God, Evolution or Extraterrestrial Creationism?

robindch

Crop circles rock! Here's a nifty art-form cooked up over a few beers by a couple of geezers who carry it out with a few yards of rope and a plank of wood. Next thing you know, it's energy vortexes, ball lightening and aliens all over southern England.

Circlemakers.org are the best-known group in the UK and they produced a book last year explaining all about it.

Way to go guys!

RayMondo

Hi 5uspect, not tryin to make anyone do anything man! Just lookin for some good discussion, and since I've started it's been good, I've learnt that I don't seem to have all the answers I thought that I had in the first place, this is what discussion boards are all about, learning, and looking at other peoples views and opinions, and insights, so let's not be negative and let's be positive, people are going to make up their own mind, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
It's a pity that RTE's policy of excluding all discussion about the UFO phenomenon in Ireland has stiffled debate on it. When the media do discuss it they limit the debate to a very narrow discussion, ridiculing and not treating it with any real journalistic skill and going into depth, so consequently people believe it's a load of rubbish and dismiss at once. There's a good book called 'Conspiracy of Silence', which highlights the phenomenon in Ireland.

Well buggar mi ef ate aint dat dem therr buggers Doug and Dave again eh!!!

5uspect

My problem, or negativity, with all this alien crop circle, alien abduction stuff it that its just a self reinforcing chain of wishful thinking. A whole community has sprung up with various alien races, alien messages and interaction and all sorts of other mythology and nonsense that has as much credibility as the pink unicorn or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. There is absolutely zero evidence to support any of it and when someone tries to demonstrate this in any rational way then it is dismissed a government conspiracy. Then you have things like the whole cult of Area 51 where the USAF were perfectly happy to let some hopeful and gullible citizens believe that they had a bunch of alien UFOs when instead they were test flying backward engineered MiGs and other exotic aircraft that they'd rather no one knew about.

Of course I cannot possibly be 100% sure that they don't have little green (or grey?) men locked up in hangers but that isn't evidence in support of such ideas. The problem is that many people do and they use this (often with great confidence) to "prove" their points.

Such unfounded stories make great television, in the X-files Mulder (or more generally the audience) has any skepticism done away with via a healthy dose of special effects where we see people levitated out the bedroom window or some light in the sky maneuver "unlike any plane possible could". (they've obviously never seen a Flanker pull a Cobra), but in the real world they don't and have never stood up to rational scrutiny.

Zombrex

RayMondo wrote:

When the media do discuss it they limit the debate to a very narrow discussion, ridiculing and not treating it with any real journalistic skill and going into depth, so consequently people believe it's a load of rubbish and dismiss at once.

Has it occurred to you that they might do this because if you go into depth with it you realise it is all rubbish?

Expecting the media to treat every single crop circle, or UFO sighting, independently from all the other fake ones that have gone before is not going to work.

Zillah

RayMondo wrote:

When the media do discuss it they limit the debate to a very narrow discussion, ridiculing and not treating it with any real journalistic skill and going into depth, so consequently people believe it's a load of rubbish and dismiss at once.

Has it occured to you that it might actually be a load of rubbish? And have you also noticed that the evidence strongly supports it being a load of rubbish? And therefore its a very reasonable position to treat it as a load of rubbish.

RayMondo

As we already know up to 95% of all UFO reports turn out to be either, natural phenomenon such as stars etc, or misidentifications such as satellites... that's not to say that the other 5% is extraterrestrial, just that we don't currently know, however I think at this stage in humanity's development we do know alot and so we have to look at the possibility.
I don't think the news should cover all reports but certain reports made by professionals like, aircraft pilots, police officers, air traffic control personnel, astronomers should at least be looked into if not aired.
How does one explain the following UFO account in LA, February 1942 in the midst of World War II. No Photshop or clandestine military projects can explain this?:
http://www.rense.com/general67/batofla.htm
I became aware about cases such as the above from reading Timothy Good's 'Beyond Top Secret', the masses of evidence contained in that book clearly demonstrated that professional observers, as stated before, experience the phenomenon all over the world.
Is there a conspiracy of silence cercerning UFOs in the American authorities I definitely think so, is there disinformation given to UFO investigators to muddy the waters and discredit the good work done by many UFO researchers of course, if anything they are trying to cover up their own ignorance of the area in order to appear as if they are in control of the situation, but really they are not and disinformation is the only real weapon and defense they have...
There are many credible people like Dr. Stephen Greer of the Disclosure Project and those who have decided to speak out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP9Vj9Z_hXA

Son Goku

RayMondo wrote:

As we already know up to 95% of all UFO reports turn out to be either, natural phenomenon such as stars etc, or misidentifications such as satellites... that's not to say that the other 5% is extraterrestrial, just that we don't currently know, however I think at this stage in humanity's development we do know alot and so we have to look at the possibility.

