So, the amateur astronomer who looked through his telescope and saw two unidentified planes/jets/whatevers separating is credible and not suffering from optical illusion, but Fife and everybody else who saw the same thing were experiencing "mass optical illusion"? Is that the point you're wanting to make?

I should ask what point you are trying to make. Are you aware of errors in human observation, especially in regards to dark background, pinpoints of light?

__________________
---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

Why not? The amateur astronomer had the tools to take a closer look, right? He also spends more time looking up than the average person, right? Isn't it, therefore, reasonable to assume that he was able to get a better view of what was there?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Hey LotusExcelle, I'm not trying to make a point. I'm just trying to understand the different points of view. Gillianren, that depends on the amateur astronomer. What he saw is way different that what hundreds of other people saw. I guess in this situation, we're all going to tend to believe the point of view that most closely matches what we came here with. I'm not defending Fife or "the sighting". In fact, I don't know how I got myself into this situation! I'm going to slide out of this thread now and head back over to the Questions/Answers forum. I actually need to get some work done too, if you can believe that. Thanks to all for your opinions and feedback.

Believing the astronomer also means trusting the simplest answer with fits the evidence, a fine test of science. Again, just having a telescope would also mean he had a better view than everyone else; does that count for nothing to you? Also--how many other people saw it and identified it as planes, then thought no more about it?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Not exactly; the astronomer had more detailed information than the others.
The governer had some level of PR involved.
The mass optical illusion is just a subset of people who saw it. Do you think that the person who said "Pfft, that's just some flares" would be of interest to the media, or even report the flares?

Yes; I saw that very clip being contrasted with a daylight picture from the same vantage point. The lights disappeared exactly at the level of crossing th mountain range.

And it could be both. Once the flares were released from the "seen" airplane, they could have been bright enough to obscure the views of the planes.

OhbythewayLinden(ifyouarestillreadingthisthread), pleaseusesomemoreformattinginyourposts. Theygetratherdifficulttoreadattimes.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Like I said, the Phoenix Lights occurred in two phases. The second phase (which was thought to be unidentified craft at the time), has been soundly debunked and was definitely flares. The earlier event, a chevron of lights in the sky was observed by Mitch Stanley and was observed to be several airplanes (not just two) flying in formation. So that has been explained too.

I don't know which phase of this event Fife Symington saw, but whichever it was, it seems to have been explained quite well.

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New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

Hundreds of people all saw the same thing from different areas.

People who did not even know each other independently described seeing exactly the same thing.

The "optical illusion" debunkment, an over-used tool in invalidating UFO sighting claims, just is bogus in this situation.

Fife Symington is an Air Force pilot and highly successful businessman and politician. I trust him over some amateur "astronomer" (i.e., guy who likes to look through his $250 telescope) who we don't know anything about in terms of personal character, education, etc...

The Air Force, when asked by Fife Symington to explain what happened that night had NO answer. It wasn't until much later, in response to a written request by Senator John McCain, that the USAF provided the "flares" explanation.

The video taken of the UFO as shown on the program clearly shows a boomerang shaped object gliding -- SILENTLY as all witness state -- overhead, blocking the star light. A video taken by an Air Force major several months earlier and provided to the producer of the program showed the exact same object -- just a different location and different time.

Much respect for you and your opinions, but watch the show, I think you'll see how wrong you are on this one event.

About a year and a half ago I was walking outside around 10 p.m. and looked to my left behind me and saw an orange-ish red light in the sky, "Oh, Mars," I thought. I looked at it for maybe half a min. and turned around and kept walking.

About ten min. later I turned around again looking for "Mars" and it was gone--found it left of where it was and moving at about the speed I'd expect of a prop-plane at a range of about five km.

I watched it fly along and pass behind a few pine trees that are clustered together out in the open space in which I was walking. It should have taken just a few seconds to transit behind the pines. I never saw it again. Stayed there for ten min. looking for it.

The light was about the size of Venus--maybe a little bigger--color of Mars and perfectly silent. I live way out in the country and can hear aircraft from many km away easily.

I'm not sure what it was. Doubt it was little men from space, though.

__________________
If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

No, not at all. That's why I asked for evidence for your claim.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

The Air Force doesn't answer to state governors.

