The woos will be dancing in the streets.

Quote :

Her Majesty's Government may have concluded in 1979 that "it has never
been approached by people from outer space" but the current Pope is
entertaining the idea of aliens.

Read all about it

Methinks aluminium foil is going to become a scarce thing, what with all the hats that'll be needed. If you have stocks in it don't sell em yet

it was stoked up by the govs to cover up real secret experimental planes

I do not believe that Earth has been visited by aliens anytime recently but there is a strange anomoly. Most people believe that Earth was not created by God but that life evolved. They believe that life has evolved on many planets in the Universe. However few believe these lifeforms could ever master space travel and ufo believers are crazy. So if you believe in evolution you are a smart man but if you believe in evolution plus a few hundred more years from this point you are a Nutjob. How stupid is that.

There is the Rare Earth hypothesis which could be the lonesome truth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis

However, there is also the cuckoo chu-chu lalalalula theories of Zechariah Sitchin which are better fun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zechariah_Sitchin

It is another inconvenient truth. If you believe in evolution it stands to reason that if it happened here it could happen anywhere. The rare Earth theory believes that the only place it could happen was Earth. How lucky was that. So if you believe in evolution you should believe in ufos and if you believe in God then you would not believe in ufos. Take your pick.

Not a matter of belief, but if it could happen here I see no reason why it may not have happened elsewhere in this, or some other universe.

UFO's are fascinating. I don't believe they're extraterrestrial for a moment, although a tiny part of me would wish that it were otherwise, but the phenomenon of belief is amazing. Actually, all pseudo-science is of interest, in a sort of step away from the lunatics way. My favourite theory? The shrinking and expanding earth one which is used to 'explain' the way the continents sort of kind of fit together. Got to look at more info on those files though...

youngdan even though evolution had many many conditions to meet in order to produce us, the astrological complexity involved in producing us on this planet are further complexified by our position in the solar system, the size of the sun, the composition of our atmosphere, the manner in which we avoided getting wiped out by an asteroid like the one which busted the planet between Mars and Jupiter which is the asteroid belt today - all these conditions are so necessary and must be perfect that it really is a $45000 question as to whether there is life out there or not. Certainly of our paragon of intelligence - slime maybe, yeah but people like us? it's a very very long shot so long as to be non existent - like me winning the lotto.

Worldbystorm I just saw your post and that's interesting about the expanding and contracting earth...

youngdan wrote:

It is another inconvenient truth. If you believe in evolution it stands to reason that if it happened here it could happen anywhere. The rare Earth theory believes that the only place it could happen was Earth. How lucky was that. So if you believe in evolution you should believe in ufos and if you believe in God then you would not believe in ufos. Take your pick.

I see where you are coming from Dan - but your arguement is a tad simplistic too.

I would buy into the theory that there has to be life as we know it or something similar somewhere else in the universe, how many or how few I wouldnt like to guess. But the Universe is one big place expanding all the time - even if we could travel at something approaching 10% of the speed of light it would take us 400 human years to reach Alpha Centauri - the nearest star system in the our galaxy, the Milky way , to us.

But I dont buy into the E.T explanation for UFO's and the way they appear to act and the supernatural powers,in contradiction of all the laws of physics known to us - I have no problem with the belief that an ET spaceship could arrive in our solar system at any moment - but I dont buy the Klingonlike cloaking devices etc etc - Im more Arthur C Clarke ,than Gene Roddenberry in my choice of Science Fiction - I like to know that gravity still counts for something.

In a way - there is something almost religious about the need to believe in UFOs and the fact that they are given humanlike qualities by those who have "met them" and the revelationary trancelike atmosphere in which these encounters were meant to have taken place. I understand that very human need to find our place in the big picture and how relevant we are and ultimately how relevant our own lives are - but I dont buy into the whole UFOtainment gig as broadcast so far - which is a mixture of stoned hippie, old time religion and good ole fashioned libertarian" I dont trust nothing but the bullets in my shotgun" talk and seems to affect mainly white folks living in hot climates who need to get proper airconditioning.

I have no doubts that we will discover life elsewhere in our own solar system in my lifetime - possibly Europa or Titan and it probably wont make the front cover of hello magazine - but it will be a start.

Auditor. The amount of things that have to be just right for life to exist on Earth is an argument that Creationalists would use to say that it could not have happened by accident. The commonist amazing thing to consider is the unusual fact that water expands when freezing. Liquids normally contract when freezing and if this were the case ice would sink and never melt so the planet would soon be icebound.
Edo. Alpha Centuari is only 4.3 light years away so an alien traveling close to the speed of light might be on his way as we speak. When it comes to astronomy I think that some assuptions might be wrong from starting with a false premise. It is assumed that the speed of light has always been what it is today. If however light is slowing down then everything changes.
The numbers are indeed large. There are billions of galaxies in the universe so if only one star in a billion has a suitable planet then there is still billions of suitable planets. If different lifeforms evolve in hostile climes then who knows what is out there.
Anyone who would have read Chariots of the Gods in the 70s would be convinced of one of 2 things. Either aliens visited on that humans at one time were more advanced than they are today.

If there was intelligent life though with our level of complexity then wouldn't they have contacted us by now? Maybe we are earth trash to them and they wouldn't bother in a fit - not after what they saw in Whitley Schreiber's ***. But wouldn't they have contacted us by now?

Maybe it's because they are not out there or they are just mushroom-like beings who couldn't assemble a radio transmitter and will never evolve to be able to do so and maybe we are alone, the centre of a pre-Copernican universe after all.

