Isn't there also a stubborn streak in every believer of various phenomenon( UFO's psychic powers, cryptozoology, etc...) to accept the fantastic and choosing to ignore all the evidence against it?
There are quite a few explanations for every one of those that people choose to ignore in order to not alter their own perceptions. You can't look at these events with your blinders on.
You can probably split people up into three groups.
Believers-accept and believe any evidence that supports their personal views.
Sceptical-straddle the fence, want to believe but need solid proof that can be proven.
Non Believers- don't accept any evidence and think it's all B.S.

The biggest problem is that there are enough people out there who make claims that are so ludicrous that they're laughed at. Yet at the same time the believers will accept what they say as long as it supports their personal feelings. This ends up discrediting the people who have experienced true unexplained mysteries.

Look at the study of crop circles done several years ago. You had established credible scientists looking into the crop circle phenomemon. They came back that 98% were either fake or natural events that could be explained. That left the 2% that was established as being unexplained by modern science. Here was a great opportunity for the so-called crop circle "experts" to bring crop circles into the mainstream media as a serious event. Instead they completely ignored what was said, continued to verify the obviously fake and man-made patterns as real and guaranteed that crop circles wouldn't be taken seriously.

which is why there are skeptics to keep the balance.
I believe that there is evidence on both sides. But proof
precedes the evidence. You can have evidence as in
pictures, witnesses etc... whatever you consider evidence.

you forgot those believers that don't accept any other evidence which
might go against their personal views. The stubborn ones.
Then again, its always reasonable to present why you believe so that
people will not think you're a nut right away.

yes. some crop circles are fake. but does that mean that all are fake?

Exactly, sceptics are in many ways the bridge between the believers and the mainstream.


Actually I'll go along with 2% being unexplained.
There are various theories on whats going on, including one excepted by mainstream science. I just thought this makes a great example of where the fake experts screwed up and ruined the great opportunity they had.
In a way this ruins it for the rest of us. The one chance crop circles had of being taken seriously by everybody and it was destroyed.

Vel- Good to see you again! Missed you here.

Some people seem to think that belief and scepticism is an "all or nothing" thing- it isn't.

I believe in psychic abilities, re-incarnation, recording-type hauntings, sentient ghosts, ET's (and possible abductions)... but I don't believe EVERYTHING I'm told.

Most sceptics (the ones here for instance) take things on a case by case basis. They examine each case, and try to eliminate the known types of causes for the phenomena before simply saying, "I do believe that a yellow-breasted flying chupacabra dropped from a vortex of doom to steal these garden gnomes".

As long as people are involved (and thus human nature), belief and scepticism isn't as black and white as we may wish.

*says in a Darth Vader type voice*(only because I've always wanted to )

Apology accepted Norman

Vel,good to see you been back hun...stay longer please.
Thanks to Vel and Stewey for the things you have said.

I'm the same way for believing in the paranormal. Just a pick and choose type of believing. I'm going to read about the event, look at the events and then try to decide what's true and what isn't.



I constantly have that problem but I thought I was the only one.

Stewey and Alice thank you, it's good to be back.

You be the judge of things? See, thats where the problem lies!
But sometimes, you make a decision. "Is this likely? does this
fit in the picture, or does it make sense?" You are simply
convicted, and you say "Alright. I thought about it long and hard,
and I've decided that I will believe in (for example) aliens."
Since there are too many worlds out there that might have a suitable
environment for life to develop. So, its a possibility. What do you
gain if you believe in aliens? Your range of possibilities will expand,
and you will be able to question other possible truths also and
come to a fair conclusion.

Doesn't every single person have to be the judge of things?
If not we'd be on here arguing if the sky is blue with no one willing to commit one way or the other.

Some people are just poor judges.

I only base my opinion of things.. on facts. Nothing else. I may have a feeling that something is 'true' or 'fake', but until I know for sure, I keep my mind open for any possibility.

But with supernatural phenomena the "facts" can be just as confusing. Often the entire case is presented so that you can't even trust any so called "facts".
There's been so many hoaxes, that were pulled off so well it had the entire world wondering what was really going on. then it's always two rednecks from the backwoods sitting there going "ha ha, we sure fooled you". and when it's not a hoax you have so called experts who make it even worse. They'll throw their theories out there and they know how to sound just intelligent enough to make it sound almost plausible. Then they'll sit there and verify the silliest of sightings from the most untrustworthy of people. So how can you even determine what a fact is under that case?

