There's a vast difference between being classically Skeptical, as opposed to openly derisive, vis-a-vis the whole tinfoil hats thing. Now hear this! There are no tinfoil hats! They're aluminium!
I think the UK still calls it that, aluminium. An American Aluminum siding salesman, I think, is credited with Americanizing it out of a constant mispronunciation. Silly Americans! (Born and raised in the USA, btw.)
I have followed the UFO investigations pretty much since I can read. Why? And as importantly, why do I believe?
I had an experience when I was about 4. (I can remember pretty clearly most of my life back to about 18 months of age) It was during a storm when I was living in Bremerton, Washington. We lived on a Navy base that was also one of the Navy's larger Ammo Depots on the West Coast. It was maybe the summer of 1965, so I was almost 5 by then.
The storm was great! I always have liked lightning storms. And the base had lightning rods EVERYWHERE! (It was an ammo depot, wouldn't do to spark off those bunkers, now would it?)
Then our power just started going wonky, wavering and browning, then surging. This happened for far too long to be just an electrical discharge (though at that time I didn't know that.)
Then the power just went, Bloop! Out. And there was this humming. You could feel it as well as hear it. It raised the hair on your arms and head. Not in a scared way, but like static discharge.
And that's when my 2nd oldest brother and I noticed that there was a bright green tinted glow to the night.
So we both opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. Overhead, I don't really know how far up, was this huge disc of aquamarine hovering close to where the power lines that fed our whole neighborhood were. If I had to guess, I'd say it was probably -- around a 100 feet in diameter? Maybe? Hard to say.
Was it an alien spacecraft? I don't know. Was it extraterrestrial? I don't know. Was it manmade? No fricking way, man. No fricking way. I recall getting ready to step off the porch and start heading for it when my brother grabbed me by the arm and yanked me back inside and slammed the door shut. Then he closed the curtains and started crying. Up to that point, I wasn't scared at all. But when I saw my 7 year old brother start crying, that's when I got scared.
I've had two other similar sightings in my life.
Are they from another planet? Couldn't tell ya. Could they be time travellers? I suppose. Were those things of alien manufacture in the sense that they were not naturally occurring objects and had to be created by an intelligence? I'd have to say yes to that.
That skepticism should be a two-way street and it's not. The "scientific" community is actually pretty smart, but is just as biased about what it will accept as 'science' as the 'pseudo-science' they laughingly scorn.
Who are we to say, in our relatively ignorant position in the universe what we can and cannot detect? Who's to say that, even in some of the most rigorous science, some fudging doesn't occur? And, with all that we have learned in just the last 100 years, we should not be so ready to proclaim that we are at the knowable pinnacle of universal knowledge.
History, if anything, tells us a far different story. We are talking about a society and race that used to burn people who heard voices and called them witches. We are talking about a race and a history that has seen the Great Library at Alexandria burn for no other reason than to watch it burn -- losing texts, scrolls, and papyrus' of inestimable value to history and learning. We are talking about the same race of beings who, in the last 160 years in this country closed the US Patent Office not once, but Twice(!), because everything that could possibly be invented had been.
In this day and age we find it laughable that people used to say, "If man were meant to fly, God would have given him wings!" Only a hundred and seven years ago, there were a couple of bicycle mechanics who proved the scientific community wrong about powered flight, on the very same day that an erudite group of learned scholars and experts were giving lectures on how such a thing was clearly just not possible to do.
So. Are there aliens visiting this planet? Personally I think so, but I have no way to prove it or disprove it.
Is faster than light travel possible? It is indicated that it might very well be, with a greater understanding of quantum mechanics. Can we transmit instantaneously across the vast reaches of the Galaxy? Maybe using elements of as yet not understood properties, or as yet undeveloped mechanisms, we can. You may not be able to slowly approach and then pass the speed of light, but a quantum shift may allow such a thing with sufficient technological leaps of science, production and applied materials.
I think the historical record is pretty clear. We're pretty smart, but we're also, on the whole, pitiably arrogant, ignorant and not just skeptical, we are simply unbelieving of some things because we've been told, time and again, that it's just not possible.
I believe we live in an Impossible World, where things that we cannot yet explain happen with alarming frequency. And because we cannot explain them -- in some cases, barely imagine them -- they are dismissed out of hand, scoffed at, and made fun of.
You know, when Marco Polo got back to Italy and showed the people paper money, no-one could believe it. It was pretty, sure, but that couldn't possibly represent 10 gold talents. No way. So they burned them while at the same time tried to burn some gold coins to prove that the paper money wasn't 'really' money.
Me? I believe. I have studied, following Project Blue Book, MUFON and CUFOS and several others (I have sort of lost interest, because if there really were going to be some sort of 'proof positive' event, it should have happened by now in my estimation, though am willing to wait a bit longer -- just not holding my breath.)
Much of what has been sighted is identifiable as natural phenomenon. Some are clearly hoaxes and shams. Others are military projects, allowed to be speculated as UFOs because that helps keep the project under cover. Then there is about 8-12% or so of the thousands upon thousands of sightings that simply cannot be explained.
So go ahead, put on your Aluminium Foil hats, scoff, laugh and deride. I think the folks on the 'believer' side of things have learned to accept that. On the other side of the coin, though, I think they're still trying to prove that powered flight is impossible while burning paper money to show it's not really money. And that's not Skepticism, it's sheer lack of ability to even accept the premise in the first place.
There really does have to be a middle ground somewhere. I have no idea how to go about getting there, but I am pretty sure that it doesn't involve making fun of the other side of the debate, or of ignoring the very valid and well researched information the scientific side of the debate can offer up. Those explanations reduce a lot of the 'dead weight' of the information. After all that, though, there is still stuff that simply cannot be explained.
So far, the Scientific Community's attitude has been, "If we cannot explain it, it doesn't exist." And that's not a new way of doing things. It's that natural bias SFT referred to. It does cut both ways, unlike the Skepticism. I think being Skeptical is the key component to greater understanding on both sides. Both sides could well do without the dogmatic approach that treats their particular point of view as more correct than the other.
dunniteowl
Modifié par dunniteowl, 12 octobre 2010 - 07:32 .
Retour en haut
