Satyr

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and so, in this case you choose, you will, to settle for a conclusion which against odds you choose to think is plausible because to simply say "i do not know' is more stressful.
Neanderthal man saw fire and instead of saying "i do not know" postponing his conclusion he settled for saying "I do know" it is a spirit.

Right, I understand your criticism, I think I should be a little more open minded, I shouldn't settle for just anything, however, I urge you to be open minded as well, and not assume a mundane explanation for these, rather extraordinary events. Hume said- extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs, well fuck Hume, I say extraordinary phenomena require extraordinary explanations.. but yes, perhaps we don't know enough about this phenomena to settle for a particular extraordinary explanation.

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Now besides the odds of life being "out there"

If you accept the theory of the organic soup, then yes, life is probably rare, though difficult to calculate just how rare, however, I think it is just as plausible if not more, that life arrived here from other planets via asteroids and comets, and life arrived on other planets from other planets, via asteroids and comets, and so on and so forth ad infinitum, just as matter travels throughout the universe, life may travel throughout the universe, why does life require an origin, in a universe that seems infinite in times and spaces. If this is the case, and I think it is, life is probably similar everywhere, so we shouldn't be surprised to find extraterrestrials with genes like ours, and two eyes, a nose and a mouth. You may question my theory, however, there is absolutely no empirical evidence to support the theory of the organic soup, and like the magicians in the renaissance, informed by the lunacy of Aristotelian, magical thinking, you assume life can arise from non life, magicians in the renaissance believed maggots arose ex nihilio, but they were proven wrong, they hatch from fly eggs, and magicians of the enlightenment believed bacteria arose ex nihilo, or from bits and pieces of matter, but they were also proven wrong, now we're told life arose only once or twice, by accident, something as complex as a computer arose by accident, in an organic soup, preposterous. Scientists have probably found live bacteria in asteroids and comets, but have not told the public, for we are on a need to know basis, and they did reveal some very telling footage, of what appeared to bacteria, but they did not confirm or deny it, and the battle of words continue between the few dissenting scientists who believe bacteria have indeed been discovered inhabiting meteors, alien bacteria, not contaminated with earth bacteria, and their supporters. Bacteria can live in some of the most hellish environments known to man, so it shouldn't be hard to picture them arriving here on meteors, and life being ubiquitous throughout the universe.

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besides the odds of this civilization surviving long enough to develop space travel or to invent travel to such an extent as to challenge everything we know about time and light-speed and distances in space;

That's not the only thing it challenges, it challenges your notion of equating civilization with conservatism, or looking back.

Who knows what the odds are of a civilization surviving, when we only know of our own civilization?

What we know about space travel and the laws of physics is constantly being challenged, 20 years before Apollo, if you told people, scientists and otherwise, man would someday fly to the moon, they would've told you you were fucking nuts.

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despite the infinite resources available to a species that may have developed some technology that can reach us or even care to do so,, you, you and your kind, choose to consider this irrelevant.
The odds do not matter. All that matters is that this solution offers you a peace of mind, even if a stressful one. To know, after all, of your death is far less stressful than to not know and to wonder.

Perhaps for you and your kind, it is less stressful to think this all there is, mysteries and perplexities frighten you, if human beings are going where no one has gone before, you have to face your biggest fear, you won't have a past to root yourself in, you'll be taken out of your familiar comfort zone, so it is more comforting for you too only consider the problems of space travel, and the challenges, and to not consider. For a man who constantly grounds himself in the past, it should come as no surprise to me, and everyone on this forum, that the prospect of a future beyond what Alexander, Aristotle and Heraclitus could have ever dream of, should frighten, the hyper conservative, past oriented mind is always afraid of innovation, broadening his horizons, leaving behind the certainties of the past and letting his imagination run wild and free. Such a mind would be damaged, couldn't handle the truth, if the truth is indeed that we're are being visited by extraterrestrials, or that we can travel through space, so, like the Christians, your sort of mind is the one the occultists may be trying to protect from a star trek like universe.

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despite the infinite resources available to a species that may have developed some technology that can reach us or even care to do so,, you, you and your kind, choose to consider this irrelevant.

If there are anything like us, perhaps they overpopulated their home world, consumed it's resources, and the resources of other planets they've colonized, or perhaps they're curious, or maybe they even have compassion for life, and have made it their mission to monitor life, seed planets throughout the universe, help it grow, like human beings grow gardens, purely out of love for life, or aestheticism. You only seem to be able to imagine why they would not come here, like a true conservative, you are stuck there, but I am able to switch from the conservative mindset to the liberal mindset when need be.

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Stupidity takes many forms in every age. The ignorant pretend to be in the know.
Jesus was a sort of Alister Crowley and there were many others like him during that time.

And for some, ignorance is bliss.

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U.F.O. means "Unidentified Flying Object"...Unidentified means unknown.
Instead of explaining the unknown using the known you, and your kind, choose, will, prefer, to use the unknown....the unknown explaining the unknown. Imagination unfettered by reality leading to fantasy or delusion.

