(Jan 18, 2025 05:53 PM)confused2 Wrote: I've been 99.9% convinced of the existence of alien technology since 1980 when I heard an eye witness account of glowing orb behaviour (seen in the 1950s). My 0.1% doubt lies in the possibility of there being a 'natural' explanation .. so far I'm not convinced there is a natural explanation so I have to go with aliens. The only real proof has to come from catching one and finding out what makes it tick - I strongly suspect there won't be anything making it tick which just makes the alien explanation more alien.
Drones have now made it so easy to fake ufos that almost any 'evidence' can be discarded as a hoax. While I find possible sightings as interesting I admit I dismiss most as hoax or error and what remains as insufficient evidence of 'anything'.
Yes, sadly it IS becoming increasingly hard to tell the real videos of uaps and the fakes. But with practice you can still do it. Generally if a video looks too good, it probably is. If it looks like a slick movie special effect, if the uap moves in a too fast and funny way, if it appears or disappears, if it shoots a ray, if the people aren't realistically reacting to it, if the lighting or shadows are off, if the video has received no attention worldwide by anyone, and if there is no background info about who took it and where and when it was taken, then it's probably fake. Some things that distinguish orbs from drones are their luminosity, being very bright, their altitude, their jerky movements in the sky, and their speed. It's almost as if the aliens or whoever is behind them intentionally do these things to keep them from being confused with anything else. The fakers may have won the battle over crop circles, but they won't with uaps.
It's weird that so many people are so thoroughly convinced by as little as an eye witness account.
You know, there were these twelves guys who said they saw this dude come back to life once.
A brief history of mysterious man-made artifacts found embedded inside of coal...
"According to the World Coal Association, the process responsible for the formation of coal began 360 to 290 million years ago. With this in mind, it would seem absolutely impossible for any human artifacts to be found within this ancient substance; but incredibly, many items have reportedly been found in such deposits, either buried inside the coal itself or found buried deep down within coal veins found in mines which have been tunneled out far beneath the Earth’s surface. OOPArts found in coal and stone are some of the strangest of unexplained artifacts.."
(Jan 18, 2025 07:59 PM)Syne Wrote: It's weird that so many people are so thoroughly convinced by as little as an eye witness account.
You know, there were these twelves guys who said they saw this dude come back to life once.
Nothing is more powerful than a new idea whose time has come. Just as the deified Christ was the unconscious counter-pole to Roman imperialism, so ufos/paranormal is the unconscious counter-pole to scientific materialism. Both arose in a time of one-sided rationalism/secularism and spawned/will spawn a wholly novel paradigm and mythology for the collective human experience.
"Jung argued that, whereas earlier cultures would have considered “intervention from heaven as a matter of course,” in ostensibly secular societies, largely bereft of the mythic resources of the past, UFOs replace traditional deities as the agents of salvation. “We have indeed strayed far from the metaphysical certainties of the Middle Ages, but not so far that our historical
and psychological background is empty of all metaphysical hope.”42 Hence, while this
hope “activates an archetype that has always expressed order, deliverance, salvation,
and wholeness,” it does so in a way “characteristic of our time.” It takes “the form of an
object, a technological construction, in order to avoid the odiousness of a mythological
personification.” His point is that, “anything that looks technological goes down without
difficulty with modern man. The possibility of space travel makes the unpopular idea of
a metaphysical intervention much more acceptable."--- https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/13..._Space.pdf
Nonsense. Early Christianity was competing against Greek and Roman deities, not secularism. It wasn't any kind of diametric counter, much less to imperialism. Nor are UFOs a counter to materialism, as they are overwhelmingly believed to be material and purportedly supported by science (hence all your bullshit claims about "evidence"). Trying to lump them in with the paranormal, like ghosts, etc., doesn't change that fact.
What is true is that the spiritually disaffected are desperate to fill that hole in their lives, and will latch onto just about anything as a surrogate. Whether it's big government, leftist political ideology (but I repeat myself), UFOs, etc.. It's just grown children desperately seeking their daddy figure.
Quote:Nor are UFOs a counter to materialism, as they are overwhelmingly believed to be material and purportedly supported by science (hence all your bullshit claims about "evidence").
Clarke's Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
UFOs consistently suggest a technology and science far beyond anything humans have attained or may ever attain. They accelerate instantaneously, defy gravity, travel at Mach speeds without breaking the sound barrier, radiate incandescent energy, morph into different shapes, and appear and disappear like they have cloaking ability. Accompanying phenomena include telepathic messages, poltergeist activity, synchronicities, vivid dream/abduction states, channeling of ETs, and interaction with bizarre etheric entities. They represent an intelligence and a consciousness that defies the laws of physics as presently posited by materialistic science. So they ARE supernatural and magical and miraculous being numinous manifestations of the otherworldly. When people experience them, it changes them forever.