Isn't that what a lot of us here do...keep an open mind?

I do

I'm with Stewey on this one. I be a firm believer in asking questions and that 'no man is at all hours wise'. If it wasn't for asking questions I wouldn't be where I am today. Where am I today? Ah yes, sitting at home replying to a cool thread! No seriously where would any of us be today without questioning something at least once in our lives.

The 'facts' I am referring to, are undoubtably true. Not hunches or theories or anything non-concrete. I base my opinions on true facts. Unquestionable data/info.

A good example about facts can be found in the Bible.
The story of Joseph in Egypt. After being sold into slavery
by his jealous brothers, Joseph was appointed to work for
a high ranked official in Egypt. The wife of this official had
an eye on Joseph. She asked that he would work for her also.
When she had an opportunity, she approached
him with desire. Now, few people in our time could pass up
an opportunity like Joseph had, but Joseph remained faithful to
God. He refused to have done anything sexually suggestive
with the official's wife. Since she was in charge of Joseph,
she commanded him to submit. But Joseph fled, and the officials
wife tore Joseph's garment. She screamed!
Then, when they both stood before the official, Joseph had no
chance of going away unpunished. The official looked at
the facts. "Hmmm. torn garment, wife in tears, slave begging
for mercy...... it could only be one thing! No, wait. I shall ask
my wife!" So, the official asked his wife about this. And she
defended herself, and blamed Joseph for this act.
"Now, even the facts are supporting what the wife says.
So, I shall kill Joseph!" But his wife asked him to spare the
poor slave's life. "Just throw him in prison."

Anyway.. this is a good example, of how facts can be incorrect
at times. Even facts that may seem logical may be wrong at times.

Okay so how about some facts that everybody here will consider to be true?

even then, it could be wrong.
But what can we do? We don't know everything.
But we try to gather information the best we know how.
But even then understanding ceases when it crosses the
line into... for example the supernatural.

Yeh! I kinda get what you mean

[attachmentid=6257]

Sort of Spooks ya, dunnit?

My goodness this has become another argument!! lol. I think the problem we are having here is that we have agreed that sceptics do need to exist to challenge a view, which will either debunk it or make it stronger, in this case sceptical people are not a bad thing. If a sceptic asks you about a particular post or belief and that post or belief is so well formed or supported that the sceptic agrees with you then between you the view, opinion, post, belief etc has been strengthened.

Now we are talking about facts... If anything there is no such thing as a fact. what we have is evidence. Now what a sceptical person will do is check the validity of a piece of evidence, which seems to be the logical thing to do, right?

For example if i take a picture of my friend in an alien suit and post it on here saying that "aliens must exist". What EVERYBODY should do is validate that evidence. "Is there anything that stands out...", "is anything missing..." etc etc

Without being rude and i apologize in advance, what i think you are doing Norman is exactly what you believe you are attacking sceptics for... closing eyes and ears and shouting "NO!" or in your case "YES!".

As a couple of people on here have already stated, I am a very open minded and accepting person. I have some very strong beliefs, but they are strong because i question them relentlessly and am not afraid to adapt my belief if it is obvious (to me) that they need to be adapted. I refuse to believe somebodies word on something... however, i will take what they have said on board and keep an eye out for any evidence that may be around to support what they have said.

That is a true sceptic.

If anybody does disagree, then tell me it may make me change my mind if its convincing!

Thank you Solomonkey for your words...you put it better than I did,and for that I am grateful.

Thank you once again.

No Problem AliceCoopersGirl, felt it needed rounding off a little!

Yes I too have something to say about the Goth thread.....I read right through that thread as it was of interest to me as I am a goth....I put my views in and Tull came along all the time trashing it....Now I know this is a topic that not everyone understands because it is a topic that some are skeptical about but if you dont ask questions , you wont get answers but Tull was being a complete pain in the butt over that one and I was quite insulted....
Fair enough, if people want to know why, where, how etc .....you expect to get some skeptism and so forth but there is a point where it becomes blatently obvious that some are just arrogant.

