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Ghost in the Machine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:44 PM
Original message
For UFO Skeptics & Non Believers
I wonder why you have this mindset, seeing as we have our own "UFO" right here in the United States. Of course, it's not a "UFO" to us as we know what it is. We call it the "Space Shuttle". Yes, we have an aircraft that is capable of repeated interplanetary flight.

In our Space Exploration Mission, what is it that we are doing? We are exploring other planets, searching for one that is suitable for life form. One that will sustain life. We are seeing if there is somewhere else that we can colonize. How do we do this? We take plants up there and see how they grow, change and adapt to their environment and surroundings.

If plant species are surviving, we try next with insects. Remember when the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded over Texas? It had spiders, silkworms, inorganic crystals, fish, bees and ants in it's payload. The next logical step would be small animals & birds and/or domesticated animals such as cats & dogs. If all goes well, you could start next with experimental humans by using test tube babies or clones. I honestly believe that's how OUR planet was started and how "we" got here and where we come from. I won't elaborate on that more right now, as that isn't my point. My point is to point out the existence of our very own spacecraft capable of interplanetary flight.

I'm just wondering how *anyone* who is capable of thinking can look up at the sky at night and see all those lights (stars) in all that vastness of this Universe and be so conceited as to think that we are the only intelligent life anywhere in the Universe.

Now a question for the religious folks. In the bible it speaks of "the Angels who flew in on their wings". What were these "wings"? Are Angels really these winged creatures depicted all over? Creatures with wings growing out of their backs that are capable of interplanetary flight? The bible also speaks of visitors from heaven descending in their "flaming chariots". What were these "flaming chariots"? Are they horse drawn chariots that are literally on fire? Now tell me... what do you see coming out of the back of a jet when it takes off, especially at night? What? Flames?? Ok... what do you see coming out of the back of the Space Shuttle when it takes off?? More flames?? Imagine that!

Open your minds and think outside the box.....

PEACE!
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mondo joe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:47 PM
Response to Original message
1. I think you have confused UFO skepticism with belief that there is no life outside
of earth.

This is not the case.

Carl Sagan is one rather famous example of someone who felt it was mathematically very likely that there was life in the universe outside earth. He was also a UFO skeptic.
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Ghost in the Machine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:21 PM
Response to Reply #1
29. That's good to know. The skeptics I know personally think that the two go hand in hand.
"There's no such things as UFOs because there's no such thing as aliens"

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LaurenG Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:48 PM
Response to Original message
2. You're very brave and I'm here to say you make an excellent point
Edited on Fri Oct-26-07 03:48 PM by OhioBlues
I have thought the same thing many times.
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Ghost in the Machine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:22 PM
Response to Reply #2
30. Thank you...
We could just be someone else's big science experiment.. like a giant ant farm.
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bighart Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:49 PM
Response to Original message
3. the shuttle is not capable of
"repeated interplanetary flight". It is capable of repeated low earth orbit flight.
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Felinity Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:54 PM
Response to Reply #3
8. Also,
Where exactly was the space shuttle going to drop the insects, etc? The space station? That's an artificial environment, not an alternative planet.

Beam me up! Nothing to see here.
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baldguy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:50 PM
Response to Original message
4. If you can identify an flying object, then its not a "UFO"
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Mojambo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:51 PM
Response to Original message
5. Skeptics don't deny that there's a possibility that we are not alone
We just think it's a little silly to assert that there are without proper evidence.

I don't think it's an unreasonable position to hold.
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lovuian Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:52 PM
Response to Original message
6. The Truth is out there
You make a great point
Its a fool who thinks we are the only life in this huge universe
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:52 PM
Response to Original message
7. "By this time John
and May had moved into an apartment overlooking the Hudson River in New York. Julian described it as small and very white, with two bedrooms. There was a balcony they had sat out on and he told me that one night John had seen a UFO from there."
-- John; by Cynthia Lennon; Crown; 2005; page 258
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Bright Eyes Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:56 PM
Response to Original message
9. The Space Shuttle would be an IFO
Identified Flying Object.

