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Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,297 posts, read 14,166,733 times
Reputation: 8105
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vasily
...... But suggestive evidence or personal experiences are NOT CONCLUSIVE PROOF that what you've seen is an alien craft from another solar system, or from a parallel universe, or demons from hell.
.......
It depends on your personal, subjective standards of conclusive proof. You may choose the standards of scientific proof as your own, and that's fine - as long as you realize that a lack of conclusive scientific evidence doesn't necessarily mean those things are wrong.
I think most of us including me have said, here's a phenomenon I've seen, and maybe, just possibly, it indicates visits by extraterrestrials. Few except the OP are certain that it is extraterrestrial.
Here is a clue. If you capture a real UFO on video, you probably don't have to put annotations on the screen to point out what you think is the UFO. If you have to do that, then the UFO is in your mind only.
Do I believe in the fact that I can't identify all flying objects immediately? Yes. Do I believe in the fact that there could be intelligent life elsewhere? Also yes.
From Merriam-Webster Dictionary: "conclusive applies to reasoning or logical proof that puts an end to debate or questioning". This is similar to the legal definition of conclusive evidence. It has nothing to do with my subjective beliefs, or wishful thinking on my part. You can't use a term that has a standard definition that any educated speaker of would agree means X and say no, no; it really means Y.
I sometimes think the only things True Believers in this forum don't believe in is any claim made by yucky scientists, and the Christian religion in any of its forms. I happen to have a background in the sciences and engineering, and am an Orthodox Christian, so I guess in the New Age's version of reality I'm doubly damned!
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,297 posts, read 14,166,733 times
Reputation: 8105
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vasily
From Merriam-Webster Dictionary: "conclusive applies to reasoning or logical proof that puts an end to debate or questioning". This is similar to the legal definition of conclusive evidence. It has nothing to do with my subjective beliefs, or wishful thinking on my part. You can't use a term that has a standard definition that any educated speaker of would agree means X and say no, no; it really means Y.
......
Well, that's kind of what I was saying. There are plenty of highly educated people who believe in UFOs (or the paranormal) because of what they have experienced. They simply don't accept the scientific standards as being necessarily conclusive, they are willing to consider anecdotal evidence.
Some of them are scientists such as Stanton Friedman.
In fact quite a large number of scientists believe in God, the paranormal, or extraterrestrial visitations in their personal lives ..... but vigorously deny that such are "scientific" (satisfying the requirements of acceptance by an entire scientific community around the world.) Thus for example you would find some physicists privately believing in Intelligent Design, while at the same time insisting that it is not scientifically proven and working to exclude it from public school teachings.
Thus different standards of proof. There's no absolute universal standard of proof.
Well, that's kind of what I was saying. There are plenty of highly educated people who believe in UFOs (or the paranormal) because of what they have experienced. They simply don't accept the scientific standards as being necessarily conclusive, they are willing to consider anecdotal evidence.
Some of them are scientists such as Stanton Friedman.
Contrary to the bogeyman image of the scientist or skeptic I see here sometimes, most scientists are willing to consider anecdotal evidence. I'll point to Jenning's observation that milkmaids seldom get smallpox leading to the first smallpox vaccinations. A lot of times anecdotal evidence is the reason someone will start a scientific study. But with regard to evidence of the senses, there are a lot of reasons why it's not necessarily trustworthy.
For example: when I was a child a few times I saw an evil face looking at me in my room. When I turned on the light, I saw it was just folds in a shirt over a chair, or a pattern in the wallpaper. The brain's evolved to extract human faces from noisy backgrounds as a survival mechanism. And that's why the evidence of our senses or photographic evidence shouldn't be taken as proof of anything; it's not reliable. If anyone here chooses to read that as my calling them a liar, or evidence that I'm inflexible and dogmatic, that's their problem.
Remember the Cydonia face on Mars? When NASA decided to take a peek with a higher quality camera years later, it became obvious it was just a landform that slightly resembled a face (and not as good as some of the Terran landforms that resemble faces). The response of some of the True Believers was that NASA or JPL doctored the high-res images to keep people from finding out the Truth! The Cydonia face is no more conclusive evidence of past aliens on Mars than the childhood faces I saw in draped cloth were conclusive evidence of gnomes living in my bedroom.
