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| Glenn Steckling |
The fifth day of the International UFO Congress was Sunday, February 16, 2014, with a shortened schedule. The first speaker was Glenn Steckling, the head of the Adamski Foundation, and today's spiritual heir of the great Baloney-master. "Glenn Steckling, the Director of the George Adamski Foundation, one of the oldest & longest standing UFO organizations, will join us to discuss George Adamski, moon anomalies and his concerns regarding varying agendas participating in the revisionism of UFO history. Mr. Steckling’s father, the late Fred Steckling, was a close friend & associate of George Adamski, considered by many to be the pioneer in the early contactee UFO field." I had heard Steckling speak more than once before to San Diego MUFON. "His discussion will including re-mastered original Adamski motion picture footage, and newly released rare Adamski home movie footage. He will also share a number of first-generation copies of NASA photographs of the Moon, along with movie footage of an array of UFOs taken by his father in 1966, while he was traveling through Germany by train." If you always wanted to see home movies showing George Adamski, as well as some ludicrous 'daylight disks,' then you missed something good.
Steckling explained that Adamski's saucer photos, supposedly taken through his 6" telescope (which I doubt very much), were amazingly clear. This caused some people to assume that they had been faked (!). Adamski was given this telescope by the mother of the man who did "mapping" for the site of the observatory at Mt. Palomar, a Mrs. Johnson. As soon as Adamski had set up the telescope, saucers began to appear. Steckling explained that his father was the one responsible for getting Adamski's saucer photos on the postage stamps of Grenada (see my book Psychic Vibrations, page 5).
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| David Marler |
Next was the final speaker, David Marler, the former head of Illinois MUFON, now living in Albuquerque, NM. I spoke with him at some length before his talk. Marler is a very serious researcher. He showed me photos of the huge UFO research library he has been accumulating, in part from acquiring the collections of retired or deceased UFOlogists. He describes himself as an archivist and historian. If you're a serious researcher, digging into an old case, I'd recommend that you contact Marler to see what info he might have on it.
Marler's talk was titled "Triangular UFOs: An Estimate of the Situation," which is also the title of his book. "For years, serious researchers have known that triangular-shaped UFOs are increasingly one of the most common types observed. The phenomenon has sparked intense debate among many and excited the imagination of many others. But until now, there has never been a comprehensive analysis of triangular UFOs. Marler has collected, collated, and analyzed hundreds of reports over the last thirteen years. In the process, he has created a detailed profile of these objects and written a rich narrative of their history."
He talked, of course, about the famous Belgian triangle UFOs of 1989-90. He acknowledges, however, that the famous one and only photo supposedly showing the triangle UFO, from Petit Rechain, is indeed a hoax. There is very little good video or radar data concerning the Belgian triangles, but lots of eyewitness testimony. He also spoke of several little-known triangle UFO sightings from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, back when the genre of the "triangle UFO" was not yet well-established. One of these was by none other than the man who started it all, Kenneth Arnold, who reported seeing a triangle UFO on July 27, 1966. Sometimes, Marler remarked, the triangle is reported to be flying flat-side first, with the point trailing behind. This makes no sense from a standpoint of aerodynamics, he noted. He left the audience with no grand conclusions, just lots of information.
There remained one event on the schedule, a panel on "Abductions and Alien Contact," featuring Kim Carlsberg, Mike Clelland, and Kewaunee Lapseritis. I didn't stay to hear this, as all three had given their opinions earlier. I heard just one brief snippet, when Kim Carlsberg was saying that her alien hybrid son had visited her briefly in her living room, but just once. However, he has stayed in regular contact with her, telepathically. And I thought, he's a good boy, even though he's off orbiting around the Pleiades or someplace, he's still thinking about his Mom.
He talked, of course, about the famous Belgian triangle UFOs of 1989-90. He acknowledges, however, that the famous one and only photo supposedly showing the triangle UFO, from Petit Rechain, is indeed a hoax. There is very little good video or radar data concerning the Belgian triangles, but lots of eyewitness testimony. He also spoke of several little-known triangle UFO sightings from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, back when the genre of the "triangle UFO" was not yet well-established. One of these was by none other than the man who started it all, Kenneth Arnold, who reported seeing a triangle UFO on July 27, 1966. Sometimes, Marler remarked, the triangle is reported to be flying flat-side first, with the point trailing behind. This makes no sense from a standpoint of aerodynamics, he noted. He left the audience with no grand conclusions, just lots of information.
There remained one event on the schedule, a panel on "Abductions and Alien Contact," featuring Kim Carlsberg, Mike Clelland, and Kewaunee Lapseritis. I didn't stay to hear this, as all three had given their opinions earlier. I heard just one brief snippet, when Kim Carlsberg was saying that her alien hybrid son had visited her briefly in her living room, but just once. However, he has stayed in regular contact with her, telepathically. And I thought, he's a good boy, even though he's off orbiting around the Pleiades or someplace, he's still thinking about his Mom.
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| The National Atomic Testing and UFO Museum in Las Vegas at the UFO Congress. |
In the Dealers' Room, the The National Atomic Testing and UFO Museum in Las Vegas had a table. In September of 2012 I wrote about this Smithsonian-Affiliated Museum's descent into UFO advocacy. Well, things have only gotten worse, as you can see from this photo at the UFO Congress. I'll have more to say about this later.
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| A possibly alien organism, and a possibly alien shoe |
This display at Art Campbell's table contains a bunch of stuff that might, or might not, be alien artifacts.
Notice that the paper on the table references a supposed analysis by "scientist Steve Colbern." Colbern has been working with Dr. Roger Leir to supposedly authenticate alleged 'alien implants' that are removed from under peoples' skin. The Colbern/Leir "Alien & Scalpel" table, with the big black tent behind it, was absent from this year's UFO Congress, after being present several previous years (you can see one such 'alien scan' in this YouTube video). It had been announced that A&S would be there. Quite likely this change was in response to complaints received from some women concerning alleged 'improprieties' inside the tent. Yvonne Smith announced that Colbern would still be doing 'alien scanning,' but in his hotel room.
Finally, adding glamor to the surroundings once again was Leda Beluche, a resident of New York City who works in the entertainment industry. She informs us that she is now a "Reverend," as well as a "healer," and she sends out Light and Love to all. Leda says that she has been contacted by producers of a TV Reality Show, who are interested in doing a show about her, documenting her life as an alien hybrid. Some people might call this an Unreality Show, but that would make it no different from a lot of what is already on TV today. As they say in show business, Break a Leg, Leda!
I'm more than a bit excited- I just received my alien & scalpel table starter kit in the mail. Now i just need a podiatrist to authenticate my future finds.
