THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE

notdej

Honorable
It's great to believe- why not...



I did for many years until I started to look at it without the fantasy glasses on. I had to take mine off for a while to see what I was really looking at regarding the so called evidence. It seamed to be the logical thing to do due to the frustration of the lack of REAL proof/ evidence after (in my case) 40+ years of faith, hope & fantasy! Now they are off all the time. But I haven't thrown them away YET


For all the years us homosapiens have existed on this planet; not one piece of evidence has ever been submitted that would make a- <now skeptical> like my good self think again about ufos/ aliens & the supernatural in general. You know: <REAL EVIDENCE> -- not a story told by someone we should believe (via some form of lucrative media) because of who they are/ their position in life etc!> believe what you're told or don't kinda thing.


I'm here to find the truth/ real evidence of the supernatural in all it's diverse shapes & forms. Why are you here? Due to my opinions & approach; this is a question that's been asked of me many times over the years.


<the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence> is a phrase well used in discussions regarding ufos/ aliens & the supernatural. If you're here to try & find the truth via debate regarding ufos, as am I, then isn't it about time to re-evaluate this well used phrase? What needs to happen or not happen or how long will it take, 10/100 years before the well used phrase will be: <the absence of evidence can only mean evidence of absence>?


By all means keep the fantasy glasses on when reading through this thread. But out of respect for different opinions & approaches at least take one lens out for some kinda balance. See how it goes;)

Peace.


dej...
 

iwant2believe2

Honorable
I think I understand what you are saying, dej. I could be greatly misunderstanding but I hope not.

Unfortunately, logically, 'absence of evidence' can only be used as 'evidence' of absence if the negation being proved true is limited or finite in it's scope. For instance, statement A "P does not exist" can only be proved true if P is within one's knowledge or attainable knowledge. I can say "green men are not in my house" and prove that claim true because I can demonstratively show that there are none. It is a condition within my knowledge. Therefore, their absence is my evidence. Only limited negation can be proven. The statement "Extraterrestrial life does not exist" is a negation that can not be proven true by evidence of absence because the claimant is not making a finite negation within the scope of their knowledge. To prove this by way of 'absence of evidence' would necessarily require the claimant to be omnipresent because the assertion must be true in all possible worlds. So, logically, an infinite negation can not be proven.

However, because an infinite negation can not be proven true, the burden of proof always rests on the claimant who makes a positive claim, i.e. "P exists." Those who claim ET exists have the burden of proving the claim true. They must present evidence to support the claim. Whether or not the evidence presented is persuasive enough for a reasonable person to judge the claim depends on the evidence, the logic of the inferences drawn and, of course, the person. Some folks will consider the evidence while others will dismiss it...some use reason, others faith and still others won't even consider anything outside of their own preconceived notions.

That said, everyone will arrive at their own conclusions. I agree that we should all try to respect that.
 

SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
It's great to believe- why not...



I did for many years until I started to look at it without the fantasy glasses on. I had to take mine off for a while to see what I was really looking at regarding the so called evidence. It seamed to be the logical thing to do due to the frustration of the lack of REAL proof/ evidence after (in my case) 40+ years of faith, hope & fantasy! Now they are off all the time. But I haven't thrown them away YET


For all the years us homosapiens have existed on this planet; not one piece of evidence has ever been submitted that would make a- <now skeptical> like my good self think again about ufos/ aliens & the supernatural in general. You know: <REAL EVIDENCE> -- not a story told by someone we should believe (via some form of lucrative media) because of who they are/ their position in life etc!> believe what you're told or don't kinda thing.


I'm here to find the truth/ real evidence of the supernatural in all it's diverse shapes & forms. Why are you here? Due to my opinions & approach; this is a question that's been asked of me many times over the years.


<the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence> is a phrase well used in discussions regarding ufos/ aliens & the supernatural. If you're here to try & find the truth via debate regarding ufos, as am I, then isn't it about time to re-evaluate this well used phrase? What needs to happen or not happen or how long will it take, 10/100 years before the well used phrase will be: <the absence of evidence can only mean evidence of absence>?