And some, upon seeing a purple monster with twenty arms and eighty eye balls floating through the sky, may look for a mundane explanation, maybe it was a hoax, a robot, or a hologram, perpetrated by the government to test our reaction to bizarre stimuli, or maybe the 10 000 people who witnessed it were all hallucinating at the same time, yes, we will call it- spontaneous mass hallucination syndrome (smhs), or maybe the water was contaminated with poisons by Al Qaeda which caused them to simultaneously have the same hallucination, they had the same hallucination because they ingested the same poisons, and when other people report seeing it around the world, the scientists will say, this is just some hics doing this, they got stoned and stole some technology and are using it to pull the wool over our eyes, or, odds are, that millions of people all over the world are bound to hallucinate at the same time, sooner or later, or maybe the people were lying, maybe human psychology is occasionally retarded, we'll call it the domino retarded effect (dre), apparently retardedness is occasionally contagious (there is a window of retardedness that opens approximately once every 2643 years), once one person says something retarded, another person will repeat it, and another and another, and when YouTube videos start popping up with clips of the purple dragon, simultaneously, the skeptics will say they are a gang of hoaxers all over the world, using computer software to play an elaborate and sophisticated prank on us, the most elaborate and sophisticated mass mind fuck the human race has played on itself since Christianity, go back to sheep, nothing to see here, move along people, Al Qaeda did it!

When we observe Christians carefully, 99% of them half heatedly believe the shit their priest peddles, they only seriously consider it on the verge of death, during life, they're much, much more interested in the mundane, the ordinary, making money, drinking beer, watching the football game, the majority of people gravitate towards hedonism, materialism, ignorance is bliss, they'd rather not know, they prefer business as usual, they'd rather not rock the boat, so naturally ultra skeptics are quite common with the people, and those who offer radical, revolutionary, Promethean knowledge and wisdom, no matter how substantiated it is, are often ridiculed.

Conservatism is the natural, default state of man, going with the familiar in spite of the extraordinary, in spite of the evidence.

Most of those who claim to be philosophers and scientists, really couldn't care less about the mysteries of the universe, what's going on behind the scenes, conspiracies, the occult, higher, deeper metaphysical and psychological knowledge, the paranormal, the cutting edge, the avant-garde, and in that sense, you are partially representative of the the norm.

I'm not saying we should buy into all alternative science and research, rather, just that there's a tendency in man, perhaps now more than ever, to live in small box, to narrow his vision, and therefore, being the natural rebel that I am, I encourage others to carefully consider alternative knowledge when there is evidence behind it.

Man turns away from such knowledge instinctively, is comfortable with the familiar, he runs from the radical, from the new, and that seems to be what you're doing here, I'm not asking you or anyone else to believe in extraterrestrials, I do not fully believe in them myself, though I believe the probability of them existing is much higher than you do, based on the counterarguments I provided, and that extra terrestrial space craft is not the only explanation for UFOs, but the best one at this time. Do your own research and draw your own conclusions, but everyone ought to know there is far more evidence out there than the establishment let's on.

Negative knowledge is a kind of knowing too, this can't exist, that probably doesn't exist, and many are guilty of having negative faith.

Oh and by top down, I just meant that I often develop a theory about something first, holistically and intuitively, or rationally, and then I sift through the details and evidence of that something to confirm or deny it, some people have to sift through a ton of details and evidence to get an idea of what they're dealing with, where as I usually get an idea or multiple ideas quickly, and they usually turn out to be right. I did not mean I come to a solid conclusion with little or no facts, and then only acknowledge data that supports it.

However, now I'm very skeptical myself about what I'm about to say here, if I'm not misunderstanding him (Kant), I think that perhaps we can get an idea about the metaphysical categories, the fundamentals, early, the fact that we have certain concepts like free will (I learn towards determinism, btw), and that our brains seem geared towards dichotomization, means our brains were deigned to organize phenomenon that way, because the universe is, to some extent, that way, or parts of it, or at least that it will appear to us that way, so in some sense, to know the mind is to know the universe, I rarely, if ever use this method, don't get me wrong, I'm just playing devil's advocate, challenging your empiricism, I would describe myself as an empiricist as well, but I seem to come to conclusions quicker than you, you're more of a conservative empiricist, where as I'm a more liberal one. This isn't an inherently good or bad thing, it depends on the issue.

eyesinthedark wrote:

3. Too much activity can be just as detrimental to order as too little. Asteroids and comets colliding with the earth can disrupt order, too much heat can cause the sun to explode/implode.

