Proof that there are no UFOs?

Question

Skeptical debunkers always find some mundane, if lame, excuse for not accepting evidence of the UFO. Indeed, it is a given that the various kinds of evidence that have been rigorously examined and proven NOT to be false or hoaxed are invariably ignored or dismissed with the proverbial wave of the hand. As if that would make this phenomena go away.

However, the reality of the UFO is based on an overwhelming accumulation of valid evidence. Indeed, were this a court case, the "reasonable doubt" criteria would be rendered moot because there is indisputable evidence that such things exist.

So, doubters, prove that the various kinds of evidence as to the reality of UFOs are equally invalid, and prove your case against their existence.

Answer 1

You cannot "prove" absence.  That is why science, justice and logic always stick with test to either prove the presence of something.

It has already been accepted that there are objects seen in the sky that are not identified by observers.

The problem comes with the idea that these things could come from elsewhere than Earth.

That is the hypothesis for which there is no supporting observation.  Far from being overwhelming, the evidence is extremely spotty and difficult to verify.

I have rarely dismissed "evidence" with a wave of the hand.  I WANT it to be true that intelligent life exists elsewhere, and is close enough for us to have direct contact.

But, unfortunately, I am also intelligent enough to realize that wanting something very bad is not, in itself, proof that the something exists.  So, I too, am looking for proofs and, so far, there is not much.

Answer 2

are you asking or answering!

Answer 3

I flew professionally as an airline pilot/captain for 37 years.  "What the pea soup was that???" is a very common exclamation on the flight deck; that is, we often saw things sharing the atmosphere with us that we could not immediately identify.  Most of them resolved themselves into something we knew about.  Only a handful remained unidentified.

So certainly UFOs exist.  People see flying objects they can't identify.  As an airline Captain, I occasionally received surveys in the mail from UFO "investigators."  Most of them claimed to be consultants working for the US Air Force or the CIA.  We were thought of as "reliable witnesses" in such matters.

So yes, we see things in the air that we can't identify.  Often.  But there is no objective scientific evidence that any of these things ever was a vehicle owned and operated by a resident of some place other than Earth.  I am kind of disappointed myself.  As a youngster, I wanted us to make contact with them, and kept hoping they would land.  But as a mature, science-trained adult, I am forced to agree there is no evidence that intelligent beings are or ever have been anywhere around.

As mentioned above, the main reason is that the distances are too far.  The nearest planet that might be inhabited is so far away that it would take hundreds of thousands of years to travel here.  How did they do that?  And why?  To see wooly mammoths?

So it seems that the reason the people whose essays you have read believe the evidence is sound because they want it to be true so badly.

Sorry.  It's not true.

======================================...

Aliens

I.

Poems are like flying saucers at dusk in nineteen fifty-five in boy

hood small town

“If you believe in em you'll

see em

look long enough you'll

see one”

Electric

Magnetic

With people inside just like us only

prettier

smell better

finding here through swirls of light and banks and snowdrifts of stars

never wondered where god is in all that

the clean people watch the spherical compass

that glows the color of oily pools in the edge of the

street after a rain

II.

lie in the grass at dusk

scrutinize the sky to descry the silver ships

they fly with a sound like running

your finger around a wine glass

And they are more just

more in love with it all

than we

And they were more numerous in nineteen fifty-five

but not written

get your flashlight

sail a silver hubcap past my window at dusk

Answer 4

Your question is like asking for proof that the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist.

Answer 5

You're wasting your time.  Anyone with the ability to make a valid argument (for either side) sure isn't wasting his/her time dorking around on Yahoo Answers!!

Answer 6

The simplest answer is that the distances in our galaxy are just too great for intelligent life to travel here.  Nothing can go faster than the speed of light, and even if they could come close (which, as far as we know is very unlikely), it would years, if not tens of thousands of years, to travel to Earth.  Would aliens bother to do all that and then not even talk to the civilization they found here?

No matter how rigorously you examine eyewitness accounts and grainy pictures of indistinct lights, they simply aren't proof.

Answer 7

i beleive in UFO's and aliens!

i mean, sheesh!

you should just beleive in the stuff!

expecially because there was a show where dozens of people say they were kidnapped while they were asleep, and poked and prodded and everything, but of course, skeptics just say its a state of different sleep. i dont beleive it was just sleep.

then there are the crop circle cases. why would people ALL OVER THE WOLRD want to go to someone's crops and put patters in them? and if they did, how could they have done it in that short amount of time, and all in the same direction??

Answer 8

If there were an "overwhelming" accumulation of valid evidence, would we really be having this debate?

Answer 9

Sorry UFOs do exist,they are unidentified flying objects.Are they space men from another planet,who knows,they are un identified and can even be a weather baloon,Your question is almost as bad a tree falling in a forest makes no sound if your not there.

Answer 10

Well, of course there will be those who will tell you that there absolutely *have* been UFOs; that they are just unidentified and that there is no reason to assume extraterrestrial origin.

But to answer what your question was really aimed at, UFOs being of intelligent ET origin, there is no proof against them ever having been here.  Requiring proof of a negative is unreasonable and illogical, in this case.   I am not one who is withholding belief with a diffident wave of the hand.  I have studied this phenomenon for many years.  I have looked at both sides.  That is something that almost NO believer has ever done.  The conclusion I reached is that the evidence is not adequate.  

We know that humans have had active imaginations and have mis-perceived things long before the UFO phenomenon.  Human history is replete with such things. The modern media are responsible for this phenomenon having become so ubiquitous.  The occasional hoax doesn't help matters any, either.

So, there is a psychological and sociological precedent for so many people believing in things that don't exist.  And there is no solid evidence of their presence.  Finally, there are things which we *should* have seen if even a small percentage of these claims were true.  For example, in over 40 years of extensive SETI research, not one intelligent signal has been recorded from outer space.  We have scanned the entire sky.  To me, that's a bit like a blind person believing he is standing on a sidewalk in New York City during rush hour, when he is surrounded by absolute silence.  Most people don't think of things like that.

I'd love to see evidence of ET life before I die, whether it be a microbe on Europa or a simple intelligent "hello" from outer space.  I fear neither of those is going to happen. Never mind about legions of them invading our airspace, kidnaping people, and squashing out crop designs..

Edit:  Mallard, I KNOW the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist because I had a wisdom tooth extracted a few months ago and didn't find one single cent under my pillow!  Was I miffed!!!

(Now let's see if I can extract my tongue from my cheek.)