The UFO Phenomenon

Toaster Mantis wrote: Dean wrote: If some cultures represent spirit creatures with big eyes then it could be because the eyes were important to the mythology, like the eye of Horus or the 100 eyes of Argus, or it was to enable the creature to see better, or to see into your soul, or to simply look more scary or beguiling, or it could just be that it looked better with bigger eyes. Of course there is symbolism in many of the depictions and descriptions of mythological creatures, but we must be wary of reading more into them that is actually present, especially applying modern interpretations.  I agree completely, it's just that I think the similarities between UFO/alien contact stories and things like demonology or faerie lore are an angle to approach the subject that hasn't been picked up enough by the general public. Here is the Magonia article I referred to earlier, by the way. They also have a couple others along the same angle.

"Creatures from the sky, and below the ground; tall, beautiful, god-like humans, or small, malevolent goblins, are so consistent a part of human experience, from Baffin Island to New Zealand, that there can be no doubt that they are real!"

...there can be every doubt that they are real. If anyone doubts that the plethora of gods that the human race has ever worshipped are real then there is doubt over every phantasm regardless of which world or realm they come from. The stories of Zeus and Vishnu and Quetzalcoatl are not proof that those gods were real, the story of Beowulf defeating Grendel and his Mum is not proof that any of them were real, so stories of piskies and ishigaq are not proof that faerie folk were real. Many UFOologist have attempted to usurp ancient gods for aliens (in typical von Däniken fashion), substituting a different supernatural creature for those absentee gods does not make the premise more credible. And in this I suspect the conclusion came before the premise - as I said before, there are many examples of demon and faerie that look nothing like ET, even in the Inuit mythology of Baffin Island where most of the bestiary of mythical creatures have animal form (as they do in nearly all cultures).

Edited by Dean - January 06 2014 at 17:59

Svetonio wrote: Dean wrote: (...) The only time you have offered an opinion from your own mouth it was to repeat an often repeated error that people of the 1600's thought the world was flat, (...) Sadly enough, it's not my opinion. The fact is that a common beliefe in Europe countries that the Earth is not round was strong untill almost recent times.

The idea that the Earth was flat was typical of ancient European cosmologies until about the 4th century BC, when the Ancient Greek philosophers proposed the idea that the Earth was a sphere, or at least rounded in shape.[4] Aristotle was one of the first Greek thinkers to propose a spherical Earth in 330 BC. By the early Middle Ages, it was widespread knowledge throughout Europe that the Earth was a sphere.

Edited by Dean - January 07 2014 at 01:08

*sigh* You are repeating the same misconception, in fact you are now showing images that are propagating the same misconception of people from earlier times. The painting is not showing what people believed at the time the picture was painted, but what the artist thought that people in earlier times believed. I don;t know the exact source of the painting you have shown, but similar paintings exist from the 19th century that illustrate what they thought the opposition to Columbus's proposed voyage was about, and those artists were wrong. People did not oppose his voyage because they believed the world was flat, they opposed him because they believed he had under-estimated the size of the Earth, the size of Eurasia and the distance from China to Japan (which he had, in all three he was completely wrong, and if you ever get to answer my questions on the Piri Reis map then I'll point out several other areas in which Columbus was both wrong and inaccurate).

Edited by Dean - January 07 2014 at 02:02

Svetonio wrote: Ok, back to the topic..

Toaster Mantis wrote: This thread is starting to feel like a bad X-Files episode.

AtomicCrimsonRush wrote: Awwww I came here to discuss UFO the TV series.

VOTOMS wrote: AtomicCrimsonRush wrote: Awwww I came here to discuss UFO the TV series. Yeah!! I love UFO opening, that hammond organ rules!!!

An interesting documentary.

UFO is one of my favorite sci-fi series. Gabrielle Drake is hot heheh have u seen his other movies? You can find her nude 

Svetonio wrote: An interesting documentary.

While we're at it, you could read up on the strange-but-true story of Trotskyist alien contactee Juan Posadas... and by that I mean that the aliens also were Trotskyists.