Where do I claim that activity is order?
I say activity is need, and need is a symptom of disordering.

eyesinthedark wrote:

4. I'm not an expert in physics, so bare with me. I'm under the impression nothing seems to drop in or out of existence, matter does not cease to exist because it is greatly divided or decreased in activity, it is merely temporarily imperceptible to us/can no longer affect us or other things we can perceive/be affected by, the moment it is infused with more matter and/or energy, we will be able to perceive it/be affected by it again. When something is divided to the point we can no loner perceive it, we don't assume it drops out of existence, we know if we had a microscope or an electron microscope, we would be able to detect it. When things reach/approach absolute 0 (assuming absolute 0 even exist (I doubt it), they do not disappear, they temporarily lie dormant, they can be reactivated by energy, heat, gravity or repulsion.

Exactly, so nothing ever drops out of existence but its activity slows to a point of becoming imperceptible.
There are no absolutes, so less activity is relative to the observer.

eyesinthedark wrote:

And should that not be the protocol?, when ordinary explanations cannot suffice, we should consider the extraordinary, but no, we should not jump to any extraordinary conclusion, and that's not what I'm doing here, perhaps those lights in the sky are extremely advanced government aircraft, light years beyond what they've told us about, though I doubt it, since the public and the military have reported observing such lights for... hundreds, thousands of years, at least 100 years, and I doubt they had the technology back then, it could be weather phenomenon, but some of these unidentified flying objects are metallic, so, that kind of rules that out, and some people from the public and the government have reported encountering extraterrestrial entities, not demons, robots, or whatever. There is an enormous amount of evidence that points towards us being visited by extraterrestrial intelligences, not weather phenomena, perhaps you're not familiar with it, for it's more than a little outside your paradigm.

There were times where large amounts of people swore that they experienced ghosts or were visited by dead relatives...in some circles this is still the case.
The impressionability of the mind is astounding; how we are affected by subliminal imagery, words, etc, is used by politics and marketing agencies.

The current image of an "alien" in fact began as a sfi-fi image. It somehow permeated the culture, infecting millions of minds who might not know or remember or care but are convinced that this is a "true depiction."
Culture uses symbols, by connecting them to sensations and to primal needs, fears, desires etc.
That certain symbols are o ubiquitous should be explained by using human biology.

The concept of something being possible is not the same as the concept of it being probable.

eyesinthedark wrote:

Who knows what the odds are of a civilization surviving, when we only know of our own civilization?

If by "looking back" you understand a focus on your own culture then you misunderstand what looking back means.
When I look back upon my own existence, the further back i look all the more people and events begin to be included, extending back like a pyramid.

eyesinthedark wrote:

Perhaps for you and your kind, it is less stressful to think this all there is, mysteries and perplexities frighten you, if human beings are going where no one has gone before, you have to face your biggest fear, you won't have a past to root yourself in, you'll be taken out of your familiar comfort zone, so it is more comforting for you too only consider the problems of space travel, and the challenges, and to not consider. For a man who constantly grounds himself in the past, it should come as no surprise to me, and everyone on this forum, that the prospect of a future beyond what Alexander, Aristotle and Heraclitus could have ever dream of, should frighten, the hyper conservative, past oriented mind is always afraid of innovation, broadening his horizons, leaving behind the certainties of the past and letting his imagination run wild and free. Such a mind would be damaged, couldn't handle the truth, if the truth is indeed that we're are being visited by extraterrestrials, or that we can travel through space, so, like the Christians, your sort of mind is the one the occultists may be trying to protect from a star trek like universe.

Yeah, this is a typical response. Using fear as a reason.
Looking back offers you guidance....we all project forward into the unknown. It grounds your projections so that you don't go off confusing your hopes and fantasies with legitimate probabilities.

Knowledge is a looking back...it is codified memory based on repetitive consistency...so is genetic and memetics.
Now, without knowledge an ignoramus can think afire is caused by spirits, whereas one with knowledge can try to explain fire by using more worldly and probable causes.
Perhaps you, as a liberal, are afraid of the past, as it defines and determines you...so you prefer to imagine an unlimited future, possibility unfettered from anything past so as to gain hope.
Hope is an antidote to fear. But not all hope is realistic.

Me hoping to win the lottery and escape the determining factors of my poverty is only as realistic as the odds against it...and the odds are determined by knowledge.

eyesinthedark wrote:

If there are anything like us, perhaps they overpopulated their home world, consumed it's resources, and the resources of other planets they've colonized, or perhaps they're curious, or maybe they even have compassion for life, and have made it their mission to monitor life, seed planets throughout the universe, help it grow, like human beings grow gardens, purely out of love for life, or aestheticism. You only seem to be able to imagine why they would not come here, like a true conservative, you are stuck there, but I am able to switch from the conservative mindset to the liberal mindset when need be.

I know...because if you really want to preserve or increase the probability of something you desperately cannot let go of then you can come up with many reasons. Christians have gone so far as to do away with the contradictions in their ideas by claiming that God is bored or that he's testing us, though He already knows the outcome...then they introduce the mystical aspect of free-will to do hide the stupidity.

Are there Leprechauns?
Sure...it is possible. My lack of omniscience, if honest, can only include it as a possibility.
Why then have we not seen them more often, except for a few who seem to see them all the time?
I don't know....maybe they are shy.....maybe they are tricksters and are having fun.....maybe they are evil and are trying to drive us insane....maybe....

