Stop baiting for religous or political discussion and stop taking the bait in responding

OK good I wasnt sure if you were being honest in your skeptisism (sp).
From what I get your most likely an agnostic like myself. I however give eye witness testimony from credible people more weight than you. Especially when there are multiple witnesses to same sighting. Not everyone is crazy or out to make a buck. And lots of theoretical physicists believe now that its likely possible to travel light years away by bending space and time, we are just to primitive to figure it out now.

Okay, I'm taking a risk here but i'm going to bring up a religious event witnessed by thousands of people. Now, this has nothing to do with religion so don't go off on one. It concerns the nature and reliability of eye witness testimony.

The day the sun went mental*....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun

I will wager that you and I don't believe for a second that on the 13 October 1917 the sun actually....

And yet presumably there were quite a few people in that huge crowd who would easily qualify under your standard of 'credibility'. Still, you will be inclined, as would I, to explain the event in naturalistic terms. Perhaps as a mass delusion, an optical illusion or an instance of people seeing what they expected to see...etc. I very much doubt you will entertain the thought that perhaps God really did make the sun dance for the faithful on that day.

However, when it comes to UFOs all this seemingly goes out of the window. Why is that? Why, in the case of religious visions (of which there are many) would you immediately look for a natural, down to earth explanation; but when it comes to testimony concerning un-identified flying objects you have your heart set, it appears, on advocating probably the most out-landish explanation imaginable!

True. But the fact is that UFOlogy is filled to the gills with crackpots and charlatans. For anyone who is truly trying to get a handle on the phenomena they have my respect and sympathies.

Don't confuse possibility with either probability or evidential support. The fact that wormholes may be theoretically possible in no way constitutes supporting evidence that aliens are using them to get here.

This notion of 'primitive' brings up a point I don't recall reading in this thread so far. Have you noticed how the alleged space-craft have evolved over the years? We've gone from the 1950's hub-cap style flying saucers to modern day stealthy 'black triangles'. When I was growing up in the 80's the common description for UFOs was as a 'cigar-shaped craft'. Similarly the descriptions of extra-terrestrials given by 'contactees' have undergone an obvious evolution.

How to explain this? One way to explain this is to take the testimony at face value and begin categorising all the various ETs and their ships into 'races' or 'species'. A somewhat more realistic approach is to explain this variety as the projections of culture upon a confusing and at times frightening phenomena.



* El dia el Loco Sol (or something like that...:grin:)

he magic sun is prettty easily explained with science. First problem is all the people there were there to see something so write there they are tainted. read the skeptics and scientific explanation...

"Stuart Campbell, writing for the 1989 edition of Journal of Meteorology, postulated that a cloud of stratospheric dust changed the appearance of the sun on 13 October, making it easy to look at, and causing it to appear yellow, blue, and violet. In support of his postulation, Mr. Campbell reports that a blue and reddened sun was reported in China as documented in 1983. Mr. Campbell's article does not attempt to provide evidence that might explain the reported zigzagging of the sun towards the earth[29].

Joe Nickell, a skeptic and investigator of paranormal phenomena, claims that the position of the phenomenon, as described by the various witnesses, is at the wrong azimuth and elevation to have been the sun[30]. He suggests the cause may have been a sundog. Sometimes referred to as a parhelion or "mock sun", a sundog is a relatively common atmospheric optical phenomenon associated with the reflection/refraction of sunlight by the numerous small ice crystals that make up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. A sundog is, however, a stationary phenomenon, and would not explain the reported appearance of the "dancing sun". Nickell suggests an explanation for this and other similar phenomena may lie in temporary retinal distortion, caused by staring at the intense light and/or by the effect of darting the eyes to and fro so as to avoid completely fixed gazing (thus combining image, afterimage and movement)."

You've missed the point.

I get it notice I said the crowd was there looking for something to happen, that alone discredits most if not all that people saw as they were delusional before they went. Just wanted to add the rational scientific explanation for this "miracle". Hell Chris Angel performs bigger miracles than this!!

Nope, you still missed the point.

:-P

We agree there are perfectly natural explanations available to us to help explain these various religious phenomena, yes?

OK.

And we agree that even if we currently do not have a rigorous scientific explanation of these phenomena there is no justification for invoking the supernatural to help explain them. Yes?

OK.

So why, then, when it comes to the subject of UFOs are you eager to discard these natural explanations in favour of the most fantastic explanation? i.e. Aliens from Outer Space.

Try this out. Here's an archetypical UFO encounter I just made up. We'll let Bob describe his experience....

How to explain this? Well there are very many possible natural explanations for what happened. Tiredness, anxiety, vertigo, canopy reflections, hallucinations, birds, atmospheric effects, oxygen starvation, other aircraft.

But let us imagine that none of these explanations hold water, and we find that we simply do not have any explanation at all for what Bob saw. Our conclusion is therefore : "We don't know". Not "Aliens"

if none hold water, then yes, the "We don't know" holds true and captures the tag: Unidentified Flying Object... and "not of this world" is a natural extrapolation.

Crikey some of the artifacts dug up from some archeological sites have distinct shape to modern aircraft... but these are thousands of years old.
wall drawings... same thing - fantastically shaped beings, and some of which have uncanny similarity to modern experiments with plasma - others? who knows.
The Muhahubtra (sp) with its references to flying machines


so, go figure


Oh, and "bending space"... faster than light travel

It's only a valid extrapolation if you have some actual evidence to demonstrate that something is not of this world. Meteorites* are 'not of this world'; but we can collect them, hold them in our hands and scrutinise them to see whether the hypothesis that they are 'not of this world' holds any water.

The same cannot be said of UFOs. Over half a century of testimony and there is still not one ATOM of tangible proof to suggest that this phenomena is 'not of this world'.

Von Daniken alert!!!! All hands on deck!!! "Put down that book and never open it again!"

Countdown to Face on Mars!

:-P

:confused:


* long considered super-natural events.

Actually you have photographic evidence as well as radar so its not completely a blind faith thing like religion. Your method of saying one individual saw swamp gas holds only when its one individual. What about mass sightings like the phoenix lights or the UFO's over Washington DC in 1952.