Quote:
In fact quite a large number of scientists believe in God, the paranormal, or extraterrestrial visitations in their personal lives ..... but vigorously deny that such are "scientific" (satisfying the requirements of acceptance by an entire scientific community around the world.) Thus for example you would find some physicists privately believing in Intelligent Design, while at the same time insisting that it is not scientifically proven and working to exclude it from public school teachings.
Thus different standards of proof. There's no absolute universal standard of proof.
Proof implies evidence that will convince any reasonable observer that such and such is the case. If you'd replace proof in your last sentence with belief, or truth, or ways of knowing, I'd agree with your statement. There are more than one way of knowing things. But that doesn't mean there are many objective realities, one in each person's head, either.
The only thing that personal anecdotal evidence can prove is that the experiencer found it convincing. When a client would tell me during therapy that he/she heard voices in his head, i believed in most cases that he/she heard voices; most clients were not lying abouut their experiences. I would not do is attribute these voices to transmissions from the government, or gremlins or demons living in my client's head because the only evidence I had was the client's subjective testimony that the voices were real. And no, I'm not callng anyone a liar or "crazy" here ... Though I suspect those that most needed to hear this stopped reading after the first paragraph.
I believe in what earthlings cleverly labelled unexplained sightings as UFO's are
two primary entities ie, post flood nephlim fallen angel spirits ( not the fallen
angels 1/3 kicked out of heaven with Lucipher) and heavenly angels in the form
of light shapes, orbs ( often clustered or pattern) . Both can hover or travel at warp.
I don't believe in extraterrestrials unless there is evidence of resources enabling
them to manufacture space craft and if the employees are unionized. As we view
deep space we haven't seen enough supporting conditions to make a angel food
cake mold! If we include a third visual they are airborn objects originating from
very scary creatures called humans.
It depends on your personal, subjective standards of conclusive proof.
There's no such thing as "subjective truth." If I claim a square has 3 sides that isn't my own "subjective truth" that everyone has to respect. That's just me being wrong. If Truth is subjective, then there is no such thing as Truth.
Vasily, I do agree, like your remark "
Remember the Cydonia face on Mars? When NASA decided to take a peek with a higher quality camera years later, it became obvious it was just a landform that slightly resembled a face (and not as good as some of the Terran landforms that resemble faces)."
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,297 posts, read 14,166,733 times
Reputation: 8105
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark S.
There's no such thing as "subjective truth." If I claim a square has 3 sides that isn't my own "subjective truth" that everyone has to respect. That's just me being wrong. If Truth is subjective, then there is no such thing as Truth.
Everyone has a right to their own opinions.
NO ONE has a right to their own facts.
That's not what I meant, which is that everyone has different standards of proof ..... for example at the low end of the spectrum, a person might only require that a tribal shaman's or friend's experience is enough to conclusively prove something, while at the other end only scientific evidence and the consensus of the scientific community are sufficient to prove something.
I'm not saying that truth is purely subjective, but that we have different standards by which we are satisfied that something is true - after all that FEELING of something having been proven is all we have at our level, regardless of objective truth which we can never directly know. Objective truth is not the same thing as being satisfied that something is objectively proven.
For example, many Hindus believe in Krishna, a blue cowboy god who makes love to many milkmaids simultaneously. Some of those Hindus are very intelligent people, I've talked to them. Yet they don't need the scientific paradigm to prove Krishna's existence to their personal standards of proof ...... they believe he is objectively real, because they think that the wisdom of family elders or anecdotal evidence for his existence is sufficient. Most people in the scientific community outside the religion would disagree, saying there is no scientific evidence to compel belief. A debunker at the far end of the spectrum would deny that Krishna exists even if he were to appear to him and demonstrate miraculous powers ..... only the agreement of the scientific community would be enough for him to get that subjective feeling of "it is proven".
But - and this is a big butt - a lack of scientific evidence doesn't necessarily mean Krishna doesn't exist. He might objectively exist ...... but there's no way for humans to directly know truth.
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