• NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!

    Subscribe to The Paracast Newsletter!

Sparks, Part II - The Empire Strikes Back


H

hopeful skeptic

Guest
Mr. Sparks' inability to keep a story straight aside, I still believe the best - and for me, most maddening - portion of The Paracast is the direct dialogue between Messrs. Steinberg and Biedny.

I suggest that the reason folks walked out on Dr. Jacobs' presentation on abductions tells us a lot about the faith system that so many UFO believers cherish. I hold that there is no difference between Christian eschatology and typical UFO eschatology except the name of the savior. Why would anyone want to hear that alleged UFO occupants are in any way evil, or harmful to people, or bent on nefarious purposes? Folks have a cherished faith that the aliens are come to save us all from ourselves, and will not give that up. The only thing surprising to me about the audience's reported reaction is that stoning wasn't involved.

Several moments later, Mr. Biedny decried those who take a strong position one way or another, and lamented the aspersions heaped upon those who take a "grounded," middle position. I understand the frustration he feels with those who accept only one or another hypothesis to explain what a UFO is- and share it - but feel that this does not address the real, key issue at hand: What evidence - hard evidence, not eyewitness testimony, stories and anecdotes - exists for anyone's position? Those making claims about the nature of UFOs must first prove that UFOs exist. I think a case can be made for that, based on a smattering of physical trace evidence and hard radar returns (which would lead me to further speculate that the UFOs are physical in nature, and have physical, measurable properties). I don't think anyone can go beyond this, since there's no evidence anywhere. What we're talking about, then, is really a story-swapping session, where the veracity of a claim is really dependent on the communicator and the gut feeling of his audience. In that kind of environment, folks who don't care about evidence will stake out ground, since they don't have to worry about fighting any evidentiary battles.

In regards to Mr. Sparks, I share Mr. Steinberg's suprise that he accepted a second interview. It surprised me when it was announced, and surprised me even more after I heard the interview. Bad decision. Bad, bad, bad. If I had been advising Mr. Sparks, and had a stake in his story, I would have tied him to a tree and spiked his Kool-Aid to prevent him from keeping the date.

All aside, though, I compliment Messrs. Steinberg and Biedny for asking at least some of the questions a critical thinker should ask. Their two interviews with Mr. Sparks were far more informative and revealing than the three-hour love fest Mr. Sparks shared with Art Bell. Kudos!
 
hopeful skeptic said:
Their two interviews with Mr. Sparks were far more informative and revealing than the three-hour love fest Mr. Sparks shared with Art Bell. Kudos!

lol. good stuff...

Sparks sounds like a good guy, but I still didn't find anything final from the second interview, nor did I think I would. He just has an answer for everything, and his answers are just detail after detail. His descriptions are amazingly sharp. I don't even remember what I did 30 minutes ago.

Your guys question to him about going to the bathroom on the ships, and his response made me want to remove my computer from the internet. Lol.

He claims all this stuff, but with no evidence. It is just a great story.
 
I think you guys were still soft on him. Temporal displacement? Time travelling homeless people? Burnt matches? And RAINFORESTS? Is this 1992?

Cookie cutter abduction stuff.
 
hopeful skeptic said:
Mr. Sparks' inability to keep a story straight aside, I still believe the best - and for me, most maddening - portion of The Paracast is the direct dialogue between Messrs. Steinberg and Biedny.

I suggest that the reason folks walked out on Dr. Jacobs' presentation on abductions tells us a lot about the faith system that so many UFO believers cherish. I hold that there is no difference between Christian eschatology and typical UFO eschatology except the name of the savior. Why would anyone want to hear that alleged UFO occupants are in any way evil, or harmful to people, or bent on nefarious purposes? Folks have a cherished faith that the aliens are come to save us all from ourselves, and will not give that up. The only thing surprising to me about the audience's reported reaction is that stoning wasn't involved.

Several moments later, Mr. Biedny decried those who take a strong position one way or another, and lamented the aspersions heaped upon those who take a "grounded," middle position. I understand the frustration he feels with those who accept only one or another hypothesis to explain what a UFO is- and share it - but feel that this does not address the real, key issue at hand: What evidence - hard evidence, not eyewitness testimony, stories and anecdotes - exists for anyone's position? Those making claims about the nature of UFOs must first prove that UFOs exist. I think a case can be made for that, based on a smattering of physical trace evidence and hard radar returns (which would lead me to further speculate that the UFOs are physical in nature, and have physical, measurable properties). I don't think anyone can go beyond this, since there's no evidence anywhere. What we're talking about, then, is really a story-swapping session, where the veracity of a claim is really dependent on the communicator and the gut feeling of his audience. In that kind of environment, folks who don't care about evidence will stake out ground, since they don't have to worry about fighting any evidentiary battles.

