José Can Say So - Religions Are Cults

[scrogdog]

That wasn’t my question. Would you be convinced that something unexplainable and beyond our technology happened?

Sure, I suppose I would. But what would that mean to the world?

Not so. All science begins with a hypothesis.

Ah. I see we need to review how science works.

The first step of the scientific method is observation. Observations establishes a fact that needs explaining, which is what science does. Without it, there is nothing to hypothesize about! How could Newton form a hypothesis about gravity without the observation that apples fall to the ground?

Again, please show us the repeatable experiment that Von Daniken conducted to transform his hypothesis in to an actual testable, repeatable, falsifyable theory. Then please show how this was passed around for peer review.

[scrogdog]

Scrog is assuming there isn't hard evidence because a UFO has never hit him in the arss or because our government hasn't revealed the truth to the American people.

Scrog was one of those guys that put Galileo in prison.

Not so. I am assuming that there is no hard evidence for the simple reason that no one in this discussion has yet presented any.

One of you might try that at some point.

[scrogdog]

Hmm. The room became very quiet.

Indeed. Your lack of knowledge about how science works is stunning!

[coolwhip]

If ET landed on your house and smashed it, left a video for you and an autographed picture, you still wouldn't believe it.

[scrogdog]

There is far more conclusive evidence as to the existence of extra terrestrials than there is of Jesus Christ, yet many folks have no problem believing in him.

Splain! Wheres the science?

People will trust an Economist, but they do not trust a fortune teller.

Splain! Account for this science!

Banks have chains on their pens, but leave the vault door open.

Splain! What science does this involve?

Just so we are clear, there is no hard evidence for God either.

It is called faith for a reason.

If you want to believe in aliens, CW, that's fine with me. By definition in this context, belief is not based on hard evidence.

In my case, belief is something that is based on an established precedent. It's not that way for everyone obviously.

[coolwhip]

Just so we are clear, there is no hard evidence for God either.

It is called faith for a reason.

I didn't say GOD, I said Jesus.

[ga-hvac-tech]

If our government says it never happened, surly they must be right. All of us know that our government would never conceal, lie, or manipulate the truth in anyway.

Just like MK Ultra never happened right?

and Operation Northwoods

and Operation Ajax

and CIA drug smuggling

and Operation Paperclip

and we dont manipulate currency values

and Operation PBSUCCESS

and the secret bombing of Cambodia

and secret CIA prisons

and the Gulf of Tonkin

and the attack on the USS Liberty

etc. etc.



Your government would never intentionally lie or mislead you now would they?

I am not saying it never happened because the govt said it did not... I do not believe the govt in this area any more than I believe the govt in other areas (like they can fix SSI or medicare).

What I am saying is the govt COULD use UFO's as a bluff to cover other things. Will explain more later.

[coolwhip]

So Scrog, tell me one law of Physics that says alien life cannot exist.

[scrogdog]

So Scrog, tell me one law of Physics that says alien life cannot exist.

Silly lad.

So, you believe in aliens simply because they can potentially exist?

[scrogdog]

I didn't say GOD, I said Jesus.

I can't off the top of my head think of any hard evidence for Jesus either.

I usually don't bring that up since it is irrelevent in this sense; whether or not Jesus existed does not affect my views on religion one bit.

[coolwhip]

Silly lad.

So, you believe in aliens simply because they can potentially exist?

You state there is no proof, I say show me proof there is not and to show me one law of Physics that says they cant exist. If you are a man of science, then prove to me they do not exist.

Your type thought Galileo was silly too and imprisoned him.

Who knows, maybe Jesus was an Alien. Maybe thats why the Jews chose Barrabus over Jesus...they didn't want to follow an alien around...bad for publicity and chose a criminal instead.

[scrogdog]

You state there is no proof, I say show me proof there is not and to show me one law of Physics that says they cant exist. If you are a man of science, then prove to me they do not exist.

There is no need for me to do that since I have not made a claim that it is impossible that aliens exist. That's quite an odd request, not to mention irrelevent to what I've actually said.

