Concerning _Carl Sagan on UFOs_, RON TAYLOR said to TROY H. CHEEK in UFO:
 RT> Troy, I think you are getting a little extreme here.  It's as if you are
 RT> saying that NOTHING can be proven absolutely.  Well, maybe so, but most
 RT> events can be proven to the level of "without reasonable doubt".
Which is not sufficient for many of the skeptics I've argued with over the 
years.
 RT> Your breakfast scenario, for example, can and does fit into this 
ategory
 RT> quite often.  It is common for autopsy reports to determine what a
 RT> victim ate over the last day or two.  These conclusions are routinely
 RT> accepted as "proof" beyond a reasonable doubt.
Accepted, yes.  Infallible, no.  If I can alter stomach contents, then people 
with more medical training than me certainly can.
 RT> The UFO question should require no less or no more.
I agree.
 THC>> It is indeed vexing.  Some people would require less evidence to 
convict
 THC>> you of murder than to be convinced that you saw a UFO.
 RT> 
 RT> Murder is a common occurrence.  That is an accepted fact.  Alien
 RT> visitation has never been substantiated.
Murder is a common occurance because, when a murder occurs, people generally 
agree that it's a murder.  When an alien visitation occurs (if any do 
actually occur), people generally try to explain it as a hoax, misidentified 
mundane event, mental illness, etc.  If each incident is taken singly, 
mislabeled, and then ignored, then a body of evidence never builds up.
   >> (And I don't necessarily mean
   >> an alien spacecraft.  I mean just to convince them that what you saw
   >> wasn't just a misidentified mundane object.)
 RT> 
 RT> If it wasn't a "misidentified mundane object", what else could it be
 RT> but an alien craft.
By "misidentified mundane object" I mean things like weather balloons, flocks 
of birds, lightning, Venus, swamp gas, weather satellites, etc.  Outside of 
that we have stuff like secret military aircraft, previously undiscovered 
atmospheric phenomena, geological events in otherwise stable areas, 
once-in-a-century celestrial events, etc.  These don't fit my definition of 
"mundane."  For example, a previously unknown fault line shifts, creating a 
piezoelectric effect which ignites pockets of swamp gas along the fault line, 
giving the appearance of a bright ball of light "hopping" along the ground at 
high speed.
 RT> In all my life, I've never known of someone that denied that UFO
 RT> sightings were happening.  They just maintain that the meaning of the
 RT> "U" portion of the initials is a valid description.
I've encountered a few that believe that UFO sightings happen rarely if at 
all. The entire "UFO phenomenon" is an invention of a few UFO fanatics who 
make up and distribute false sighting reports to support their theory that if 
people all over the world are seeing UFOs all the time, then there must be 
something there worth investigating. 
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