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Where do I claim that activity is order?
I say activity is need, and need is a symptom of disordering.

Oh, well in that case I agree with you.

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There were times where large amounts of people swore that they experienced ghosts or were visited by dead relatives...in some circles this is still the case.
The impressionability of the mind is astounding; how we are affected by subliminal imagery, words, etc, is used by politics and marketing agencies.

Perhaps they were seeing ghosts, why do you have faith in the non existence of ghosts?

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The current image of an "alien" in fact began as a sfi-fi image. It somehow permeated the culture, infecting millions of minds who might not know or remember or care but are convinced that this is a "true depiction."
Culture uses symbols, by connecting them to sensations and to primal needs, fears, desires etc.
That certain symbols are o ubiquitous should be explained by using human biology.

That's not what I heard, the depiction of greys in the media was based on eye witness accounts.

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The concept of something being possible is not the same as the concept of it being probable.

What we don't know for certain is not necessarily an improbability or an impossibility.

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If by "looking back" you understand a focus on your own culture then you misunderstand what looking back means.
When I look back upon my own existence, the further back i look all the more people and events begin to be included, extending back like a pyramid.

I meant our civilization as a whole, has survived thus far, individual civilizations have perished, but civilization as a whole has remained and progressed since it began, unless of course you're talking about a civilization before the great deluge.
Where does a myth come from, is it a story used to explain some aspect of the human psyche, the human condition, the unknown, or is it an embellishment of historical events? I think it may be all of the preceding. Remember in elementary school when your teacher sat the children in a circle, and told one of the students a message, and then told him or her to pass it on to the next student in the circle? By the time the message got back to the teacher, it was often distorted.
Funny, in those experiments, I remember trying my best to pass the message along as accurately as I could. Unfortunately, most humans are not so, dedicated to the truth, as I am. Nevertheless, the message was always altered, but often resembled the original message.

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Yeah, this is a typical response. Using fear as a reason.

You can question my motives for thinking the existence of extraterrestrials is probable, I can question your motives for thinking the existence of extraterrestrials is improbable.

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Looking back offers you guidance....we all project forward into the unknown. It grounds your projections so that you don't go off confusing your hopes and fantasies with legitimate probabilities.

Perhaps it is you who have failed to use the past to make sense of these phenomena. Metallic, cigar and disk shape objects, some with windows and flying intelligently (i.e. not colliding with other cigar and disk shape objects, or with our aircraft, or with the ground, mountains and buildings), sometimes flying in formation or chasing our aircraft, best resemble our own aircraft, except they're more advanced than our own, which rules out the possibility they are our own, the government may be hiding technology from us, but there's no way they had this technology during WW2, or in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Since some of UFOs resemble aircraft in virtually every way, they probably are, aircraft, but not ours.

Edit- Also, the objects are symmetrical in shape, and some of them turn our missile offense/defense systems and other devices off and on.

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Knowledge is a looking back...it is codified memory based on repetitive consistency...so is genetic and memetics.
Now, without knowledge an ignoramus can think afire is caused by spirits, whereas one with knowledge can try to explain fire by using more worldly and probable causes.
Perhaps you, as a liberal, are afraid of the past, as it defines and determines you...so you prefer to imagine an unlimited future, possibility unfettered from anything past so as to gain hope.
Hope is an antidote to fear. But not all hope is realistic.

Who says I'm a liberal, I always enjoyed your rants regarding race, sex and psychology, and your realism regarding the antisocial, irrational side of human nature. I suppose I'm a liberal in some ways, and a conservative in others. What you call conservative is in many ways a revolt on the part of the agrarians and artisans against the historical tendency toward collectivism, and a society dominated by the bourgeoisie, bureaucrats and/or the warrior priest class.
I'm beginning to understand you more and more, as time passes. In many ways, you remind me of Alex Jones, just replace his, supposed Christianity with Social Darwinism, and his egalitarianism with agrarian, white, male elitism and supremacism, and we have something like your ideology. There were times when I sided with your cause, so I understand it, I understand it all too well, but for the now, it is not the direction I am headed, though I may incorporate elements of it in my vision. There was also a time I embraced something like the Joker's ideology. I'm a bit of slut when it comes to ideologies, but not a whore.

Now, do you think I'm so retarded that when I see a partially new phenomena, I think the past should be completely disregarded, no, in some respects that's what you're proposing, I am proposing we use the past to identify these phenomena as much as we can, whilst realizing that since they're a partially new phenomena, there's much about them we don't yet know and understand, so we must partially rely on wholly new observations and deductions/inductions in order to figure them out, and perhaps, that scares someone like you, having to rely on present observations as much or more than previous observations, and yes I am aware the present is not entirely the present, but a nano second ago. However, since man has probably been encountering these aircraft for thousands of years, I suppose we do have a past to root them in, so in this case it seems, I am the conservative and you are the liberal.