By all means keep the fantasy glasses on when reading through this thread. But out of respect for different opinions & approaches at least take one lens out for some kinda balance. See how it goes;)

Peace.


dej...

Not a thing wrong with being skeptical.
I encourage it. However there is a point of extreme skepticism just as there is extreme beliefs.
I have always held that a good stance is one somewhere in the middle.
Not a total believer and not a total nonbeliever.
People who believe that some UFO reports may be ET visitor's are NOT ALL total believers. Some of us take a skeptical stance on a case by case basis...I do.
But to claim you have been at this for 40 years and are a total nonbeliever puts you in the radical or extreme skeptical group.
There is no fantasy in thinking some reports may be visitors from some other world. There are enough reports that are good enough to strongly suggest it and you should know that.
I think you do...and do not want to face that.....

Or you would not waste your time on discussion forums.
IMHO
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Accidents do happen, I think incidents or better said, accidents like Roswell were quickly swept up and remains hidden from the public...Maybe some of the tech we enjoy and take for granted today had an origin from the debris of that accident...I know, my paragraph here is pure speculation...:)
 

3FEL9

Islander
I Live with the possibility of E.Ts out in the universe. I just cannot dissmiss it, however few UFOs / Aliens actually been confirmed on Earth
 

Castle-Yankee54

Celestial
I have no doubt that there are intelligent races beyond our solar system that can travel between galaxies and maybe even universes......but I've not really found a convincing event that leads me to say that yes they are visiting earth.
 

Gambeir

Celestial
It's great to believe- why not...



I did for many years until I started to look at it without the fantasy glasses on. I had to take mine off for a while to see what I was really looking at regarding the so called evidence. It seamed to be the logical thing to do due to the frustration of the lack of REAL proof/ evidence after (in my case) 40+ years of faith, hope & fantasy! Now they are off all the time. But I haven't thrown them away YET

First of all notdej, we people have been left with a lack of basic fundamental knowledge by our own systems. In a single word: Traitors.

I sense aand empathize with the frustration and it's fair to say you speak for many people. What with the barrage of daily lies one is left alone to try to filter it out into meaning.

Truth is a fluid. What we think we know determines truth, but since all knowledge is fluid, so too is truth. Yesterdays truths are not todays truths, and todays truths will not be tomorrows' truths.

There is one truth we can be sure of. That antigravity exists, that there are ships which we the public are still calling UFO's, and that these vehicles have their origins in the Third Reich. There is also a war going on in space. The question I have is who it is with? We may find that the war in space is with our kind. Wouldn't surprise me personally, and that many of the UFO sightings are of these advanced but secret vehicles.

For all the years us homosapiens have existed on this planet; not one piece of evidence has ever been submitted that would make a- <now skeptical> like my good self think again about ufos/ aliens & the supernatural in general. You know: <REAL EVIDENCE> -- not a story told by someone we should believe (via some form of lucrative media) because of who they are/ their position in life etc!> believe what you're told or don't kinda thing.

Here you must be your own judge. Weigh the evidence and decide where the preponderance of evidence lies. I feel that this is mostly a personal issue.

I'm here to find the truth/ real evidence of the supernatural in all it's diverse shapes & forms. Why are you here? Due to my opinions & approach; this is a question that's been asked of me many times over the years.

The reaon I'm here is to give to others. Writing is what I do to give back as I approach the downhill side of my life.

Your opinion counts for squat unless you are a "court certified expert," and rightly or wrongly the reasoning is that those certified experts are supposed to have sufficiently high enough education and experiences in a specific field to be worthy of more than hearsay.

Do I think this is right? Nope I sure don't.

Opinions only have weight in discussions if they are matched with logic. and not dogma or dogmatic denial. You go overboard with this often, and make blanket denials. For example, you say; "REAL proof/ evidence ."

There is real proof, real evidence, and a lot of it. The question is, what it is proof of? The issue isn't the evidence. The evidence is there, the real matter at issue is how to analyze the evidence. The point of the discussion forum is to do just that. Sure it's true that I do know almost every fucking thing in the world, after all I am a thousand years old, but sometimes people surprise even me.


