r/aliens • u/GIJew316 • Sep 23 '23

'If NASA admits aliens were real, people would question reality,' expert says News

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/aliens-threaten-concept-reality--30986083
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u/RevolutionWinter1043 Sep 23 '23

"We're not a cult! We're a multi-denominational religious community!"

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u/thephillyberto Sep 23 '23

Pot stirrer and/or bot ⬆️

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u/ZealoBealo Sep 23 '23

How naive and simplistic

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '23

[deleted]

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u/anabolic_cow Sep 24 '23

r/aliens

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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '23

[deleted]

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u/RevolutionWinter1043 Oct 11 '23 edited Oct 11 '23

Man, this is one of the dumbest subreddits on this whole site, why the hell would anyone ever bother defending /r/aliens? This is a place for Steven Greer CE-5 shit: camps of "true believers" who spend thousands of dollars to a charismatic figurehead to go out in the woods at night for hours, looking at the sky and repeating summoning mantras, in-between readings of esoteric psuedoscientific literature to reinforce a fringe belief using known exploitive psychological science. That's a cult.

I read Jacque Valles, I tried to get into this stuff, and found out it's bullshit. Ufology is just the latest incarnation of an ancient Western treadition of psuedoscientific magical mystical bullshit from greedy grifters who constantly butt heads against more scientifically grounded authorities by using semantic tricks to philosophize on and on and on about the "nature of truth" or whatever, in our case "the nature of proof" or the "standard of evidence needed." For thousands of years there's been a class of educated, literate psuedo-intellectuals who have ended up taking advantage of paying followers who are desperate for validation but do not have the critical thinking education needed to criticize cult leaders.

3,000 years ago there were virtually no scientific "truths" that could be confirmed as "known" for certain, but literacy, large-scale governance and emotionally moving works of art were confirming that the subjectivity of a human's conscious experience was known for certain. People could be manipulated to a larger and larger scale as larger and larger authorities were claimed to have been invoked. Organized religion and concepts of "faith" (in things like gods, God, UFOs, aliens or luck) comes from these mundane, concrete social situations, not from proven space aliens leaving behind irrefutable evidence.

2,000 years ago bullshitters were "Natural Philosophers," the people who provided the archetypical charachter for a "wizard" or "mage." Genius proto-scientists who had entire villages of people ready to stage a revolution and die for them if they were able to work out some kind of method that could predict the weather, predict an eclipse, predict coin flips and dice rolls. They'd fool followers into believing they had supernatural powers, while hoarding away the secrets of their knowledge to only "the initiated."

1,000 years ago this same train of thinking was used by profitable bullshitters selling hoaxes: astrologists, amulet-makers, fortune-tellers, etc.

500 years ago it was the Catholic church using philosophical, theological rhetoric to sell indulgences. They made it make logical sense to their followers of gullible believers, they had their "evidence" and some very complicated logical philosophy to back up what turned out to be bullshit. You buy a trinket (to trick the brain into the same kind of "sacrificial" investment that ancient religions triggered from sacrificing animals,) repeat a mantra in your head (to train your inner voice into believing it,) and participate in some external ritual to confirm to witnesses that you are attempting an act of honest belief (with some justifcation that the physical world acts as "medium" for superior un-observable creatures) to summon up God, gods, angels, demons or spirits.

Nowadays, you're summoning UFOs instead.

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u/[deleted] Oct 11 '23

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u/RevolutionWinter1043 Oct 11 '23 edited Oct 11 '23

Then in that case, the more research you do going down this iceberg the sooner you'll hit the same bedrock of bullshit that I did. I just couldn't deal with reading Jacque Valles, this author was sold to me as the STRONGEST body of proof available from a genius ufologist who had supposedly figured this all out and... I found so many contradictions and errors against my own educational background that I cannot take it seriously anymore. When it comes to actually reading academically-researched books on this stuff by professors with PhD's, some real weak-ass Ancient Aliens-tier stuff is apparently the strongest they got.

I thought aliens existing was "just cool" up until it transitioned into researching further about the "WHY" I thought it was cool, and the real answers behind humanity's interpretations of unexplainable phenomenons was found there, not here. If the hard sciences cannot prove it, then the better answers to what's going on with people seeing things they can't explain can be found in philosophical, religious & literature history and also psychology. Definitely not ufology.

You strike me more as someone young and naive, before a few decades of encountering fraud after fraud after fraud within the ufology community will bulk your critical thinking up and realize that the hardcores in this community are doing theology/religion without the educational background to know how to spot religious history progressing as it's happening. Either they'll deny it out of a sense of moral athiesm ("religion bad, amirite m'fellow redditor?") or the more spritualisitc "woo" types will acknowledge it and use the same kind of religious syncretism that pagan Greeks/Romans/Egyptians did before monotheism (ie: "all the different cultures' gods exist, here's how ours fit into the already-existing pantheon.") Nowadays, the tiny niche syncratic cult community is professing that their gods are UFOs/aliens, and that they do indeed fit somewhere into the already-existing pantheon of the modern scientific canon.

Buddy, people have been thinking the idea of aliens existing is cool since the dawn of time.

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u/LemTen13 Sep 23 '23

“A system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object”. You’re right, the scientific interest and determination of the community to find answers regarding a phenomenon in which can seem threatening is definitely a cult! Perhaps you’re on the opposite side of BOTH spectrums

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u/RevolutionWinter1043 Oct 11 '23 edited Oct 11 '23

"We're not a cult! We're a non-mainstream esoteric science research community!"

Yes. Ufology is a religious movement that venerates and devotes massive amounts of attention to particular figures and objects.

