If you standby and watch a murder take place, a murder you could have stopped
and/or prevented at anytime, then you are just as guilty of murder as the person
who actually committed the murder. Likewise, to allow irrational and illogical
ideas go by unchallenged makes one guilty of the same immoral exploitation that
those irrational and illogical ideas are used for. It is a fact that no one can
talk to the dead, no one can tell the future, no one can past life regress, and
ETs are not visiting us -- these are all examples of New Age gimmicks used to
exploit people, not help them, because conning people into believing in these
things is giving people a false hope. Their resources would be better spent
elsewhere. And conning people into believing in these things is the anti-thesis
of evolution because it promotes illogical and irrational behavior instead of
teaching people to use their brains for what they naturally should be used for
-- to think.

People's behavior is always the result of their beliefs, that is their
philosophies of life, because what people believe to be real about the world
around them affects how they are going to react to it. This problem is
compounded by the fact that human behavior is seldom rational or logical because
the unconscious mind, which is driven by those philosophies, isn't troubled
about what is reasonable or logical, for it, anything that works is 'real'. This
is why the psychology of people who believe in things that don't exist is
important to try and understand, especially when you realize that the vast
majority of beliefs harm people rather then help them. For example, during the
time of the Crusades and the Inquisitions, Christians everywhere believed that
it would be morally insane to calmly stand by while thousands of unbelieving
people in the world were being sent to Hell at their deathbeds, so any act --
torture, maiming, burning alive, mass murder -- anything was a justifiable act
if it meant having the person confess a belief in God before they died so they
could go to Heaven instead of Hell. These holy Crusaders imagined God being very
pleased with their actions since they were sending so many thousands of people
His way to be with Him in Heaven, imagining themselves as saving the world from
the Devil, never realizing the truth that they were being immoral barbarians.

This is a battle, a battle for your mind, a place where rational forces have to
rally against irrational forces on a daily basis. As psychology and history have
taught us, it is never wise to let irrational ideas go unchallenged for
harboring irrational ideas is not the most mentally healthy thing to do. I am
doing the proper thing by challenging the irrational UFO/ET ideas with rational
ones. The psychology we possess allows us to become paranoid, irrational,
illogical, and deluded and the UFO fad provides more evidence of that. There
should be no more room for fantasy in their thinking -- not with the potential
consequences of continuing to be unable to distinguish the difference between
reality and fantasy for the rest of peoples lives.

Psychologically speaking, people take truth to mean 'any idea that someone
believes'. They believe that believing in an idea makes it true, but truths
often have little or nothing to do with facts. Facts are parts of the real
world, independent of what people think or believe, independent of whether or
not people know they exist, independent of whether they are accepted or not,
believed or not, even liked or not. Confusing truth with fact is a common cause
of clinical emotional distress.

Now I don't see a problem with people running around pretending that ET is
visiting us, what I see as a problem is when people run around confusing their
make-believe fantasy that ET is visiting us with actual reality, and then react
to that fantasy as though it really were a fact. I can understand why people
would believe in the UFO fad, because most people aren't intelligent enough to
distinguish the difference between reality and fantasy. Other's just like to be
where the excitement is and join the crowd. What I can't understand is why some
people would be so greedy and uncaring that they would tell any nimwit whatever
it is that they want to hear, just because it will bring them money -- and
that's disgusting.

Tell me dear reader, is your trust something you blindly give away or is it
something that must be earned? I never trust anyone until they've earned my
trust because it would not be logical or intelligent to *assume* anyone is
trustworthy until they prove otherwise. In fact, the scientific method is based
on *never* trusting anyone on testimony alone -- it just wouldn't work. The
Committee on Science and Astronautics is no exception to this rule and just
because they concluded that the USAF directly deceived the public isn't proof
that the US Air Force did, in fact, deceive the public. It is merely an
unfounded accusation. If this committee truthfully wanted to prove that the USAF
was deceiving anyone, they should have come up with direct evidence to that
effect, ie -- copies of insinuating documents or confessions of inside
informants to uncover a trail of evidence or so on. Just because a committee
feels UFOs are real doesn't prove that the USAF knows they are real and, by
illogical extension, therefore the USAF must be lying about what they do know.
So again I ask, what actual evidence did the committee base their conclusion on?
Their authority or their demonstrable facts? Their authority! They were saying,
'Trust us because we belong on this prestigious committee and not because we
have any actual facts'. Well I don't buy it; I'm not that gullible. I want
facts, not statements of authority.

I believe, not by blind faith but by logical extension of known facts, that
intelligent life exists all throughout the universe. That any of this
intelligent life is visiting us, is a big joke. I don't care if Albert Einstein
believes in the existence of invisible pink elephants, that doesn't prove that
invisible pink elephants actually exist, will it? I want facts, not Albert
Einstein's comments on what he believes or 'calculates' about the existence of
invisible pink elephants. Same goes for anyone else you care to list in favor of
your beliefs: Dr J Allan Hynek, Dr Carl Sagan, Prof James E McDonald, Dr Robert
Hall, Dr James A Harder, or Dr Donald Menzel -- these are all ordinary humans
who are just telling you what you want to hear, not presenting us with any
actual facts we can take home with us.