Correction: The Air Force doesn't have to answer to state governors, but will when it deems it appropriate to do so.

Oh, for Pete's sake, it most certainly does not! It shows a string of bright, long-lasting battlefield illumunation flares, which I myself have seen several times - on the battlefield (mostly at Ft. Irwin's NTC, once in Iraq).

If the stars weren't visible, it was for the same reason they weren't visible in many of the Moon photographs, namely, they were easily overpowered by the many orders of magnitude-brighter flares. Go look up at streetlight tomorrow night and tell me how many stars you see behind it....

On the contrary the optical illusion argument IS quite valid in this case and REINFORCED by multiple witnesses. I would additionally state that it is not 'overused' rather 'note understood' by people counter-arguing the point. Optical illusions come in many forms and rather than being a hallucination, which is seeing something that isn't there, it is *misinterpreting* the information that is there.

The human brain has many processing errors ESPECIALLY in the optical information department. Our eye-to-brain path is full of wild errors hence optical illusions exist in the first place. If our brains really did interpret visual data correctly (i.e. without error) optical illusions would not exist.

ALso this is semi-tongue-in-cheek but if trust a politician over an independent observer you are already a lost cause. No other observers that came forward had a telescope or even binoculars. Even modest magnification could have revealed some rather important details about the object/objects. Certainly it could have revealed if they were part of one craft or two.

Here is a challenge: Go to the outskirts of an airport at night, without binoculars, and see if you can identify what each airplane is with your naked eye before they land. You have only a limited number of choices, as there aren't a huge number of different airplanes out there. I do this from time to time myself and find in nearly impossible until they are close enough to see their TRUE shape.

Now try it with binoculars. Better yet a land scope (telescopes will flip the image and give you a headache, if you are like me)

Also in relation to this notice how the three landing lights on the planes make them *appear* to be dark triangles flying through the air - and if they are far enough away and background noise is high enough... silent?

__________________
---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

Mugaliens, you are right, the USAF does not answer to state governors. However, in this case (according to the program content), when asked by the governor what that object was, the USAF DID answer and the answer was "we don't know". It wasn't until much later in a written response to McCain that the flares "reason" was offered.

And with all due respect, you are wrong about it being flares. Clearly, you are not watching the same video or seeing the same thing that the witnesses -- including Fife Symington -- saw. If you watch the program, you will see what I mean. Don't you think Fife Symington, a former Air Force pilot, would have strongly considered that possibility before stepping forward? He says, most certainly not flares. (edited correction) An Army officer captured a UFO on video at a different place and time and provided it to the program producer. That video is shown in the program and depicts the exact same object (size, shape, lighting pattern, etc..) that the witnesses to Phoenix Lights events saw -- and it definitely is NOT flares.

And I'll agree with you LotusExcelle, politicians are frequently less than accurate in their statements, but only in relation to public debate on political issues, or when they are trying to cover their behinds. As you know, character is a pre-requisite to high political office (one that is not always met of course). If Fife had a track record of dishonesty, reckless speculation, tendency to see things that aren't there or inability to correctly ascertain reality then I doubt he would have made it through two terms as governor. It seems you are looking for ways to discredit Fife and ways to bestow total credence to the amateur astronomer. Why? Do I sense a small amount of denial going on here....:-)

I personally can't wait to bail out of this thread, but when I see you intelligent people denying something so obviously (to me and so many others) factual, I feel obligated to jump in and try to set the record straight. I saw a UFO -- man made or alien, but the best explanation is alien. It was not an optical illusion when I saw it, and it wasn't an optical illusion when Fife saw it.

Van Rijn, I'm not the one boldly stating that the US Government is suppressing info on UFO sightings. Watch the program, your question will be answered. Here's the link: http://www.history.com/shows.do?acti...isodeId=492224

That program will cost you $24.95 plus shipping, a small price to pay for answers to these questions. Or, if you subscribe to the History Channel, then a schedule of showings is on the same link. My guess, however, is that you will not watch it because you already "know the truth" and are not interested to hear the babblings of a bunch of people suffering from mass optical illuisions.

