UFO's and extra-terrestrial life

[unreasonable]

Originally Posted by CharveL

I really hate to harp on you Oldschool61, and respect your apparent strong faith in aliens, but when you come up with glaring logical fallacies all in one paragraph it's difficult to ignore.

Edited for brevity..

I'm fine with the fact you believe in alien flying saucers but from my perspective, and the standard of logical reasoning, it's just as likely there is a bearded man up there arbitrarily judging us as there are grey aliens with big eyes doing the same.

Surely you do not mean this (if I am right in thinking that by "bearded man" you mean a conventional patriarchal deity)?

The existence of grey aliens with big eyes is an empirical issue - you assert (and I would agree) that there is no credible evidence for their existence. But without an assumption that life only evolved once in the universe there is surely a tiny possiblity that they are indeed there, watching and judging from behind their stealth fields, descending occasionally to probe the fundament of an unwary midwesterner.

By contrast, the existence or otherwise of a patriarchal deity is not an empirical matter of uncertain status. So probability does not come into it.

(Disclaimer: this comment should not be taken to be part of a religious discussion. It is a comment about what a religious discussion is).

So how can they be "equally likely"?

On another note it is surprising how long governments used to be able to keep secrets - take the Polish/UK cracking of the German Ultra code in WW2. Hundreds of people knew something about this and many a great deal, yet the general public and even professional military historians had no idea until sometime in the seventies, IIRC, when the records were released. In those days, when some elderly officer in a regimental tie sat you down and told you that you could never discuss your work even with your family, you did what you were told. Not sure how that would work now....