With Love and Light.

Deadly Nightshade.
xxx.

Okay so let's go ahead and look at facts then. I'll start off. Please join in and try to limit yourselves to only proven events.

Roswell- we know something crashed, we know that the original press release was for a "flying disk" that was then retracted with the weather balloon replaced as the "real" story. Those are facts which can't be disputed.

What we end up with though is a question of what's true. For myself both are cover stories for the real event.

If you really want to throw people off track you release a very sensational story guarrenteed to gain attention, then you release a cover story for the original cover story. Then people don't look beyond the original cover up thinking it's the true story when in reality theres another unseen layer.

Considering that the US saved numerous Nazi scientists in WW2 I imagine that could be a possible hint to what was really going on in Roswell. Especially if its true that the Nazi's had flying disks I imagine the experiments would have continued.

Yes that's all speculation but for me it sounds as plausible as anything else. Simply because I don't see why the government would choose to cover-up an alien crash. Where is the gain?

There is something more than the simply collection of facts and evidence, however. People have been dancing around this for the last several posts, but haven't really mentioned it outright. The interpretation of the evidence is where most of our mistakes come from. True evidence is imperical and objective, such as Norman's torn garments and wife in tears, however the interpretation is what makes us arrive at our conclusions. One person might decide that the story is clear, another that more information is needed, a third that foul play is afoot.

It is this third one that creates the greatest amount of outcry against the skeptics. How many times have we been accussed of close-mindedness? Of not wanting to believe? And yet, this negative approach is necessary. So necessary, in fact, that it is almost the exclusive manner in which forensic police approach an investigation. If one looks at evidence from the stand-point that what has occured is an unknown phenomena, then you automatically have to pin a certain amount of faith in the evidence; faith that may not be deserved. By believing the outcome to be unexplained, you have limited yourself to making the evidence fit the result, as opposed to letting the evidence lead you to a logical conclusion.

There are a great many unexplained murders in the United States on a daily basis. If, however, you were to approach these with the midset that they are unexplained, or the result of unknown forces, you will require and necessarily be open to various theoretical notions that can only be described through their possible effects, as they themselves have not yet been fully established by science. You would, by sheer admission of possibility, be forced to consider that a little green leperchaun was jumping from portal to portal, murdering people and vanishing in the blink of an eye. If, however, one approaches this from a negative standpoint, i.e. that an entirely human crime has been committed, things begin to fall into place. Evidence begins to make sense.

This is why skeptics are so often accused of thinking a phenomena is fake prior to proving it to be false; because, to a certain extent, it is true. If one approaches a phenomena with the idea that it is a government cover-up, or the product of aliens, then one has to bias the interpretation of the evidence with the notion that some of it may be planted by MIBS or that aliens have capabilities that we are unaware of. This limits the conclusions that you can reach, because the conclusion is already there and you are merely fitting the evidence you have in whichever way it can be supported (and, likely as not, abandoning what evidence does not support it). If, however, one approaches this phenomena as a hoax, then things begin to line up. If we focus on how college pranksters can create a circle in a wheatfield, as opposed to an alien technology, we suddenly are able to find many more answers than we had before. We are able to predict what sort of other evidence we could find, and upon finding it, confirm that our theories were correct, as opposed to not knowing what else aliens might have left behind.

I hope that I have explained myself adequately. It is essential for the skeptic to play the devil's advocate. It is necessary that he, or she, not have faith in the human perspective, but rather believe the worst of it, the lies, hoaxes, and scams, so that they, in turn, no be hoaxed themselves. It is not a foolproof system, by any means, but it does work the great majority of the time, which is all we can really ask for.

Aquatus...You make yourself pretty clear to me...And besides

You are a true Sceptic, and not one of these cynical disbelievers who keep wanting to express their (deluded) sense of 'superiority'.
You are not rude, you do not attack a person's beliefs and (most of the time) you know what you are talking about...Apart from 'crop circles' and mexican UFO videos.

Vimjams

I think that could apply to quite a few of us on here Vimjams,myself included.