ReplyDeleteThe late Long John Nebel told me that Adamski had a special US State Dept. Passport, and lots of "Long Green" that he flashed constantly. Is it possible that George was a disinformation agent of some kind?? Nebel was suspicious of the tall tales of a lot of his interviewees and I think this skepticism was justified...
ReplyDeleteThe triangular UFO's are most likely top-secret military stealth blimps. Did David Marler talk about this or did he leap to the conclusion that they're alien craft?
ReplyDeleteSo you insist, Transpower, and you are welcomed to that opinion. But there's no veracious evidence that there ever was a "giant stealth blimp" as described in various anecdotes from thirty years ago. The "giant stealth blimp" MYTH is mere late-night radio and Internet baloney.
Deletehttp://badufos.blogspot.com/2013/04/that-citizen-hearing-on-ufo-disclosure.html?showComment=1367168374912#c8055228420606815289
Zoamchomsky: Check out this link--http://www.thestealthblimp.com/. I would be very surprised if the military were not working on this....
DeleteH2 has a great show about a new airship (in its Rise of the Machine series): http://www.history.com/shows/rise-of-the-machines/episodes
DeleteAs with the airship and flying-saucer myths, none of the long-explained "black triangle" reports--Hudson Valley, Belgium, Illinois--or the "giant stealth blimp" myth generally require an advanced-technology hypothesis. Like the ETH, it's a wishful-thinking, demonstrably false and unnecessary explanation for a fanciful abstract--a trufo--when there aren't any real "ufos" of any kind and never were.
DeleteI wouldn't take anything seen on the Histriony channel too seriously, Transpower, the test of a 1/2 scale version of the Aeroscraft, the Pelican, though deemed a "success," wasn't anything too demanding. Aeros had previously lost its DARPA contract, and only continued operations through the Pentagon's Rapid Reaction Technology Office slush fund. Aeros is said to be seeking funding to build a fleet of Aeroscraft. Good Luck!
DeletePopular Mechanics has a nice article about military aircraft mistaken for UFOs here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/ufo/4304207
DeleteSome triangles could well be the NOSS satellites that orbit in trios. Others that move only very slowly are simply triangles of stars. That's after eliminating the obvious aircraft.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ian, the NOSS satellites might explain some of the triangular sightings, although I don't think all.
DeleteTrans, there's an entire section at www.satobs.org that is devoted to identifying NOSS flyovers.
DeleteI take it that every eye-witness account of a very large(football field) sized black triangle floating slowly & silently overhead must be the rantings of some dellusional nutbag?
DeleteAll of those Belgian police & Airforce Colonel?
The appearance of black triangles in the last 25yrs has made a whole new sub-set of UFO craft. Whether it is military or alien,there is something very big,black & triangular in our skies.........
That's why it's called a myth and delusion, deano, you and others believe these stories are true when there's no good reason to think that they are. There's certainly no evidence.
DeleteEven the best "UFO" stories are mere anecdotes, and all of the "evidence" ever presented by Believers is really crummy.
So you see the problem? You believe in the existence of some extraordinary thing based only on highly fallible human perceptions and their subjective narrative creations. These stories consist of the teller's failure to identify an ambiguous visual stimulus, and the details are mostly confabulated afterwards according to a culturally supplied generic "UFO" script as it has grown, evolved and mutated over decades.
You know, like Betty Cash's attention-seeking simple-minded mashup of the Maury Island hoax and the Hills' flying-saucer "abduction" fairy tale. Both Bettys had read a lot trashy flying-saucer magazines and watched a lot of science-fiction movies and television. Or Terauchi's laughable "spaceship" scare over Alaska and the "UFO" myth and delusion-supplied and completely imaginary "scout ships" and the "giant mothership." Terauchi was so totally steeped in "UFO" mythology that he admitted to thinking of a famous "UFO" case even while his silly "UFO" scare was occurring!
Like you, they all had some level of difficulty distinguishing fiction and fantasy from our one scientific reality where "UFOs" of any kind do not exist and never have. No rational adult believes a bit of this nonsense, deano, the totality of real-world facts are incongruent with the existence of "UFOs." The idea that there could be unidentified objects of any kind haunting our atmosphere and nearspace and all the world not know it is absurd.
Even the best "UFO" stories are fundamentally unsound; the process of "UFO" reporting is questionable with ambiguity resident in every step; and the very idea of "UFO" reporting--that a failure to identify is worthy of consideration--is itself the very core of the absurd "UFO" delusion.
Please study this monograph and begin to help yourself out of your juvenile false belief about the world--your "UFO" delusion.
http://debunker.com/texts/black_box_approach_to_ufo_perceptions.html
I think I have told you all but I am an Ausssie carpenter. Ex surf-boat rower, Rugby League & Rugby Union player & 26 yrs in the construction industry. I had my own maintenance business for several years so know all about being "grounded" & your reputation is everything> for house owners, builders & construction/mine sites.
DeleteI can remember how I obtained every scar on my body except for one> a SCOOP mark. I didnt even know about such things until a couple of years ago when I started having nightmares & flashbacks. For years I was drawn/interested in Cropcircles & once I obtained a computer in 2012, on the same page was a Youtube video called "OZ Encounters". The very first segment sent shivers down my spine as I watched a case from the Central Coast, the very place I was living at the 94/95 event. Memories came flooding back of the blinding lights & humming/buzzing as described by the local Police Sergeant(who I knew) & several other witnesses, the local paper received dozens of calls.
I remember a huge fight with my fiance because I was 2 hours late> 2 HOURS missing time,she thought I had been playing up so I lied & told her I had dozed off on a mates lounge! At the time I didnt say a word because of the stigma, & tried to forget about it but it has always been at the back of my mind. The recent watching of the video confirmed the event>even on a documentary!
In Australia there isnt a huge commercialization of the whole topic as in the US. Rarerly do I see UFO magazines, & its only on the net , that I have found various sites & information.
When I found out about Scoop marks, I instantly looked down to the crevice of muscle on the side of my knee, a scar that had been there since a young teenager.
"OZ Encounters" also had abducted women with various scars,& a couple with the same scar in the same place!
So Zoam, it is very hard for me to deny their existence for I personally have had sleep paralysis & a Scoop mark while young
(thought they were nightmares) & a missing time incident that I have tried my whole adult life to forget that was confirmed on a Govt paid channel documentary with dozens of witnesses.
The more I have studied the whole UFO phenomenon, the more & ever more number of witnesses coming forward, especially pilots, astronauts & military & police, videos & abduction stories amounts to hundreds of thousands. What, we are all dellusional????
Looking at these just out of interest, there is the obvious 9/11 truth videos that surface.
Having worked on high-rise bldgs, examining the videos etc, it just doesnt fit the description> 4 inch thick 200ft steel columns do NOT disintergrate in mid-air> the CORE should have remained or at least fell sideways!!!