In regards to Mr. Sparks, I share Mr. Steinberg's suprise that he accepted a second interview. It surprised me when it was announced, and surprised me even more after I heard the interview. Bad decision. Bad, bad, bad. If I had been advising Mr. Sparks, and had a stake in his story, I would have tied him to a tree and spiked his Kool-Aid to prevent him from keeping the date.

All aside, though, I compliment Messrs. Steinberg and Biedny for asking at least some of the questions a critical thinker should ask. Their two interviews with Mr. Sparks were far more informative and revealing than the three-hour love fest Mr. Sparks shared with Art Bell. Kudos!



I attended a ufo conference and Jacobs was one of the speakers. I think it was around the time of "The Threat". If not, then it was some time after "Secret Life". No one walked out on him at that conference.

This latest Sparks interview ended abruptly I thought. I was expecting a lot more.

I haven't listened to the second guest yet. I guess that's Messrs you mentioned. His name doesn't ring any bells, so I might not be familiar with him.
 
I don't know how they could resist asking something like:

"What do you think would have happened if you had gotten up and moved something in the room with the time dopleganger looking in that direction?"

That came to my mind on the spot when he started talking about the time shift. I wonder if Mr. Sparks has even thought of this..

Overall I have the problem of falling slightly to the side of believing him because his story IS cookie cutter (except for the time travelers). His story shows consistency between him and other abductee accounts. I knew exactly what he would say in the 3 points in regards to the question about smell before I heard it because of the consistency to other abductions by grays and the more credible accounts of reptilians.
 
CapnG said:
I think you guys were still soft on him. Temporal displacement? Time travelling homeless people? Burnt matches? And RAINFORESTS? Is this 1992?

Cookie cutter abduction stuff.

I'll tell you a great follow-up interview: his wife. Get hold of Terry (Terri?) and see if she'd like to talk. I'd love to hear her side of all this. Hell, get hold of a family member.

Unethical, probably, and unkind, but it would be really interesting.
 
hopeful skeptic said:
Unethical, probably, and unkind, but it would be really interesting.

Can't make an omelette...

Oh and A.LeClair, "messers" is the plural of "mister", not a person's name. Just FYI.
 
I don't know how they could resist asking something like:

"What do you think would have happened if you had gotten up and moved something in the room with the time dopleganger looking in that direction?"

Oh, good one. Didn't cross my mind at all. I get stuck on alien flatulation. I had a college roommate who also felt the need to reward us all by passing gas.

Overall I have the problem of falling slightly to the side of believing him because his story IS cookie cutter (except for the time travelers). His story shows consistency between him and other abductee accounts. I knew exactly what he would say in the 3 points in regards to the question about smell before I heard it because of the consistency to other abductions by grays and the more credible accounts of reptilians.

Right. A believer is going to turn this around and use this as evidence for Sparks' veracity. We're skeptical of the commonality; he'll use it as a point in Sparks' favor.
 
A.LeClair said:
I haven't listened to the second guest yet. I guess that's Messrs you mentioned. His name doesn't ring any bells, so I might not be familiar with him.

You're not missing much, I'm afraid. "I saw a ghost. I know it was real because I was there. Here's my story." You can fill in the details, I imagine. Interestingly, dead people call being dead "travelling," and when the guest asked his relatives where a person goes when they die, they refused to answer. What a surprise! A radio host (the guest has a show) who doesn't take a stand on the specific destination in the afterlife so as not to step on anyone's toes (he mentioned later that he specifically tries not to do this). The dead were equally evasive when asked if any religions were "legit." I'm disappointed to learn that political correctness extends beyond the grave.

Mr. Biedny mentioned his reservations about organized religion, and made this statement:

"It interesting to talk about paranormal stuff when people ultimately see religion as something that's completely acceptable and don't necessarily look at it in a paranormal context, but yet are willing to look at things like life after death...UFOs, ghosts... and they lump that into a paranormal belief system, but religion ends up getting something of a free ride."

I have no idea what this means. Supernaturalism is supernaturalism, whether the players are ghosts, spirit orbs, psychics, Jesus or flatulent aliens. Mr. Biedny doesn't apply the same degree of skepticism and natural distrust to paranormalism he applies to organized religion and its claims because of his predispositions against it. Why scold the listeners for doing the same thing?

