I for one, also think that we are not alone in the universe. There likely are other civilizations out there. I just don't subscribe to the belief that we are currently being visited by any of them.
In the course of 60 years since the first saucer sightings, the UFO "research" movement is no closer to knowing anything about more alien visitations than when they started. In that time, real science has discovered DNA, put a man on the Moon, conquered the atom, gone to the deepest oceans, and revolutionized how we inform ourselves and interact. That is what we can do when we set about to do practical things. When we set about instead to indirectly argue a pet theory for which there is no evidence, we'll do that until he cows come home. Frankly, I think the methods of the UFO research crowd are geared not toward finding an answer, but toward endlessly perpetuating the debate. Why? Because these endless go-arounds are profitable for the UFO authors and lecturers. What about the rank and file? I think most believe because they want to. Most seem to have a lack of faith in mankind or human institutions (who can blame them?) and see aliens as some sort of otherwordly saviors. There are some strong parallels to religion there.
What I find interesting was that in the past one in fifty people carried a camera and today forty out of fifty people carry a camera, we should expect to see more UFO photos today than we did in the past, a lot more (we certainly get to see more photos of things that do exist, things like kittens and fast cars and phone distracted people waking into fountains)... unless of course those things which were being photographed in the past are now easier to identify in the photos and are therefore not reported as UFOs anymore.
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