More digging & you realise the Silverstein insurance payout, the Bush family security,bomb sniffing dogs missing, eyewitness reports of explosions, WTC No 7?......& on, & on, & on....
This opened my EYES to the FACT that the US GOVT & MILITARY will LIE ,have LIED & are capable of LYING again!
Would they hide evidence of UFOs? ABSOLUTELY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Once you see ""33 Conspiracies Proven True"", I think that anyone who believes the US Govt on such topics are the ones that are deluded!
P.S. Have you worked for CIA,NSA or the like Zoam?
These days, if someone becomes a whistleblower, I tend to believe them!!
Zoam he say: “Both Bettys had read a lot trashy flying-saucer magazines and watched a lot of science-fiction movies and television."
DeleteIf that’s the case with Betty Cash, (a) I haven’t heard of it, which isn’t necessarily significant :-) and (b) where did you get this fact(oid)?
Betty Hill, as far as anyone can tell, read a number of UFO books *after* her experience, whatever that was, in the White Mountains, and *before* having the dreams on which all her claims were based. Insofar as TV was involved, the one bit of Betty & Barney’s story that can be pinned to that is *Barney*’s account of wraparound eyes, most probably absorbed from ‘The Bellero Shield’ episode.
Now, I don’t mind you trashing the objective veridicality of abduction claims, but you might at least argue from some basis of the known facts. If you have better—as in, any—evidence that Betty H was a devotee a lot of science fiction, you know something no one else does, and we’d all like to hear what it is.
As for this: “...they all had some level of difficulty distinguishing fiction and fantasy from our one scientific reality where "UFOs" of any kind do not exist and never have.”
This is the kind of insupportable knee-jerk claptrap that gives skepticism a bad name. What strange conception makes you think our reality consists only of “one scientific reality”? Yes, there is *a* scientific reality, but there are plenty of others besides, and no sane scientist pretends his methods & principles encompass them all. Maybe you think so too. Given to whom you’re responding, maybe you ought to say so.
UFOs certainly exist. ET craft, I’d agree, don’t, or at least not in our skies. I have a harder line than Roberto on that. And turning UFOs into ET craft don’t work in either logic or by the evidence. But there’s a difference between misperception & bad logic, and fantasy-proneness.
More precision, please, Zoam.
And there you go again, Deano.
DeleteYou have one unexplained scar on your body. I have more. I’ve never been abducted by aliens. It’s a leap of illogic to use that scar as evidence you’ve been abducted, no matter how many episodes of sleep paralysis or missing time you’ve been through. You thought you were having nightmares. Right first time, I’d guess. Otherwise, where is the chain of evidence that starts with a scar and ends with being kidnapped by ETs? It’s not there in what you’ve said so far. And I bet you can’t produce one.
And how you get from being a soi-disant abductee to 9/11 ‘truthers’ being right, and a comprehensive cluster of other conspiracy theories, I do not know. Doubt anyone else does either. I do not get easily from a man being a carpenter (doubtless a fine one) to his being able to tell how buildings like those at the WTC fell down improperly. But then they didn’t. They were built to fall down like that. No architect would build a skyscraper on Manhattan that, once structurally compromised, would fall over sideways. They did & do think about this kind of stuff you know.
But 9/11 is an aside, really. The point is, you never produce the chains of evidence that would join all this stuff together, never mind make sense of its components. Gissa break and try it sometime. O, and don’t believe everything you see on TV.
And then you say:
“The more I have studied the whole UFO phenomenon, the more & ever more number of witnesses coming forward, especially pilots, astronauts & military & police, videos & abduction stories amounts to hundreds of thousands. What, we are all dellusional????”
Different people have different motives, some of them highly dubious (Hastings, Greer, Bassett, Jacobs et al, ad nauseam) for promoting this stuff, and other different people have different reasons for choosing to believe it (mostly a paucity of knowledge and a surfeit of bad logic, outside personal stuff). “Delusional” isn’t always the right world. But mistaken, yes.
—Peter B
To Peter B, perhaps I didnt explain it too well, but this is hard for me to come to grips with as well. I am not a book promoter,in it for financial gain or fame > I just seek the truth.
DeleteAs a child I noticed the scar(wondering where I had got it). As a teenager I started having sleep paralysis,presence in the room etc.
When I was 24 & walking home to my future wife I was chased by a blinding light & something that was humming/buzzing very,very loudly & that was the missing time event.
All of these events I tried to forget about & concentrate on work,the family, business etc.
However at 43, & interstate chasing work, I started having flashbacks (triggered by a noisy buzzing air-conditioner). It was soon after this that I stumbled upon "OZ Encounters" video & the realization that it was describing the exact time & place where I had my missing time event!
It dawned on me that the unthinkable might have happened>abduction! More research & I found "SCOOP Marks" are an indicator as well. I looked to exactly the spot where my mysterious scar was & wham, confirmation like a sledgehammer!
So in reply to chain of evidence, I found a Govt channel documentary confirming that night with dozens of witnesses including a Police Sergeant (I Knew) inundated with phonecalls.Then I found out about Scoop marks>physical evidence this time, that cant be mistaken for anything else!
The point I was trying to make with 9/11,is people saw the planes, fire, collapse> end of story! I thought you were a skeptic?
No, those buildings were not designed to come down at all, including multiple air collisions. Even if the "pancake floor" theory was possible, the CORE would have remained standing. In videos you can actually see the top 20floors starting to lean & then disintergrate mid-air. Have another look.
Should Clapper be jailed for his lies in court about NSA spying?
As I often bring up on this site, it depends which side of the story USAF testimonies are taken as literal.
Do we believe Salas, & the missile shutdowns? Halt in the UK?
Or should we believe Carlsson, & his tyrade,book writing son?
The astronauts Cooper & Mitchell?
Or Jim Oberg from NASA?(another book-writer/self interests)
Bob Lazar & the recent CIA whistleblower(near death) about S4?
Or the govt, that has only just disclosed that Area 51 exists? But did apparently, after Lazar's revelations, acquire that much extra land around A51,that you need a telescope from the nearest mountain to make out anything.
My knowledge of Area 51 comes from the book by Annie Jacobsen. So by her motives as a book-writer,she is in it for self-interest/personal gain, & so we shouldnt believe a word of it.
It was a great read, & very plausible, but the explanation of Roswell Crash, being Soviet technology with medically experimented deformed Russian children as pilots, well, you gotta laugh......
Trained pilots mistaking Venus or Swamp Gas.........
Sgt Penniston mistaking a lighthouse.........
Mistaken is a nice & convenient word. But it cant explain the 1000s of videos, reports & abductees like myself who KNOW something has happened, have scars as physical evidence, a documentary with dozens of witnesses confirming the event & an ever growing community of military & public persons describing the same events on a global basis.