The guest was asked for scientific evidence for life after death, and gave the usual paranormalist excuse that there really isn't any, then gave the usual additional addendum that there is some stuff out there, but the scientific community has stifled it all. Absence of evidence is not evidence, and I thus have no idea why he calls his show "Dead Science." It would more correctly - completely correctly, actually - be called "Dead Speculation."

The guest claimed to have once been attached to the Air Force, to have held a Top Secret clearance (hardly a rare thing), and gave the usual uncorroborated story from a source he refuses to name about Area 51. You can fill in these details, too. I laughed hardest when Mr. Biedny asked him to authenticate the guy's story based on his body language. I laughed, then started to weep. Jesus Christ.

He told a second story about having been attached to a general's security detail, and the story really didn't tell anything at all. He said the general had lots of conversations within his earshot about projects he'd (the guest) had never heard of (ever see Seven Days in May?). He's pretty slippery. As he told his story, he named the general, and told the audience that we could "look all this up," thus planting in the audience's mind the notion that the whole story could be looked up. Actually, all we can look up is this fellow's service record and whether the general he named exists. The rest of the story is entirely anecdotal, and can't be verified. Lots of paranormal claimants do this, and it's a very slick trick - a common maneuver among those offering nothing but anecdotes to buttress their claims.

One of my hobbies is Ripperology - I've collected materials on Jack the Ripper for twenty years - and it was nice to hear the guest poke a few holes in the profilers' armor. I was particularly pleased to hear him agree that some of the common saw about serial killers - they can't stop unless they die, are caught or move out of the area and resume work somewhere else - isn't true. Several killers have stopped - sometimes for long periods of time, sometimes (apparently) for good. That was a prescient statement. His idea that serial killers "are everywhere" is unprovable and purely speculative.
 
Besides Jim's ex, he claims to have another witness. Someone who's been abducted along with him at the same time. I'm surprised he hasn't been asked about it yet.
 
hopeful skeptic said:
Actually, all we can look up is this fellow's service record and whether the general he named exists. The rest of the story is entirely anecdotal, and can't be verified.

Even if it could be what good would it do? You'd learn the names of some classified programs and nothing else... because they're classified. Given the no doubt astronomical number of currently classified programs being run by the military plus all those yet-to-be declassified programs on the books... well it hardly bears thinking about. Not exactly useful.
 
hopeful skeptic said:
You're not missing much, I'm afraid. "I saw a ghost. I know it was real because I was there. Here's my story." You can fill in the details, I imagine. Interestingly, dead people call being dead "travelling," and when the guest asked his relatives where a person goes when they die, they refused to answer. What a surprise! A radio host (the guest has a show) who doesn't take a stand on the specific destination in the afterlife so as not to step on anyone's toes (he mentioned later that he specifically tries not to do this). The dead were equally evasive when asked if any religions were "legit." I'm disappointed to learn that political correctness extends beyond the grave.

Mr. Biedny mentioned his reservations about organized religion, and made this statement:

"It interesting to talk about paranormal stuff when people ultimately see religion as something that's completely acceptable and don't necessarily look at it in a paranormal context, but yet are willing to look at things like life after death...UFOs, ghosts... and they lump that into a paranormal belief system, but religion ends up getting something of a free ride."

I have no idea what this means. Supernaturalism is supernaturalism, whether the players are ghosts, spirit orbs, psychics, Jesus or flatulent aliens. Mr. Biedny doesn't apply the same degree of skepticism and natural distrust to paranormalism he applies to organized religion and its claims because of his predispositions against it. Why scold the listeners for doing the same thing?

The guest was asked for scientific evidence for life after death, and gave the usual paranormalist excuse that there really isn't any, then gave the usual additional addendum that there is some stuff out there, but the scientific community has stifled it all. Absence of evidence is not evidence, and I thus have no idea why he calls his show "Dead Science." It would more correctly - completely correctly, actually - be called "Dead Speculation."

The guest claimed to have once been attached to the Air Force, to have held a Top Secret clearance (hardly a rare thing), and gave the usual uncorroborated story from a source he refuses to name about Area 51. You can fill in these details, too. I laughed hardest when Mr. Biedny asked him to authenticate the guy's story based on his body language. I laughed, then started to weep. Jesus Christ.

