LH, you are quite touchy on these subjects but on the other side deal out snide and uninformed remarks about skeptics. But I agree that saying that if you welcome an argumentation is a warning signal was not really nice. I'll try to be nicer from now on.

Amos, your argument would be a strong one if your opponent would categorically exclude the possibility of UFOs being extraterrestrial spaceships. I don't know such people.

I consider it as nearly certain that life also exists somewhere else. I consider it probable that intelligent life has developed elsewhere. But I am much less sure that it coexists at the same time. Maybe, any intelligent life will destroy itself within a relatively short time. They would need completely different laws of physics and/or extremely large sources of energy. That would make good weapons too. If they are remotely similar to us, they would use these weapons sooner or later. If on earth we would develop a weapon that could destroy the planet in a second and if this would become available it would be a matter of hours before the first nutcase would use it. So far, we can say that intelligent life understanding some laws of physics and being able to manipulate large amounts of energy has existed for say 200 years.

The question is how probable it is that UFOs are foreign spacecraft. I know a lot of the UFO-lore and it is enraging to see that even long debunked myths are still reported by believers as if they had never read the alternative explanantions (actually, they may have never read them, for the UFO-lore literature mostly does not mention alternative explanations, whreas the skeptical...).

So, for most of the reports there are good explanations. Are the remaining 5% spacecrafts? Not very likely in my eyes. Unexplained phenomena they are but it would be argementum ad ignorantiam to choose one particular explanation as likely.

The reported behaviour of the UFOs is so unlike any real expedition or reconnoitre that it makes no sense to me. Over many decades, they come to the Earth and are only seen under quite dubious circumstances instead of openly (and fearless, for if they could manipulate energy in a way they would have to in order to travel that far we would be no danger to them) telling us they are here.

Finding evidence of other life outside of the Earth would be the most interesting finding I could dream of (I hope I live to read of this finding), but if intelligent life would visit us closely it would be an Earth shattering experience witnessed by millions and the first news for a month or so.

Until then, I consider the idea the most likely that UFOs are just the interpretation of someone who doesn't know what he has seen. They may not even be flying or objects. I have seen about a dozen UFOs in my life. In all but one case I later (sometimes only seconds later when the plane changed direction) found out what it was that I could not identify. And in the last case? I don't know. Period. I sometimes walk in the woods and something moves and I don't know what it is. I can live (and die) with the feeling of not knowing everything. Shrug. No big deal.

But I read a lot about human perception (the area of my dissertation) and on that subject I am that someone else (who) may know something you don't know. And I am wary of hypnose therapists who believe the stories they are told. I think Mack is the most prominent name here. He is not taken serious by most scientists.

Wolfgang