I believe that there is life out there, i just don't believe 'they' have visited.
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Ghost in the Machine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:02 PM
Response to Reply #9
21. Then how do you explain the "visits" in the bible?
Millions of people believe the bible, and it TELLS you that we were visited.

Explain please?
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mondo joe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:04 PM
Response to Reply #21
22. I think the bible is a load of hooey, personally.
It's really not evidence if UFOs.

But to be quite honest, when you describe the space shuttle as an interplanetary device you're not doing a lot to establish your own credibility.
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Ghost in the Machine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:17 PM
Response to Reply #22
27. Yes, I should have used another word besides interplanetary - I couldn't
think of one though, maybe "repeated flights to outer space"?

I think the bible is a bunch of fairy tales too, but I just wonder how people can believe in angels, god or any other "heavenly" being that their bible says visited us, yet they don't wonder how they got here.
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mondo joe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:19 PM
Response to Reply #27
28. Another problem: you say we are bringing samples to live in other
world's environments. That's simply not true.

Your OP is not making what appears to be a particularly informed opinion.
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Ghost in the Machine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:37 PM
Response to Reply #28
31. What would you consider "probing the effects of space flight on spiders, silkworms,...."
SPACEHAB was also making it possible for universities, companies and other government agencies to do important research in space without having to provide their own spacecraft.

The Canadian Space Agency sponsored three bone-growth experiments, and was collaborating with ESA on two others.

The German Space Agency measured the development of the gravity-sensing organs of fish in the absence of gravity.

A university was growing ultra-pure protein crystals for drug research. And another university was testing a navigation system for future satellites.

The U.S. Air Force was conducting a communications experiment. Students from six schools in Australia, China, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein and the United States were probing the effects of space flight on spiders, silkworms, inorganic crystals, fish, bees and ants, respectively.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-107.html
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Why study the effects of space flight on these species? To see if they would survive the flight so they would know whether it would be a waste of time or not to send a massive payload of them up the next time. After all, you wouldn't want to arrive for an experiment with billions of dead bugs, would you? Especially if that experiment involved "sustaining life".
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mondo joe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:38 PM
Response to Reply #31
32. I'd consider it studying the effects of gravity or lack thereof.
Edited on Fri Oct-26-07 04:41 PM by mondo joe
The space shuttle is not an alien world's environment.
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Bright Eyes Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:05 PM
Response to Reply #21
23. Well i don't believe in the bible
I mean, it says a senior citizen built a giant boat stuffed with 2 of every animal, and survived in high seas for a year.

I mean no offense. ;)
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LeftyMom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:06 PM
Response to Reply #21
24. I'll take Bronze Age bullshit isn't evidence for $500, Alex.
Unless we all wound up in an alternative universe where pi=3, bats are birds, whales are fish, rabbits chew cud and snakes talk and I slept through it.
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mudesi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:39 PM
Response to Reply #21
33. HAHAHA
I put people who believe in religion in the same boat as people who believe in UFOs and ghosts and whatnot.

Irrational and superstitious.
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Tierra_y_Libertad Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:56 PM
Response to Original message
10. What I want to know is if there are visitors, why would they want to bother with humans?
It would seem to me that we would probably appear to them as just another insignificant primitive species that delights in killing everything in sight including each other.

We inhabit a speck of dust, circling a minor star, on the outskirts of an unremarkable galaxy amid billions of other galaxies which is part of a universe that is very likely one among trillions of others.

We think our species is important in the cosmos only because we are egotistical enough to tell ourselves we are.





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mondo joe Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:57 PM
Response to Original message
11. "Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion,
by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."

Carl Sagan
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SmokingJacket Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:58 PM
Response to Original message
12. I think it's very likely there's other life in the universe.
I just think when and if it gets here, it'll either be totally obvious, or completely invisible. It seems unlikely that aliens will arrive on ships *that only a few people* are prviliged to see.

