UFO's

Ghandi:

You said: “If they really wanted to keep us from blowing ourselves up and/or blowing up everyone else, why wouldn't they simply land on the White House lawn at noon?  Flying around silently at 3 am with the lights on and occasionally abducting people to perform strange, unnecessary tests/experiments seems like an awfully poor way to achieve world peace and warn man of his impending doom.”

First, I did not suggest that aliens want to keep us from killing ourselves, or to help us “achieve world peace” or even “warn man of his impending doom.”  I merely quoted Klaatu as stating that our ability to bring our aggression into the “peaceful corridors of space” was the issue.  And even if that were the case, it would not absolutely presuppose that aliens would simply come down and kill us all, or land (as Klaatu did) to warn us; they may have morals as enlightened (or moreso) than we do, and may have no interest in “interfering” with us.

You also ask: “Do you believe that we landed on the moon?  Did Lee Harvey Oswald shoot JFK?  Do the Masons/Illuminati control the world (or at least are trying to)? And, most importantly of all, is Elvis still alive!?”

Yes, I believe that astronauts landed on the moon.  No, I don’t believe that LHO shot JFK (though he may have been a shooter).  No, I do not believe that the masons/Illuminati control the world.  Yes, Elvis is still alive, and living on an island with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, John Lennon and others, having the greatest jam session in history.

Tony:

You said: “I am perturbed that you do not [offer] any more rational explanations for what you and others saw.  Weather balloons, science projects, meteors, regular airline flights (the problem of perspective discussed in the 9/11 thread!!).  On issues of size it is very difficult to give accurate measurements without proper instrumentation.  It is a delusion that many people have that they can tell the size/distance without proper instruments, this simply is not true.”

First, I should mention that I was a “UFO buff” long before I saw my first one, and read almost every book on the subject (I read Project Blue Book within months of its de-classification).  Thus, I fully understand angles of declination and other phenomena associated with determining whether an object is moving, at what presumed rate, etc.  [N.B.  I was the first person on line for the very first screening of Close Encounters in 1978, and had followed its creation from day one.]  However, none of these came into play during this encounter.  The object flew directly above us at perhaps 1,000 feet, and was as big as a commercial airliner.  It moved far slower than it had any right to, given its size (an airplane traveling that speed would certainly have stalled).  And, as noted, it made not one hum or buzz, much less the roar one would expect from an object that size traveling at that low height.

I’m not sure what one has to do with the other, but no, I do not believe in past lives.  As an aside, nor do I believe in alien abductions.  (One can believe in UFOs and aliens without necessarily believing in abductions, etc.)

Ghandi:

You said: “Listen guys, if super-intelligent aliens landed on the White House lawn it would not change anything about Christianity.  There would be three possibilities: (i) they are an unfallen race, (ii) they have fallen and their Christ has come, (iii) they have fallen but Christ has not yet come for them.”

An interesting way of putting it.  Bravo.

Rust:

You asked: “Do you mind sharing the other times you said you have sighted UFO's?  I am fascinated with your story.”

I will share at least one more.  It occurred while a friend and I were sitting in his kitchen on Co-op City, a large housing development in the Bronx.  He lived on the 10^th floor, and had a sweeping view of LaGuardia Airport, which was about four miles away.  We used to watch the planes landing and taking off all the time, so we were pretty familiar with the “normal” routines, and how various planes looked and “acted” from that distance.  He was also a “UFO person,” and had told me one of his own stories at one point.

We were sitting in his kitchen one afternoon (totally straight, I might add…), watching the airport.  It was a clear day, and visibility was unobstructed.  At one point, he pointed to an object heading toward the airport from our left and asked, “What is that?”  It was clearly not a commercial airliner, nor did it look like a military plane.  It looked like a shiny silver fuselage without windows, wings or tail.  It did not even seem to have a cockpit, or a window in the front.  (Again, we had seen hundreds, perhaps thousands of planes go in and out of the airport over a period of more than two years, so we were pretty darned familiar with what things looked like.)  The object (like the one I saw years later) was moving at a rate of speed that both of us recognized as far slower than it should have been able to for its size.  It was still a couple of miles from the airport, and did not seem to be lining up for an approach.  As it came closer to the airport at its unexplainably slow rate of speed, one plane landed and another took off.  Exactly at the moment that the airport was “between” take-offs and landings, the object shot past the airport at a tremendous rate of speed, and then, about two miles past the airport, went back to its leisurely speed.  It had covered a distance of about 5-6 miles in 2-3 seconds.