All I've said is that, up to now, there is not a shred of hard evidence for as much as an extraterrestrial microbe. Making a belief in aliens about the same as any religion.

However, you have one advantage here, you can't go back in time and prove anything about the past. However, nothing says that in the future there will not be evidence. Only that there is none so far. Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

Your type thought Galileo was silly too and imprisoned him.

Actually, no, since Galileo was fully capable of actually DEMONSTRATING his claims. Unlike you.

[coolwhip]

How bout this article?

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...IESvz48aXzc_WQ

A NASA scientist, Richard Hoover Ph.D., of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, published a paper Saturday in the Journal of Cosmology which claims that alien bacteria have been positively identified in meteorites. Fox News was given the story as an exclusive, and the announcement set off celebrations by some, and a fire-storm of criticism by others.


Close up view of one of the fossilized bacteria from the meteorite.
Fox News, a very unusual publication for the release of scientific findings, fairly enough gave equal light to both sides of the sensational story. Hoover’s recent paper on the subject is not his first, he has published very similar findings in a number of papers over more than a decade.

Meteorite

In a nutshell: Hoover broke open a crumbly, rare meteorite called a carbonaceous chondrite, the interior of which revealed microscopic fossils of bacteria including mineralized cyanobacteria, common blue green algae. Many of the bacteria can be classified and some are unknown. The Fox article quotes Hoover as saying, “The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth. There are some that are just very strange and don’t look like anything that I’ve been able to identify, and I’ve shown them to many other experts that have also come up stumped.”


In an earlier paper from 2004 on the same subject, Hoover wrote: “Many of the forms have the correct size of trichomes and sheaths, and exhibit complex morphology, branching, and other features, such as the presence of germlings, heterocysts, apical cells, akinetes, and hormogonia that permit them to be recognized and their taxonomy established in accordance with the characteristics set forth in Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology.”


A view of the abundance of forms fond in the meteorite.
Bacteria from Space
Detractors claim he is fooling himself into seeing things that aren’t there, or that the things he sees are bacteria that contaminated the meteorite sample over the last 100 years of handling. Hoover’s response is to show that chemical analysis demonstrates that all the proper elements found in life, in the proper proportion, are found in the microbe samples. Key to his argument is that one element is missing: nitrogen. Nitrogen is found in all organic samples … unless they have had centuries to release the gas. This is Hoover’s proof that the bacteria are not due to terrestrial contamination.

“If someone can explain how it is possible to have a biological remain that has no nitrogen, or nitrogen below the detect ability limits that I have, in a time period as short as 150 years, then I would be very interested in hearing that,” Hoover said. “I’ve talked with many scientists about this and no one has been able to explain.”

Also from the 2004 paper, Hoover states: “Evidence for possible microfossils in meteorites was previously reported in numerous papers by many scientists (Nagy, Claus, Timofeyev, Van Landingham, Palik, McKay, Rozanov, Hoover, etc.).”

As to the claim that he is seeing things that are not there, Hoover noted in his 2010 paper that there is an overabundance of L-amino acids in the samples. In nature, life forms use L-amino acids exclusively, otherwise equal quantities of L-amino acids and D-amino acids are found.

Source Criticism

Another criticism of the news centers around the nature of the publication, Journal of Cosmology. Critics claim that the journal does not have the peer review standards of more well accepted publications. In fact, it is only a somewhat cosmic-looking website. There is no paper issue. For such an important discovery, a well-accepted, major publication like Science would normally be chosen, they say. An example they cite is that the 1996 discovery of bacteria in a meteorite from Mars was published in Science, the most esteemed scientific journal.

Critics have been fair to note that observations about the Journal, or Fox News, are not to be considered as a disproof of the theory, but they seem like odd choices for publication, and do not lend credibility to Hoover’s argument.

Dr. Rudy Schild, a scientist with the Harvard-Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cosmology, wrote: “Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis. No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important research paper before it is published.”