The best way (possibly) to resolve the Duke of Mendoza - Deano battle is to put a few specifics to Deano directly:
DeletePlease list, in order of strangeness, your best five UFO cases - you know the ones that defy every earthly explanation as you see it.
Please also realise that in the event of the Duke, or anyone else, giving an explanation of all these five, or referring you to a source that does this adequately, you may NOT then choose another set of cases to reinforce your argument. If these are your best 5, then any others are, by definition, inferior to them.
I accept that rational explanations are not always acceptable to everyone. But come on - select your best five. Some people present their best ten, find most get demolished then try to add a few more in their place. Cheating!
Thanks cda, your feedback is appreciated.
DeleteI am not going to list any of the well-known like Roswell, Rendlesham Forest, Pheonix lights etc because these have been dissected enough by skeptics, though still not fully answered to me.
As I knew nothing of the "OZ Encounters" doco, till 16yrs after it was made , I am personally not in it, but one case is.
KELLY CAHILL Abduction
Kelly Cahill > in Victoria> nightime abduction after stopping car> scars> husband witnessed craft a few weeks later> same story as another woman with scars( unrelated but stopped at same road side incident of UFO) > photo evidence of fresh scars> evidence of craft landing/impressions in field
WESTALL PRIMARY SCHOOL (1960s Australia)
Daytime sighting of saucer landings>witnessed by students,teachers & neighbours> military involvement>principal held assembly & told everyone to forget>missing TV channel video>in Newspapers> military burned landing area(long grass)
JERUSALEM UFO (Dome of the Rock, 2011)
Originally 3 camera angles> sudden vertical take-off>light/brightness on Dome> red lights in night sky above> more camera angles have been produced(one Israeli weather cam)
***One shot is obvious fake (Mississipi woman), but this was the shot shown by most media channels::{why was it made so quick?}
***Hoaxkiller mirror tile effect is null & void > cheap phone cameras do this on edges. Someone explain the correalating brightness on Dome with moving cars in foreground. If real, close up shot is possibly the best ever of UFO (symbols are cropcircle-Barbury 91)
ARECIBO MESSAGE (cropcircle/glyph answer too)
Drake & Sagan(Seti) sent out message by radiotelescope into space describing man,population,elements,& the Earth in 1970s.
A reply appeared as a crop glyph in front of Chibolton Radiotelescope UK 30yrs later. Changes to human(4ft "Grey"),silicon was added in correct elemental sequence,different solar system,population but numerals/binary the same.
Although not a UFO event, the "Circlemakers", human pranksters have images of orbs & a craft on their website. No one has claimed ownership of this glyph.(How anyone could replicate this in the dark beats me) The interview Drake gives when asked about this is poor at best. The man who gave us the "Drake Equation", certainty of life in our own galaxy , doesnt seem sure about this one.
A year earlier was a glyph depicting their radiotelescope. How do pranksters make a weird pattern of something that appears in a glyph a year later?
No one has claimed the intricate glyphs that depict the human face, alien face with disk message that are created like dots on newspaper print or a TV image.
SAUCER CRASH (USA somewhere)
I think this was on UFO Hunters. A video of a brightly lit white object that ricochet's off the ground, skips another 200m -400m & then disintergrates into hundreds of pieces.
I dont know the source or incident name/event, but I would just like someone to explain whatever that was in terrestial terms.
Thanks cda , I am always up for a go at anything. Maybe these off the radar events will be taken as an info gathering experience, I learn a lot from this site, & hope others do too!
The Google Barge has been towed to Stockton, & as Google them selves state- " to have a little rest from the attention".
Mmmmm....dont most companies that pour $35million into a bldg,showroom want to have it up & running & open to the public as soon as possible?
I'll guess it will be fitted out with all its computers & generators in tranquil Stockton before being towed again. Anyone that comments about Stockton reckon its a rat hole full of thieves & thugs. A retail display? I dont think so.
I will definately be checking its progress!
Zoam, I too would like to know more about where you heard about: "... Betty Cash's attention-seeking simple-minded mashup of the Maury Island hoax and the Hills' flying-saucer "abduction" fairy tale. Both Bettys had read a lot trashy flying-saucer magazines and watched a lot of science-fiction movies and television."
DeleteI've looked for any evidence to support prior UFO interest and haven't found it. If events were fabricated, I feel it more likely they'd be working from "Close Encounters" or TV's "Project UFO" as source material. Also, I don't understand why you need to have Betty injure herself. Wouldn't it make as much sense to invent the story around the illness?
Lastly, Betty's narrative of the story was sketchy, so you should be considering Vickie Landrum as the architect of your hoax scenario. She had a more active role, and a developed narrative of the scenario from the beginning, and she was the one to contact police and NUFORC.
At the end of the day in this case, Col Sarran states that the witnesses were believable. So at least 5 witnessed the Chinook helicopters. The whole law suit rested on govt involvement so the helicopters were denied> Schuessler turning it into a UFO ,was the fabrication.
DeleteIf this wasnt a govt cover-up(Richard Doty style) then I'll drink that acid Zoam claims Betty drank!
Because of Schuesslers actions, I think this was the retrieval of a nuclear powered satellite> revealing this would send the public into a panic.
Is it necessary to prove when or from what sources Betty and Barney acquired their knowledge of the narrative tropes and motifs of the culturally ingrained flying-saucer myth and "UFO" delusion? No! No more than it's necessary to prove that they had seen Menzies' colorful "Invaders from Mars" or "Killers from Space," or had watched the "Frisby" episode of "The Twilight Zone" or the "The Bellero Shield" episode of "The Outer Limits"--as millions of others had in theaters and drive-ins, and on TVs.
DeleteWe know they did, or we can reasonably conclude they did because the probability of such similarities between these fictions and their confabulations is too great to be accidental and they are too specific to be by passive cultural osmosis. During their initial observing of the ambiguous colored lights, Betty said she thought she might be seeing a "flying saucer" because her sister had reported seeing a "flying saucer" two years before. And when excited Barney took the binoculars, claimed he could distinguish a crew of operators and exclaimed "they're going to capture us," Betty's retort was, "like on the Twilight Zone?" This self-referentiality--this incestuousness of fiction on reality, fiction become "UFO" myth on reality--is as damning to the Hill's credibility and the reality of their report as Terauchi's ludicrous Mantell reference.
Anyone interested has read Kottmeyer's 1990 deconstruction of the Hills' dreamlike flying-saucer "abduction" confabulation--supposedly based on Betty's notebook of "dreams"--in which nearly every plot device and motif is drawn, no stolen, directly from "Invaders from Mars," the whole of which is finally revealed to be "all a dream!"
