NationStates Jolt Archive

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Those things that go bump in the night? About one-third of people believe they could be ghosts.

And nearly one out of four, 23 percent, say they've actually seen a ghost or felt its presence, finds a pre-Halloween poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos.

One is Misty Conrad, who says she fled her rented home in Syracuse, Indiana, after her daughter began talking to an unseen girl named Nicole and neighbors said children had been murdered in the house. That was after the TV and lights began flicking on at night.

"It kind of creeped you out," Conrad, 40, of Hampton, Virginia, recalled this week. "I needed to get us out." What to do if your house has ghosts

About one out of five people, 19 percent, say they accept the existence of spells or witchcraft. Nearly half, 48 percent, believe in extrasensory perception, or ESP.

The most likely candidates for ghostly visits include single people, Catholics and those who never attend religious services. By 31 percent to 18 percent, more liberals than conservatives report seeing a specter.

Those who dismissed the existence of ghosts include Morris Swadener, 66, a Navy retiree from Kingston, Washington.

He says he shot one with his rifle when he was a child.

"I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a white ghost in my closet," he said. "I discovered I'd put a hole in my brand new white shirt. My mother and father were not amused."

Three in 10 have awakened sensing a strange presence in the room. For whatever it says about matrimony, singles are more likely than married people to say so.

Fourteen percent -- mostly men and lower-income people -- say they have seen a UFO. Among them is Danny Eskanos, 44, an attorney in Palm Harbor, Florida, who says as a Colorado teenager he watched a bright light dart across the sky, making abrupt stops and turns.

"I knew a little about airplanes and helicopters, and it was not that," he said. "It's one of those things that sticks in your mind."

Spells and witchcraft are more readily believed by urban dwellers, minorities and lower-earning people.

Those who find credibility in ESP are more likely to be better educated and white -- 51 percent of college graduates compared to 37 percent with a high school diploma or less, about the same proportion by which white believers outnumber minorities.

Overall, the 48 percent who accept ESP is less than the 66 percent who gave that answer to a similar 1996 Newsweek question.

One in five say they are at least somewhat superstitious, with young men, minorities, and the less educated more likely to go out of their way to seek luck. Twenty-six percent of urban residents -- twice the rate of those from rural areas -- said they are superstitious, while single men were more superstitious than unmarried women, 31 percent to 17 percent.

The most admitted-to superstition, by 17 percent, was finding a four-leaf clover. Thirteen percent dread walking under a ladder or the groom seeing his bride before their wedding, while slightly smaller numbers named black cats, breaking mirrors, opening umbrellas indoors, Friday the 13th or the number 13.

Generally, women were more superstitious than men about four-leaf clovers, breaking mirrors or grooms prematurely seeing brides. Democrats were more superstitious than Republicans over opening umbrellas indoors, while liberals were more superstitious than conservatives over four-leaf clovers, grooms seeing brides and umbrellas.

Then there's Jack Van Geldern, a computer programmer from Riverside, Connecticut. Now 51, Van Geldern is among the 5 percent who say they have seen a monster in the closet -- or in his case, a monster's face he spotted on the wall of his room as a child.

"It was so terrifying I couldn't move," he said. "Needless to say I survived the event and never saw it again."

The poll, conducted October 16-18, involved telephone interviews with 1,013 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.


Absolutely horrifying statistics, fools will believe anything, apparently even educated fools.

YAY!! I'm in the minority who believes in ghosts.

If you're into this kind of rubbish, try abovetopsecret.com - all a crock, all the time!

So people believe something you don't. Freedom of thought? How horrifying.

I believe that there are ghosts. Those that only believe what they see believe little. Sure, there are mistakes, like when people think they're witnessing a domestic verbal abuse problem and it turns out that they were just practicing for a play.

There are questions science hasn't answered yet. If science had all the answers, scientists would be out of a job.

Two things pop into my twisted little mind first this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joa3WiXDuEg

then this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfzKVt2xy4c

:)

"I see dead people... all the time..."
"really?"
"Yes..."
"wow... that must be some seriously good shit!"
"Yes!"

I believe that there are ghosts.

http://www.nataliedee.com/112504/giant-sucker%5Bpoorly-drawn-version%5D.jpg

There are questions science hasn't answered yet. If science had all the answers, scientists would be out of a job. Clearly untrue if 19% believe in witchcraft and magic spells.

I believe that there are ghosts. Those that only believe what they see believe little.
http://images.somethingawful.com/mjolnir/images/cg07122005/Juhwertamahkai1.jpg

Well, I'd say, i'm agnostic in this matter. I will not run around blaming every inexplicable phenomenon on ghosts, but this doesn't keep me from thinking it is possible, until disproven, that there are "ghosts" in the sense of traces of sentience that continue to exist within our world after the organism they belonged to has "passed away" by our measuring.

