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Originally Posted by Ustwo
I like you. You are the first 'pro' UFO person I've seen write who wasn't a wack job about it which makes this a fun debate. Normally its like arguing with someone who believes in faith healing.
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Hehe, thanks. I try to stay level-headed and even-minded about the whole deal.
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Then we have the crashed spaceship mythos. This again is also possible, but I’d have to say that safely traveling 100 light years only to crash doing something as mundane as a planetary landing would be almost comical. Now maybe this has happened but I think its sort of difficult to see how it could be covered up so well for so long. Government secrets seem a dime a dozen these days, and its been that way for a while. I would expect that there would be SOME physical evidence which could be produced, not just a guy claiming to have a PhD in physics who later turned out to be the night janitor who was fired for sleeping on the job in 1978 (and I’m just making that up, but I do recall one guy who wrote a book etc who turned out to be something very similar, I just don’t recall the details). I’d also add that some very smart people can believe some very crazy things, so even a legitimate person can be out in left field on these stories.
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The story goes that Roswell was blanketed with high-powered radar. The most powerful network in the world at the time, in fact, because it was the location of the world's only nuclear stockpile. The radar interfered with the aliens' guidance systems and caused them to crash. I agree that the chances are still pretty marginal. In order for it to be probable, you have to assume a large volume of traffic in the first place -- the kind of volume that would be obvious to a casual stargazer. But we don't see that, unless these craft are largely operating in stealth.
As far as secrecy, the indication I get, mostly from the Disclosure Project testimony, is that fear, intimidation and ridicule can be used very effectively as leverage to keep people quiet. One of the witnesses talks about a form he can fill out to report a sighting, and 48 of the 50 pages is a psychological profile. Everything about you, your family, your parents, siblings, et cetera -- so that something (in his opinion) can be found that will undermine your credibility. With the military, we're also dealing with people who are loyal to their country and want to protect it. If they're told that staying quiet is the best thing for America, that's what they'll generally do.
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I won’t even get to the alien abduction stories, and I doubt you give those any credibility either. I myself used to have a recurring nightmare as a child that was almost identical to the abduction dreams so I always get a kick out of the stories.
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Aside from Betty and Barney Hill, none of it really grabs me. Regressive hypnosis is pretty shaky. I've read too many stories of it being used in court and turning out to be completely false -- but the accuser fervently believed that all these crimes against them had actually been committed. It's scary. I think the majority of the phenomenon can be chalked up to mental illness, with attention-seeking being a close second. And sometimes both seem to be involved. Do I believe no one has ever been taken by ET against their will? I honestly have no idea. Even if they made a stop on the White House lawn tomorrow and proved their existence to the world, I think it would still be an open question until they themselves said otherwise.
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Originally Posted by Greg700
Funny how people always "see" aliens/ufo's that somehow perfectly match the science fiction/cult idea of what an alien should look like. After war of the worlds the flying saucer was in. Now it is little men with big eyes. How charmingly anthropomorphic.
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Yeah, I think it's important to keep in mind the historical significance of the popular morphology. It seemed to actually come from pulp sci-fi movies of the 50s before it became the staple of abduction stories and Roswell claims.
On the other hand, Stan Deyo claims that
Forbidden Planet is largely authentic -- that the technology featured in the film actually exists. Is it too much to extrapolate to other films and surmise that the Little Green Men aren't that far from the truth? I don't know. But that's the way I think about the whole phenomenon. I try to tie things together and see if the knot holds when I pull.
According to consensus UFO mythology, they've actually crash landed all over the world, for decades. Commonly due to mechanical failure, but sometimes due to governments testing out plasma cannons and the like. Now, I don't put much stock in Philip J. Corso's claims -- that lasers, fiber optics, kevlar and the like are based on technology retrieved from Roswell -- but I detect a kernel of truth. I keep in mind that Corso was an information officer, first and foremost. Not a scientist or someone who would be a liaison between scientists. I think he's a deflector, in fact, but that's probably another topic there. Suffice to say that the tech he claims to have ushered in was in development for decades, with no spikes that would chronologically corroborate with his claims.
There have been leaks, or purported leaks, like the Majestic/Majic 12 documents, the Cutler-Twining Memo, and a couple deathbed affidavits generally corroborating the Roswell crash. And several authorities over the decades have gone on record with statements that strongly indicate an alien presence. Of course, there's a degree of subjectivity with that last element. Statements aren't evidence anyway, although they can lead in the direction of evidence.
The problem is that the statements are uniformly downplayed, and the documents attacked. Arguments sometimes devolve to typographical deviation of timestamps on the onionskin.