R UFOs real?

[dfoJC]

Originally Posted by alanmolstad

a person can believe in a fancy dream so much that it becomes real to them, and can have an ability to effect their hearts.

Now I dont believe for a moment that anyone actually "sees" something in the sky that is a UFO or a demon.
But, you can see things that you dont understand in the night sky and this can lead you to come up with all kinds of reasons for the unexplained .

Thousands of years ago men understood that some stars would back up and travel the wrong way in the sky....they also saw every night that some stars fell down.
This knowledge of the basic facts had no explanation, and to come up with a reason some stars moved in the wrong direction and others fell to the ground we ended up with a whole Mythology around the stars that soon became a whole new religion that is still around to this very day.

So seeing things you dont understand can become a way to build a religion...and that means there can be a connection between UFOs and a person faith life...

But aside from this, I dont believe for even a second that Satan is flying around in the sky with a flashlight making weird UFO sounds to fool people.

All very true statements, but I know for a fact that the devil is flying around with a flashlight! And making funny noises to! OK, that was just to funny and I had to comment on it.

Thanks for responding Alan. Take care of your self up there in the Dakotas...

dfoJC

[alanmolstad]

Things that are fake in my book...

#1 - stories of UFOs and little green men.
#2 - Big foot
#3 - Nessy.
#4 - any and all proof of a young earth only 6,000 years old.
#5 - stories where a demon shows up.
#6 - all speaking in tongues where you end up with babbling only.
#7 - any "healings" where people line up.

[alanmolstad]

Now I do believe in the very great chance of life being found off the earth.
i beleiev that God actually has planted a garden of life in the night sky, and i have no doubt at all that over the next few thousand years or so we shall find that life is a natural thing that can happen on any world if given a chance by a world's temp and distance from a sun.

But i do not believe in UFOs at all.

I think all the proof of UFOs is fake, and lies.

I believe all the photos of UFOs are fake, all the stories are fake, or just things that are mistaken to be something else....

[tdidymas]

Don't know if this is a subject that people want to talk about, it looks like there was only 1 day of discussion. Perhaps my input might spark some response..

Firstly I don't believe in UFOs. Meaning of course, I do not believe that what is commonly believed to be UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft. With that said, I studied ufology for some time, went through the FBI Blue Files, saw and recorded every UFO Report and investigation I could get from TV, was an avid X-files fan, saw all the Star Trek series including the original, next gen, deep space, and voyager, and have seen most sci-fi movies ever made.

Back in '65 I once went out on an 'adventure' with some guys, and they started talking about little green men (I was 11 yrs old). I never saw anything, but we had some fun. The only problem is that by the time I got home I was 2 hours past curfew, and I had to make up something that sounded legit to excuse myself. So I told the story about the little green men, with some extra embellishment. It looked like I almost had my mother convinced; at least she didn't punish me.

The point is that if a story is told well enough, it can be believed. After all, why are there so many cults, religions, and even denominations in our own Christian faith? The fact is that stories are indeed being told well enough to be believed. And some people are even saying that the Bible is a story so well-told that it is believed (of course, meaning that it's a made-up story). As an aside, I believe the Bible not because it is a believable story, but because it has given me the peace of heart I was desperately looking for, which comes from my personal experience with a Personal God.

I gather that people are desperate for a story that fits their longing for completeness and purpose in life. Such stories can be addictive and appear to satisfy the gap that is experienced from a dissatisfied existence. So then people are desperate to believe that story that fits their idea of the universe, the "I WANT to believe" at***ude that takes them down a path of obsession. Such is the world of UFOs.

Now concerning the patterns I see from the evidences presented:

1. Not one picture or video of a UFO is clear. They are all fuzzy, shakey, grainy, out of focus, etc. In other words, you cannot possibly tell what it is from the pictures alone. And this concerns the pictures that are not obvious fakes. About 90% of all UFO pictures are faked. If you study them, you will see: strings, reflections, ill-fit sizes, photo-shopped scenes, even common things thrown into the air and photo-snapped as if they were flying saucers. 90% of the "evidence" presented is completely fraudulent. Meaning that the originators of the evidence were lying about what they saw or about how the evidence was obtained. The believability is in how the story is told and the receptivity of the hearers.

