-=> On 03-12-98  18:53, Paul Andinach said to Ivy Iverson,<=-
-=>"About Skeptics...,"<=-
-=> Quoting Ivy Iverson to Paul Andinach <=-
 
Hi, Paul;
 
 DB> That doesn't mean whatever evidence might be brought forth is
 DB> automatically deemed as fake.
 II> To many, at least in the field of UFOlogy, it sure seems like it!
 PA> Another subtle difference people have trouble with:
 PA> "It might be fake, so it is fake."
 PA> "It might be fake, so it's safer to assume it is fake until
 PA> something turns up independently to support it."
(Skeptic's razor - Slice away what you can't explain!)
 II> Or, "If it CAN be faked, and _I_ don't think it's likely/possible,
 II> then it's gotta be faked... so prove otherwise!"
 PA> Yes, that's the problem. Some "skeptics" are like that, and some
 PA> people assume that *every* skeptic is like that.
 PA> Both, we could do without.
 
Not all, but at least 90% of the skeptics _I_ have come into contact with,
either in these echos or in person, has come accross that way!
 
 PA> How many plane crashes have there been since 1945? How many of
 PA> them have made it onto the news?
 PA> Repeat, substituting "flying saucer" for "plane".
 II> "The media" knows all about airplanes and talks freely about them, and
 II> when one crashes, it's usually a tragedy for many families.  When a
 II> UFO crashes, it's buried by Uncle Sam... and don't think for a
 II> picosecond that the Govt can't kill any story they want kept quiet!  (I
 II> was in broadcasting, and I KNOW that when someone from the Govt - from
 II> the local cop-shop to the military - calls on the phone and says, "Not
 II> a word about such-and-such," NOTHING goes out on the subject, on the
 II> air, in print or on the electronic wires... IT'S DEAD!
 PA> Which makes it different from the UFO phenomenon, because if it's
 PA> DEAD, people don't go on to write bestselling books about it.
 
Except that when something like that happens to have witnesses, either
seeing it happen or after the fact, (ie: seeing something crash, seeing the
debris field and/or helping to clean it up), there is likely to be someone
that talks, either shortly after or several years later, (when memory is
clouded by time).  It is these talkers that either write books or tell
their stories to the ones who write the books.  Granted, you can't take the
books as being 110% factual, but there is enough similarity between them,
and between the stories of the talkers, that one must believe that
SOMETHING happened, and when Uncle Sam hands out half a dozen stories in
the following half century, and NONE of them agree with all the accounts OR
the results of FOIA requests, one has to wonder what the REAL story is!  (I
am, of course, referring to the Roswell incident).  BTW, when 50 or 100 or
more people, including cops, astronomers and other trained observers,
spread over many miles - or hundereds of miles - INDEPENDANTLY report
seeing EXACTLY the same thing ... "mass hallucination"  just does not
compute!  There HAD to be "something unusual" there!
 
 PA> So you admit that the evidence on which you base your belief is
 PA> not actually sufficient?
 
Sufficent?  Sufficent for what?  Sufficent for believing that Uncle
Sam is trying to pull the wool over sheeple's eyes?  YES!  Sufficent to
PROVE that whatever crashed near Roswell in 1947 came from another
planet/solar system/galaxy/universe?  No!  Sufficent to arouse strong
suspicion that whatever-it-was cane from a technology not available to
humans on planet Earth in 1947?  I believe so, yes.
 
 II> If I were taking odds, my money would be on it being factual.
 PA> What are your reasons for making that decision?
 
Basically on the QUANTITY of similar accounts of (alleged) witnesses and
what has been published in a multitude of books, many written by people
who have used the FOIA to dig through the records.
 
 PA> You've just stated that you accept that your belief in alien visitors
 PA> is mostly based on evidence that may be false, or at least largely
 PA> inaccurate.
 II> ANYTHING is possible.  Some things are just more likely than others.
 PA> What's going on here?
 II> That's what we are trying to figure out... isn't it?
 PA> I was referring to the way you apparently managed to agree with a
 PA> full-scale attack on your position without seeing the need to change
 PA> your position at all.
 
No, I do not see the arguments of one skeptic - or a hundred - as being
sufficently convincing to make me believe that ANY of the O-fishy stories,
(read "LIES!"), spewed out like a baby voliting Pablum from the Pentigon in
the last half century are anything but vain attempts to distract the
American public, (read "Sheep!"), from whatever it REALLY was!  And about
the only thing they HAVEN'T said was, "Ok, it was from a technology unknown
to us."  And everything that comes from other sources, (except you
skeptiks), tells me that there WAS something there which was unknown to our
technology, just like there are so many pictures and video tapes, (granted,
many are mistaken identity or outright fakes!), which defy explaination,
PLUS several witnesses and two abductees that I have known, that I have to
believe that there is "something else - someone else - from somewhere else
and/or some-time else" visiting us!
 
They can't ALL be:
A) Natural happenings;
B) Black projects;
C) Halucinations;
D) Mistaken identity;
E) Fakes!
 
I am very sorry if you and your skeptic-buddies can't see that.
 
Just a thought...Are you sure you don't work for the Pentigon's
DIS-information machine?   :-}
 
Catch you later... Keep l00king up... you might see one!
   Ivy
 
 
 
... Beware SESR (Self-Embellishing Sighting Report) - UFOlogists' Curse.
 
      --
 -=[ Ivy's WALL BBS  Hi, Jack!  Happy New Year to All! ]=-
 
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