So even if they weren't flying-saucer nutters before the purported event, they were certainly very well imbued with all of the narrative tropes of the "UFO" myth and delusion as it existed then--as it had in forms for millions not only since 1947 and the advent of the flying-saucer myth but for a half-century before in print and radio fictions. Only if the Hills lived under a rock, were they not Entirely Predisposed to the "UFO" myth and delusion; and from this predisposition was their very tall tale manufactured.
My High Strangeness, over fifty years after the Hills and already half that time since Kottmeyer's deconstruction, why would anyone still be clinging to the details of this utterly inconsequential flying-saucer "abduction" fairy tale? It's not as if one bit of it could ever have been true or it was worthy of more than a moment's consideration--followed by a knee-slap, exactly as if we had just heard another of Somerset Frisby's tall tales!
ufoolery is history already; let's make the "UFO" myth and delusion history as well.
Zoam continues: “Is it necessary to prove when or from what sources Betty and Barney acquired their knowledge of the narrative tropes and motifs of the culturally ingrained flying-saucer myth and ‘UFO” delusion?’”—and answers “No!”
DeleteGranted, but only up to the point that it’s no longer possible to *prove* any of this. But it will *not* do, in my view, to proclaim these things as givens in the theorem, on the (admittedly not unreasonable) assumption that “We ... can reasonably conclude they did [get their story from popular culture] because the probability of such similarities between these fictions and their confabulations is too great to be accidental and they are too specific to be by passive cultural osmosis.”
I think JK Galbraith had a point in ‘The Affluent Society’ when he said that the best way to wreck his opponents’ arguments was to take them on their own terms and show where they led. So *if* (as you initially gave the impression) you had had some hard evidence with which to trounce defenders of the reality of ‘alien abductions’, it would have been useful to have it. But you don’t. You have a reasonable argument from logic, but said defenders are not logical. They also have a point (when it ccomes to proof) when they point out that immediately after that mention of ‘The Twilight Zone’, Betty H tells Dr Simon that she never saw the programme. She steadfastly maintained thereafter that she & Barney didn’t watch that kind of thing.
Now, it would be nice to be able to stick out a foot & trip up said defenders with some documented evidence to the contrary. But you don’t and, it seems, you can’t. Pity, but so it goes. But you give skepticism a bad name by thrashing away, rather crossly it seems, as if these things you mention are proven. They’re very convincing arguments, to me and many another, but they are not proof.
I wonder if you have read—or read carefully enough—that excellent volume ‘Encounters at Indian Head’, edited by the late Karl Pflock and yours truly. In so many words a couple or three of the contributors demonstrate why “anyone [should] still be clinging to the details of this utterly inconsequential flying-saucer ‘abduction’ fairy tale”. Marty Kottmeyer is one. The devil is in the details, but surely it is clear enough (look around you: ask Deano) that very large numbers of people do think the Hills’ story and (the devil in the generality) the many that have followed it, are not “inconsequential” and are certainly “worthy of more than a moment's consideration”. Don’t you think *that* is a strange enough fact to be worthy of consideration—especially granting (as I would) your assertion that not “one bit of it could be true”?
So—are all those believers just idiots, bereft of all rationality, swivel-eyed in their delusions, & not worth a piss in a boot? Or might their beliefs be a way of trying to tell themselves and the rest of us something, however obliquely? Why do people believe this stuff—particularly those who haven’t had the privilege of being ‘abducted’? Don’t you think that therein lies a potentially more interesting, yea more subtle, approach, than your bilious style of rejectionism?
Now, give us your spiel on the Cash-Landrum case.
—Peter B
Believing is Seeing
Delete[the two Bettys, Terauchi, and other flying-saucer myth Believers become famous witnesses to belief in the myth] all had some level of difficulty distinguishing fiction and fantasy from our one scientific reality where "UFOs" of any kind do not exist and never have.
"This is the kind of insupportable knee-jerk claptrap that gives skepticism a bad name."
No, that is real skepticism. Though anyone might see something that they fail to identify, it's not astronomers and other scientifically literate skeptics who report "UFOs," the subject of a fossilized pseudoscience and exhausted popular delusion.
"What strange conception makes you think our reality consists only of “one scientific reality”? Yes, there is *a* scientific reality, but there are plenty of others besides,"
From what one and only scientifically informed reality do you imagine any other?
"no sane scientist pretends his methods & principles encompass them all."
Our one scientific reality consists of the continuously evolving totality of facts. We know the world as it is, informed by science, and that all is what we know.
"UFOs certainly exist."
People make "UFO" REPORTS, that doesn't mean there are any real "UFOs" of any kind. "Unidentified" cannot be an identity; the set "UFO" is empty. And the very idea of "UFO" reporting--that a failure to identify is worthy of consideration beyond breakfast-table conversation--is itself the very core of the absurd "UFO" delusion.
It's a complete non-issue, as rational persons knew in 1896 and in 1947. The Null and PSH of "UFO" reports are only that practical good sense formulated to counter and explain popular irrational belief in the "UFO" myth and collective delusion.
"More precision, please, Zoam."
My Old Peculier, please. Without much more information, which is highly unlikely, any more precision is not possible; and, as I tried to show, what we do know in abundance in a real-world context makes more precision unnecessary.
Over a century of "UFO" reports has not produced one bit of veracious evidence of anything extraordinary, much less a real "UFO" of any kind.
CC; As long as you suffer under the delusion that Betty Cash's crude hoax was something more than tabloid trash in 1981--when skeptics long ago determined it to be only that--then there's no point in feeding your fascination with this rubbish.
DeleteInvaluable old-time debunking paid believers in the "UFO" myth and delusion the compliment of rational opposition, Scientific realists know they're not even wrong.
Z, thanks for responding, even if you dodged answering. I know of several prominent skeptics who are interested in the Cash-Landrum case, and would like to see any further evidence. Your allegation that it is a media-inspired hoax does not fit the facts. Just as UFO believers have done, you've fit the story into your dogma and ignore what you don't want to see.
DeleteClaiming it is a crude hoax is no more valid than the legend that it was a nuclear-powered secret project. Both zeros without evidence. At least come up with a hypothesis that matches the facts.
Is this Betty & Barney Hill, we are talking about or Betty & Barney from the Flintstones?
DeleteWasnt the Hill case the first abduction report that involved sperm samples & a needle into ovum/womb procedure?
Even Hollywood couldnt have dreamt up this one. Exposure to TV, films & magazines to perpetuate some sort of global delusion?
I watched "Close Encounters of the 3rd kind" when I was young,but that had nothing about operations,scoop marks, implants or bedroom abductions in it. It did have Hynek(Bluebook) playing an extra but he wasnt surrounded by Swamp Gas either.
Scientific reality? Press any one of these scientists on the origin of life on earth according to evolution, & their response is "Directed Panspermia". Life from an asteroid guided by an alien intelligence.
