Ok. From these two quotes I can make the justified assumption that it really takes faith to embrace the reptilian theory as valid.
Depends on what your qualifications are for believing something. If you are incapable of using indirect evidence, have no personal experience with this, trust authority more than your own intuition, are unwilling to research before making a conclusion, and believe only what your five senses tell you, then your beliefs would be limited indeed. The contradiction here is that I have personal friends and acquaintances who have seen reptilians. Now if I told you this, you might say, "But you take it on faith that what they are telling you is accurate." In which case, if I had myself personally seen a reptilian as well, what difference would it make to you since then you would have to take it on faith that what I am saying is accurate. Therefore unless you yourself see a reptilian and remember it, you would not be convinced. Therefore my own experiences and that of others is irrelevant to you, at least it would not be enough to meet your standards. Because if it were enough, then you would find it reasonable to trust my trust in those who have had such personal experiences.
About 1): When somebody does not have enough information about an extraordinary subject, like the reptilians, so that he can be certain of it, and still believe , despite the principle called "Occam's Razor" that it is plausible... he makes a "leap of faith" .. where faith resides, there is less room for debate. ( if i can't find my pen, it is proper for me to suppose that I have lost it , and much less proper to think that aliens from outer (or inner) space came and stole my pen.)
The determination of 'extraordinary' is subjective, isn't it? Or at least relative to the person's own knowledge and experience with such things. If I told an Amazon native about skyscrapers, that would be an extraordinary thing for him, and he could very well not believe me, especially if he refuses to leave his native lands and investigate it for himself. It's a slippery slope because naivete can sink into outright ignorance where one's own closed mindedness is projected onto something else's being 'extraordinary.' Because then what constitutes sufficient proof is determined by a subjective standard, that standard being whatever it takes to overcome a skeptic's willful ignorance rather than what is logically conclusive given the entire spectrum of pieces available.
Demonstration of willful ignorance, and hence subjective standards, is when the skeptic refuses to survey those pieces first, when as a matter of ego-convenience he shifts the burden of time and energy upon others to tell him through discussion what he could easily find out for himself through the published literature already available. Asking questions like you have is perfectly fine, I'm talking more about previous encounters with people who pride themselves on being skeptics and who therefore have something to lose in terms of pride and ego-investments were they to capitulate to facts outside their comfort zone. So another illustration of standards being subjective is when a skeptic raises the bar arbitrarily to avoid ever having to change his position. If he already has his mind made up that something is bunk, as evidenced by him rather shifting the burden of learning upon others by making them jump through his hoops rather than him doing some thorough research first, then he will always have quick rationalizations at hand to dismiss whatever infringes upon his own subjective beliefs.
The reason I bring this up, is that if the place from which a skeptic is coming is itself flawed, subjective, based on incomplete or false assumptions and crippled methodologies of reasoning, then it would be hypocritical to blame others of same. That is the risk here to prevent.
About 2) Montalk I am really not saying it for the sake of contradiction,but as you brought logic into the discussion I'd like to point out that what you've said it's at least inconsistent. How can you be sure ( =convinced) that reptilians are true, if you acknowledge that they "probably exist"?.. the word "probably leaves room to being wrong.. and them acctually not existing. And if that's the case, you must have a belief similar to those usually seen in religious people, by this I mean, a "faithful belief" and not a "justified belief"..
That is because you and I have different ways of determining truth. For you, truth is that which is inductively or deductively deduced to be 100% certain, proven through incontrovertible evidence and observation by your five senses, intellect, and external sources of authority you arbitrarily trust. For me, truth is among that which is left after all impossibilities have been eliminated based on counter-examples, and further narrowed down through intuitively-guided reasoning toward the most probable possibility that best explains all my observations and experiences. So I work with "fuzzy logic" while you might prefer "binary logic." The reason my method works better for investigation into new territory is that if you only move forward when you are 100% certain, then you never actually progress beyond the boundaries of your old assumptions and modes of perception because it is those that determine what for you is certain. That I work with probabilities ensures that I am always selflessly open to revising my beliefs when new and better data comes along. What good is 100% certainty and 0% faith, when in the end you might be wrong anyway and thus all the more stubborn to changing?
For skeptics steeped in orthodoxy, something new is wrong because it contradicts the old. For me, something new is right if it's better than the old. Of course, there are many things I know to be 100% true based on my own experiences, but I do not limit my beliefs solely to those - rather I use these as stepping stones to then extrapolate further into probabilistic theories that are refined through further experience and observation. Found out it is called "abductive reasoning." It's necessary to go beyond the old. Otherwise one is like an explorer who never ventures beyond the map's edge.
And if that's the case, you must have a belief similar to those usually seen in religious people, by this I mean, a "faithful belief" and not a "justified belief"..
