elu

I'm a stalker, too. Do you want to follow each other around?

Hi. I'm replying to your post in the Skeptics group, where I originally posted this. I welcomed you to the group and started on this, but thought it ended up being too long to leave in the welcome thread. I look forward to hearing more from you and the hopefully productive conversations we can have.

You can't deny with complete certainty that a given thing exists without proof to that effect, that's true. However, it's extremely difficult to procure evidence of a given item's non-existence.

A great example was coined by Bertrand Russell back in 1952, referred to as the Celestial Teapot.

In the cases of things such as conspiracies, UFOs, etc, the burden of proof lies with the individual making the assertion. Therefore, you will find most skeptics dismissing these assertions due to a lack of evidence. Refusing to accept an assertion is not the same as asserting that something doesn't exist - which is to say, the burden does not lie with the skeptic to provide evidence against something's existence.

Additionally, using tricks like Occam's Razor , we can reach reasonable assumptions about claims, while not claiming absolute certainty.

Lastly, a quote by Carl Sagan, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," is meant to show that claims that would dramatically contradict existing evidence must be of better quality than the existing evidence to be considered effective.

So if, for instance, I claimed that my sister was abducted by a UFO, the burden is on me to prove:
1) That I have a sister. (Which would be easy, except I actually don't. Still, very little evidence would be required here, as it's a very plausible claim.)
2) That she was abducted. (Trickier, but doable. Interviews would help, but most helpful would be physical evidence of the actual abduction - for instance, any left by the abductors.)
3) That her abduction was not more likely the result of an existing, understood, plausible phenomenon. (My claim is made much more dubious if she's known to run away periodically, or if it's likely that a person took her. Since both of those are more likely than an alien abduction, based on what we know about reality and human nature, I have to get some pretty convincing evidence that it was aliens or a UFO to be blamed.)

By all means, investigate these issues. Learn as much as you can. But be aware of your logical fallacies. Know what mistakes to watch for. For instance, remember that one of the hallmarks of a conspiracy theorist's paranoia is that any evidence against their theory is dismissed by them as further evidence that there is a conspiracy and it's altering the evidence.

Can any of us say for certain that the NWO isn't rising up to claim control of the world? No. Is there any good reason to believe it? Not really. You can choose to be afraid of it if you like, but keep in mind that you can't disprove Russell's Teapot either. Does that mean it's likely to exist?