Skeptic Project

The subject of UFOs and extraterrestrial life came up recently on the FB page. I understand some of our regulars (Edward in particular) have a special interest in this subject, as I do. Let's talk about it--not limiting ourselves necessarily to the CT aspects of the phenomenon.

My own beliefs are, clearly stated:

1. I believe it's a virtual certainty that there is intelligent life elsewhere in our universe.
2. I'm not willing to state that I believe either that extraterrestrials have visited Earth, or that they have not.
3. I do not believe that there's a concerted, centralized or official policy by the US government to suppress UFO reports. Needless to say, I don't believe the US government is deliberately concealing irrefutable or even mildly convincing evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, because (1) there is no reliable evidence that they have done so, and (2) such a conspiracy, like 9/11 and various other CTs, is extremely improbable to have been pulled off successfully.
4. I do not believe in "alien abduction" cases such as Barney & Betty Hill's and Whitley Strieber's. (Whitley Strieber is a world class CT, in my opinion). In all of these cases, witnesses' memories have been significantly tweaked by hypnotic suggestion.
5. I do not believe UFOs are "governmental secret weapons." If prototype weapons that do the kinds of things UFOs are said to do are government experiments, how come they haven't been put into production yet? One operational flying saucer could reduce Afghanistan to a pile of smoking rubble. There's no reason why the US government would test these weapons for decades and then not use them, not to mention there would be dump trucks full of documents evidencing their existence, and there aren't.

Full disclosure: I myself witnessed a real live UFO in New Mexico in 1993. It was the single scariest moment of my entire life. I'm not willing to state what I think it was (alien spacecraft, government weapon, etc.) but I do know what it was NOT. This experience was highly disturbing to me and I don't wish to discuss it publicly, but if anyone wants to discuss it privately, email me.

I also believe my father has had experiences with UFOs, which he is equally reluctant to discuss, so I don't know what happened.

What are others' opinions on the UFO phenomenon?

Let me give some background:

Back when I was 12 - 14 or so, the early 1980s, I thought UFOs were in fact alien space craft and that the government was keeping it secret to keep people from panicking. I read all kinds of books on the subject, but of course there was no Internet (that I had access to anyway) and the skeptical community wasn't nearly as large back then as it is now, and the only opposition I ever ran into were people saying it's not true, they didn't really offer any counter evidence (as far as I was concerned at the time).

There were two general events that basically convinced me otherwise:

1) Meeting other people who were into UFOs and seeing how paranoid and delusional they were, up to that point I had only read books, seen a few television shows.
2) The rise in the alien abduction "phenomena" and how people in that arena, as well as people in other groups so easily jumped to conclusions about what every UFO was.

I did believe some were misidentified airplanes or other natural phenomena, I also believed that some photographs/videos were fakes as well. As I began to research further into it, mostly because I grew up a little bit and wasn't such an impressionable kid anymore ... obviously, I still didn't have the Internet, but the more I looked deeper into sightings and events, the more skeptical I was of the individuals involved.

Looking back, though, I don't really see it as a situation where I was desperate to believe in something fantastic to feel special, I easily let go when looking into UFO sightings and so forth showed little to no evidence they were alien spacecraft. I wasn't interested in conspiracy so much as I was interested in astronomy and astrobiology; I really wanted UFOs to be alien, because then that would prove life was out there, so I let my bullshit meter slip a bit. I bolded that to make it clear, because I have a feeling some people may ignore that part.

In fact, I remember it was some time after 13th birthday, I think during the next summer, that I realized "Wait a second, if we only see the space craft, how do we know they aren't just secret military aircraft, in order to believe they're alien, I have to believe things that contactees say." I actually felt proud of myself at that moment, because I thought I had solved it, but I spent more time reading about them, but it only made me more skeptical.

If I would have had the Internet, it's not likely I would have ever believed they were aliens, because my parents always taught me to ask zillions of questions, and for a long time there was essentially no one to ask, and I only heard one side of the story. Plus, like I said, I was just a kid.

I still have an active interest in the paranormal over all though, not just UFOs. I enjoy shows about things like ghosts, UFOs, crytozoology, but I always wear my skeptical cap.

Back in 2000 there was a show called "UFO Over Illinois" or something with Peter Jennings, regarding a UFO sighting that happened only about 20 - 30 miles from where I live on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. I found it very interesting, but something that struck me about the sighting was it seemed to fit the description of the so-called "stealth blimp" which isn't proven to exist, but there are several military bases in the area, so I thought that it, if anything, was the likely culprit.

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My friend Eric and I, who posts on this site, have talked about making a sort of paranormal skeptic group that goes out and applies real science to the paranormal, and looks into things, sort of like this site but with ghosts, UFOs, and so forth. He travels for business about half the year, and I'm also always busy so it hasn't come up, but I'm still very interested in it. In fact, I'd much rather work with the paranormal than conspiracy theories at this point.

1 Agree with , though it may not necessarily be advanced or intelligent, but there is the possibility.

2 Again neither am I, and I think people who say they have need to provide evidence or else be considered delusional or story tellers.