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I know...because if you really want to preserve or increase the probability of something you desperately cannot let go of then you can come up with many reasons. Christians have gone so far as to do away with the contradictions in their ideas by claiming that God is bored or that he's testing us, though He already knows the outcome...then they introduce the mystical aspect of free-will to do hide the stupidity.

Christian skeptix have also come up with many reasons for why dinosaur fossils can't be trusted- they're a hoax, they're only 6000 years old.. THE DEVIL PUT THEM THERE TO TEST OUR FAITH!!!

Perhaps, you, desperately clinging to your narrow world view, are only capable of thinking why, they wouldn't wanna come here, and not why they would, wanna come here. You're the one who attempted to decrease the odds of them wanting to come here to nil , I merely countered you and restored the odds of them wanting to come here to 50/50.

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Are there Leprechauns?
Sure...it is possible. My lack of omniscience, if honest, can only include it as a possibility.
Why then have we not seen them more often, except for a few who seem to see them all the time?
I don't know....maybe they are shy.....maybe they are tricksters and are having fun.....maybe they are evil and are trying to drive us insane....maybe....

Maybe they know certain minds would not be ready for contact.

eyesinthedark wrote:

Perhaps they were seeing ghosts, why do you have faith in the non existence of ghosts?

Because I respect my self and place more weight on my conception of reality than the blatherings of morons and half-wits.

don't you think this "Atheists believe in the non-existence of God" is a bit overused. That you use it diminishes you.
this is what I mean by top-down thinking.

For the top-down "thinker" any conception is as equally possible as its negation, in effect making anything possible.
So, for this type, Darwin's ideas about evolution are just as possible as Creationist dogma, and stating that the earth is not flat is at par as saying that it is.

what do ghosts have to do with the concept of God? nothing

what is a ghost? a term for something that was seen or experienced that can't be explained, currently.

of course there is no such thing as a leprechaun unless it's a midget dressed up as one.
of course, it can't be proven there is no two foot irish midget with pointed ears with a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but given the entire story, it's leans toward unlikely.

however, there are people who have unusual experiences that can't be explained such as having a premonition and it occuring or actually having a vision that later takes place etc. of course, these can't be proven either but to those who have the experience, it's just something they don't have an answer for but can only be wondered about and cannot just be easily dismissed or brushed off as imaginary or a result of some type of mental disorder such as schizophrenia as people with no disorders have also had some unusual and compelling experiences. these types of experiences have more weight because of the nature of them given the later confirmation so it opens up questions as to our supposed logic behind events such as our limited knowledge of linear time etc.

big foot, the tooth fairy, leprechauns etc are not of the same subcategory which are obviously unrealistic and of those who have not had any unusual experiences see them all as unlikely.

let's consider this interesting story. there was a man who regularly speed home on a winding road. you know, the kind where you can't see what's coming around the bend. one day, he saw an american classic, relic of the past, drive past him. he turned to look and the man, who he recognized as his deceased father turning his head and looked at him with no expression, kept going and turned onto a dirt road. he followed and there was nothing.

this experience made him slow down considerably unconsciously as he was ruminating on his experience as he resumed his driving toward home. as he was rounding a bend, he saw there was a major accident and a semi had turned and completely blocked the road. had he kept speeding as he usually does, he most certainly would have crashed into the semi, probably resulting in fatality.

now, there are several ways to respond to such a story. one can claim that he was lying and made it up, that it was just extraordinary coincidence that the semi had blocked the road and that he was just daydreaming of his father or that perhaps we don't know how everything works or can work.

there are some issues with this that just can't be easily dismissed. perhaps he was projecting and daydreaming but it is extraordinary coincidence how events unfolded and why would he all of a sudden actually see a vision of his father? he was not consciously trying to and it was not a like a reminiscent memory but an actual vision that actually puzzled him.

say for instance, his subconscious was projecting this to protect or warn himself of this impending danger, that still does not correlate to our currently fixed beliefs of what we consider our senses capable of as most believe that it is only our five senses that can pick up on our environment.

then it leaves a possible conclusion that is most extraordinary and that perhaps it was the spirit of his father trying to warn him.

there are other types of unusual experiences that everyday people have, even if rare, in their lives which can't easily be explained away.

as for that particular individual, his 'intuition' was that it was not mere coincidence or random.

That's a beautiful story.
It almost made me cry.

I like stories.
I heard a story about some guy who came back from the dead to save mankind.
That was a nice story also.

Satyr wrote:

That's a beautiful story.
It almost made me cry.

I like stories.
I heard a story about some guy who came back from the dead to save mankind.
That was a nice story also.

see, you just dismissed it as bunk. that was convenient.

the point is if you had such an experience, you wouldn't dismiss it so easily but because you haven't you think it's ridiculous.

what would you do? keep it to yourself or share it and risk having some asshole laugh at your experience as if it was nothing?

what if you had a vision that later occured? tell yourself that your crazy and that it didn't? that's denial from fear because you can't figure it out or it goes against what you previously thought was not possible.