Time for shleep

From watching space programmes on the Discovery Channel etc, scientists are quite often saying how amazed they are about the hostile environments life can thrive in on earth.
This raises the question of what kind of environments life can survive in on other planets.
Also, why must all life fit into our narrow view of what life needs?
Does all life really need water? Would it be possible for life to need methane instead of oxygen?

Is Chariots of the Gods the book by Eric Von something about the gods of ancient Egypt? I think I read another of his books - In Search of Ancient Gods

I forget who wrote it but it dealt with many areas of the world. One part that I do remember that I found very interesting were these huge lines in South America that can only be made out from an airplane. I think they are called Lea Lines of something like that. There are a lot of examples where the seemingly impossible was achieved long ago.

I think he had found some artifacts in Egypt that had been cut so precisely he concluded it could only have been done with lasers.

There were other things along the same lines. I also remember he found temples and pyramids in South America that were very similar to those in Egypt and he concluded that people on opposite sides of the planet were worshipping the same gods.
That could have been something I saw in a film tho (It's been a while since I read the book)

That book could be a good suggestion for the next book of the month club because it is really thought provoking

here's the author's website....
http://www.daniken.com/e/index.html

I don't know how to set up a link properly

Slightly unrelated, but didn't the Vatican come out today and say it believes in the possibility of extra-terrestrial life?
Strange coming from them.

The Von Daniken stuff is largely rubbish and is based more on his lack
of knowledge rather than genuinely knowledgable speculation.

As for extraterrestrials, there are weirder things here on Earth like PD voters and Bertie Ahern's explanations.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc wrote:

As for extraterrestrials, there are weirder things here on Earth like PD voters and Bertie Ahern's explanations.

touché

They were called nazca lines and here is what discovery channel says about them. http://www.exn.ca/mysticplaces/nazcalines.asp
I read that book a long time ago and at the time it set me thinking but on reading it today I might think differently. I have not seen it in stores recently.

The main problem with extraterrestrial life is how to explain it to a
bunch of people who still believe in people being magically transported
up into the clouds rather than airtravel, and all the other forms of
simplistic, though effective thought control.

Regards...jmcc

Christians believing in ufos makes no sense whatsoever. God did not create Adam Klingon or Eve Firengi as far as I know. Evolutionists must believe in ufos if their theory of spontainious life is correct. So are evolutionists tin foil loons. If it were revealed that aliens do exist then that would be the end of religon. The Vatican promoying ufos is like a turkey promoting Christmas.

youngdan wrote:

Christians believing in ufos makes no sense
whatsoever.

Surely Christians should be open to the idea of
extraterrestrial life if they believe that their God is omnipotent?

Regards...jmcc

I don't think they would buy that one. They would not take too kindly to the firengi having souls. Some Christians would take the view that ufos are demonic in origon if evidence of them should appear.

Francis Harry Compton Crick the famous co-discoverer of the DNA molecule, worked on 'Directed Panspermia,' a resurrected form of the ancient belief in panspermia during the late 1960's and 1970's. The idea was that once life had developed in the universe, it could be spread around the universe via intelligent life using space travel. Interestingly enough, it was the conspiracy theorists who latched onto this idea moreso that the scientific community at large.

Suddenly we have a world-renowned scientist at the root of ET coming home to check up on the life he'd seeded millions, if not billions, of years before. With the conspiracy theorists kicked into hyperdrive, it wasn't long until panspermia faded into relative obscurity. In recent times panspermia has made something of a comeback, although it's still treated with a respectful amount of skepticism. Currently, panspermia does not require that ET fly around the universe to seed life. Link to panspermia information

We've always had alien encounter and abduction myths. The scenario has remained a constant whilst the details have evolved to reflect progress and the times. For example: We had Zeus mating with earth girls, we had the Nephilim and we had folks being snatched by the fairies. It's not hard to see why a lot of UFO supposition can be tied in with religion.

As a youngster, I was very much into UFO stories. I read everything I could on the subject. My love of science and in particular physics and astronomy are quite probably founded on my earlier fascination with UFOs. Whilst my deep interest in the sciences has grown, my former and very distant preoccupation with UFOs has all but vanished. Of course there might be intelligent life in the universe (if you don't count us) - the SETI program for example is run by intelligent folks. Is ET coming to earth and practicing acts of sexual deviancy with us? I very much doubt it. Is ET engaged in constantly snatching folks to perform medical experiments on them? Doubtful too - why risk the constant and repeating risk of exposure and capture when ET could breed a massive colony of subjects for his experiments and sexual gratification on the big mother ship docked on the dark side of the moon?

What about all the sightings? Ask six witnesses to a murder that happened and you'll be told of six different crimes. Human beings, especially under a heightened sense of emotion are prone to misunderstanding things that they see. To date, there has never been an instance of a so-called sighting of either ET or his vehicle that can be considered concrete evidence that proves either the existence of ET or this vehicle. This is despite what are probably millions of alleged sightings. And it's not down to the lack of investigation if one just considers the files released that are referred to in the opening post. Of course mysteries remain, just like there are many unsolved murders. The point here is that even with unsolved mysteries still in the pot, there is no concrete evidence that suggests that ET has been driving past the speed limit on this planet.

A very good resource for debunking conspiracy theories and anything else that requires debunking, is the James Randi Educational Foundation Forum (JREF Forum). James Randi is a magician who has become a very successful debunker of so-called psychics, including household names like Uri Gellar. The Forum itself deals with everything from psychics, religion and 911 conspiracies up to debunking false and pseudo scientific practices and ideas. Here's a link to the forum, as I said it's an incredible resource: JREF Forum