The program description, as copied from the link provided above is:
"Director and host James Fox assembles the most credible UFO witnesses from around the world to testify on the subject and share their experiences and observations. Air Force generals, astronauts, military and commercial pilots, government and FAA officials from seven countries gather at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. to tell stories that, as former Arizona governor Fife Symington states, "will challenge your reality." These accounts reveal a behind-the-scenes U.S. operation whose policy, in the eyes of some observers, seems to involve confiscation of substantiating evidence from close encounters--to the extent that even Presidents have failed to get straight answers."

Question: Do you guys (mugaliens, LotusExcelle, Van Rijn) propose that every UFO sighting ever claimed/recorded is the result of optical illusion or some other non-factual basis, or are we just talking about this one "Phonix Lights" event?

I will limit my response to myself - as in I am only speaking for myself... I am only making my points in regards to this particular "Phoenix Lights" issue. And I take the term "propose that every UFO sighting ever claimed/recorded is the result of optical illusion or some other non-factual basis" to task: Optical illusions are factual as in they really do happen, especially at night on a dark background. Also specifically 'non-factual basis'. I certainly never said that people did not see something. They DID. Many people did. My point is that they misinterpreted the visual data. Fact: something was seen. Fiction: it was an alien craft.

__________________
---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

Why?

And evidence you have to pay $24.95 for is not, in my opinion, useful evidence.

And in answer to your final question, UFO sightings are caused by not knowing what you see. Period. Any speculation beyond that must depend on the situation, and chalking them all up in a single category is as foolish as, well, assuming that the default explanation is aliens.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I know an 81-year-old man who insists that the world (and universe) is only 6000 years old. He is deeply religious. Despite his age, he retains excellent mental clarity and physical health. He's my dad. I can show him pictures of intact dinosaur skeletons still imbedded in rock along with sea shells and mollusks at the top of a mountain -- he says, God created the planet that way. No fact will sway his belief, no logic will penetrate his defenses. The reason why is because to accept as fact that the world is actually billions of years old would destroy his fundamental system of beliefs -- it would ravage his sense of self and purpose in this life. So would accepting that there is life anywhere else in this universe, and so especially would accepting that alien visitations to our planet are occuring. There are a lot of people just like my dad in this country and in this world -- anchored to their internal set of beliefs and sense of self, they are unable to recognize fact when it's under their noses. They have an impregnable self-defense shield built up around themselves that filters out all contradicting information. Good people, most of them anyway, just living their lives in self-enforced denial. Nice post, Gillianren. I guess you settled the matter once and for all -- for yourself, that is, but not for me and probably not for many others. Based on statistical surveys, approximately 50% of American believe in UFOs, and 5% (or so) claim to have witnessed one. But don't let facts sway you, if you need to stick with your fundamental belief system. I'm done with this thread. Thanks again for the thought-provoking discussion.

I'm not really sure where to begin with this one. But I do hope you at least read this thread even if you are not going to post in it anymore.

You yourself are filtering contradicting information - information provided by plenty of sources that show that, again specifically, the Phoenix Lights were of mundane origin i.e. man-caused.

Surveys of what people believe are often 180 degrees opposite of the *facts*. And so public opinion is not used in scientific inquiries. Rather empirical evidence is. A significant portion of the population also believes in Santa Claus. Am I in denial because I can prove a mundane way to explain Santa?

Additionally I don't recall anyone claiming other life does not exist in this universe. I'll speak again for myself when I say that I can't fathom a universe without more life in it. However there is an incredible and near-infinite leap of faith to claim that said life found us and emits lights from their craft that is visible to the human eye.

Taking the evidence - that flares were being used in the area, that flares fall at exactly the rate the lights in Phoenix fell, that matching up video taken during nighttime with that taken during day reveals that the lights disappeared behind the mountains on the horizon, that flares emit the same color light as the phoenix lights, that aircraft are known to fly in that area, that an independent observer with vastly superior equipment for viewing distant objects claimed that one of the claimed sightings was in fact two earth-made aircraft, the propensity for human visual observation at night to be (honestly) laughably inaccurate... into consideration which seems to fit the bill better: Flares. or aliens?