I'll now say something that always causes an argument on any forum I've visited, for some reason people object to it, even though it's a solid scientific result. Anyway...............

It is almost certain that aliens have not visited Earth without us knowing, unless they used Slower-than-Light travel.

Basically if the Aliens live really long, freeze themselves in transit or have a psychology that doesn't care about living for generations on a spaceship then they may have reached Earth.

They could not however, have used FTL (Faster-than-Light) travel to reach our Solar System within the last possibly 10,000 years, because all conceivable methods of FTL travel are "louder" (in terms of how much light they put out) than a supernova. We'd know they were coming and their visits would not be ambiguous in the least. In fact it'd be difficult to use the FTL without destroying Earth.

I suspect, as always, somebody will take issue with this.

bonkey

RayMondo wrote:

No Photshop or clandestine military projects can explain this?

Picture looks photoshopped to me. I'd go further and say that the strength of the search-light beams looks more like its from a b-movie poster than from a real-world shot, taken at night, > 60 years ago.

Are you saying you believe this is the original, untouched photograph?

bonkey

RayMondo wrote:

There are many credible people like Dr. Stephen Greer of the Disclosure Project

Why is he credible?

I ask this with no intended cynicism. I just want to know what qualities make him credible.

See, the way I look at it is that if being a Doctor and expressing an opinion makes you credible, then we must note that there are far more credible people saying "no, there's no credible evidence" then we do those saying "yes, there is".

So clearly, "merely" being a doctor isn't enough.

Whatever criteria we establish can be similarly judged. We can ask ourselves the following questions about the criteria:

1) Are they inherently biased, favouring one standpoint or another (e.g. credible == "saying what I agree with")

2) What are the implications of these criteria being applied to proponents of both sides. Does it lend more weight to one argument or the other overall, if we don't just apply it to a cherry-picked selection of individuals.

So, in all sincerity....why is Dr. Greer credible?

5uspect

RayMondo wrote:

How does one explain the following UFO account in LA, February 1942 in the midst of World War II. No Photshop or clandestine military projects can explain this?:
http://www.rense.com/general67/batofla.htm
I became aware about cases such as the above from reading Timothy Good's 'Beyond Top Secret', the masses of evidence contained in that book clearly demonstrated that professional observers, as stated before, experience the phenomenon all over the world.

The author of this page actually says he used photoshop to "enhance" the picture FFS! You cannot "enhance" information in a picture to show what it is actually was. CSI is not the real world. You only add information that photoshop decided to do according to the maths of whatever (levels or sharpening etc) filter you used. It may make it easier for you to see information that was already there but no more.
All he does is narrow the tonal range of the image (i.e. removed a lot of information) to make the smudge in the middle appear to be of the same tones and suddenly its a saucer. Looks like a diamond to me. Is there an un-hoaxed or unexplained saucer to verify that a saucer is the preferred style of alien spacecraft?

How can we trust him and then claim that we cannot trust the government or whoever. How do you decide who to trust? More wishful thinking and anyone who disagrees is a conspirator?

RayMondo wrote:

Is there a conspiracy of silence cercerning UFOs in the American authorities I definitely think so, is there disinformation given to UFO investigators to muddy the waters and discredit the good work done by many UFO researchers of course,

If anything these so called good UFO researchers do damage to proper scientists who try to discuss alien life by mere association.

Zombrex

RayMondo wrote:

As we already know up to 95% of all UFO reports turn out to be either, natural phenomenon such as stars etc, or misidentifications such as satellites... that's not to say that the other 5% is extraterrestrial, just that we don't currently know, however I think at this stage in humanity's development we do know alot and so we have to look at the possibility.