For me, there is nothing "supernatural" about ESP or ghosts or wha'ever. It seems to us now that these things are supernatural, because we cannot explain them yet. It's like blaming lightning on Zeus. Once you understand the mechanisms behind this, it won't be anything creepy about it anymore - at least not in the supernatural way - because it will be an accepted part of physics. So, in any case, I will wait what established science (or other possible ways of attaining knowledge about the phyiscal reality we live in) has to say on these things.

As for ESP, as I said, I'm agnostic, but I do seriously hope that this exists, because if it does, it'd be a proof of god's/evolution's/destiny's/whaever's decision to have us overcome all the rocks the universe will throw in mankinds ways over the coming millenia.

But, yes, I do think it is a problem when people believe in such supernatural things without any self-reflection or reference behind these beliefs.

I admire how you could have ever had a more optimistic view on humanity prior to this article.

*parties on the night of Friday the 13th*
*faces a mirror in a dark room and says 'Bloody Mary' thrice*
*breaks the mirror with his fist*
*goes out of the room and kicks a black cat on his way home*
*passes under a ladder*
*enters the home with his left foot first*
*opens an umbrella indoors*

I admire how you could have ever had a more optimistic view on humanity prior to this article.

Every time I think my faith in humanity has hit it's low point they do something dumber!

Every time I think my faith in humanity has hit it's low point they do something dumber!

Yay! Bigotry!
:upyours:

You didn't know that people will believe anything on the flimsiest evidence? I would have thought you'd seen enough cosmetic adverts and other types of adverts to already know that.

*breaks the mirror with his fist*This might not be unlucky, but that doesn't make it any less stupid. :p

This might not be unlucky, but that doesn't make it any less stupid. :p
*waves bloody fist*
Who called me stupid?

:D

Every time I think my faith in humanity has hit it's low point they do something dumber!

I suspect it's some kind of competition. I wonder what the winner gets.

I don't see the harm if they don't want to kill people in the name of spectres or something to that effect.

Granted, I also don't want to be forced to take a stand one way or another. That just sucks, regardless of context.


In summary: What's the harm?

Blah blah blah science doesn't know everything blah blah...

Were I the mean sort, I'd insist desperately that a gnat just turned into a 50" fire-breathing dragon and ate my neighbour. That's as solid evidence as all those senseless superstitions have going for them. But I'm not mean. At least, I like to think I'm not. And though I'd admittedly find it amusing for a few seconds, such short lived amusement on my part doesn't quite justify forcing a goodly portion of NSG to live in pure terror of the common housefly for the rest of their lives.

The morale? You might be entitled to make shit up and convince yourself it's true, but it's a piss poor idea all the same. Conclusions based on lack of evidence and/or wishful thinking and/or willful ignorance, gets millions of people killed every single year. At best, superstitions are a slippery slope of proportions. At worst they're a fucking plague on humanity. If you harbour any, the very least you could do, is stop being so damn proud of it. You come across like a drunk in a bar going "Look everyun, I's just shat myself!"

By the way: of bloody course science don't know everything. Science don't know shit, it's a tool, not a sapient being.

I suspect it's some kind of competition. I wonder what the winner gets.

The optimist in me says "out of the gene pool".

I ain't fraid a no ghost.

Absolutely horrifying statistics, fools will believe anything, apparently even educated fools.

I am one of those educated folks, and I don't particularly believe in ghosts, but I have experienced something that I have no better tag for than "ghost".

I was living in an huge old Victorian house, the parsonage of the church of which my dad was the minister. One evening I saw a shadow the size and shape of a person come walking up the stairs, past me in the hall, then through the closed attic door (without opening it). I opened the door and watched it walk up the attic stairs and disappear around the corner. I don't know what it actually was, but I haven't got any idea what else to call it other than a ghost.

About one-third of people believe they could be ghosts.

BOO!!!!

*parties on the night of Friday the 13th*
*faces a mirror in a dark room and says 'Bloody Mary' thrice*
*breaks the mirror with his fist*
*goes out of the room and kicks a black cat on his way home*
*passes under a ladder*
*enters the home with his left foot first*
*opens an umbrella indoors*

try this. check with your local hospitals or mental health institutions and see if you can find a trend between Friday the 13th, Nights of th Full Moon, and their bed census... ;)

The optimist in me says "out of the gene pool".
Via the drain...

try this. check with your local hospitals or mental health institutions and see if you can find a trend between Friday the 13th, Nights of th Full Moon, and their bed census... ;)Witness the awful power of self-fulfilling prophecies.

When people want it badly enough, their minds will provide it. Be it visages dead husbands or lunacy.

