[Blart]

Originally Posted by robbieopperude

I didn't really see you convey anything that can convince me that military people lying on there deathbed would feel the urge to lie about Roswell. Or, for that matter, the many other scientists and government officials who come out and say they worked on projects that involved UFO type technology. Yes, I believe some of them are probably doing it for fame or money but I just can't believe that humanity is so corruptible that a 80 to 90 year old man would tell a whopper of a lie just before dying. Not to mention people from that era of time have different standards and codes that they lived by.

I'm not saying they're lying. Sagan is much more delicate than me on this subject, so I'll let him explain:

SAGAN: If I were speaking to a group of abductees, I think the first thing I would do would be to tell them that I'm sure to many of them the pain that is expressed is genuine, that they're not just making this up. And it's very important to be compassionate. At the same time, I would stress that hallucinations are a human common place, and not a sign that you are crazy. And that absolutely clear hallucinations have occured to normal people and it has a compelling feeling of reality, but it's generated in the head.

And that being the case, I would ask them to try to be as objective as they can and see if anything like that might, in fact, explain what they said happened to them. And I'd remind them that children, universally, have terrible nightmares, especially around 7 to 11, and wake up from sleep absolutely terrified about a monster, a witch, a goblin, a demon, and why shouldn't some of us retain that? I mean, there's no question that those monsters don't exist and they're hiding in the closet or under the bed. That's something generated in the mind. Why should it all go away when we grow up? We should retain some of that. And could not something like that be an explanation?

I would try to simply ask them to adopt the scientific method of multiple working hypothesis. Right now, they have only one hypothesis and their minds are, in many cases, closed to the alternative. I would ask them to do a serious consideration of the alternative, see if it makes sense.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/aliens/carlsagan.html

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.