Quote:What is true is that the spiritually disaffected are desperate to fill that hole in their lives, and will latch onto just about anything as a surrogate.
People need a new mythology to give an impactful and visceral meaning to their lives. The old gods of religion are fading away. And materialistic science only offers a hyperrational and abstract worldview with nihilistic implications. People feel numbed and alienated by their cyber technology and by constant information overload. They crave a global metanarrative that involves humanity in a transcendental and hopeful vision. And ufos present just such a possibility.
Clarke's Third Law was more applicable in 1968, when there were much more rapid advances in previously unknown technologies. Not so much nowadays. IOW, nothing about UFOs is "sufficiently advanced" for the vast majority of people, including those only tangentially familiar with science through movies or basic news, to ever consider it "magic." Almost universally, people assume it's just a more advanced technology.
Those who think they've witnessed something truly extraterrestrial are not transformed by any notion of the supernatural or magical. It's just the idea that humans are not the lone intelligence in the cosmos becomes more concrete to them. So you're obviously conflating many of your own beliefs, in a wide variety of supernatural woo, with what the vast majority of people actually believe about UFOs. That's you're own personal bullshit; not a cogent argument.
Contrary to your ignorant claim, there's actually a resurgence of religion, especially among younger people. Bible sales surge: Gen Z is sick and tired of predecessors’ self-centered, godlike hubris
Again, any uptick in UFO belief is only a pale surrogate for this need. Having a belief in a larger cosmos of intelligent beings does nothing to imbue people's personal lives with meaning or purpose. That's exactly why secular leftists treat their politics like religion. Their politics do give them a purpose UFOs cannot.
Quote:Contrary to your ignorant claim, there's actually a resurgence of religion, especially among younger people.
Or so the bible thumpers and conservative rags like Washington Times would have us believe. Actually, the situation is quite the opposite. The younger Z generation is more open-mindedly seeking out spirituality and less identifying with any particular religious beliefs. And that's completely in line with what I showed to be a growing need in our society for a new mythology:
"Ansberry’s explanation for the increased interest in matters of faith is that after three years of loss and confusion, including the disruption of the pandemic, young people are seeing the need for something bigger than themselves. “In many ways,” she wrote, “it aged young Americans, and they are now turning to the same comfort previous generations have turned to during tragedies for healing and comfort.” Barna researcher Daniel Copeland even called this generation, “The Open Generation.”
At the same time, spiritual openness of young people often comes at the cost of identifiably Christian convictions. As political scientist Ryan Burge laid out in 2021, “They are the first generation in [American] history in which the nones clearly outnumber the Christians,” 48% to 36%, to be exact. Even the report cited by Ansberry excluded the phrase “belief in God” in favor of the term “higher power.” As the authors explained, when the question is narrowed down to belief in “God,” the numbers revert to an overall decline in faith."
The results are a mixed picture. As rates of disbelief in God and rejection of Christian doctrine rise, young people are grappling seriously with a search for meaning, truth, and belonging. This is a critical moment to reach what is the loneliest, most agnostic and most distraught generation on record. They are the epitome of a line widely attributed to G.K. Chesterton: “When men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”---- https://breakpoint.org/is-a-surge-of-fai...americans/
Quote:Those who think they've witnessed something truly extraterrestrial are not transformed by any notion of the supernatural or magical.
Being a chance eyewitness to the physical manifestation of a higher power and intelligence from another realm that is beyond all our science and human reasoning? Yeah.. that's pretty much the "supernatural" and exactly in line with Clarke's definition of "magic".
su·per·nat·u·ral
/ˌso͞opərˈnaCH(ə)rəl/
adjective
(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.
"Ansberry’s explanation for the increased interest in matters of faith," and you cannot refute the surge in Bible sales. But you can certainly make genetic fallacies and baseless claims. And where do you imagine (as you're so prone to do) that I mentioned God anywhere? Religious meaning and purpose can be derived from the principles and values without a necessary commitment to a God. You can also follow a religion while being disillusioned by the institution, thus identifying as "nones." I myself have syncretic beliefs that don't neatly fall into a particular orthodox denomination/religion.
And you can keep trying to put paranormal lipstick on materialist pig, but that doesn't change what it is. Just because you're so gullible for anything woo-related just means you're out of touch with the vast majority of people.
Jan 18, 2025 07:09 PM
(This post was last modified: Jan 18, 2025 10:56 PM by Magical Realist.)
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