Keep in mind NONE of the evidence lands any 'proof' to the side of aliens. It is merely what flawed human visual observation and interpretation led people to claim.

__________________
---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

Oh, okay, one last response. LotusExcelle, the military jets did drop flares that night, about 2 hours after the actual sighting. So no surprise that many people reported seeing flares. My guess is that the military jets did that to give people who need to NOT believe in alien UFOs a lifeline to hang onto. Grab it tight!!

Hey, here's a large category of online pics and videos of those flares, er uh, optical illiusions, or I mean swamp gas. Ah heck with it, just look and see:

http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/view/newer.htm

Here's the real scoop on The Phoenix Lights, for those that do not have a need to not have all the facts, as copied and pasted from this link -- http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case270.htm:

Most of the controversy that arose from the incident centers around a cluster of lights that was seen, and videotaped, to the south of Phoenix at between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. on the same night as the sightings. In May 1997, the Public Affairs Office at Luke AFB announced that their personnel had investigated these lights, and had established that they were flares launched from A-10 “Warthog” aircraft over the Gila Bend “Barry M. Goldwater” Firing Range at approximately 10:00 p.m.. Even the most implacable UFO skeptics (except YOU -- talking to LotusExcelle and GillianRen) admit, however, that irrespective of whether such flares had in fact been launched or not, they cannot serve as an explanation for the objects that had been witnessed by many individuals some 1-2 hours earlier.

Search for the truth guys, it is there. Or stay ignorant and self-deluded. Your choice.

I am SO done with this thread -- really, I mean it this time!

A few points: You completely missed the mention of the use of a telescope to identify one of the sightings as man-made craft.

Also your thought process goes from "well even though it looked like flares it must be alien craft" is faulty to the extreme and lacks even a basic filter of logic, deduction, and sanity.

__________________
---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

What facts?

When I was in my teens, I believed many UFOs were alien spaceships. I read many books with UFO stories, "ancient astronaut" books, and so forth. I was really into it. As I got older, I started noticing huge problems with stories: Lack of real evidence, little or no skeptical analysis of stories, too many assumptions being made, incorrect identification, and sometimes just outright made up stories and images.

It became clear to me that the "UFO as alien spaceship" idea was a belief system not properly supported by the evidence.

I'm still open to the possibility, but it would take good evidence.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

One of the biggest problems is that aliens are so mainstream that most people know what the common experience is like and are an unreliable source because they may be just repeating what someone said or associating a different experience with aliens.

So if alien abductions are real the people are becoming less and less reliable because their stories match, but if their stories didn't match, that would somewhat invalidate that abductions are real.


I think the situation is silly as there are reliable accounts of UFOs and such that are being discredited, but at the same time I think that there is no conclusive evidence for it...

In other words I think there is a higher probability that it is happening than most rational people think, but I think it is much lower than what irrational people think

That makes little to no sense.
Aliens on earth either are or are not real. That in a binary issue. 0 or 1. There is literally zero evidence minus *unreliable* human testimony. No empirical evidence. None. Zero. And so the binary value is zero.

When the evidence for aliens on earth is balanced it comes to zero, scientifically. Belief is not evidence. Nor is shoddy video. Zero, again.

__________________
---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

Lindon, you are lashing out and it is uncalled for. No one is attacking you, they are just pointing out the the holes in your argument. Don't leave the thread, just open your mind and consider the points that were made. There are things you have to keep in mind; 1) what the mass population believes or agrees on, does not constitute fact. 2) failing to agree with the masses does not constitute ignorance or self delusion. 3) I saw the same program. Keep in mind, there is an editing process in making these programs entertaining and intriguing enough to keep you watching past the commercials. There is also a fine line between true and factual. They can call it "true" programming because it has some elements of truth; people did actually witness something. However, that does not make it factual. You have no idea how much of the full story the program edited out.

The reason I am so eager to bail out of this thread is because I am very uncomfortable in the roll of "UFO defender".