I have based my conclusions, not on what I trust or don't trust, but on a
logical deduction of known facts. Everything I have listed in this FAQ is
factually indisputable. There absolutely is no smoking gun, there is nothing
more than reports of UFOs and not any collection of artifacts for objective
examination, and the FOIA is silent on the issue of ETs. I offered my comments
as a way to reach those people who have difficulty reasoning due to the
conditioning of Hollywood. It is a way out for them; a way to show them that
there is another more rational way of seeing things. Some people will believe
regardless of any facts or lack thereof. To those people, UFOs is a religion or
a way to meet cool chicks or a nice way to supplement your income when you can't
find sufficient employment related to your doctorate degree. I'm not into that
scene.

Once upon a time, it used to be that UFO stories mainly were about 'lights' but
they have recently graduated to sexual assaults and medical exams where the
abductees are tagged with implants. If a civilization technologically advanced
enough to be able to traverse light-years of space were interested in our
genetic material, surely they could just land on a spermbank at 3AM or take some
skin scrapings or saliva samples...anything besides rape and the associated risk
of getting a sexually transmitted disease even ET never heard of yet. People
were sexually assaulted by incubi and sucubi for hundreds and hundreds of years
before ET came along, so apparently the story is still the same, only the names
of the innocent have changed.

There is a phenomenon going on here, but it has nothing to do with physical
reality, but imaginary reality. Physically real phenomenon do not appear and
disappear without ever leaving a trace -- by definition of the word physical,
that's impossible. So these people are either lying, deluded, or stupid because
there is no truth in anything they say in regards to physicalness of this
phenomenon.

   >You don't stand a chance against us. You skeptics are all alike and repeat 
   >the same ineffective arguments over and over again. If you don't believe me,
   >then check out this site (http://www.psyzone.freeserve.co.uk/winston.htm) by
   >Winston.

Do you really expect intelligent thinking people to blindly believe that Winston
couldn't find and list one single great common argument used by skeptics,
because skeptics have absolutely no good or logical common arguments whatsoever?
I've seen many common arguments on CSICOP that are great, yet somehow Winston
was unable to find a single one? That certainly sounds like Winston has gone
through alot of trouble to construct a very misleading and prejudiced list to
me. I don't believe it was because he failed to find any good arguments but that
he wasn't looking for them nor was he interested in publishing anything that
would appear to successfully refute his or your paranormal and visiting ET
beliefs. His oversight of including even just one single of any of the really
great common arguments that skeptics use, indicates that he was trying
(consciously or unsconsciously) to make it seem like the only common arguments
skeptics have are bad ones and therefore all skeptics have absolutely no
arguments that are good. Hogwash!

To misquote Ayn Rand, "UFO skeptics have a weapon against you called Reason. So
you must be very sure to take it away from them. Cut the props from under it.
But be careful. Don't deny outright. Never deny anything outright, you give your
hand away. Don't say that reason is evil -- though some have gone that far and
with astonishing success. Just say that reason is limited. That there's
something above it. What? You don't have to be too clear about it either. The
field's inexhaustible: 'Remote Viewing' -- 'ESP' -- 'Feeling' -- 'Revelation' --
'Divine Intuition'. But even if you get caught at some crucial point and
somebody tells you that your alleged UFO experience doesn't make sense -- you're
ready for them. You tell them that there's something above sense. That here he
must not try to think, he must feel. He must believe. Suspend reason and you
play it deuces wild...Can we rule a thinking skeptic? UFOlogists don't want any
thinking people."

Note that if you look and compare all the stories people have to say about the
paranormal, the stories are very contradictory and inconsistent. If someone
wants to claim that behind all that BS is a real story, how can they separate
the fact from the fantasy if they have nothing but only the stories to base any
claims they make? The whole paranormal phenomenon is useless noise from a
scientific point of view (except maybe for the psychology of fads).

If UFOs or ghosts are real in any sense of the word other than imaginary, then
just like all real objects, they should interact with their environment in some
predictable way: If you can see a ghost, then should be able to clearly record
the photons that reach your eyes with a camera or video recorder. If a UFO
'lands', then it should leave evidence of a landing. Of course, if they are only
purely imaginary, then we would expect that even when there is a 'sighting' of a
ghost or UFO, it wouldn't leave any evidence of any type of interaction with
actual reality...hmmmm, I just described every ghost and UFO story to date.

In THE DEMON HAUNTED WORLD, Carl Sagan notes that if you pick up any typical UFO
magazine and flip through the pages looking at the advertisements, you will find
lots of ads -- not just for UFO books or UFO videos and so on -- but numerous
non-UFO related things like charm kits to place spells on people you would like
to influence, crystals which will cure you of anything, ninja videos that teach
invisibility and invulnerability skills, and so on. I see two common threads
running throughout all these ads: The general sense of power- or helplessness
that UFO believers must continually feel and the most extreme kind of credulity.
And since we know that advertising executives live or die on the basis of how
well they know their audience, we are pretty much guaranteed that they know
their audience quite well.

My goal isn't to save the world from their inner demons, my goal is to offer a
helping hand to those who are willing to accept it. It does not matter to me
what happens with the UFO community as a whole, all the matters to me is that I
was there to offer hope and reason to those few individuals who were looking for
hope and reason at a time that they needed it most, and I have been very
successful in that regard. So there is no reason for me to pack up and leave and
it hasn't been a losing battle for me. Those few individuals and the future few
individuals makes it all worthwhile.

The Sage

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My Home Page      :           http://members.cox.net/the.sage

"The men that American people admire most extravagantly are
most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are
those who try to tell them the truth" -- H. L. Mencken
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