Drakes Equation>certainty of life in our galaxy.
And as for scientific observation, there are numerous videos of UFO s making incredible changes of speed & direction that have no earthly or human piloted explanation.
Poor Betty Cash, she must be rolling in her grave. A senior police officer witnessed the Chinooks that night as well, is anyone calling him a liar or delusional?
UFO or not, the case revolved around the helicopters not being there when they actually were.
Peter B;
Delete"In making her argument that her dreams [were] accurate memories of events that really happened, [Betty] admitted that the dreams may have, at least partially, been the product of her imagination" [or more likely, the product of her conscious, if jumbled, memory of entire scenes of "Invaders from Mars!"--zo]
And when excited Barney took the binoculars, claimed he could distinguish a crew of operators and exclaimed "they're going to capture us," Betty's retort was, "like on the Twilight Zone?"
PB: "She steadfastly maintained thereafter that she & Barney didn’t watch that kind of thing."
Yes, but then the Hills don't appear to be sterling examples of honesty, do they? Some deep emotional trouble had been stewing even before their wild journey, and it was necessary in their battle for transcendence to paste over the jagged reminders of their troubled life in the construction of their "Contactee" existence. Anything that might expose the bones, the derivation of their new lifestyle was denied; but occasionally, Betty would expose a fact underlying its conscious creation.
PB: "But you give skepticism a bad name by thrashing away...as if these things you mention are proven. They’re very convincing arguments...but they are not proof."
I don't think that making rational, real-world conclusions based on all available, virtually complete, and all that's necessary evidence about extraordinary (or extraordinarily ridiculous in this case) claims gives Scientific skepticism a bad name. The "trials" of these "UFO" cases are akin to that of courts of law in which a logical argument made on circumstantial evidence is all that is required for decision. And considering the always fallacious and desperate case of some imaginary opposition--irrational advocates of a fossilized pseudoscience and exhausted pop-culture delusion--to whom I am not speaking, is not necessary.
PB: "very large numbers of people do think the Hills’ story...are not “inconsequential” and are certainly “worthy of more than a moment's consideration”. Don’t you think *that* is a strange enough fact to be worthy of consideration"
These are very different things: "Inconsequential" to the world of fact and so not "worthy," as I said of the Hills' tall tale; and your not "inconsequential" in number so "worthy" Believers in the myth; and then the unrelated fact of their existence in the world as "worthy" of consideration. Good One! False; False; so True.
Yes, the longest-running collective delusion in history demands the attention of sociologists and psychologists.
PB: "So—are all those believers just idiots, bereft of all rationality, swivel-eyed in their delusions, & not worth a piss in a boot? [Straw-man]
"Or might their beliefs be a way of trying to tell themselves and the rest of us something, however obliquely? [Not a Chance!]
"Why do people believe this stuff—particularly those who haven’t had the privilege of being ‘abducted’? [The mythology of a culture reflects its hopes, fears, intellectual and technological development. And in a short time, I say, these space-age dragons, mermaids, angels and demons will be just as toothless, impotent and silly to most people as their earlier expressions.]
"Don’t you think that therein lies a potentially more interesting, yea more subtle, approach, than your bilious style of rejectionism?" [Absolutely Not! As John Rimmer observed in 1967, the "UFO" is the neo-pagan symbol of antiscience. And "tis against that we are fighting!"]
PB: "Now, give us your spiel on the Cash-Landrum case."
A crude hoax manufactured by a sad pathetic neurotic for attention and money.
Sorry for the lateness of the hour -I meant to post this earlier for Deano.
DeleteDeano,
Part of the problem you have in making a point is that you jump all over the place and then try to relate seemingly unrelated things.
The government lies>9/11 thermite>JFK>they must therefore be lying about aliens.
To a lot of people, that sort of thing looks like gibberish.
Governments don't tell the public some things. This does not mean that every statement made by an agency is a calculated lie. It doesn't really indicate anything. We can guess at facts, but there is no unbreakable chain of logical processes that start with Gulf of Tonkin and end with hangar 18 alien bodies.
Things like 9/11 conspiracy theories are somewhat related to UFO cover-up conspiracy theories. They describe a mindset of the individual who subscribes to them. The obvious answer is eschewed in favor of the highly unlikely.
Here's a question: If the Gov. devised the 9/11 attacks, why didn't they immediately come forth with the whole controlled-explosion idea? Wouldn't they have had a ready-made explanation blaming it on terrorists? Why not use the convenient excuse instead of feeding the fires of conspiracy buffs by denying everything?
Another one: Why do scoop marks mean abduction? Is there no other conceivable way to get such a scar? It reminds me of the great line from Ghostbusters: "you're right. No human being would stack books like this."
If something is not undeniably due to a certain cause, because, for instance, the cause itself is pure speculation, it cannot be used as evidence of that cause.
Since Curt has devoted himself to C-L and wants us all along on his misery trip:
Delete"We thought it was the end of time." --Betty Cash
"If you see a man it's gonna be Jesus." --Vickie Landrum
Curt; If you don't see the unintentional hilarity--and self-exposing tell--in those unnecessary details added to this flying-saucer fairy tale for pure effect, then you might be just a bit too... credulous!
Exactly like the ridiculously stupid and impossible details of heat and radiation, which--if true--would have burnt them immediately and killed them in days! And the very same is true of every other bit of their fantastic celestial, and horribly noisy, event over northeastern Houston that somehow tens of thousands failed to observe, an event that--if real--would have made LIVE TV news but didn't!
"...over toward Crosby and Intercontinental Airport was the way they were."--BC
Yeah, right, Betty!
And let's hear that East-Texas drawl again: "We thought it was the end of time."
Curt; Most if not all of the skeptics here, Gary Posner and Phil Klass think C-L was a hoax, none or very little of their story is true or that it could not possibly have happened the way they tell it, and that their superficial injuries were self inflicted. Now, how is what I've said about this crude hoax substantially different?
And how can determining that it was a crude hoax and none of it ever happened be comparable to credulously believing that it all happened as they say and the flaming object the size of a water tower was a nuclear-powered black project? That doesn't make sense. It's Betty's simple fairy tale that has ZERO evidence.
As I said about flying-saucer fairy tales that offer photos as "evidence." Once the hoaxed photo is exposed it becomes real evidence that the saucer story is a lie. Without real-world corroborating evidence of any kind--no possibile helicopters--their injuries become real evidence of only one thing: Hoax for attention and with the hope of monetary gain--always the main motivators for dumb "UFO" hoaxes.
Repeating here, so you have an opportunity to address points unanswered:
And for a sketchy, hackneyed, scripted "UFO" fairy tale for which there is not a single bit of supporting evidence, and that real-world knowledge, experience and circumstances indicate not only the high implausibility of a real event but hoaxing by the purported "witnesses," what can be the only logical determination, Curt?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In logic, probability, and in real-world practical skepticism, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. So evidenceless "UFO" stories aren't simply unproven, they're rightly dismissed as having never occurred. "Feelings" about some truth to the story are irrelevant.