I realize there are people who despite all evidence to the contrary will never accept that alien visitation is fact. LotusExcelle, for example, is one of the posters on this thread that hung his hat on the "military dropped flares" debunkment of the Phoenix Lights event, but that "debunkment" is totally bogus as the flares were dropped 1 to 2 hours after the mass sighting. So now, LotusExcelle says hey what about the amateur guy with the telescope. LotusExcelle would rather believe a single amateur "astronomer" and attribute scientific reasoning and critical mental process to that dude -- whoever he is -- than give even the slightest amount of credence to the mass of individuals who all saw the same thing, many of them extremely credible witnesses.

To me, that's called denial.

I have looked up into the night sky one million or so times in my life. On one and only one of those occassions, an exceptionally crystal clear cold night back in the days when I still had 20-20 vision and I had passed all the criteria to be admitted to the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine program, I saw a UFO. Since then, people I don't know who are spread all around the world have reported seeing the exact same phenomena that I witnessed. LotusExcelle and the group of deniers tell me I had an optical illusion, or that there are "many other" explanations for what I saw. I say, B.S.

Isn't it true that a person can be convicted of a crime without any physical evidence based on three things: 1) proof of motivation, 2) opportunity and 3) one credible witness. Where's the "optical illusion" defense in criminal law? Does it exist? People don't normally have optical illusions. I've never had an optical illusion. Granted, in the desert there are mirages and in other cases there are phsycal conditions that lend themselves toward creating optical illusions, which are easily recognizable. But to attribute all or a majority of the UFO sightings to optical illusion or lack of scientific reasoning is DENIAL, especially when the optical illusions are being attributed to groups of people who saw the same exact thing from different positions, when many of the people reporting the sighting are highly skilled pilots, and when in many cases there is radar and tower-to-cockpit recordings where the control personnel "see" the object on radar, and the pilot sees the object clearly.

Why is it that every time somebody has an optical illusion, it's a UFO? If somebody sees God or Jesus, it's a vision. If somebody sees pink cows floating in the air, it's a hallucination. But when somebody sees a UFO, it's an optical illusion. Give me a break.

Check out these optical illusions: http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/view/newer.htm

Granted, a few or more of those photos are probably faked, or there's a better explanation. But don't tell me that all these photographs from all around the world are depicting optical illusions or that they are all fakes. If you do, don't expect me to believe you.

So, once again, I attempt to leave this thread once and for all. Where's the evidence you ask? Everywhere is my answer. More evidence than a reasonable person can deny, IMO.

I sense that many of the UFO deniers are secretly reaching out for help with their often repeated denials. They WANT to believe, but can't. Probably it's easier for me to "believe" because I saw what I saw and I know what I saw, and because it makes sense to me that there are much older civilizations in this universe with far more advanced technology than the human race possesses. And it doesn't scare me or violate any of my strongly held convictions to recognize that alien visitation is real -- as it apparantly does some other people who DO need to deny.

In the future, please do not direct requests for evidence of alien visitation to me, because I am no expert and I do not assume the role of UFO defender. Just start with the following link which I discovered just a few days ago. If you want to believe, you'll find plenty of support at that website. If you don't want to believe, you will find plenty to deny. http://www.ufoevidence.org

Lindon, you do know that eyewitness testimony isn't considered particularly reliable in a court of law, either, right?

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I would like to state that I respect your return to the thread - I can't imagine it was easy to jump back in. And so my hat is off to you for that.

I will quote your entire post piece by piece. I hope I don't break the quotes because things tend to get messy. If I do I apologize for the confusing format.

To start:

Your claim that 'alien visitation is a fact' requires evidence. In fact it requires some substantial (not in quantity - in quality) evidence. I will touch on this after a later quote.

I did not hang my hat entirely on the military flare point. I stated that flares act exactly like what was claimed and what was shown in the video. I also stated that a person equipped with superior viewing equipment stated something different than what the multiple witnesses, using their naked eyes at night, stated.

I'll touch on those points further as well.

Your denial of there being other possibilities means, to be blunt, that *you* are in denial. My stance on specifically the Phoenix lights is one of evidence and probability. Those two combined lead to a mundane, not alien, version of what people saw. Your is based on belief. You can believe something all you want it does not make it true or a fact. And if you chose to jump from "something in the sky I can't quite figure out what it is" to "it must be aliens" then your thought process and in fact powers of deduction are in a sense broken. The distance between those two points is near infinite. Bridging the gap from a mundane ufo to and alien ufo takes a leap beyond that that ANY science allows. In fact it is faith. If you are asking us or me to take something based on faith as fact - you are on entirely the wrong board.

