important.

Talking of fingers, Deni may have put hers on the crux of the matter. The aliens are clearly shy and retiring types. Would they risk having their feelings hurt by revealing themselves to hard bitten sceptics like Setanta or me? Of course not, they've done their homework, they know who the softies are and hence only expose themselves in congenial circumstances where they are assured of a loving and adoring audience.

Thats it end of mystery. Case solved. QED.

Next!

Steve, try to upgrade your arrogance level, would you please. It's not up to us to decide whether this case is closed, certainly not on the type of low rationale you just penned down.

Besides of the UFO question, it bares every reason to believe extraterrestrial life has travelled through space before we did. It would be the grandest surprise of creation us being the first. In fact it's a ridiculous idea.

Given the absolute uniformity of the universe in all cosmic localities, it would serve logic to regard biological evolution to be fairly uniform as well. Life departs from a combination of carbon with other atoms, because that is just the most fruitful possibility out there -- no other atom provides as much options for organic chemistry as does carbon (thanks to its electron disposition). You can draw an evolutionary scenario from thereon on a planet, that will bounce through all possible index points, but given the relative isotropic border values for planets regarding life potential (distance to their star, solar position within their galaxy), we can assume many planets will develop a biological ladder not very different from our own. Again: look at the universe. It's big in distances, but very small in essentials. It's the same everywhere.
On one side are those who take a rather anthropormorphic view of other lifeforms and believe that it would basically be humanoid in shape with two arms, two legs, a head at the top of the body and the main sense organs located on the head. Opposing this view are those exobiologists who believe that other intelligent lifeforms are bound to appear exotic, because the creature would inevitably have taken a totally different evolutionary path from man and would have arisen in a very un-earthlike planetary environment.

I think the non-humanoid ET protagonists don't stand up to the example of the evolution of intelligent life on Earth, nor the necessities of morphology that a creature requires to become intelligent. It is therefore certain -- based on the uniformity of the cosmos -- that a basically humanoid form would be the convergent result for many exoplanetary variations of biological evolution.

The universe is not chaos; there is orderliness. What happens somewhere, happens somewhere else -- with superficial variety, but essentially the same. If a planet climbs its way up to space travel, we must assume other planets in the universe to do the same.

Much later... or much sooner.

I was being sarcastic.

OK so the Universe is teeming with life. So why don't we see any? I'm not saying its not out there, just suggesting it might be an awful lot rarer than the Drake equation predicts. I'm also saying it requires a great leap of imagination to go from the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, to alien space craft wizzing around our sky. The one is not supported by the other.

If on the other hand you are gullible enough to believe a second or third hand story of some woman who claims to have been abducted by aliens in the middle of the night and anally probed as she was transported round the moon...well that's all the proof you need.

But unless you develop the capacity to think critically, you will be forever led down paths of increasing fantasy, not necessarily to your advantage. There are some bad people out there - on Earth. Be careful.

I know I don't trust you, that's for sure. Your arguments come right out of the debunkery guide. When things start getting sweaty, Setanta comes in with a poem. If that doesn't work, some other idiots start posting huge pics.

All this to avoid the credible testimonies of several good men, and to avoid admittance of the high probability that we have indeed seen extraterrestrial craft during our history, but are trained to keep quiet by fear of ridicule.