<the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence> is a phrase well used in discussions regarding ufos/ aliens & the supernatural. If you're here to try & find the truth via debate regarding ufos, as am I, then isn't it about time to re-evaluate this well used phrase? What needs to happen or not happen or how long will it take, 10/100 years before the well used phrase will be: <the absence of evidence can only mean evidence of absence>?


By all means keep the fantasy glasses on when reading through this thread. But out of respect for different opinions & approaches at least take one lens out for some kinda balance. See how it goes;)

Peace.
dej...

Here's what I'd say, it's hard to not be combative when you feel alone and attacked. Second, stop falling back on glib linguistic programmers speech. That's what this business is about absence of whatever is all about. It's not there to help, it's there to impede. Forget about it and stop using it because it's purpose is to stop free thought.

Again, there isn't any absence of evidence; what you should do is to call into question what kind of evidence is it? For example, people involved in crimes under criminal investigations will lie naturally, they will plant evidence, ect. You cannot make wholesale judgements. You have to take each case on it's merits.

I hope this helps. I myself have no doubt that aliens are visiting us. I also have no doubt that the USAF has flying saucers. Hell they flew right over my fricking head and all but waved to me. We have this technology. Have had it for a while. So have others. I've made a post saying who else has them, and I think that goes a long ways to explain a lot of mystery.
 
Last edited:

iwant2believe2

Honorable
I have no doubt that there are intelligent races beyond our solar system that can travel between galaxies and maybe even universes......but I've not really found a convincing event that leads me to say that yes they are visiting earth.

I have never seen definitive proof of extraterrestrial life. What I have seen is a lot of plausible evidence to suggest it is so. If we completely dismiss this evidence then we have no evidence to support ET life existing. However, that doesn't mean we have proven that ET life doesn't exist. It simply means, literally, that we have no evidence to prove it does.

But even if this tremendous amount of plausible evidence didn't exist...we still have two things. We have the possibility and the probability that ET life does exist. In fact, it is statistically in it's favor. Considering that, even if I dismiss all the speculative evidence, and in the absence of nothing else, I'm going to favor the statistical probability.

Finally, in our consideration of ET life, we may greatly err in defining what constitutes Life.
 

Dundee

Fading day by day.
The main influencing factor for me that is in favor of the existence of ET Life is very unscientific, and easily dismissed but is this.

I am far from a historian, but so far what I have read there seems to be a re-occurring theme...

At any point in history, science says....
  1. These are the facts, science says it it true.
  2. Society and current sensibilities of the times agrees.
  3. If it suits, the government agrees
  4. If it suits, the church(s) agree
  5. There is an (at the time) lunatic fringe that disagrees. (they are ridiculed as unscientific)

Years pass,
Science advances, we learn new things, old science is dismissed and we return to point 1
and half the truths we knew in point 1 are thrown away as incorrect, which then in turn
invalidates the previous invalidation's of points 2 to 5

Years pass, (again)
Science advances, we learn new things, old science is dismissed and we return to point 1
And thus the truth changes.
Now add in the fact that so much of Science fiction at some point becomes science fact.
Using history as an example, why is 2017 any different to 1600.

In my mind, nothing is impossible.
 

Gambeir

Celestial
The main influencing factor for me that is in favor of the existence of ET Life is very unscientific, and easily dismissed but is this.

I am far from a historian, but so far what I have read there seems to be a re-occurring theme...

At any point in history, science says....
  1. These are the facts, science says it it true.
  2. Society and current sensibilities of the times agrees.
  3. If it suits, the government agrees
  4. If it suits, the church(s) agree
  5. There is an (at the time) lunatic fringe that disagrees. (they are ridiculed as unscientific)

Years pass,
Science advances, we learn new things, old science is dismissed and we return to point 1
and half the truths we knew in point 1 are thrown away as incorrect, which then in turn
invalidates the previous invalidation's of points 2 to 5

Years pass, (again)
Science advances, we learn new things, old science is dismissed and we return to point 1
And thus the truth changes.
Now add in the fact that so much of Science fiction at some point becomes science fact.
Using history as an example, why is 2017 any different to 1600.