We are not talking about the court of law here. The requirements of law and the requirements of science are wildly different. Each needs evidence, to be sure, but scientific evidence is far more rigorous and would NEVER rely on eye-witness testimony, no matter how numerous, as a basis for fact.

The atmosphere is an optical illusion playground, so to speak. It lends itself rather well to them in fact. I am not nor has anyone here stated that all 'sightings' are optical illusions. My personal stand on it is that many are. Many also are mundane objects... far-off planes reflecting light oddly, several planes that appear to be one especially to the naked eye, especially at night, etc etc etc... Many truly are unidentifiable. There simply is not enough information from either a witness or a 'hard copy' (photo, video, radar) to say what it was for sure.
I am not sure whose mouth you are putting the 'vision' words into but it certainly is not mine. Nor are we talking about those cases. We can if you wish but we would really have to get specific on cases and such. I did not state that every ufo is an optical illusion, again. But you belief that a ufo is an alien craft shatters through all steps of identification.

Also I do like that you pointed out that 'some' of the photos on that site are faked. Some are, for sure. Some also are genuine misidentification. Still others are possibly hoaxes perpetrated by a third party - the person taking the photo was duped. Please identify the ones you think personally are the real deal. Let us start with 5, if that is okay with you. Point out 5 that you think are genuine alien craft. Please also tell why you believe that.

ANd if you can elaborate on why you don't believe they are all mundane in origin i.e. not alien - please do so as well. My question here is: Why do you believe they are alien, something monumentally implausible, versus mundane?

Your sense is quite wrong in my case. I do not need help to show how eyewitness testimony is essentially useless in regards to scientific inquiry. Empirical evidence is much preferred.

Do you really know what you saw? Really? I doubt that very much. I myself have mistaken a passing satellite for a meteorite, briefly. Also as stated your eyes have a really large number of errors not only physically but in processing as well that leads to all kinds of other possible ways to go with that.

I also find it unlikely that we are alone in the universe. But 'needle in a haystack' doesn't even begin to convey the unlikelyhood of aliens visiting earth. Again your leap from one idea to your belief skips all steps of identification here.

Your CHOICE is to believe. That is obvious. You have your reasons and I will not attempt to argue against what you yourself saw. The evidence of that is locked in your neurons and unreliable beyond usefulness. (Please do not take this as a dig - everyone's brains are roughly equally unreliable in this way)

But you do have a choice about how you handle evidence. Your choice is to skip to the end so it can fit your assumptions. I have seen the Phoenix Lights show at least 5 times. In its entirety. I have also watched counter-argument and counter-counter-argument clips. The evidence for a mundane cause is simply overwhelming. The evidence for alien craft is simply that a few people believed that's what they saw.

Belief is not evidence. It is that simple.

__________________
---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

I'd like to add this photo link - its just one example of some of the more interesting atmospheric optical effects. The site itself is full of other such things. Even aside from the discussion its a fantastic site to browse.

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/pilpic22.htm

__________________
---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

I'd like to continue this conversation, but while I was at lunch today a couple of guys dressed in black suits and wearing dark sunglasses approached me. One of the guys told me that if I didn't cool it on the UFO talk, that bad things might happen to me. The other guy commented something to the effect of "yeah, ya' know that nice electric guitar you love more than life itself, you better keep it mind". So, to make a long story short, I'm done here. I never had any interest in debating whether UFOs are real or not. Most people (and it looks like about 50/50 or even actually more in favor of "believers" based on legitmate studies) have their minds made up. And unless one side has a crashed alien craft in tow, the other side is going to make all the same arguements you're making LotusExcelle, and more. It has been interesting and fun. I'll see you all on the other threads.

I cannot stress this point enough: Belief is not a basis for fact nor is it evidence. I agree with your decision to stop with this thread - we aren't getting anywhere and you and I both are repeating ourselves. However - I do ask that you keep in mind what I just said: Belief is NOT a basis for fact nor is it evidence.

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---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

Really?

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek