Hidden Truth/Hidden Truth.iso/data/newspostings/1401-1500/1422

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From: Jonathan Waisman <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors,alt.paranet.ufo,alt.alien.research,alt.metaphysics
Subject: Re: BRIAN ZEILER, MALICIOUS USENET ABUSER
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 18:21:10 -0700
Organization: Oregon Public Networking
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On 18 Jun 1996, Cluster User wrote:

> Jonathan Waisman <[e-mail]> wrote:
> >
> >
> >On Mon, 17 Jun 1996, SPHINX Technologies wrote:
> >
> >> In article <[e-mail]>,
> >> Jonathan Waisman  <[e-mail]> wrote:
> >>
> >> >My point is that we don't know anything for sure about the existence, or
> >> >non-existence of UFOs. It's a quirk in our paradigm. If we jump the gun
> >> >and side with 'believers,' then we're making an error in our scientific
> >> >judgement, and we are delegating our knowledge to faith, which has no
> >> >place anywhere except religion, and this group is NOT about religion;
> >> >it's about (or so I thought) finding the answer to a very intriguing
> >> >question - why are people seeing things in the sky that don't seem to
> >> >have an explanation?
> >> >
> >> >The discerning individual will recognize that the answer has not been
> >> >found, and will keep an open mind, but will not make any hasty decisions
> >> >or conclusions. Those who chose to 'believe' based on the anecdotal
> >> >evidence available are making a religion out of it.
>
> It is nice to hear you trying to be rational for a change (i think you called me
> "maroon" (moron?!) in or last reparte)... So congrats on that...

First, I don't recall EVER calling anyone anywhere a "moron." If I did, I
apologize from the heart, because I don't believe human beings should
treat each other with disrespect. Perhaps someone else said that to you
and you mistakenly thought it was me? Strike that: I did call one person
an 'idiot' because he proposed to storm military installations; if that
was you, I still apologize, but I request you reconsider: the military is
much more intense than the public is aware of. If it wasn't you, ignore
the last sentence.

> But I have to disagree with your point ("maroon" again?). All the stuff
> you are talking about still has it's foundations in the grey (no pun)- that is,
> we never really prove anything scientifically, we just get to a point where we
> feel adequately secure with the conclusions. Take dinosaurs or evolution- in the
> fundamental sense we have not proven either of them conclusively- nobody ever saw
> a dinosaur, all we have to show for them presently are rocks that look like
> bones. But we certainly have passed the threshold where we accept their premises
> and move on to collect new data and make new hypothesies, and in fact, formed an
> entire branch of science from the evidence, one that has added significantly to
> our understanding of what we are as a species.
>
> The question is, where does one draw the line? UFOs offer perhaps even better
> evidence than what we initially had to work with in paleontology- that is, lots
> of people actually SEE UFOs, while nobody ever saw a dinosaur, or even held a
> real, unpetrified dinosaur bone in their hand. Certainly, scientists were
> originally aghast at the proposal that the earth had once been populated by giant
> beasts, and rejected it out of hand. Renegade non-scientists were the first
> people to do real field work in the subject, largely because they had the
> foresight to see potential in something non-conventional- qualities scientists as
> a whole largely lack. Their job is to gently nudge the edges of the conventional.
> As a consequence, scientists are really the worst possible group to try to come
> to terms with wholly unexplainable phenomena.