No, actually what we have to do is say "we don't know"

The mistake would be to say "we don't know, but by gosh we hope its aliens. Now if we assume it is aliens that that means the government must be in on it, if the government is in on it they must found some evidence, which must mean that Roswell was true, and Area 51 does have aliens and that must mean......"

You see the difference?

There is a big difference between stating correctly what we don't know what such and such was, to going on flights of imagination trying to come up with theories of what it could have been.

RayMondo wrote:

I don't think the news should cover all reports but certain reports made by professionals like, aircraft pilots, police officers, air traffic control personnel, astronomers should at least be looked into if not aired.

Why?

An airforce pilot seeing an unidentified object visually or on his radar screen is not interesting at all, unless one assumes it is an alien. And then you are doing exactly what it is not a good idea to do, jumping to an unsupported conclusion.

It could be anything from a bird, to swamp gas, a computer malfunction. None of those things is worth reporting on ("Breaking News with Sky - An airforce pilot today saw a bird over his left wing while on approach to Bristol RAF base. Initial this bird was not idenfied by ground radar, but on visual it was determined to be a large bird. We will keep you up today on this amazing story").

If someone shows that one of these things actually is an alien space craft, then you report on it.

RayMondo wrote:

How does one explain the following UFO account in LA, February 1942 in the midst of World War II. No Photshop or clandestine military projects can explain this?:
http://www.rense.com/general67/batofla.htm

Seriously, dude, stop going to the internet for this stuff.

Firstly the picture is so bad it is impossible to tell what the search lights are looking at. The most reasonable explination is that they are looking at where the shells are exploding, but there is nothing there except smoke. It has even been suggested a few times that the photo is a fake.

Secondly the "Battle of LA" turned out to an over reaction by the Navy. Official letters to the President at the time confirm this. If they were firing at aliens the US Navy certainly didn't think they were, they thought they were firing at Japanise air craft.

Thirdly why would you think that if there were actually something they were firing at that it was alien in origin, rather than some Japanise covert plan. They were at war with Japan at the time.

RayMondo wrote:

Is there a conspiracy of silence cercerning UFOs in the American authorities I definitely think so

Why?

So long as the US government says "no we have not been contacted by aliens" then alien watchers are going to be convinced that they are lying or covering something up. The fact that they might actually be telling the truth doesn't seem to factor into it. The only answer that would shut these guys up is "Yes, we have been contacted by aliens"

BlackWizard

This might be off topic and very vague but ill put it out there.

Has anyone ever heard of the story about two races that lived a long time ago
on this planet? It kinda of reminds me of this Extraterrestrial creationism topic.

It went something like this. One race was really tall and very wise and smart. Had
all sorts of advanced technology for that period. The other race was really small.
It was not too smart and was more of a simplistic race. The taller race of course
lived with the smaller one. But there was a sort of class system. The taller ones
I think ruled the lands while the smaller ones lived in harmony on them. The
smaller ones where more adept at working on the lands and physically shaping it.
They had unwritten rules of having races being mixed. They always stuck with
their own races when it came to reproduction.

But this was not always the case. Eventually the outcome of mixed race
reproduction lead to a third race. It was simplistic and intelligent, which was
it's downfall. They didn't seem to be balanced right as a race. So their population
grew and did not fit in with the other two races. The tall race eventually was
overthrown or lost their influence as the new race was also quite technologically
advanced, but because of their hands on simplistic ways they never achieved
the same greatness the tall ones did.
The tall ones all left. They left and went into the sky.

The above is a story of some sort that I have had in my hand since I was a
kid but never knew where it come about from. Anyone have any idea where
this might of came from?

Sounds like fecking lord of the rings gone wrong ha ha But I never read that
when I was a kid. I never could really read when I last remember having this
story in my head. It's kinda embarrassing posting this weird story online

Zombrex

BlackWizard wrote:

This might be off topic and very vague but ill put it out there.

Has anyone ever heard of the story about two races that lived a long time ago
on this planet? It kinda of reminds me of this Extraterrestrial creationism topic.