I believe in Ghost and I study the Paranormal in my free time. :) MJ is ok with it, she actually finds some of the books that I have on the subject interesting.

Yes I am poisoning her mind. *rubs hands together evilly*

hooray for open minded people!

I've seen ghosts and UFO's that couldn't be easily explained away and was corroborated by other witnesses at the scene.

I've seen a UFO. It was unidentified, it was flying, and it was an object. Ergo, it was a UFO.

The optimist in me says "out of the gene pool".

...but the realist knows its probably the nomination to run for the Whitehouse.....

Witness the awful power of self-fulfilling prophecies.

When people want it badly enough, their minds will provide it. Be it visages dead husbands or lunacy.
but this is using factors you won't have control over. you will be using recorded numbers and statuses.

Absolutely horrifying statistics, fools will believe anything, apparently even educated fools.

I'm agnostic on all this jazz.

72.653% of all statistics are made up on the spot...

but this is using factors you won't have control over. you will be using recorded numbers and statuses.

I think the point was that the idiots convince themselves that bad things may happen on said days and as a result that belief influences their actions negatively- self delusions can be very powerful (placebo effect anyone?).

I think the point was that the idiots convince themselves that bad things may happen on said days and as a result that belief influences their actions negatively- self delusions can be very powerful (placebo effect anyone?).

then it's not a self fulfilling prophecy. but in reality a subconscious reaction to "Friday the 13th" and the full moon.

(and considering some of our ER and Psyche problems that come in on those two occasions... )

Provide me with evidence and confirmed data, and i'll believe in such worldly phenomena. Until then, I don't know, don't care, and frankly have never seen evidence to the contrary.

So, at least on the one with "monsters in the closet", it appears people were counted as responding "yes" if they ever thought there was a monster in the closet...the man's example story was when he was a child, if you read beyond the underlining. Thus, I wonder how many of those "yes, I believe in _____" votes were from people who, at some point, believed in whatever and now no longer do.

Seems it may be a case of the news making a story where less of one exists...

I didn't used to believe in ghosts/spirits etc.

Rage, RAGE against the possibility of something existing that we can't yet prove or measure with our current technology. No reason to keep an open mind about ghostly/demonic/alien possibilities, even though millions of people have experienced something otherworldly/supernatural. Let's just call them idiots instead. Much easier that way.

I've had objects thrown across the room by something that doesn't exist. That pumpkin probably just sprouted a sudden stem which pushed it through the air all the way to the other side of the room, which then retracted back into the pumpkin.

I've had a door shake violently just before the handle was reached for after I saw a shadow attached to nothing jump away.

I've had several instances of something whisper words in my ear while no one was around to do so.

There was a room at a house I lived in that several people had felt was very negative. People would become disturbed and not be able to bear being inside of it. It would suddenly become cold for no reason sometimes too.

A couple of times I had visions of the future that played out like I saw them.

Nobody can prove an unrecorded event that they experienced alone or with a group of people actually happened to someone who wasn't there.

With the right tuning we can see things that are as of yet unexplainable.

then it's not a self fulfilling prophecy. but in reality a subconscious reaction to "Friday the 13th" and the full moon.

(and considering some of our ER and Psyche problems that come in on those two occasions... )

I'd say its most likely a combination of the two, some people are subconsciously affected while others have an actual belief in such bad things happening. In a way I guess the "crazy" people are right, though they're the ones causing the phenomenon in the first place.

I think the point was that the idiots convince themselves that bad things may happen on said days and as a result that belief influences their actions negatively- self delusions can be very powerful (placebo effect anyone?).

perhaps it also influences the perception, if something goes wrong on Friday the 13th people will blame it on that day. When something goes bad on a normal day people will just call it bad luck.

Rage, RAGE against the possibility of something existing that we can't yet prove or measure with our current technology. No reason to keep an open mind about ghostly/demonic/alien possibilities, even though millions of people have experienced something otherworldly/supernatural. Let's just call them idiots instead. Much easier that way.

I've had objects thrown across the room by something that doesn't exist. That pumpkin probably just sprouted a sudden stem which pushed it through the air all the way to the other side of the room, which then retracted back into the pumpkin.

I've had a door shake violently just before the handle was reached for after I saw a shadow attached to nothing jump away.

I've had several instances of something whisper words in my ear while no one was around to do so.

There was a room at a house I lived in that several people had felt was very negative. People would become disturbed and not be able to bear being inside of it. It would suddenly become cold for no reason sometimes too.

A couple of times I had visions of the future that played out like I saw them.

Nobody can prove an unrecorded event that they experienced alone or with a group of people actually happened to someone who wasn't there.

With the right tuning we can see things that are as of yet unexplainable.
Every single instance has always been perfectly explainable without such nonsense. Most people misinterpret or misunderstand what they experience.

