Originally Posted by JayUtah

How cleaver nf . . . pretty much what I expected

If your anecdotes are intended to be analogues to the UFO sighting phenomenon, then clearly they beg the existence of space aliens and their vehicles. And that question-begging is what I have been pointing out. An analogy that begs the question is no more illustrative than a direct argument that begs the question. Neverfly's conversion of your anecdotes to one in which the question is similarly begged (but clearly absurd) exposes the flaw both in your analogy and the reasoning it represents. You simply assume all the unknowns in your favor.

You warp the situation so that the aboriginal elders are portrayed as dismissing the witness from pure closed-mindedness, which we omniscient readers can easily detect by understanding that the witness saw an airplane -- something that actually did exist, but outside his experience. The elders simply declare it to be impossible because the observations and their implications lie also outside their own experience.

The aborigine witness is the analogue of the UFO witness; the elders are analogues to mainstream scientists. The witness is simply assumed actually to have seen something real and legitimately beyond his experience. No mention is made of ordinary phenomena wrongly interpreted, which is the most common UFO finding. The aborigine is assumed to have made a completely factual report to the elders, without ebellishment or interpretation. Again, this is not what happens in UFO reports.

For their part, the elders simply dismiss the witness out of hand, observation and all. This doesn't follow from UFO skeptics, who typically accept the observation but dismiss the interpretation. It also fails to address legitimate efforts by UFO skeptics to ascertain the strength of the testimony.

Further, the elders here say the implications of the testimony are impossible, which is an assertive claim; whereas mainstream investigators don't say space aliens and their vehicles are impossible, simply that there's no evidence specifically for that possibility in that or any other case.

A better analogy would be an aborigine who comes back to the village telling tales of flying objects and loud noises, only also asserting that it must be some new god they should worship. Naturally the village elders question that interpretation and wonder how the witness knows it to be a new god. After all, they should not abandon on a whim the gods that have cared for them for some time.

The witness then becomes belligerent and accuses the elders of only wanting to consolidate and maintain their power. He accuses them of calling him a liar, and says that since they're the elders they must already know of these new gods and have worshiped them behind everyone else's back. He accuses them of keeping the new gods' favor for themselves at the expense of the village.

And the witness stands on the stump in the center of the village every day, loudly repeating his accusations and telling his story over and over again, hoping that all the other villagers will sit at his feet and pay attention to him instead of to the elders, or to the hunters who are typically the ones who receive the accolades.

Does this sound familiar too?

Really, your analogy merely says, "If we could know for sure that UFOs were really alien spacecraft, then your calling those witnesses 'weirdos' who insist on that interpretation would be pretty improper." Well, we don't know that; so it isn't.