It went something like this. One race was really tall and very wise and smart. Had
all sorts of advanced technology for that period. The other race was really small.
It was not too smart and was more of a simplistic race. The taller race of course
lived with the smaller one. But there was a sort of class system. The taller ones
I think ruled the lands while the smaller ones lived in harmony on them. The
smaller ones where more adept at working on the lands and physically shaping it.
They had unwritten rules of having races being mixed. They always stuck with
their own races when it came to reproduction.

But this was not always the case. Eventually the outcome of mixed race
reproduction lead to a third race. It was simplistic and intelligent, which was
it's downfall. They didn't seem to be balanced right as a race. So their population
grew and did not fit in with the other two races. The tall race eventually was
overthrown or lost their influence as the new race was also quite technologically
advanced, but because of their hands on simplistic ways they never achieved
the same greatness the tall ones did.
The tall ones all left. They left and went into the sky.

The above is a story of some sort that I have had in my hand since I was a
kid but never knew where it come about from. Anyone have any idea where
this might of came from?

Sounds like fecking lord of the rings gone wrong ha ha But I never read that
when I was a kid. I never could really read when I last remember having this
story in my head. It's kinda embarrassing posting this weird story online

Was this like a Anime cartoon or something?

BlackWizard

Wicknight wrote:

Was this like a Anime cartoon or something?

Its exactly what I was thinking. But I've spent countless hours talking about
old cartoons and I don't recall ever watching TV with this sort of story line. Even
being drunk and arguing over the best TV cartoon when we were children it still
never popped up..

I thought it was the Smurfs then I had a nightmare. But I couldn't of made that
kinda nightmare up at such a young age.

I was just curious if it's theory of extraterrestrial creationism that some ***k
told me when I was a kid to make me scared of tall and small people

Zombrex

It wasn't H.G Wells "The Time Machine"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine

BlackWizard

Thats kinda similar alright! In fact I only seen that movie just before X-mas this
year for the first time. For a 50 year old movie I really enjoyed watching it while
eating dinner But I never recalled seeing the story or film before.

It could very well be that film that I seen when I was younger and I added a lot
of creative ideas to it, creating this memory.

Thanks anyways! Guess its no story of creationism

I_and_I

If i had to decide I would say evolution after extraterrestrial plantation of life forms on our planet.

5uspect

I_and_I wrote:

If i had to decide I would say evolution after extraterrestrial plantation of life forms on our planet.

But where did the extraterrestrials come from? If you go down that road you end up with an infinite recursion, it has to start somewhere. The neo-Darwinian model suggests that increasingly self replicating molecules were the ancestors of organic life. There is a lot of scientific work looking at this too I believe...

Zombrex

I_and_I wrote:

If i had to decide...

Its ok, you don't

Calibos

BlackWizard wrote:

This might be off topic and very vague but ill put it out there.

Has anyone ever heard of the story about two races that lived a long time ago
on this planet? It kinda of reminds me of this Extraterrestrial creationism topic.

It went something like this. One race was really tall and very wise and smart. Had
all sorts of advanced technology for that period. The other race was really small.
It was not too smart and was more of a simplistic race. The taller race of course
lived with the smaller one. But there was a sort of class system. The taller ones
I think ruled the lands while the smaller ones lived in harmony on them. The
smaller ones where more adept at working on the lands and physically shaping it.
They had unwritten rules of having races being mixed. They always stuck with
their own races when it came to reproduction.

But this was not always the case. Eventually the outcome of mixed race
reproduction lead to a third race. It was simplistic and intelligent, which was
it's downfall. They didn't seem to be balanced right as a race. So their population
grew and did not fit in with the other two races. The tall race eventually was
overthrown or lost their influence as the new race was also quite technologically
advanced, but because of their hands on simplistic ways they never achieved
the same greatness the tall ones did.
The tall ones all left. They left and went into the sky.

The above is a story of some sort that I have had in my hand since I was a
kid but never knew where it come about from. Anyone have any idea where
this might of came from?

Sounds like fecking lord of the rings gone wrong ha ha But I never read that
when I was a kid. I never could really read when I last remember having this
story in my head. It's kinda embarrassing posting this weird story online

Sounds a bit like the Buzz Aldrin book, "Encounter with Tiber". A fiction co written with John Barnes

http://www.amazon.com/Encounter-Tiber-Buzz-Aldrin/dp/0446518549