2. Night scenes are always very shakey. People don't realize just how deceptive night vision can be in regard to lights that are far off. The shakeyness of night videos are usually regarded as being stable scenes, with lights that are "rapidly moving this way and that." People describe distant lights they see as flying objects that are defying known physics, not realizing that naked eye twitching can make distant lights in the darkness appear to be in motion. But people believe what they are looking for, not what actually is. One MIT researcher noted that a group of UFO watchers only saw UFOs at the same exact time that traffic was moving a certain direction on a certain stretch of distant highway. It is interesting how real science can dispel science-fiction, even when people still want to believe the fiction.

3. Orbs: usually in ghost stories, they also appear in UFO accounts. If a person who takes many photos is willing to investigate thoroughly, they can find out that most orbs are out-of-focus reflections. Sometimes the reflection is from dust particles, and those particles can appear to be further away from the camera than they actually are. Some relections are from windows, drinking gl***es, eye gl***es, or other reflective objects. A sure sign that an orb is a reflection is that the orb is moving across the screen at some % proportional rate to the rate of the camera moving across the scene. Another sign is that the orb appears within view, and disappears within view. The reflective angle is constantly changing. I have taken many pictures in dark environments (such as caves) and seen orbs, and most caves are not said to be haunted.

4. Crop Circles: Aside from the fact that people have actually come forward with admittance to creating a hoax, crop circles appear to legitimize the idea of alien intelligence. It is one thing to photoshoot a fuzzy object. It is quite another to report a clear picture of something readily observed by eyewitnesses, among whom are skeptics. The fact is that not one person has reported observing a paranormal creation of crop circles, even though there has been reports and pictures of literally thousands of them. All reports are after-the-fact. Not one observation of a crop circle in progress. Call me a skeptic, but I am not a believer in any paranormal source of crop circles at this point. Again, how well the story is told is what makes the difference.

This is not by any means exhaustive. One could spend years of leisure time studying evidences. People usually believe either what they want to believe, or what they have to believe. In actuality, there are some UFO pictures and videos that are not easily explainable. The fact that you are observing a scene of something that was recorded at a different time and place than you are when you observe the recording, should tell you that almost any interpretation you come up with is going to be outside of context. And we should know very well how deceptive something taken out of context can be.

[alanmolstad]

Originally Posted by tdidymas

Don't know if this is a subject that people want to talk about, it looks like there was only 1 day of discussion. .

I'm trying to get some interest in other topics going.
Im not a Mormon, and have zero interest in most Mormon-related topics, and so its slim pickings around here for guys like me.

Im very grateful for someone stopping by and dropping a post into this small conversation

[alanmolstad]

Originally Posted by tdidymas

saw all the Star Trek series including the original, next gen, deep space, and voyager,

I own a Bat'leth....http://daqotahforge.tripod.com/klingonblades/id71.html

[tdidymas]

Sorry, I'm not much into Klingon culture. I only mentioned Star Trek as a backdrop of my interest in Science Fiction. So far I only own 1 season of the original series (on Blue Ray). Most else I have are recorded from TV, or DVD purchases like Dune and Forbidden Planet.

In my original post I forgot to mention that I had actually seen some UFOs back in '85. I wasn't looking for them, it was quite by accident. I can still describe them in detail if you are interested. I regret I didn't have a camera at the time, or even binoculars. For any skeptic who might see this post, I am an engineer and a scientist, and I used the standard process of elimination of every possibility of it being something known, such as aircraft, etc. I (and the person I was with) simply had to deem it "unknown." Like I said before, night vision can be illusory.

[alanmolstad]

when any person goes out under the stars for a few hours, there is every chance in the world that they will see something that they dont understand.

Men have been sitting around camp fires for millions of years looking up at the stars and noticing that every once in a while something new happens, or something different that they simply do not understand the reason for.

I once saw a trail of a falling star that glowed in the night sky for a long time.
I never saw the falling star itself, but I did see the trail left and it was weird.

Now I can see how had another person seen the same star trail in the sky that i did, and didnt understand what caused it, how ideas such as "An angel fell from heaven" might get started.

The lack of correct information leads our imaginations to invent answers that fit the circumstances.
So a falling chunk of rock into the atmosphere becomes an angel that has been cast out of heaven.
The same inventive mind that came up with the "Falling Angel" idea can also come up with a back-story to support this idea...and soon a whole new myth is being told around the campfires.