RE: This guys says he knows there's no God!
April 16, 2011 at 8:19 pm
(This post was last modified: April 16, 2011 at 8:47 pm by Oldandeasilyconfused.)
Quote:What I'm saying is, I found this stuff and I'd like someone to help me pick holes in it in an intelligent manner. Not, "hey, it's gotta be crap 'cause it's some loony with delusions.
Carl Sagan said 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" A photo is not evidence,neither is an assertion.
'Seems reasonable' is a basic logical fallacy, argument from ignorance. IE a thing may seem obvious and be false or seem absurd and be true.
You are not the first and will not be the last person to be gulled by photos or film.
I Googled Billy Meier and got 417,000 hits. The guy is batshit crazy and/ or a complete fraud.
The wiki article is interesting. Note his response to accusations of fakery and the defence offered by supporters.
Quote:"Billy" Eduard Albert Meier (February 3, 1937) is a citizen of Switzerland who claims to be a UFO contactee and prophet. He is also the source of many controversial UFO photographs, which he states are evidence of his encounters. Meier reports regular contact with extraterrestrials who impart spiritual and philosophical wisdom. He describes the Plejaren (aliens from the Pleiades) as humanoid Nordic aliens.
Quote:Some of the most important evidence for Meier's claims come from his large collection of controversial photographs. These include images of alleged spacecraft in the Swiss countryside, the Apollo-Soyuz 1975 docking and distant astronomical phenomena. Supporters insist that the images are exceptionally high quality and that a one-armed man could not possibly have fabricated them.
Critics such as Stanton Friedman and Jacques Vallée believe them to be fakes.[17] Some critics have provided examples of similar faked photos[18] and have pointed out that some of his photos are taken from science fiction books, paintings and television programs.[19] Meier claims that these photos were altered by intelligence agencies and slipped into his collection in order to discredit his UFO testimony.[20] Other allegations include focus and light-direction problems consistent with cut-and-paste and model techniques.[21]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Meier
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No less a mind than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes) was taken in by the famous (at the time) 'Cottingley Fairies' hoax. So much so that he wrote serious book "The Coming Of The Fairies"
Quote:The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 10. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of The Strand Magazine. Conan Doyle, as a spiritualist, was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as genuine, but others believed they had been faked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Meier