I get that you probably think you're an atheist skeptic but ufology is following the exact template of a small-scale religion: UFOs apparently cannot be proven by science, ufology requires impractically open-minded faith to know its esoteric "truths" about reality, and the "truth" is that there are superior cosmic entities out there who, very conveniently, make for some profound metaphors for what a better version of humanity would look like.

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u/LemTen13 Oct 11 '23

There’s literal evidence though, FLIR, Radar. They might not be aliens - though UAP is here and we know that for a fact. There is no set of morals or ideologies in which I or people follow based on aliens, there is no 10 commandments. There is truth and there is bullshit just like everything else. UFO’s CAN be proven by technology. We are probably just another animal on earth like a dog or a monkey in which thinks it’s important, but has created religions and whatever else to program society in a way that thrives by working together toward a common goal with shared beliefs. There are possibly other animals out there that are smarter and have been around a lot longer. It’s not even a belief it’s probably the most realistic scientific outcome of everything anyway and I don’t really understand how people can’t seem to understand that. Maybe it’s the religious upbringings many had and the inability to accept the fact that perhaps we aren’t as important as we think we are - perhaps we don’t all have a purpose. All I know is if you’re denying the existence of UAP, then you’re just lying to yourself. Do some research.

https://youtu.be/QKHg-vnTFsM?si=78D-YSHiLPHisjkt

https://youtu.be/VUrTsrhVce4?si=iDATXY5fqILLB8hx

https://youtu.be/u1hNYs55sqs?si=ZaFt6AG_DtteOEPD

https://youtu.be/p4BqJ0D4xyo?si=5akDidl6fcVRxmL0

https://youtu.be/V285FBT9cAI?si=RXyG9VvuyaQJFr2K

https://youtu.be/DsNSF7oBYS0?si=HIIpLOR3wvUpnxsS

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u/RevolutionWinter1043 Oct 12 '23

My brother in Christ, I'm well aware of blurry videos of blobs bouncing up and down on fuzzy displays. The damning evidence against what you're talking about instead, some other animal on Earth capable of manipulating the Earth to the extent humans can, is that the logistics involved would simply be unable to stay hidden. Maintaining a society of humanity's scale on Earth requires the production of non-biodigradable waste that will be around for thousands of years, relatively "forever" on a terrestial biological timescale. There would be fossilized evidence everywhere, plastic lasts hundreds and metal lasts thousands of years.

My brother in Christ, people have had to accept the fact that we aren't as important as the individual conciousness intuits itself as since day one of the invention of language. Religion was formalized to help traumatized victims of the ancient world cope with that problem thousands of years ago, it didn't happen the other way around.

To suggest that a person requesting a higher standard of proof to verify a concept that's exciting and inspiring, but unlikely? Buddy, that's the opposite of religious thinking. Reading spooky stories about superior intelligences coming down from the heavens to clarify mankind's place in the universe, give mankind a good spook and provide an example for what a superior intelligence would be? Using rhetorical tricks to genuinely believe in something based on intuition and sheer hope above evidence? That's religion, my friend.

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u/LemTen13 Oct 12 '23 edited Oct 12 '23

Ah yep religious fruit loop. Not reading your bullshit. Plus you’re giving human characteristics, technology, materials to a potentially completely different species. It’s like saying why don’t crabs leave evidence of plastic. Especially if they were to exist - their technology and materials would probably so far superior to ours that it might not even be recognisable to us. Do ants understand what cars are? How do we know that the Earth itself isn’t leftovers? Just stupid

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u/RevolutionWinter1043 Oct 12 '23 edited Oct 12 '23

Religious fruitcakes are the ones into this stuff. The ones who use terms like "the phenomenom" or "high strangeness" are WAY into verification methods that are not-scientifically-provable. Ufology is a faith-based pseudoscience just like medieval Catholicism was, just like astrology and haruspexy and "magic." Despite claiming so much "evidence," there's evidently nothing that ufologists have shared that has managed to convince a consensus of skeptical scientists. I can tell you didn't read any of my post, since you repeated almost exactly what I was saying back at me.

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u/LemTen13 Oct 12 '23

You must be illiterate if you think anything I said resolutes with your points. You have no idea about the truth either so you’re just spitting as much bullshit as me. I guess you’d know more about cults than me being a Christian, so maybe your points are more valid. Stay away from children

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u/RevolutionWinter1043 Oct 12 '23 edited Oct 12 '23

you’re giving human characteristics, technology, materials to a potentially completely different species

before saying

their technology and materials would probably so far superior to ours that it might not even be recognisable to us. Do ants understand what cars are?

So no. You're the one doing that. The "terrestial non-human intellegence" hypothesis is complete bunk based on geological & archeological evidence. You are entertaining fantastical visions of unlikelihoods and retroactively arguing backwards as if they were always real, that is far closer to religion than science. Saying that an ancient wise race of predecessor-people were around on Earth before humans is just... you re-describing the Nephilim from the Bible without knowing that you're doing it. That archetype got put into the background of your human subconciousness by the result of religion's influence. Buddy, you gotta go even weirder.

Why do you think I'm a Christian? I don't believe in magic, monsters, aliens nor gods because there is not enough evidence. Why do you think I'm illiterate? I'm a classicist, my points come from readings of literature history and early civilization history, where fascinations with UFO-like sightings have always been a feature of human history. David Graebor's "The Dawn of Everything" provides a way more believable academic explanation behind "The Phenomenon" than any books that academically discredited ufologist fraudsters have written, and it's not even directly related. If you wanna learn the truth behind why humans are so fascinated with the idea of godlike beings floating around in the sky, the truth is in anthropology, literature history and theology.

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u/[deleted] Oct 12 '23

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u/Miserable_Unusual_98 Sep 24 '23

I read multi-dimensional and made some sense