He told a second story about having been attached to a general's security detail, and the story really didn't tell anything at all. He said the general had lots of conversations within his earshot about projects he'd (the guest) had never heard of (ever see Seven Days in May?). He's pretty slippery. As he told his story, he named the general, and told the audience that we could "look all this up," thus planting in the audience's mind the notion that the whole story could be looked up. Actually, all we can look up is this fellow's service record and whether the general he named exists. The rest of the story is entirely anecdotal, and can't be verified. Lots of paranormal claimants do this, and it's a very slick trick - a common maneuver among those offering nothing but anecdotes to buttress their claims.

One of my hobbies is Ripperology - I've collected materials on Jack the Ripper for twenty years - and it was nice to hear the guest poke a few holes in the profilers' armor. I was particularly pleased to hear him agree that some of the common saw about serial killers - they can't stop unless they die, are caught or move out of the area and resume work somewhere else - isn't true. Several killers have stopped - sometimes for long periods of time, sometimes (apparently) for good. That was a prescient statement. His idea that serial killers "are everywhere" is unprovable and purely speculative.


Some people see religious claims as more far fetched than ufo and abduction claims. There's more evidence to support ufos than talking snakes, walking on water, resurrection and virgin births. I apply skepticism to both the paranormal and religion. Religion has a lot of paranormal claims after all. Some of us have seen proof of the paranormal ourselves and therefore are convinced. But we haven't seen any proof of many of the religious claims.

I recently read that Jack the Ripper's identity has possibly been found/solved. I forget the details, but I vaguely remember it being a shrink or perhaps a cop. Details are fuzzy. Anyway, pretty interesting stuff, though disturbing. I've read a little about it.
 
Some people see religious claims as more far fetched than ufo and abduction claims. There's more evidence to support ufos than talking snakes, walking on water, resurrection and virgin births. I apply skepticism to both the paranormal and religion. Religion has a lot of paranormal claims after all. Some of us have seen proof of the paranormal ourselves and therefore are convinced. But we haven't seen any proof of many of the religious claims.

Well, I'm not religious either, but the religious claimants do have "miraculous" healings that defy conventional medical explanation. They have more of these alone than all the UFO physical evidence combined. Now, the theorietical medical community feels these healings may be "spontaneous," or fall within the statistical parameters of what one might expect in a sick population, etc., but they have them.

If you're able to view religion and the paranormal with equal skepticism, you're one of a small crowd. I applaud you.

I recently read that Jack the Ripper's identity has possibly been found/solved. I forget the details, but I vaguely remember it being a shrink or perhaps a cop. Details are fuzzy. Anyway, pretty interesting stuff, though disturbing. I've read a little about it.

I'm not sure which source this could be (a new book or announcement comes out once a damned week, it seems), but I do recall a recent article from Britain that trumpeted a major announcement about Jack's identity, and proceeded to identify him as Thomas Cutbush. It offered no new evidence (no evidence at all, actually), and used a theory that's been discussed since the 70s. Disappointing.

The best free website on Jack is here: www.casebook.org

(I warn you. You can while away endless hours there.)

The worst theory I ever heard came courtesy of - Surprise! - Coast to Coast. I sent in an e-mail to Ian Punnett suggesting that a good show might be made of the Ripper crimes, and gave him a list of responsible researchers. Well, two weeks later they featured Trevor Marriott (a name I had specifically excluded), who wrote a book based on a letter being held in a private collection that he has no copy of. The collector will not present the letter for authentication and inspection by experts, and Marriott won't identify the collector. God, Noory. Get a life.
 
"..religious claimants do have "miraculous" healings that defy conventional medical explanation.."

No they don't. Any cult or fraud evangelists can get the same effects from faith healing. If people believe they will be healed enough then their body compensates. Same thing can be achieved through hypnosis.

Why Won't God Heal Amputees?

^
This is the reality of the matter. As much as it sounds like a joke at first glance this website is in fact serious.
 
The Hawk said:
"..religious claimants do have "miraculous" healings that defy conventional medical explanation.."

You're misinterpreting what I'm saying. I was speaking from their point of view. I then listed some of the perfectly rational explanations offered by scientists. I do not accept miraculous healings as proof of religious efficacy.

I'm merely stating that religious folks do try and offer some kind of physical, observable evidence, and not merely anectodal stories.
 
tomlevine1 said:
Nobody found my transcript post funny? I'm hurt.

Transcript 1

Transcript 2

I'm sick as a dog at the moment, so it hurts when I laugh. :rolleyes:

Those are cute as heck. Next time we have Sparks on, I think I'm gonna have to get a bit nasty, though I suppose he'll still come across as a nice guy.

Personally, I don't buy the story, but I suspect our listeners already figured that out...

dB
 
Back
Top