I heard of a story also. It was about some guy who heard voices in his head....called it "the voice of God".

Here is another thing: if I were born retarded, and I had a clue that I was retarded....then would I be retarded?

The best liar is the one who buys into his own bullshit. It's a survival mechanism.

Trivers wrote:

If…deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as to not betray – by the subtle signs of self-knowledge – the deception being practiced. Thus, the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naïve view of mental evolution.

I have no doubt that many faith-healers, priests, psychics actually believe they have real powers or that their spirits exist and that they are channeling them or that God speaks through them.
I also have no doubt that when you believe something hard enough you experience something that justifies it and validates it.

This is a well-known human phenomenon...you might call it a psychological one.

I'll ask myself over and over and over again as I drift off to sleep the infinite question of "what if?":

"What if I levitated?"
"What if a porcupine crawled out of my anus?"
"What if I woke up to discover that I've been a woman all along?"
"What if...."
Shall we indulge in what ifs?

What was Pascal's wager again?
What if God DOES exist?" Oh shit!!! There's egg on my eternally damned face.

Shit, this is the oldest bullshit in the book.
"What if those U.F.O.'s were not alien ships at all - God knows they can't be anything earthly...what if they were the Olympian gods?
What if it were Zeus playing games with us, because we've forsaken him?
I mean, forget logic, reason, experience, knowledge...WHAT IF?

Place your bets, boys, and bet your life away.
Tell yourself that the "fun" is all worth it.
I know I'm having fun.

Carry on.

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Because I respect my self and place more weight on my conception of reality than the blatherings of morons and half-wits.

don't you think this "Atheists believe in the non-existence of God" is a bit overused. That you use it diminishes you.
this is what I mean by top-down thinking.

For the top-down "thinker" any conception is as equally possible as its negation, in effect making anything possible.
So, for this type, Darwin's ideas about evolution are just as possible as Creationist dogma, and stating that the earth is not flat is at par as saying that it is.

Nice try.

As Abby once indicated to me, you assume the retarded about people you disagree with.

I'm sure that works for you 90% of the time.. but not with me.

I never said eye witness accounts of ghosts were as credible as eye witness accounts of rocks, trees or even aliens. The material world has been confirmed, verified, it is our regular phenomenal experience, the spiritual world has not and is not. Therefore, anything material has more possibility of existing than anything spiritual. An alien has more chance of existing than a ghost. That being said, it doesn't rule out the possibility of the spiritual world and ghosts, or what Ilike to call, the world of minds without bodies.

You just provided an affirmation not a challenge.

If I were to take "your word" on it, or the word of some preacher on what he claims but cannot justify or provide evidence for, simply based on the position that "it might be so", then I would be a christian....or a godless Christian trying to find a substitute mysticism to replace the old one.

There's no "try"...as it is not up to me to prove a negative.
I can't prove the non-existence of Big Foote either, does this make this creature real?
In your world it does, because in your world everything, every single thing, is possible until proven otherwise.
So you work backwards...Top>Bottom.

When someone offers a possibility then it is up to him to provide the arguments and saying that "some guy told me so" or "I heard a story" or "I saw some lights in the sky so aliens are visiting" is about as reliable as a Christian's account of being healed from cancer by his local snake-oil salesman.

Oh and your "matter" allusion hinges on how you define it, as I do not define it as an absolute nor as something other than a form of activity, to which energy is related as it being a variation of it.
As for "spirit" here is another overused word, particularly by secular Christians who feel that God's death or the idea of god having been ridiculed into UN-respectability deserves a substitute.
For me spirit can be used in many contexts, but in the one you attempt to use it as, as this amorphous, Being, that is carried in the body but is other than it, I cannot ascribe to...so, for me, spirit denotes nothing more than the sum of all the past as it manifests in the present.
My spirit, my character, my personality, my nature, is the aggregate of past inter-activities.

I won't bother with the rest.
Have a nice night fantasizing.

In closing, I didn't come to a conclusion about extra terrestrial space craft over night.

I've always been fascinated by the prospect of their existence.

I've been wrestling with the problem since I was a small boy, they exist, they don't exist, they exist, they don't exist, even then I had a philosophical/scientific mind.

I've read several books and watched dozens of documentaries on the subject.

However, i didn't become a believer (and even now I'm not a firm believer) until I watched full disclosure, and this other documentary, I believe it was called- UFOs, the best evidence. Full disclosure and that documentary pushed me over the edge. Also, learning of the star child skull added credence to their claims. However, I'm more skeptical about it.

What am I supposed to do?
I can't ignore hundreds of the best and brightest, from the airforce to NASA, coming forward and telling me they've witnessed everything from bright lights in the sky to cigar and disk shaped craft (with domes and windows), darting from one horizon to another in a nano second and then coming to a complete halt, flying in formation, chasing our aircraft and turning our missile defense/offense systems and other devices off and on. Maybe you, a dogmatic, staunch conservative can ignore such overwhelming evidence, but I. Can. Not. We are not alone, Mr Satyr, we are almost certainly not alone.