You can not have believers without disbelievers,the two go together.

good job aquatus1

I'm impressed and you're completely accurate. The interpretation of events is what leads to the disagreements. We look at the event and all interpret it in a different way. Just like the crop circles which could be viewed as the work of UFO's, faeries, people or natural phenomena. But you do have to look at it first as a mundane event and start eliminating the possibilities until you have no explantion left except for the paranormal.

I meant no disrespect to you AliceCoopersGir...But make reference to a small band of 'inquisitors' who have a habit (and enjoy themselves) of putting people down for their sometimes (impossible) and outrageous beliefs.



I totally agree with this: The world would be a dull place for automatons if we all agreed the same.

Vimjams

Its almost official. I'm going to be a critic.

although i agree with most of the posts here, i think there is a fine line between being an open-minded skeptic and a skeptic

true. I HAVE COME TO APPRECIATE SKEPTICISM!
But I'd rather call myself a critic.
My future title:
Enforcer of criterion,
Critic of misconception,
and skeptic of ETs.

One thing is looking at the evidence with an open-mind opened to all posibilities, and the other is aproaching the evidence already believing it will be fake.

Open-mindedness is fine, but too many people mistake it for a system that can be used to verify credibility. Openmindedness will never help you narrow down a solution; quite the contrary, all it is really good for is the initial brainstorming. After that, open-mindedness needs to give way to analytical reasoning, investigation, and logic, so that the most likely answer can be found.

lots of skeptics are't open minded.

I agree- many sceptics aren't open-minded... but the same can be said about many believers.

I would rather see people having their beliefs- but being open to the possibility of alternate theories and ideas of what causes the paranormal.

Blind belief leads to stagnation because you can't think for yourself, and blind scepticism leads to stagnation because you're not open to new ideas.

having an open mind is good only when you have common sense.
Remember, don't keep it too open, or you'll get an infection.

i had a whole argument planned out, but i kinda forgot it

Very true Velivovsky,I suppose for if we didnt have disagreements and such then how would we learn???

Nightshade
xxx.

"If we do not question the reality around us, how are we to truly learn what that reality is?"- My Mom

Hi everyone,

this his a very interesting subject. But I feel here that the sceptic are not the problem but just plain irrespect or close mindeness on either part.

I was at one time a full believer in everything. The world his so full of possibilities and things yet not understood. I took the decision to believe in everything until proven otherwise. Needless to say I was walking on eggs and i bumped into a few walls I have learned that keeping a balance between believing and scpetisicism was the best way for me.

They are many people in this forum, and knowing that they are a lot of different people on this world, it his logical to assume that we will find many different kind here. Even those closeminded ''I am always right''.

Sad but true, there his nothing we can do about it.....we cannot change them, but we can change how we deal with them. We take what they have to offer and leave the nonsense behind, no need to make a war on subjects that are hard to defined, that cannot be seen. And surely not with them, we just waiste your time. And foremost, we have to not take this personnal, everybody are on there own road to understanding and enlightment.


I have found a very good site that talks about keeping a balance in our evolution and investigation of truths. I would suggest it to anyone who wish to keep a balance between faith and knowledge...

http://www.montalk.net/metaphys/42/princip...volution-part-i

We all need a bit of both, faith for when knowledge fails, and knowledge to make sense of our faith.


Nice meeting all of you and I look forward to exchange more

One should always look at things from all angles because one will never condition thieirself into looking at all the possibilities otherwise.
We never know whats around the corner.

very true (Nightshade)

And yet, possibilities are such a small step in an investigation. They hardly rate the importance people seem to be giving them. When you are researcher, you most certainly do not bother with every single possibility, or you will never be able to get anything done. The only possibilities that a person doing an investigation entertains are those that are being supported by either imperical evidence or logical deduction. One cannot justify a phenomena that has never been shown to independently exists purely on the argument that it is a possibility. If the phenomena is no being supported directly, then it cannot be considered a possibility.

Hi
I think there is a possibility to everything unless proven otherwise and only until then, one should keep an open mind.

With Love and Light

Nightshade
xxx.

I cannot agree. One cannot put the conclusion before the evidence. The evidence must lead (or, if you must, "prove") that the possibility is credible. Otherwise, the search grinds to a halt, as there a million possibilities that can never be proven false (proving a negative is one of the hardest things to do in science, and is rarely worth the time and effort it entails).