We both noted no sonic boom, which we would have expected, although we could not be certain the plane had reached mach speed; it may have been just under.  But there was no mistaking what we saw.

As an aside, I saw my first UFO in Pennsylvania around 1968 or 1969.  (That one was not only witnessed by at least a handful of other people, but actually crashed, and the site roped off by the local sheriff.  Within an hour, the FBI was there.)  I can’t remember whether the above was my second or third sighting (those two came fast on each other’s heels).  My fourth sighting was the first episode I described.

Peace.

Tony:

Re why it is that aliens seem to “accidentally” be seen “only when there are very few witnesses,” this is simply not true.  There have been many, many sightings witnessed by hundreds of people at a time, all over the world.  And not all of them have been explained by natural phenomena.  True, the government and/or scientific community always “pooh-pooh” those sightings, claiming some natural phenomena.  And sometimes they are right. But sometimes they are not, and no one who “was there” is convinced of the government/scientific explanation.

Second, your belief that “it takes a certain type of individual” to believe in UFOs is specious.  You made a similar claim re believers in God, and you hold a similar belief about anyone who believes in anything that is not empirically “provable.”  But like those who believe in God – a group which includes men and women of every race, nationality, creed, economic level, educational level, psycho-emotional background, etc. – those who believe in UFOs run the gamut from A to Z, and do not fall into a “certain type of individual” category.  Indeed, unlike believers in God, in the case of UFOs there is the additional support of true professionals in relevant fields – commercial and military pilots, air traffic controllers, etc. – who know far more than any of us about angles of declination, air speeds, maneuverability, etc., and maintain a belief in UFOs based on their knowledge and experiences.  And although commercial airline pilots and air traffic controllers will sometimes make their views public, they know they risk ridicule (and possibly career) if they do.  And, of course, military pilots, radar and sonar specialists, etc. are sworn to secrecy, so they rarely if ever speak up.  Yet once these professionals leave their careers, either commercial or military, many of them do speak up, and their expertise adds enormous clout to the debate.

Finally, re your tete-a-tete with BaldFriede, I have said it once, and I will say it again: the narrow, closed-minded view of rational scientific empiricists prima facie precludes the ability to accept the existence of anything outside of their limited belief system – despite the fact that humankind still has things to learn, and that, as BaldFriede so perfectly put it, there may well be ways in which to do controlled experiments on “paranormal” and other non-scientific phenomena, but we simply do not know what parameters to use because our own knowledge has not gotten that far.  In that regard, you are essentially claiming that humankind has reached the highest possible level of  its knowledge, understanding and discernment.  That is not really hubris, it is simply an insupportable position.  Certainly humankind has made great strides in knowledge and technology, both scientific and otherwise, especially over the past century.  But do you really think we are at the “pinnacle” of all that we can know – or can learn?  You may want to rethink your position here.  And no “scientific body” has to “declare” this: it is a logical extrapolation from the position taken by the rational-empirical scientific community and those who agree with it.  And I agree with BaldFriede: though you like to fashion yourself a “skeptic,” you actually fall closer to “cynic” vis-à-vis truly “hot-button” issues such as God, UFOs, etc.

As Hamlet says: “There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Peace.

BaldFriede said :

"An elementary particle changes one of its properties, and accordingly another elementary particle that once was connected with it changes it at the same time, without any time passing, although it is far away? This is what quantum theory is about. How does the other particle "know" about the change of status, when nothing can move faster than light? Magic?"

No, that's not the essence of quantum theory, although it is one of many hypothetical consequences thereto. The kind of loose speculaton which the New Agers can fasten on to & run with......one has to distinguish between the mathematics which describe a model and the (very many) different interpretations, or physical translations, which can be placed upon that particular set of equations........