You want science? The default position for any proposition/claim is the negation of that claim, the Null hypothesis. Show how any part of Betty and Vickie's highly implausible story--an utter and complete negative factually--could be true, okay?
Now insult me more, call me names on your blog for bothering to speak with you about your obsession over what was never anything more than a crude hoax for attention and money become inconsequential tabloid trash in 1981. Belief that it was more than that and obsessing over the details thirty years later is pointless.
zoam, thanks for your views. I have taken the liberty of featuring them on a new entry at the site, where I hope it will spark further discussion. Please take a look, and I welcome your comments.
Deletehttp://www.blueblurrylines.com/2014/03/skeptic-proclaims-cash-landrum-was.html
I’ll get to some details about B&B Hills’ case in a minute, or maybe a couple of days, but meanwhile a few general points. Such as:
Delete“Our one scientific reality consists of the continuously evolving totality of facts. We know the world as it is, informed by science, and that all is what we know.”
That’s true only as long as you regard these ‘facts’ as the ‘facts’ that science can investigate. Which would suggest that you believe the world to consist only of facts with which scientists can do something, or about which the body of knowledge that we call science has had something to say. But science can’t do & scientists can’t say much with or about the facts of Dante, Bach, Pieter Breugel (et many alia: the list is long), most human passions, the religious impulse, and various responses to them, or maybe even the mood swings of my cat Esme Weatherwax, blessed be she.
‘Truth is beauty, and beauty truth; that is all ye know, and all ye need to know.’ I quote Keats from probably inaccurate memory, but I’d like to know what ‘science’ can do with that, in the terms you use.
If on the other hand you are using the word ‘science’ in its strict etymological sense of pure knowledge, then we are talking at cross purposes, or you are using a quasi-private language, or you’re hiding behind singular meanings in order to stay on top (not sure what of). Or, you are using ‘science’ as a cover-word for scientism, which is what New Agers do, disastrously; and if you call yourself a real skeptic you ought to know better (have done more homework).
These speculations partly explain why I say “more precision please”. To this reader, you speak in absolutist generalities. Generalities never solved a UFO puzzle, any more than denouncing this, that & whatever as a “crude hoax” does. Each case, as Ian R has rightly pointed out, has to be treated on its own merits. There may be no merits left at the end (fine!—no change there, then), but the discovery of what inspired someone to think there were any in the first place is a contribution to the sum of human knowledge.
Then we have: ‘People make "UFO" REPORTS, that doesn't mean there are any real "UFOs" of any kind.’
As long as the UFO reported remains unidentified (and when identified it may turn out not to have been flying, after all—have you seen Wim van Utrecht’s suggested solution to part of the Cash-Landrum case?) it remains a UFO. The set “unidentified” is full of unidentified things. The quantity of its contents may fluctuate (let’s not go near quality), but there’s no shortage of unidentified things in any field of enquiry. One of the few sensible things Allen Hynek asked about UFOs was “Unidentified to *whom*?”. From which one may calculate that for some people that ‘unidentified’ set may be very full, but for others it will be relatively empty. Mine’s full of insects, but relatively empty of horses. Why is this all so hard to get across?
[More follows]
You seem to think I am arguing in favour of UFOs=ET, that the Cash Gang saw a disabled chunk of secret radioactive something-or-other, that B&B Hill were abducted, and G-d knows what-all else that, it should be clear from what I’ve said on this thread alone, I simply don’t countenance. And meanwhile you make other broad generalizations (e.g. about crude hoaxes) that you not only can’t justify but justify with empty phrases such as “what we do know... makes more precision unnecessary”. Not when your radical imprecision, as Curt C has indicated, don’t fit such facts as are known, it don’t. It remains rejectionism. OK, fine, but why not be straight about it? Would that be because your own thinking is somewhat imprecise?
DeleteOn which, let me expand. You repeat, pretty much ad nauseam, the phrases “UFO myth” and “delusion”. As a devotee of the PSH you ought to know the useful, anthropological meaning of ‘myth’, but I see no sign of that; just a loose colloquial usage. I don’t necessarily disagree with the ‘delusion’ bit, but you seem happy to stop there, along with the derogatory connotations of the term. And I keep seeing in ghostly letters the words “snare and” to the left of your word “delusion”, as if some Limb of Satan lurked behind the notion. I insist & persist in maintaining—not very controversially, I’d have thought—that delusions have causes, and the *causes* (because I am an unreconstructed PSHist) are what make ufology interesting and a potential source of fresh knowledge. That has nothing to do with the reality or not of ‘UFOs’ themselves, or whether or not a reported case is based on a mistake, a misperception, an hallucination or a hoax.
And that’s why I am bugging you, too. You are *not* dealing with a ‘scientific’ subject (whatever the UFO buffs may think), in which reductionist & parsimonious principles apply in the way you seem to think they do (and which the UFO buffs seem not to understand from the get-go). So what is the point of your seemingly one-dimensional, one-note tune ? What are you really raging against, and what are you trying to defend, and why? What is achieved by it? This enquiring mind would like to know.
—Peter B
Peter B;
DeleteThank you for reading my post and for your thoughtful response. Except for a few points and definitions, as PS skeptics we are in much agreement, but I'm more a hard realist of philosophy and astronomy, not a skeptical Fortean writer.
“Our one scientific reality consists of the continuously evolving totality of facts. We know the world as it is, informed by science, and that all is what we know.”
See the early Ludwig W, "The World (the Universe) is the totality of facts...;" Anscombe and Searle on Brute facts, Institutional facts and Scientific facts; and Searle on our consensus social reality, known generally as Scientific realism. This is the foundation of the World and all that can be known and said about it.
_________________________________________________
People make "UFO" REPORTS, that doesn't mean there are any real "UFOs" of any kind. (Final negative determinations on purported extraordinary events are possible--despite the popular myth that all issues must remain undetermined.)
It's called the Null hypothesis. Over a century of "UFO" reports--taken at face value--might seem to indicate something extraordinary; but since all but a few can be easily explained to the satisfaction of rational people, no real "UFOs" exist. And no one has been able to falsify that parsimonious determination.
The phrase "UFO" myth and Collective Delusion is used repeatedly because that's exactly what it is. A myth is a widely held but false story about the world, and a collective delusion is that myth, that fund of false beliefs, as it subsists in living populations. A "UFO" report is the local expression of that delusion.
See Hartmann, Sheaffer, Oberg, Sagan, Bartholomew and the Magonians.