Plus, there's much, much more evidence, but I don't feel like getting into it, we got into it a little already.

You're right when you say some of it can't be identified, perhaps some of the UFOs are weird weather phenomena.. or even lifeforms, mysterious, glowing lifeforms, or something presently beyond our comprehension and imagination, but of course most of them can be identified as hoaxes or ordinary, misinterpreted phenomena.

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You just provided an affirmation not a challenge.

If I were to take "your word" on it, or the word of some preacher on what he claims but cannot justify or provide evidence for, simply based on the position that "it might be so", then I would be a christian....or a godless Christian trying to find a substitute mysticism to replace the old one.

There's no "try"...as it is not up to me to prove a negative.
I can't prove the non-existence of Big Foote either, does this make this creature real?
In your world it does, because in your world everything, every single thing, is possible until proven otherwise.
So you work backwards...Top>Bottom.

When someone offers a possibility then it is up to him to provide the arguments and saying that "some guy told me so" or "I heard a story" or "I saw some lights in the sky so aliens are visiting" is about as reliable as a Christian's account of being healed from cancer by his local snake-oil salesman.

Oh and your "matter" allusion hinges on how you define it, as I do not define it as an absolute nor as something other than a form of activity, to which energy is related as it being a variation of it.
As for "spirit" here is another overused word, particularly by secular Christians who feel that God's death or the idea of god having been ridiculed into UN-respectability deserves a substitute.
For me spirit can be used in many contexts, but in the one you attempt to use it as, as this amorphous, Being, that is carried in the body but is other than it, I cannot ascribe to...so, for me, spirit denotes nothing more than the sum of all the past as it manifests in the present.
My spirit, my character, my personality, my nature, is the aggregate of past inter-activities.

I won't bother with the rest.
Have a nice night fantasizing.

The point is hundreds of the best and brightest on and off duty say they saw them, and have evidence captured on their computers, and are prepared to testify in front of congress. We're not talking about some drunken hic in the woods, claiming he saw angels and aliens.

I guess you don't believe in Mongolia either, or have you been?

I am NOT a Christian, but I think you're afraid of Jesus Christ existing, so because admitting anything out of your understanding is a partial confirmation of the possibility of Jesus Christ existing, you have painted yourself into a corner, you have built walls around your brain so you don't have to face the unknown, you are terrified of God, you are terrified of being a sinner and your dad being right, and you needing to humble self before the lord and confess your sins (you've been a naughty boy).
I've got it, I've unveiled Satyr's greatest fear- you're a Godphobe, or a Christphobe, that's it isn't it?
You're a sinner Satyr, no better than anyone else, love thy neighbor, judge not lest ye be judged, hahaha.

Admit it Satyr, it's possible Christ exists, it may be a long shot (1 out of a billion), but you cannot even admit those odds can you?
You are afraid of admitting it for you are afraid of becoming a Christian, like if a homophobe admitted he had a gay thought, it could me he's a gay man living a straight man's life, and he cannot even entertain the idea, he would rather die, hahaha, hahaha, Christianphobe!

Satyr wrote:

I heard of a story also. It was about some guy who heard voices in his head....called it "the voice of God".

Here is another thing: if I were born retarded, and I had a clue that I was retarded....then would I be retarded?

The best liar is the one who buys into his own bullshit. It's a survival mechanism.

Trivers wrote:

If…deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as to not betray – by the subtle signs of self-knowledge – the deception being practiced. Thus, the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naïve view of mental evolution.

I have no doubt that many faith-healers, priests, psychics actually believe they have real powers or that their spirits exist and that they are channeling them or that God speaks through them.
I also have no doubt that when you believe something hard enough you experience something that justifies it and validates it.

This is a well-known human phenomenon...you might call it a psychological one.

I'll ask myself over and over and over again as I drift off to sleep the infinite question of "what if?":

"What if I levitated?"
"What if a porcupine crawled out of my anus?"
"What if I woke up to discover that I've been a woman all along?"
"What if...."
Shall we indulge in what ifs?

What was Pascal's wager again?
What if God DOES exist?" Oh shit!!! There's egg on my eternally damned face.

Shit, this is the oldest bullshit in the book.
"What if those U.F.O.'s were not alien ships at all - God knows they can't be anything earthly...what if they were the Olympian gods?
What if it were Zeus playing games with us, because we've forsaken him?
I mean, forget logic, reason, experience, knowledge...WHAT IF?

Place your bets, boys, and bet your life away.
Tell yourself that the "fun" is all worth it.
I know I'm having fun.