In my mind, nothing is impossible.

Nothing wrong with your reasoning here, but lets look at science more critically here because this word science is being tossed around without understanding what it is, and I don't mean just here, but everywhere and by everyone.

There is a major and on-going problem with what is being passed off as science. I'll be as brief as possible here.

Scientific process are only tools. These processes are susceptible to criminal invasion and manipulation. Results only have as much integrity as those whom apply them, and that's just for starters because there's more than one kind of scientific procedure used to elucidate truth.

There is a science to the art of investigation which has been refined through time. This is why I previously said that I don't agree with courts allowing "expert opinions," because this is really nothing more than "spectral evidence" put into contemporary form. Spectral evidence - Wikipedia

I assure you, expert opinion isn't there in our judicial system by accident. It's a tool for results and it's there with a purpose. I think that anyone has enough good sense to be able to judge for themselves how much weight to assign to a personal opinion. Also it's a grave error to think that just because someone has a PHD it makes their opinion superior, or that they are any more intelligent or logical than any other person. Your own opinion should not be prohibited from law simply because you're not a quote "certified expert."

The first thing a competent defense attorney will do is examine the integrity of the sciences and scientific techniques applied against their client. The police and courts are not above corruption, nor lab technicians, nor anyone else, and then there's just plain incompetence and carelessness, and worst of all those who use others for their own ends.

From the Thin Blue Line; "it takes a great prosecutor to convict an innocent man."
Corruption is what underlies the conflict in the so-called global warming issue.

Corruption is what underlies the UFO Phenomena and the issue of whether or not aliens walk among us. That's why I called them "Traitors," because this is supposed to be our government. Not a government for corporations and the wealthy.
 
Last edited:

Castle-Yankee54

Celestial
The main influencing factor for me that is in favor of the existence of ET Life is very unscientific, and easily dismissed but is this.

I am far from a historian, but so far what I have read there seems to be a re-occurring theme...

At any point in history, science says....
  1. These are the facts, science says it it true.
  2. Society and current sensibilities of the times agrees.
  3. If it suits, the government agrees
  4. If it suits, the church(s) agree
  5. There is an (at the time) lunatic fringe that disagrees. (they are ridiculed as unscientific)

Years pass,
Science advances, we learn new things, old science is dismissed and we return to point 1
and half the truths we knew in point 1 are thrown away as incorrect, which then in turn
invalidates the previous invalidation's of points 2 to 5

Years pass, (again)
Science advances, we learn new things, old science is dismissed and we return to point 1
And thus the truth changes.
Now add in the fact that so much of Science fiction at some point becomes science fact.
Using history as an example, why is 2017 any different to 1600.

In my mind, nothing is impossible.

I agree that nothing is impossible.....however, many scientific principals go back millennia long before the 1600s.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
There's much corruption in the scientific community too, recently this was once more revealed by these predatory journals that have recently become a huge problem and the scourge of academic publishing....

Fake Star Wars-inspired research paper published by several "predatory journals"

star-wars-1.jpg


Not all scientific journals are created equal. With the advent of "predatory" journals that seem legitimate but function essentially on "pay-for-publish" economies, some commentators are claiming we are facing a looming crisis in science. One journalist set out to test the credibility of several journals by writing a fictional research paper inspired by the science of Star Wars. Four journals fell for the joke and published the clearly absurd paper.


Fake Star Wars-inspired research paper published by several "predatory journals"
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Whats an example of a predatory journal?....never heard the term before.

The gist of its meaning to me is getting a paper published by certain 'publishing firms' without the vetting and validation of the content and claims...The star wars paper was I think intentionally slipped in the academic circles to get published in order to fish out these publishers who take the money and publish anything at all as if it's legitimate research...

In academic publishing, predatory open access publishing is an exploitative open-access publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimatejournals (open access or not).

