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LazyGun, Mr Occam: Opting for the most likely of two (or more) possible answers does not give you the answer. If you don’t know, say you don’t know. Don’t best guess and offer that as a solution, because it‘s a false solution, and it‘s a cop out.
Despite your denial, your arguments appear to suggest that in your opinion mankind is at the pinnacle of development, because you’re still talking about basing your assumptions upon our current level of knowledge. Yes, of course the idea that aliens have visited earth is speculation (based in my case upon what I consider to be fairly convincing evidence), but in your unwillingness to stretch your mind in order to deliberate upon potential future technological developments and discoveries, you make a pretty firm negative assessment of something you may, in fact, be entirely wrong about. It seems to me that many people of science promote the philosophy ‘If we can’t do it, then no one else can’, but to a layperson like myself, that seems to be a very limited, and I have to say arrogant, viewpoint. If a man like Stephen Hawking says that the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational, and doesn’t discount the possibility of us encountering them, then why is it not feasible that they may have already encountered us?
Your flag waving of defeat is a straw man argument. I don’t criticise western science because it doesn’t support my assertions. I criticise western science for having the arrogance to declare, without thorough investigation, that a theory is false. I am sceptical in most things, but I am not so sceptical that I am blind to seeking answers to mysteries that, in my opinion, demand explanation.