Carry on.

like i said you don't have an explanation for his experience so you just went off on a tangent/tirade of psychics, faith-healers etc when he isn't one or necessarily believed in it and ridiculous strawmen of porcupines magically crawling out of asses (because of course that definitely will not happen) as if it's an equal and valid analogy.

he had an experience and wasn't asking what if, that's your projections of your own to dismiss it.

what bothers you so much about such stories or experiences? that there is no definitive explanation for all experiences so therefore you think it has to be bullshit, because it's safer or confirms our own concept of reality at a given time.

why not just leave it be to 'we don't know' the answer to everything?

analogies such as the earth could be flat vs round are incorrect because we have proof.

but not everything has been figured out yet and our understanding of reality is still limited.

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When someone offers a possibility then it is up to him to provide the arguments and saying that "some guy told me so" or "I heard a story" or "I saw some lights in the sky so aliens are visiting" is about as reliable as a Christian's account of being healed from cancer by his local snake-oil salesman.

this is funny. i never had the delusion that there was proof of anything, i was merely showing that people have experiences that they share which they don't even have an explanation for. if, for instance, you had one then it would be up to you to share it or not.

whether one believes such occured is up to them. one may think they are just hoaxers and i'm sure there are plenty of them as well but some may be sincere and were tentative about sharing them because they were confused as well.

someone sharing an experience doesn't mean it's to 'sell' or 'dupe' anyone. they are not necessarily saying they have a sure explanation themselves.

they are simply sharing it just as we all share information. this is just more unusual.

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what do ghosts have to do with the concept of God? nothing

what is a ghost? a term for something that was seen or experienced that can't be explained, currently.

Ghosts are thought to be conscious, immortal and incorporeal, God(s) is thought to be conscious, immortal and incorporeal, the difference being, God(s) is thought to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and the creator of the universe, ghosts are not.

No, unidentified object would be a term for something that can't be explained, currently.

Ghost is more specific, it means a transparent, intangible (commonly human(oid), why no one reports perceiving alien ghosts, or dog and cat ghosts, I'm not sure, the Hindu's tell us they have souls, maybe they're just not reported or documented as frequently for some reason.. or maybe the Hindu's are wrong) entity, that is only perceptible at certain times and in certain spaces for brief interludes.

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of course there is no such thing as a leprechaun unless it's a midget dressed up as one. of course, it can't be proven there is no two foot irish midget with pointed ears with a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but given the entire story, it's leans toward unlikely.

You're begging the question. Why can't leprechauns/big foot be proven and premonitions can?
Perhaps a hunter will kill/capture a big foot or a leprechaun. Panda's were once thought to be a myth (a vegan bear.. give me a break). Native South East Asians informed Europeans of their existence. It took Europeans half a century or so to actually capture one, and we captured it by accident, we gave up looking for it. Even now, Panda's are incredibly, incredibly difficult to catch a glimpse of in their natural habitat. No why? Because in their world, we're out of our element. Panda's are elusive, they're adept at hiding, their numbers are comparatively small in forests that are relatively humungous and sparsely, sparsely populated by humans. The same thing could be true of big foot. Instead of assuming reports of big foot are untrue, we should be diverting money from sports and entertainment to fund teams of scientists and hunters to comb the forest and bag a big foot. Wouldn't hurt.
As for Leprechauns, the idea they shoot rainbows out of their asses is absurd, but perhaps there is a humanoid, elfish/hobbit like creature... nah, it's Ireland, we would've seen them by now, and there's no eye witness accounts, past or present, the creature is likely a myth, or it dates back to antiquity, and they went extinct.

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however, there are people who have unusual experiences that can't be explained such as having a premonition and it occurring or actually having a vision that later takes place etc. of course, these can't be proven either

No of course, demonstrate why.
If a woman has a premonition that a massive earthquake will strike Philadelphia Pennsylvania, on December 13th, 2011, she can make YouTube videos and attempt to contact the public and the government via internet, radio, phone or some other medium. If she's proven right, she'll gain notoriety, and if she's proven right about other starling predictions, she'll gain more notoriety, and eventually the philosophical and scientific communities won't be able to ignore her. They'll begin studying her, examining her physiologically, neurologically and psychologically, and begin asking themselves all sorts of metaphysical questions about psychic phenomena and synchronicity.

If she continues to be proven right again and again, philosophers and scientists will have no choice but to admit there's more going on here than mere coincidence, and then from there they'll attempt to determine just what that something is.

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but to those who have the experience, it's just something they don't have an answer for but can only be wondered about and cannot just be easily dismissed or brushed off as imaginary or a result of some type of mental disorder such as schizophrenia as people with no disorders have also had some unusual and compelling experiences. these types of experiences have more weight because of the nature of them given the later confirmation so it opens up questions as to our supposed logic behind events such as our limited knowledge of linear time etc.

No, they can prove it, if they have it, they just have to get off their asses and try.

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big foot, the tooth fairy, leprechauns etc are not of the same subcategory which are obviously unrealistic and of those who have not had any unusual experiences see them all as unlikely.

Thrice again, this looks like a double standard to me, explain yourself.