Predatory open access publishing - Wikipedia

BEALL'S LIST OF PREDATORY JOURNALS AND PUBLISHERS

Hijacked Journals

'Dr Fraud' experiment
 

Castle-Yankee54

Celestial
The gist of its meaning to me is getting a paper published by certain 'publishing firms' without the vetting and validation of the content and claims...The star wars paper was I think intentionally slipped in the academic circles to get published in order to fish out these publishers who take the money and publish anything at all as if it's legitimate research...

Predatory open access publishing - Wikipedia

BEALL'S LIST OF PREDATORY JOURNALS AND PUBLISHERS

Hijacked Journals

'Dr Fraud' experiment

Thanks.....always like learning new things.
 

notdej

Honorable
There is no fantasy in thinking some reports may be visitors from some other world. There are enough reports that are good enough to strongly suggest it and you should know that.
I think you do...and do not want to face that.....

Or you would not waste your time on discussion forums.
IMHO
I feel I've already explained why I'm here in the OP... No, I'm not wasting my time because I live in hope that REAL SOLID EVIDENCE will emerge that is not 'JUST_A_STORY'!
You know: the kind of thing that will make the world go pheeew, & me! Is there something wrong in that!?
<<what do i class as REAL SOLID EVIDENCE?>> I here you ask; I think we'll all know it if/when it happens.
The kinda evidence that would blow away the smallest/ slightest doubts even the most staunch believers must have after 80+ years of (in reality) nothing!

People tell stories all the time. Hell, us humans are bloody good at it.....books Earn money for people as do documentaries/ radio & TV interviews etc. This is also where you me & everyone else get's their info on this subject! And in my honest opinion the reason why this subject still exists after all this time!
For this reason I'll always take this way of receiving data with a massive pinch of salt! Many in places like this will say: 'never believe what you read in the papers'== to me there's no difference.

It seems you're still having trouble understanding others feel differently about the info they look at...
If I felt it would change things for me then I'd be looking at it the way you do- as I did many years ago....but In reality, how you look at it won't change anything my friend;)

places like this will be around for many years, pondering/ looking at shit videos/ bringing up Roswell & The Hills AGAIN because there's nothing else to talk about! I hope I'm wrong & this subject is taken out of the 'strange phenomenon' category..

hmmm, hope spring eternal.

Peace.

dej...
 

Rick Hunter

Celestial
The main influencing factor for me that is in favor of the existence of ET Life is very unscientific, and easily dismissed but is this.

I am far from a historian, but so far what I have read there seems to be a re-occurring theme...

At any point in history, science says....
  1. These are the facts, science says it it true.
  2. Society and current sensibilities of the times agrees.
  3. If it suits, the government agrees
  4. If it suits, the church(s) agree
  5. There is an (at the time) lunatic fringe that disagrees. (they are ridiculed as unscientific)

Years pass,
Science advances, we learn new things, old science is dismissed and we return to point 1
and half the truths we knew in point 1 are thrown away as incorrect, which then in turn
invalidates the previous invalidation's of points 2 to 5

Years pass, (again)
Science advances, we learn new things, old science is dismissed and we return to point 1
And thus the truth changes.
Now add in the fact that so much of Science fiction at some point becomes science fact.
Using history as an example, why is 2017 any different to 1600.

In my mind, nothing is impossible.

Excellent post. I would like to add that, prior to the Enlightenment, it went something like this:

At any point in history, the Catholic Church says....
  1. These are the facts, the Pope or Metropolitan of Constantinople says it it true.
  2. If it enhances their position (very important), the government agrees and provides an enforcement mechanism.
  3. Science has to agree if government and the church agree; or face most unpleasant consequences.
  4. Society and current sensibilities of the time reflect the views of the previous three players, what else can they do?
  5. There is an (at the time) lunatic fringe that disagrees. (they are ridiculed as heretics and banished, imprisoned, tortured, executed, etc.) Sometimes, they manage to control kingdoms or countries for awhile though, especially if the sovereigns of said kingdoms and countries think they can get a better deal from the lunatic fringe.
 
Top