As I've told others, all analogies are imperfect. That's because to make
an analogy we have to compare the relationship of one thing to another,
with another set of "things" to each other. Apples and oranges. The best
we can do with an analogy is get close (we hope). That being said, your
analogy of UFOs and dinosaurs COULD be close ... or not, depending on
what the rest of the story turns out to be. In other words, we can look
at dinosaurs with 20/20 vision now, and we can say with certainty that
dinosaurs did once indeed exist, whereas our forefathers could not say
that. A few hundred years ago, dinosaurs fit into the same 'box' that
UFOs do now: agreed. But that does not prove that the outcome, the prize
of "truth," will be the same as it was for the dinosaur. We can imply, by
your analogy, that you suspect that UFOs, like the dinosaur, will be
proven true. Again, that's still an implication at this point. We still
don't have a UFO to look at in the Museum of Natural History in NYC, nor
do we have certifiable prints of a UFO complete with castings and photos
too look at - unless you take as gospel the words of people who *claim*
that there is such evidence available. I have not seen it, and it
certainly has not been on the cover of Time Magazine that I know of. So
while the analogy is correct, in a way, it's also incorrect in another
way: UFOs are not yet proven, whereas the dinosaur is. Someday, perhaps,
UFOs WILL be proven - but it's also possible that they will be DISPROVEN.
It's that possibility that the UFO believer movement fails to recognize,
and which honest scientists doing honest research recognize as the
potential outcome of all research efforts (sometimes, much to their
dismay).

My point in a sentence: We just don't know yet for sure. Ask me in twenty
years, then maybe I'll know more.

My problem with believers: they think they know for sure. I think they're
guessing. Guessing and knowing are not the same.

> Anyway, it appears that all people are "believers", it simply matters what set of
> assumptions you believe in. Scientists generally have faith that all phenomena
> will fall within the narrow band-gap they percieve all physical events stemming
> from- that is quite a faith, if you ask me, given that we have no idea what could
> fall outside of that narrow band.
>
> The birth of paleontology and the birth of UFOlogy share a lot of similarities-
> people seeing or finding strange things, scientists dismissing them. UFOs pose
> much more of a threat to a scientist's sense of well being than dinosuars ever
> did, however, so the resistance is much greater. Eventually scientists have to
> have the wherewithall to investigate what is going on. So far all we have is a
> group of cultists spoken for by Carl Sagan desperately trying at all costs
> (including at the cost of science) to make people dismiss all claims of
> "paranormal." You see, Carl Sagan IS the ultimate believer. Science doesn't say
> that it can definitively tell anyone what can and can not exist in the universe.
> It does a good job within a limited scope of phenomena, without a doubt. But I
> venture to say that the scope science covers is actually very small, containing
> only the barest, most obvious types of phenomena. And I further venture to say
> that will remain tiny until we can somehow come to grips with other types of
> phenomena that provide a different kind of "data" than that which science
> arbitrarily demands.

To be sure Carl Sagan is not your typical paranormal investigater. Yet,
you can watch "Sightings" on TV, and see the quality of the people who do
investigate those types of things, and if you look at them with a
scientific mind, that is objective and rational, you can find HUGE holes
in their techniques. That's not to say we can be sure there are no ghosts
or other paranormal phenomenon: it's just to say that the research should
be scientific and not full of starry eyed types who *want* to believe.
Carl Sagan himself has said that science is not perfect, but it's the
best tool we have to try to discover the truth. I agree with that
assessment. You may not like him, nor me, but you only have to study
history to discover hoards of things people have beleived in the past
which have proven to be fallacies, and it was science, in the end, that
finally proved it.

A few hundred years ago if you had the flu, they might have let blood out
of you. Science has shown us that that is not a valid response. You might
not like science and all it's rigid restriction, but without it, you and I
might not be alive.


> Carl Sagan is a believer, however- he believes that all phenomena must fall
> within the narrow band that science is presently accepting data from. He has
> essentially made science a religion for himself, and is doing what many religious
> do- going out to convert others. Because of his popularity and outspoken nature,
> he is, in many respects, an unwitting menace to science and to people's intuitive
> views of the world. It isn't good to deny intuitive knowledge- so far, it is the
> level on which we do the vast bulk of everything we do as humans- including our
> science. It is interesting to hear Carl Sagan discuss how even he has dificulty
> sometimes remembering or understanding  that the personalities of his parents are
> completely erased- at some level he is at war with his intuition that maybe the
> nature of consciousness isn't so simple. We have wonderful rules of thumb
> regarding conservation of energy and matter and information in physics, but when
> it comes to consciousness, we are so ready to assume scientifically that it is
> truly unusual, that it can indeed simply "dissapear." I often wish it were true,
> but I think we'll find that it, as possibly the most fundamental entity in our
> reality (the only thing we can *almost* prove definitively), consciousness will
> also prove to be perfectly conserved too in some way that I can't presume to
> imagine at this point.

