What's the most likely explanation for UFO sightings?

[Cassius]

Even if extraterrestrial life existed it would be so far away that it wouldn't be able to visit us.  Faster than light travel just isn't possible.

Ultimately it seems all the people "abducted" are either dorks doing some crazy drugs or liars looking to make a quick buck.

Disclaimer: For religious reasons I don't believe there is any other life in the universe.  Nevertheless I have always been fascinated by UFOs and the like.

I’ve always found it comic that people believe that if an alien civilization managed to crack faster than light travel they’d spend their time mutilating cattle, anally probing American farmers and drawing the Nazca Lin... my mistake, ‘landing strips’.

[Cassius]

Even if extraterrestrial life existed it would be so far away that it wouldn't be able to visit us.  Faster than light travel just isn't possible.

Ultimately it seems all the people "abducted" are either dorks doing some crazy drugs or liars looking to make a quick buck.

Disclaimer: For religious reasons I don't believe there is any other life in the universe.  Nevertheless I have always been fascinated by UFOs and the like.

I’ve always found it comic that people believe that if an alien civilization managed to crack faster than light travel they’d spend their time mutilating cattle, anally probing American farmers and drawing the Nazca Lin... my mistake, ‘landing strips’.

Think about what we do to chimpanzees. Is this really that different from what aliens are alleged to do to us?

I mean I make no comment on the putative morality of any alien life form, but I still find it highly sketchy that a civilization capable of interstellar travel would replicate (or be perceived as replicating) modern human techniques of animal experimentation. It reminds me rather of the 1968 Planet of the Apes movie, where in spite of operating at what appears to be a fairly low level of technological development (not an internal combustion engine in sight) the Apes have developed improbably advanced techniques of brain surgery and psychology. It just seems incongruous.