EXAMPLES OF COMMON FALSE ASSUMPTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS related to extraordinary phenomena Index

If an unidentified flying object follows a path not typical for known objects, it must be an alien space ship. Sadly, surprisingly many people seem to make this kind of conclusions far too easily. "A space ship" is something that is mainly familiar to us from Science Fiction stories and future speculations. Sure, a strangely behaving unidentified object CAN be an alien space ship. But if we go as far as accepting the existence of alien life forms, why don't we come up with alternative explanations such as 1. A lifeless object is moved around by an unknown, yet natural force. 2. A lifeless object is controlled by an intelligent or intelligently controlled force, either of human or alien origin. 3. An object coming from space is made of unknown material that reacts to the magnetic fields, wind and other forces in our atmosphere, in a peculiar way. 4. The object itself is an alien life form (even if it is gigantic in size!). It is impossible to travel between stars because you can't travel faster than light. This statement is based on a religious belief in our current scientific knowledge. Even if Einstein's relativity theory is ultimately correct, it only presents limitations to travelling in linear time and space, in the space-time continuum that is most familiar to us. Now we are learning, however, that both space and time can be "stretched" by forces like strong gravity. Even though WE can not use this to travel to other stars, it doesn't mean nobody else can. And anyway, to get from a point to another it might not even be necessary to pass all the physical space between them. There's no way we can be assured that there isn't any alternative way of travelling. Eye-witness testimony has no value. A testimony of one eye-witness concerning one incident has no scientific value, true. But if hundreds, thousands or even millions of people claim to have observed the same phenomenon, it is fool to say there's no reality behind their observations. If an unexplained phenomenon can be reproduced by people, the mystery is solved. This is something that the sceptics use often. When for example some magicians were able to bend spoons apparently in the same way as Uri Geller had done, but without using psycho-kinetics, this was used as proof against Geller having supernatural abilites. Of course it only proved that something like this CAN be done with conventional trickery. Let's assume that some day a group of skillfull and committed people manage to create a complex Crop Circle pictogram during one night, a formation that can not be distinguished from "genuine" ones. Would it be a surprise if this kind of incidence was used as ultimate proof for the human origin of ALL Crop Circles ever made? What if somebody was able to produce a ball lightning artificially, outside a closed laboratory? Would it mean that all ball lightnings ever seen by numerous eye-witnesses were actually created by people?