Carl Sagan, like all humans, has his limitations. I won't deny that. I
have mine, unless you are God, you have yours too. Yet, he's looking at
things in ways that others have sometimes failed to do. Maybe he's
throwing some of the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, but who
doesn't err in some direction or other? He obviously was in great pain
due to his parents' death, and he found little solace in science. I'm
sure he would have liked to find some little nitch somewhere that could
help him deal with the pain, but it just wasn't there. He wished, I
think, that science *could* prove the existence of the soul, so that he
could feel he knew for sure that his parents were somewhere, perhaps in
heaven, and not really dead. Okay, that's a problem each of us has to
face at some point in our lives, and it's not an easy one to deal with.
Some people chose some religion or other to cover the empty emotional
bases in that case. Others become bitter. I think Dr. Sagan might have
felt a degree of bitterness. I can't judge him for that: Jesus said "let
he who is without sin cast the first stone." When I become perfect, I'll
be able to judge him (and you, and everyone else). But I'm not holding my
breath. :)



> >> So, you're saying that those in the Air Force and other fine U.S. govt.
> >> agencies who have said, in formerly-classified, FOIA-released documents,
> >> that *THEY* think UFOs are real and extraterrestrial, are "making a religion
> >> out of it"?
> >>
> >> -John Sangster
> >>  Wellesley Hills, MA
>
> >No, they're stating their opinions. They're saying "they think...," not
> >"they believe." That's the difference. The word "believe" has no place
> >here, not until we prove something one way or another. Of course in any
> >science, people chose to believe things prior to the final verdict being
> >in. Those people are practicing superstitious behavior, as psychologists
> >call it. There's nothing wrong with being superstitious or practicing
> >belief systems - one can find that in almost any Church or Synaguoge
> >throughout the world. However I personally feel that the field of
> >"UFOlogy" is so bizarre that one should not make any conclusions until
> >all the facts are in, and clearly they are not.
> >
> >I used to "think" UFOs were real, and now I "think" they are not. But I
> >never "believed" they were real. See the difference?
>
> I think you are trying to suggest that a semantical difference between the words
> implies a fundamental difference, but I think they both point to the subjective
> nature of anything we must think about or consider. We never really have facts
> the way we'd like to, we only pretend we do, so we can get on with things. Why we
> are desperately resisting something as potentially mundane as UFOs... it is
> beyond me. A I've said before, UFOs don't appear to be terribly interesting...
> but the door that could open through investigation in to them could transform our
> entire world culture. We need to get past UFOs, they are almost certainly nothing
> special (although that is probably pretty hard for a culture doing physics at our
> early level to understand). But the cloud from which they emerge will almost
> cetainly prove to be the next stomping ground for our whole understanding and
> perception of reality.


Mundane? There's nothing at all mundane about the "sightings" people have
claimed to have had. People have alleged these things make right turns at
8,000 MPH, disappear and reappear in an instant in a location miles away,
show up instantly without a visual line of travel, go faster than sound
with no sonic boom. I don't find that mundane at all. I find it ... well,
bizarre. Keep in mind that most accounts of abduction also include the
tales of going through walls. We can't just fit these accounts into some
nitch on our current sciences and make it nice and neat. Yet, we can't
just say: "sure, that's happening, that *could* be real." If there truly
*is* something happening here, then it goes far beyond anything we know.
On the other hand there's a possibility that the entire phenomenon is
psychologically based, and we can't afford to rule that out so easily, or
we might miss the truth under our noses.

Whoever you are ... you are not a moron. But I don't think we've acheived
the level of information required to "believe" this is a real phenomenon
yet. You, of course, have a right to a different opinion.

Jon Waisman