Oral history is generally reliable within a three-generation callback time period

[Bai Lan]

^^^ Nothing even approaching an adequate scientific explanation for the four primary atheist miracles - just an abiding faith that test tubes, microscopes, and mass spectrometers will have the answer. And this itself presupposes that everything in the universe is supposed to be rationally intelligible, yet another article of faith.

I don't have enough faith to be a devout Christian, Jew, or Muslim.

But I also don't have the faith required to be an atheist.

thats why you should forget those question and focus on Applied Morality.

 

[Into the Night]

I believe people are seeing unidentified aerial phenomena.

The last time I saw a UFO, it was on the ground. I saw it just south of Tonopah, NV, and just west of Area 52.

I just don't think the best explanation is that they are observing intergalactic spaceships piloted by aliens.

It wasn't a spaceship. Someone out came out and tramped the letters 'UFO' in the sand and an arrow pointing toward Area 52.

Someone must've been bored. Not much to do in Goldfield.

 

[Into the Night]

Seems his "agenda" is knowing things.

Histories from the ancient world describe lives and events known to have happened both from plural sources and surviving evidence. Reports of UFO sightings are of isolated occurrences typically lacking evidence for which the better response, in my opinion, is to say, "keeping an open mind pending proof one way or the other."

Oh, the UFO I saw was quite real and quite visible from the air. I can only imagine how bored someone was in Goldfield to go out and make the thing.

 

[Into the Night]

Your assumption is that everyone who sees an unidentified aerial phenomena actually leaps to the conclusion that they are witnessing interstellar spaceships piloted by aliens.

I always give serious weight to eyewitness testimony reported by multiple people.

I don't think everyone is lying who saw something strange on Loch Ness or in up in the atmosphere. You have to consider if the best explanation for these observations are really a freshwater aquatic dinosaur and intergalactic spaceships piloted by aliens.

So you believe in Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and spaceships piloted by aliens.

Whadda twit.

 

[Into the Night]

Seems his "agenda" is knowing things.

Already shown to be wrong. His (and your) agenda is to 'appear thmart'.

Histories from the ancient world describe lives and events known to have happened both from plural sources and surviving evidence. Reports of UFO sightings are of isolated occurrences typically lacking evidence for which the better response, in my opinion, is to say, "keeping an open mind pending proof one way or the other."

I already know you believe in the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and intergalactic spacecraft.

 

[Into the Night]

Ideally, we need multiple witnesses, and remembering what score someone got in their golf game last week, is not as important to historians as reliable testimony about who won at the Battle of Marathon, or whether Julius Caesar was murdered by assassination.

Random phrases. No apparent coherency.

 

[Into the Night]

He's right that if a substantial number of the reports were accurate we would have evidentiary proof by now, but the probable falsity of the vast majority of reports doesn't mean or logically suggest that all are false.

Attempted negative proof fallacy.