UFO conference for SA

Johannesburg - South Africa will experience its first ever conference on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) in November.

“Millions of people in SA have had their own personal experience with ETs and UFOs - but most have in the past been too nervous to raise the subject, afraid of ridicule,” conference host Michael Tellinger said on Thursday.

The gathering would allow “those in the know” an opportunity to express themselves on issues like extra-terrestrial (ET) contact.

He said 13 internationally recognised and published leaders in the fields of UFOlogy, genetics, microbiology and biomimicry would speak at the event in Johannesburg.

Speakers would also address topics including alchemy, ancient wisdom, numeric science and the formation of a money-less society.“The average person on the street is completely oblivious of the unimaginable progress in scientific research, so much so, that it would seem like magic to the unenlightened crowd”, said Tellinger.

“While there are still many who smirk in disbelief at the concept of alien presence in the universe and even here on Earth, those in the know are rapidly moving well beyond trying to justify their knowledge to the uninitiated.”

  • SAPA

My bold.

I’m skeptical,13 internationally recognised and published leaders… recognised by whom? Ancient wisdom and numeric science?

Someone here planning to go have a look?

In case any of you in JHB area are looking for some entertainment, there’s a UFO/alchemy/pyramid/alien conference in November: http://fsi.org.za/ufos-meet-numerical-science-festival-nonsense/

snap
;D
Bluegray, please merge!
http://forum.skeptic.za.org/general-skepticism/ufo-conference-for-sa/msg21550/#new

In case you haven’t heard of the organiser Michael Tellinger
oh good gods

Summed up particularly well:

Tellinger is a South African version of someone like Zecharia Sitchin, who himself is such a crackpot that even some other crackpots have disowned him.
Millions of people in SA have had their own personal experience with ETs and UFOs - but most have in the past been too nervous to raise the subject

So he claims there are millions of people with personal experience who have never raised the subject, but he knows about them?

How?

Woo - not just a sound ghosts make!

Omitting Erich von Däniken and Charles Berlitz is understandable but I’m amazed that they left out such luminaries as Richard Hoagland, Zecharia Sitchin, Graham Hancock and SA’s very own Wayne Herschel.

“Ancient wisdom” is one of those woo-woo notions that is buffed up for fresh display at regular intervals as if it incontestably affirmed those notions. It doesn’t seem to occur to those who are partial to it to ask themselves that if indeed it is true knowledge of great value, how people managed to lose it in the first place.

It’s also frightening that Wits University is prepared to host such patent hooey. What’s next, nativity plays for academia?

'Luthon64

Ancient wisdom?
the ancients thought the earth was flat, that leaches can cure pretty much everything, tried to turn lead into gold, and so on and so forth. ancient wisdom my ass.

No, those examples, each being provably wrong, don’t qualify as “ancient wisdom” in the eyes of the woos. “Ancient wisdom” is any vague, usually unfalsifiable fantastical conjecture the woos dream up to maintain the illusion that people in ancient times knew secret stuff about life, the universe and everything, which knowledge we no longer possess because we are way too materialistic (in both the pejorative and philosophical senses of that term). It’s really just a rhetorical device whose sole purpose is to sustain the comforting delusion that humanity lost its way, and only a few select delusionals know the real truth about this. The odd thing is that such “ancient wisdom” invariably yields a fat goose egg when subjected to sufficient critical scrutiny.

'Luthon64

Never heard of the dark ages?

There have been many civilisations that have been brought down in the past, with little continuity of knowledge beyond the most turbulent periods.

Not saying these woo-mongers have any credibility, just that there are precedents for lost knowledge in the past, conquering hordes/armies tend to burn records, destroy buildings, and interrupt traditions of passing on verbal knowledge and continuing apprenticeships.

A kind of ancient ‘liberation before education’ you might say.

Sure, but these people are on the whole arguing for prior knowledge of such momentous profundity and direct beneficial consequence to human existence that its being lost would be akin to humanity suddenly and collectively losing the ability to hunt or to farm. The point is that alleged knowledge of the significance claimed by the woo nuts cannot help but be spread far and wide in very short order because it would confer a huge advantage on those who hold it. Against this background, the woo crowd needs to add conspiracies of suppression by some elite in order to preserve the idea that the professed knowledge was indeed lost, and the likelihood that this is all true rapidly evaporates.

'Luthon64

which really helped in not killing people for shits and giggles, living in peace with fellow human being, treating nature with respect, being kind to animals, the poor…
oh wait…

wtf is wrong with me? Why haven’t I had a UFO experience? I’ve read all the sci-fi books ever and everything!

Two threads? definitely aliens at work!

You know too much.

my landlord recanted his UFO experience to me a few weeks ago. i had gooseflesh. i would LOVE to see one. call me woo, but i think they are out there. what the hell ever ‘they’ are.

Yeah and a “known person” of mine recently shared his ghost story with me too. He saw it totally standing there and everything! Still didn’t buy it.

I’ve met some people who could tell you all kinds of elaborate bullshit given even the slightest prod.

You need to move into a trailer park somewhere in or near Nevada.

I always knew that I know to much, I think. bane of my existence.

Will the Karroo do? Nevada seems awfully far off and I probably won’t be able to resist the lure of Vegas and miss out on any opportunities anyway.

Looks like it would do.

http://beta.mnet.co.za/carteblanche/Article.aspx?Id=1668

It was late December 1998; the children were playing in the street in a quiet Graaff- Reinet suburb. Jacques Laubscher was indoors editing the video footage he'd shot over Christmas when one of the children, having seen something unusual in the sky, ran inside in a hurry and called Jacques to come quickly...

But be VERY CAREFUL not to pick up hitchhikers - could be the Spook van Uniondale, in which case you would be stuffed.