3 I think that anything that breaks radio space or airspace is a national secret and is none of the publics business, irrespective of if its considerd a cover up, the truth of the matter is its a national secret and should remain that way if its a threat to national airspace.

4 There are some cases that are curiously interesting such as Travis Walton who did not undergo hypnosis, though his case is one of those dubious ones too, but they did all undergo lie detector tests multiple times and passed them. But yes on the whole most abduction cases such as those you mentioned and many others are tainted by hypnotic regression and lengths of time between stated occurrence and story being exposed, allowing for all manner of psychological problem factors to creep into the memory of the incident.

5 I do not believe UFO' s are government weapons, but I do believe many misidentifications occur with aircraft and prototypes that are then made out to be UFO's. Not 'unindentified flying objects', but are implied to be otherwordly in their presentation afterwards.

I myself witnessed a UFO with 5 other family members when I was 8 and very close up, it was a big event in my life. Even so I am never going to claim it was an alien spacecraft I would rather consider it a freak event of nature I have not been able to explain. It was not a metalic object it was a large multi colored ball [about 6-10 foot radius] hovering above the ground at close range, and moving towards us at varying speeds.

I feel there are potential natural explanations for many events we have not had chance to identify because they are such rare occurances which are only viewable under specific conditions. As well as the rest are probable normal misidentifications by untrained eyes and witnesses.

Conclusion I do not believe in aliens who have visited Earth, nor do I believe in alien spacecraft that are visiting Earth.

Yes Rendlesham forest was an interesting case, RAF Bentwaters if anyone is interested in its location.

I just about agree with everyone here. Unfortunately it's something we will probably never know, at least in our lifetimes.

>>3. I do not believe that there's a concerted, centralized or official policy by the US government to suppress UFO reports. Needless to say, I don't believe the US government is deliberately concealing irrefutable or even mildly convincing evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, because (1) there is no reliable evidence that they have done so, and (2) such a conspiracy, like 9/11 and various other CTs, is extremely improbable to have been pulled off successfully.<<

I agree with the last parts, but the first I wouldn't say is entirely true. There are numerous pilots(Commercial/military/etc.) that will/would tell you otherwise. A friend of mine whom I grew up with, who was/is in the airforce was told specifically that they aren't suppose to talk about it. But I do agree however, that you're right in the sense, that it's probably not a "Gun to their head and shut up" type suppression. I think it's more like, "Just don't talk about them."

All in all, common sense tells us that there's certainly intelligent life out there. And common sense would also tell us that if there is, chances are there has to be civilizations far more advanced then ours. Millions, maybe billions of years ahead of us. While I won't go the distance and say they've been here, or are here(especially this one), I AM willing to guess that they are very aware of Earth in some form or another. Just my opinion.

>>Maybe I'm too practical for that stuff, but I care more about technology that might be able to build "UFO"s than in sightings or (mostly shopped) evidence. (And no, I don't buy into the "anti-gravity device" bullshit on yt)

I just think, if we could outgrow the senseless produce, consume and shut up-paradigm, we could probably build those things ourselves after a few decades of R&D.<<

lol holy shit I said almost the same thing to someone earlier today about this subject. Couldn't agree more. I'm definitely under the "Humans hit the evolutionary jackpot and are doing shit with our gift" camp in this retrospect. I've always felt our greed to be better then each other instead of forwarding ourselves has hurt everything we were given. An intelligent species that would rather bomb/starve/rob each other, instead of forwarding our selves is just mind boggling to me.

My father always tells me, "I got to watch man land on the moon 40 years ago. At that time I thought we'd at least be on Mars by now."

I agree that CTs and woo stuff has totally poisoned UFOs as a topic for serious study. I think there are enough unexplained reports that it's fair to assume that some people really are seeing these things. It's the nutjobs jumping to conclusions about them that makes it crackpot stuff and pseudo-science, unfortunately.

The abduction stuff bothers me a lot. I think that's the absolute worst thing that could have happened to the phenomenon of UFOs and serious UFO study (I believe a serious, non-woo, non-CT study of UFO sightings is possible).

I'd like to see a full-scale objective scientific study of the most credible unexplained reports. (I'm sure there have been studies on a smaller scale). No woo, no space alien channeling, no abduction tales or psychic nonsense. Astronomers, people with experience in aircraft design and engineering, psychologists, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the conclusion of such a study would be, "We don't have enough information to say what these things are, but they are happening, at least some of the time."

The problem with UFO's being alien is that it is hard to believe that aliens have come here considering the vastness of space and then not really do anything.

We also used to think our radio waves/tv have travelled around the galaxy since we started broadcasting but it turns out they now think they degrade past the asteroid belt so wouldnt really make it far enough to matter anyway.

OMG, Obama's an alien?!??!

Wow, we really do have a problem with the birth certificate then!

I reckon that their form of time is different. What looked like a second-long abduction was an all night anal probing.

Ah ok, so the anal probing took place in human time.

Party ship, anticultist. Its like a bar, but with the ability to utilize hyperspace

The same things a dog learns.

that's how aliens be communicatin.

While they float zero g?