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wuushew Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:58 PM
Response to Original message
13. scant evidence exists to test the exogensis hypothesis
n/t
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Bright Eyes Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:59 PM
Response to Original message
14. On a lighter note
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Rick Myers Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 03:59 PM
Response to Original message
15. The Space Shuttle is not capable of interplanetary flight
Only Low Earth Orbit...

But...

On 2 occassions years ago I watched an object in the night sky. It moved irratically, froze, hovered, accelerated and came to a dead stop, reversed. Just a light, brighter than a star, and surely NOT any kind of vehicle known to be in use... Each sighting lasted about 5 minutes, and was seen by another person. This was back in 1970 or so... To this day I have no idea what I saw.
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charlie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:00 PM
Response to Original message
16. Interplanetary?
The highest the shuttle's ever flown is less than 400 miles. The moon is 600+ times further, which is an onionskin distance in just this solar system, let alone outside it.
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CrispyQ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:00 PM
Response to Original message
17. Calvin, from Calvin & Hobbs:
I think the surest proof that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it hasn't tried to contact us.

;)
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jpgray Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:01 PM
Response to Original message
18. Are there objects in the sky that are not readily identifiable? Yep. Are they aliens? Nah
Edited on Fri Oct-26-07 04:02 PM by jpgray
First off you have to remember there is no empirically consistent detectable phenomena from these visitors, despite their visitation being on an allegedly grand scale. Second you have to notice that the onset of these sightings in volume is correlated to the ascendancy of aliens in popular culture. Third you have to remember Fermi's paradox--if we posit the existence of an extraterrestrial race capable of interstellar travel, and we are many years away from such ourselves yet have been broadcasting signals readable in space for sixty years or so, why have we not picked up any such signals from any nearby systems? Odds are there is life out there, but intelligent, interstellar travelers? The odds aren't very good that they both exist -and- are completely undetectable.
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SidDithers Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:01 PM
Original message
"repeated interplanetary flight"...
what other planets has the space shuttle visited?

Sid
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Mz Pip Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:01 PM
Response to Original message
19. I believe there
is other life out there. I just don't believe it's come here. Space is just too big and stars are just too far away to make it feasible that we're being visitied.

I really wish I would be proven wrong on this. I'd love to be around when if we ever make contact.

Mz Pip
:dem:
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immoderate Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:02 PM
Response to Original message
20. The universe could be teeming with life.
That they visit earth, especially without leaving evidence, is highly improbable. To do this would require magical, god-like powers.

To listen to "abductees," one would think they know enough to control our minds, but they still need to stick their fingers in our butt. LOL. They are masters of time and space. Why would they study us?

--IMM
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varkam Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:10 PM
Response to Original message
25. I do not believe in UFOs. I also do not think we are the only life in the universe.
Statistically speaking, I think there is a good chance that we are, indeed, not alone in the universe. But something that needs to be understood is jut how incredibly vast the universe is. I say it needs to be understood because I, in all my very finite wisdom, have a difficult time comprehending just how small a part we are of the universe. Words like gigantic and expansive really do not capture it.

And given the billions and billions of planets that there are in the universe, I do not think it unreasonable to claim that there is sentient life on a few of those.

However, I do not think that we have had visitors. Suppose that we were able to craft a ship that could travel at the speed of light (and thus breaking the rules of physics as we know them): it would still take many, many years to even reach the nearest star to our solar system. In short, I don't even think it is possible to even make contact with any other life forms in the universe.

In keeping with Occam's Razor, I think there are many more plausible explanations for the variety of difficult to explain phenomena that we have witnessed over the years such as UFO sightings and abduction stories.
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Pithlet Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:40 PM
Response to Reply #25
34. Good post. And nothing close minded about it at all.
:thumbsup:
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varkam Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:47 PM
Response to Reply #34
36. Thank goodness!
I was trying to keep my fundamentalist skeptic credentials hidden when I posted that :D
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NV Whino Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:12 PM
Response to Original message
26. I thought you were talking about
Unelected Fucking Officials.
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Disturbed Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-26-07 04:42 PM
Response to Reply #26
35. Disclosure Project
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