believe it, don't believe it, it's a free country

 Well spoken Beagles.  Logically the argument is air tight, but as applied to the real world it's value is nil.  One  could just as logically start with the axiom that anybody who does not believe in flying saucers is not rational.  

I meant it as an example of a rationalist argument, it is not my argument against believing in flying saucers.  One of my arguments is that if they are as powerful as their alleged flight patterns indicate they could easily keep themselves hidden.  The only reason they would let themselves be seen is to get us into a frenzy in which case we are playing right into our hands.  And some think they are spying on us.  If you had a powerful modern army why would you give a shit where the savages are hiding their best war clubs?  And they have been investigated by all sorts of people for like seventy years and there is not a scintilla of hard evidence.  And why would people think the gummint would have proof that nobody else has, and why would the gummint deny they had it if they did?  And you know whatever info the gummint gives up over this probe, people are still going to say that's not all they know.  And how come the sightings always see different things?  There is no uniformity in the sightings.  Are the aliens flying a different kind of saucer everytime  they buzz the Earth?  And there may be a lot of sightings, but there are way more people in the world who have never seen one.  And what if I am wrong about that and there are aliens (or some saucer nuts claim maybe it is the Russkies or the heathen Chinee, or maybe those secretive Albanians, who are doing it which to my eyes is even more improbable than green men of Mars), but if they have that much power and have evil intentions what can we do about it?  I have more arguments but the morning is already growing late.  

Rational, or deductive, arguments can prove decisively things like the the sum of the squares of the sides equal the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle, but outside mathematics the empirical, or inductive, arguments are much more useful in science and everyday life but can only give us probabilities, and at a certain point you have to dismiss things or go through life thinking that Elvis is still singing Hound Dog somewhere or that Hunter Biden is the antichrist.

Or not.  If Beagles wants to continue to believe maybe there are flying saucers and the gummint is hiding evidence, ain't no pretentious city slicker going to tell him otherwise.

And sorry about the paradox thing.  The way you introduced it made me think you might be unaware and you know how eager I am to enlighten.  Anyway I was wrong, and sorry that I cast aspersions.

But I can't say I'm sorry that I brought out the subject.  It did bring Beagles back to The Debate Hall and showed that there is still plenty of fire in his belly.