Martin Stower Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Doctor Femano, It’s your example. You told us
> that it’s a flying saucer. If suddenly it’s
> not a flying saucer, or unrecognisable as a flying
> saucer, then you’ve changed the example. All
> that’s left is an artifact with
> “hieroglyphics” on it.


In all seriousness, would anyone on this planet really be able to recognize such an alien device if they bumped into one? Our notions of "flying saucer" are pinned on the obsolete context of mid-20th century fiction.

And this is the very nature of what I see as a far more severe problem going on in Egyptology.

What are the connotations of the "orthodox" term, "flying saucer"? It's based on a standard that dates back to the late 1940s -- a full 10 years before the first modern human would dare to touch Earth's orbit only 200 miles above the planet surface.

But does that "flying saucer" standard still apply today? In truth, the term "flying saucer" was invented by the US Press and not by Ken Arnold or any authority in engineering or astrophysics. Thousands of reports of "flying saucers" have been reported and left unexplained as enigmatic. But "flying saucer" is a B.S. term that was conjured up by the naive to account for the inexplicable and unfathomable. Similar to the use of the term "tomb", in my opinion.

According to our 21st century standards, it's hardly likely that such interplanetary technology originating light years away would really arrive here by "flying" through "space". Even if top secret government scientists went in there and called it a "flying saucer" (which they most likely would not) how would they know that's what it is unless they already had one and made the comparison? Or might they just assume it's from an alien civilization based on the fact that no such technology exists in any known civilization? And so here we are, exactly where Egyptology has brought us: interpretation by myopic presumptive association of context, and a rather obsolete context, at that.

And so regarding my hypothetical of what many people would still call a "flying saucer" found under 30' of earth, we might see what we interpret to be some technology there, it's a new discovery of an unknown technology that doesn't follow our modern rules, and no one today can account for it among terrestrial civilizations. Experts might take a good guess at what it is, and even label it in the secret archives as something extraterrestrial, but how would they really know that's where it's from vs. it being Earthly but from a future time...or from the distant past, etc.?

Likewise, we don't really know what the pyramids are either. Sure, many "experts" may have "recognized" and "confirmed" them as tombs, but only on the basis of a presumed context and a wildly contrived timeline based on obsolete standards (just as other experts once thought such saucers might "fly" in a "craft" though "space"). And yet apparently some people think we should take the word of those "experts" and accept that the thing really is a "flying saucer" and that those monuments are "tombs".

Your response actually supports my point about how easy it is to jump to conclusions based on presumed, but unproven, context.



> Collapse of your argument.

Hardly.

And I'd still like to know if you think those things are tombs.



> > Since we have no evidence of anything "earthbound"
> > ever constructing such a thing, how would you know
> > what the "necessary characteristics" would be for
> > such an object?
>
> I wrote “necessary characteristics of a
> spacecraft” (emphasis added).
> Can’t you read⸮

I can read. Can't you explain?

What would you presume to be the "necessary characteristics" of such an object? What would any "expert" claim to be such characteristics? Would it need an airfoil? A cockpit? Mechanical controls? Seats for the crew? Would it make any sound? Does it have an engine compartment? What fuel might our "experts" expect to find? The fact is, we have absolutely no reason to assume any of those are "necessary characteristics", so what exactly do you have in mind as a "necessary characteristic, and why would any "expert" have an iota of knowledge of what characteristics would be "necessary"?

Meanwhile, you're the one who just called it a "spacecraft", not me. I only called it a "flying saucer", and yet you seem to subscribe to the same obsolete context and conclude it was truly a "craft" that traveled through "space". It's so easy to get bitten by the context bug.



> Go on, Femano, try telling us that the necessary
> characteristics of an alien spacecraft are
> so unfathomably mysterious that we could not
> possibly have any idea of them...

That's exactly what I'd tell you, and I just did!



> —as in that case
> your grounds for calling the thing a “flying
> saucer” vanish and again we are left with an
> artifact whose only specified characteristic is
> that it has “hieroglyphics” on it.

Precisely my point.



> > > Allow me to remind you, Doctor
> > > Femano, that it’s you (and not me) who dismisses
> > > ancient aliens out of hand.
> > I believe you are incorrect, yet again [sic].
> > When did I ever say such a thing?
>
> http://grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?1,334576,334895#msg-334895
> “I've never read Sitchin. The moment I found out
> his thesis focused on aliens I discarded any
> interest in his writing.”
>
> Go on, Doctor. Give us your
> “I didn’t actually say in so many words”
> speech. Show those few still taken in by you what
> a lying weasel you are.
>
> Which is more than enough discussion of your
> mutating hypothetical nonsense.
>
> M.

Again, you misread.

If I didn't consider aliens to be a possibility, I wouldn't have said:

"If an alien ship landed on the White House lawn, no degree of marshall law would prevent that from irreversibly going public worldwide in a heartbeat"

or

"We don't know with certainty that aliens didn't built [sic] those pyramids, so they might have, but the proof just hasn't been discovered yet."

or

"And so, for example, if aliens are responsible for G1, there's no reason to jump to the conclusion that they came here "only to teach us how to pile up rocks". For all we know, they may simply have used an endogenous species as slave labor to execute the project for their own alien purposes"

Sure sounds like I'm not dismissing them "out of hand".

Accusing someone of dismissing something "out of hand" means they refuse to put any consideration into it right from the start; it means "without taking time to think" since it's not even something to be considered as a remote possibility. I've never rejected aliens "out of hand", and I've always allowed "alien provenance" as a distant possibility since there's no way (yet) to prove it one way or the other. However, as far as I'm concerned, alien provenance actually seem more of a possibility with each passing day as I consider how quickly so many traditional tenets seem to be breaking down.

The reason I discard Sitchin is NOT because I dismiss aliens out of hand, it's because I don't recognize Sitchin as qualified to identify an alien presence. Are you suggesting that we are to accept the word of Sitchin regarding something as complex as alien technology? What do you suppose would be Sitchin's qualifications to "confirm" whether something is alien technology or not?




Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02-Mar-17 21:39 by Origyptian.