_________________________________________________
About any "UFO" report, I said: Without much more information, which is highly unlikely, any more precision is not possible; and, as I tried to show, what we do know in abundance in a real-world context makes more precision unnecessary.
Which means that a thorough examination of the data will ultimately exhaust it.
Any "UFO" report however ripe will ultimately be so over-explained that further examination is fruitless. And the very same is ultimately true of the entire myth and delusion. The mythology of a culture reflects its hopes, fears, intellectual and technological development. We've had a century of these toothless, impotent, silly and thoroughly exhausted space-age dragons, mermaids, angels and demons, and they've revealed nothing more than very well understood human wishfulness, ignorance and folly.
Let's get beyond the old PC cultural tolerance and sociological studies rationales. Instead of dwelling in and feeding this decadence, let's move forward, please, I say.
Invaluable old-time debunking paid believers in the "UFO" myth and delusion the compliment of rational opposition, Scientific realists know they're not even wrong.
Your very reconstructed psychosocial theorist, admirer, and Bad Skeptic, zoam.
That girl Leda Beluche is clearly an alien-human hybrid. Her bi-colored hair proves this. Don't kid me that having both blonde and pink hair strands is possible for homo sapiens. Now you want her to break her leg! What a cruel idea. Which leg anyway, the homo sapiens one or the alien one? You realise they would require totally different repair methods.
ReplyDeleteThis skeptic says the very curious appearance of Leda Beluche is the result of a much more earthly and mundane hybrid breeding program: that of human female and troll doll.
Deletehttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/93/Wizard_troll_doll-low_res.jpg
Leda the "Nordic" could abduct me anyday! (No Probe jokes thanks)
ReplyDeleteMaybe we could party on the deck of that Google Barge as it heads to Stockton!
Leda looks like she has a accumulated lot of "mileage", but yet to be determine if said mileage is terrestrial or galactic...
ReplyDeleteCDA, forget the pink hair strands, I want a peek at the location of her tattoos. I sure that's the location of the alien implants, or other implant...
Jumping in here late -- Deano, it sounds to me as though you had an experience you can’t explain and are looking to use other peoples’ experiences to validate your own. This happens quite frequently - for example, Nick Pope and Gary Heseltine are past UFO experiencers who have now become UFO promoters, presumably in the hope of finding some explanation for their own incidents. Hence we see a great deal of subjectivity and emotion in their approach, as we do in yours, and hostile reactions when their assumptions are questioned.
ReplyDeleteTrouble with this approach is that, even if someone else has a story that may sound superficially similar to your own, there is no guarantee that there is any connection at all. UFOlogists make this mistake all the time. They try to bolster cases by throwing into the mix any other sightings in the same area, or around the same time (e.g. Rendlesham and Cash-Landrum), or of the same type (e.g UFOs and nukes). This is a bad principle, as each sighting has to be treated on its own merits. That’s why evidence in a court of law is admissible only if it is relevant to the case at hand.
But UFOlogists will never accept this principle, as they like to argue that “not all witnesses can be wrong”. Well they can all be wrong, and most of the time we can quite easily tell that they are.
Thanks, Ian & Jozz—your answers to Deano have saved me some labour. Re: Ian's comment "Trouble with this approach is that, even if someone else has a story that may sound superficially similar to your own, there is no guarantee that there is any connection at all. UFOlogists make this mistake all the time"—I'd just like to add that ufologists also make the mistake of joining up a number of experiences that one person has, but that seem strange & may be unprecedented to the experient, and make a ufo-mythology-related anomalous event teeming with ETs out of it. And some, like Deano, manage that without the help of anyone. So it goes.
ReplyDelete—Peter B
Brookesmith said to Zoam: "But you give skepticism a bad name by thrashing away, rather crossly it seems, as if these things you mention are proven."
ReplyDeleteVery accurate description.
Zoam is the exemplar of what fringe believers call a skeptic: someone who proclaims to know the unknowable. Zoam "knows" Betty Hill read UFO magazines pre-sighting because she MUST have read them. This is a crude eliminative argument: being that UFO buffs can't prove ET contact despite their many thousands of reports, therefore, Betty could not have met aliens, she must have read about them. But this is merely a hypothesis -- a starting point for searching for real evidence -- not a logical proof itself.
The illogical certainty of Zoam is especially strange for one who claims to be an adherent of philosophy. He is the opposite of true skepticism, which is exemplified by the sewing of doubt, which results in the suspension of judgement. I would recommend he read the early Socratic dialogues, and get a copy of Outlines of Pyrrhonism " by Sextus Empiricus.
Examination of the early Hill reports shows fatal inconsistencies with the later, well-polished version crafted by Fuller and Betty (and which Marden further tweaks). Much of the collaborative physical "evidence" was seen by nobody but the Hills, despite a long list of "witnesses" that Fuller never actually interviewed (he takes Betty's word for what these people saw). Nearly all this evidence is "missing," never presented to investigators, never even photographed. (We don't have any independent record of spots on the car, spinning compasses, broken watches, scuffed shoes, etc. We do have a torn dress, but it was not reported as torn in the early accounts!) I could go on and on.
Scrutinising wild claims on their own terms is usually enough to dissolve them. It is often unnecessary to set up a skeptical counter-narrative.
I just found the above and add this refutation to others made recently at
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/pdy4w56
Terry, like many today, fundamentally misunderstands ancient philosophical skepticism and confuses and conflates it with modern Scientific skepticism and then contends that both are represented by a single--and fundamentally flawed--form of radical skepticism, know-nothing agnosticism, Pyrrhonism.
I know that Betty was thoroughly immersed in the "UFO" myth because her narrative expressed so many of the motifs of the myth. That fact could not have been the result of impossible coincidence. The fact that Betty cannot prove her claims is not the basis for Scientific skepticism's positive argument. It already knows--has most plausible certainty, logically, astronomically and history of the "UFO" myth, PSH--that ET are not visiting Earth; and no matter how many Bettys come forth, their extraordinary claims will be met with doubt.
We all know a great many things with certainty. We know very well and make sound judgments regularly about what is most plausible and what is unlikely. Suspending judgment is reserved for what cannot be known. It's the delusion of certainty about objectively baseless and false beliefs that's the issue, Terry.
http://skepdic.com/skepticism.html
@zoam
DeleteI should add, gmail flagged your comment as spam.
Which means nothing except unfamiliar sender, Terry.
Delete@zoam
ReplyDeleteYou are not a rational person.
I'm eminently rational, as is evidenced, but that's not the issue.
DeleteThe issue is your misconception of Scientific skepticism. It is doubt, the Null position, about extraordinary claims in a world of certainty—not "doubt," the suspension of judgment, applied to all claims about the world and knowledge.
Scientific skepticism, realist common sense, has nothing to do with radical—fundamentally flawed—philosophical skepticism, as you mistakenly believe.