You are mistaken because the type of religious people you have in mind base their beliefs solely on external authority, what has been programmed into them by church and its dogmatic texts. Also, they are incapable of debating with sound logic. Besides, logic is nothing if it follows from flawed assumptions, and that's what religious texts tend to be - or at least their interpretations - a huge collection of flawed and limiting assumptions. So they use circular reasoning, logical fallacies, and rationalizations to defend their blind faith against counter-example. Ironically, that is no different from stubborn skeptics who act the same way to defending their blind faith in mainstream opinion and the modern scientific orthodoxy.
There is a difference between blind faith, and faith based on experience. The latter uses prior experiences to formulate new hypotheses which are then given just enough faith to follow toward new observations that either substantiate or contradict it. It's a subtle process that's too delicate for those lacking the required dexterity. What is it called when a true scientist decides to pour time and funding into building experiments solely for a hypothesis that has not yet been proven? That is the kind of faith I'm talking about. You have to assume it's possible, and can even call it true until proven false, to even test it in the first place. And so it is with the reptilian theory -- for me it works, it explains things, it has several pieces backing it up, it is logical, plausible if you do the research, and it is therefore a better fit to reality than the theory that they do not exist at all.
My beliefs are not based on dogma, institutional authorities, or mass opinion. They are based on reason, intuition, experience, observation, and those of others that I take into consideration, and so I seek ever increasing objectivity, or rather look for higher realms of objectivity, whereas religious people (and stubborn skeptics and scientists) are only looking to secure their positions against threats. On a sidenote, that's why debates between Creationists and Evolutionists go nowhere, they are both ignorant in their own way.
To sum it up.. can you blame somebody if they come across such theory and think "this is BS ( aka crazy conspiracy theory.. what a bunch of lunatics".) ?
I can't blame them if they are merely naive, never having had the opportunity to experience or research any of this for themselves. But there comes a point, like I said, where naivete slides into ignorance, when they are given the opportunity and turn up their noses at it. Then they have made the choice, and ignorance is the choice away from a potential avenue of greater understanding. Most people do think this is crazy BS, but not because it actually is, but because they are coming from a position of naivete... and very quickly from ignorance. If the latter, then my best response is: If it isn't happening to you and you are not involved in doing something about it, then it is just as well that you know nothing about it... but if things change and you find yourself in either of those positions, then you know where to go. Otherwise, I'm not concerned what people think beyond ensuring they've had their chance and know where to learn more. I have no investment making others believe against their will what I believe just to validate my ego insecurities.
1) - archeological depictions . How come there are no books written on the subject by important archeologists and historics, suggesting that there may be a link between such depictions and other UFO claims? At least have not knowledge of such books.
2) - role of the serpent/dragon symbol in history (occult symbolism, the draco standard, winged serpent, etc...) . There are plenty of occult symbols throughout hystory.. The christian cross is one of the oldest symbols known today by the people.. so, does this mean anything?
3) - Folklore , religion and mythology. I dissmiss this as irrelevant. There's plenty of BS in those areas.
4) - multiple eyewitness sightings and anecdotes. Just people crying for attention and hoping to get famous. Not a single one may be credible until proven otherwise.
7) -individuals who are possessed or shadowed by lizard beings. Oh, exorcism anyone? Lots of insane people are also alledgedly possessed by the Devil., same religious nonsense. just psychological diseases or abnormalities
11)- sudden onset of phobias in children concerning reptilian bogeymen. Well.. chieldren are afraid of lots of things... this wide range of things includes imaginary monsters.
12) UFOlogy identifies grays, reptilians, mantis and nordic beings as the most commonly encountered . Since when is UFOlogy a science?
13) higher incidences of untimely death among researchers investigating the reptilian connection. Aren't you afraid then for your life? Still , it's reasonable to assume those were coincidences. Shit Happens sometimes.
14) too frequently referenced or depicted in science-fiction movies, shows, and literature known for smuggling truth in the guise of fiction. Movies and fiction are just that ... movies and fiction. Just a commercial meme to keep the masses entertained.
This list was meant to let you know about things you might encounter in your own research, to provide potential leads to look into, and of course not in itself to "prove" anything to you, because it's easy to take a sentence and in knowing nothing about its context return with a convenient dismissal that would be shown invalid the moment you actually acquire that context by researching it. Also, keep in mind that while each of those 14 points has a probability of error that could be significant if considered in isolation from the others, all taken together results in a much smaller one that is harder to explain away. Therefore you can find explanation or excuses for each of these separately, but what about the whole thing? And you don't know the whole thing until you research it yourself, otherwise you're just passing off opinions for informed rebuttals.
Acquiring fringe knowledge is like digging for diamonds in a mine field.
Now that's something! Just when i was thinking "hmm, another overactive left-hemisphere manifestation disguising itself in polite and nice words"*.