If such things existed, they would have been proven to exist by now. Our science is certainly advanced enough to actually show if such things exist or not. To continue to believe in them when no evidence is presented and when each possible instance is explainable by other phenomena is foolish and unbecoming of a person in this day and age.

Every single instance has always been perfectly explainable without such nonsense. Most people misinterpret or misunderstand what they experience.

If such things existed, they would have been proven to exist by now. Our science is certainly advanced enough to actually show if such things exist or not. To continue to believe in them when no evidence is presented and when each possible instance is explainable by other phenomena is foolish and unbecoming of a person in this day and age.



Rage... RAGE against it.

BOO!!!!

*screams*

Rage... RAGE against it.

Can you provide concrete, undeniable, confirmed, absolutely impossible to explain as something else that is far more likely evidence? Can you produce the necessary proof for your claims?

If you cannot I have no reason to believe your anecdotes. I could share with you an anecdote about how my life is a Holodeck simulation and I'm actually a Starfleet officer on the U.S.S. Enterprise but you have no reason to believe me and that would be ridiculous anyway.

I am not necessarily going to ignore the possibility, mind, but on that same token I will not believe without evidence. If you can show me that evidence that cannot be miscontrued as being something else far more likely, I will be willing to accept it. But, if you cannot...

I'm inclined to call people who claim to have seen the more extreme end of the 'supernatural' outright liars, to be honest.

And I say again:


Nobody can prove an unrecorded event that they experienced alone or with a group of people actually happened to someone who wasn't there.


I've no need to go any further. Rage on.

And I say again:



I've no need to go any further. Rage on.

I see. In that case, I will dismiss your claims wholesale.

I want you to understand something though: I am simply trying to be rational about these things as with everything else in life. (Try is the key word...I hardly succeed all the time.) Also, I am not raging. The only one who seems to be angry here is you.

Believing in ghosts is easy.

When 2-3 billion people believe in omnipotent supernatural power who cannot be seen, smelled or touched believing in restless souls causing unexplained phenomena is easy.

Well...Personally, I'd rather have normal ghosts any day of the week over all-powerful, all-knowing superghost. :p


Besides, even if ghosts would exist they would be in no way supernatural.

Personally I see no reason to believe in ghosts or ESP. I don't see anything that reasonably suggests that either exists, although I'm not prepared to rule them out completely. There is no proof that either of these don't exist either, so to claim that you know that they're definitely not true would be pretty stupid in my opinion, although I would be extremely surprised if either did turn out to actually exist, ghosts especially. This is because I see no reason to believe that the consciousness (/ spirit / soul, etc.) is anything other than the result of various processes taking place in the brain, and so I believe that when the brain dies the consciousness is completely gone too. I do think that there is enough we don't know about the brain, physics and the universe for ESP to be called complete nonsense, but again I see very little reason for believing it in the first place. It's just I perceive there to be less arguments against it than there are against the existence of ghosts.

I think it is possible that aliens (maybe even intelligent ones) exist, but I also think it is extremely unlikely. If you believe in evolution (no offence to anyone, but if you understand the theory properly it doesn't make sense to not believe it, unless you believe reality to be an illusion or something like that; it's basically a complicated chain of common sense), then it shouldn't be too difficult to work out that it's extremely unlikely that any life would exist anywhere at all, considering all the coincidences that would need to occur at the same time in the same places, and even more unlikely that it would be started more than once with each instance being completely independent of each other, let alone them occurring at points in time or space even remotely close to each other, or them being intelligent enough to even be able to attempt to come close to us without us ever finding any conclusive evidence. Then again, whether or not it occurs the first time doesn't really affect the odds of it happening a second. It's just that it's a miracle it ever happened at all, and there are so many other variables with extremely low chances of coming out with the right conditions. Of course, it's not impossible, but very, very unlikely.

Something I do believe, though, is that no-one has the right to call another person's opinion stupid or wrong when they can't prove otherwise according to the type of logic that that person believes in, assuming their views don't negatively affect others. There's nothing wrong with debating these things as long as both parties are willing to; if one doesn't want to debate it then that's OK, as it's their right to choose whether they will or not, even if that leaves them more close minded. Even in those cases though, I think both sides of an argument should be at the very least willing to accept that others have different opinions to their own, and respect those views and leave it at that. Otherwise I think that one of the most basic human rights is being violated.

Apologies for length and any rambling that got into there :)

I'm inclined to call people who claim to have seen the more extreme end of the 'supernatural' outright liars, to be honest.

I think you're rather rude.

I think you're rather rude.

Think what you want.

Think what you want.

I will. Calling people you've never met and don't know or have any experiences with liars, I think, is rude. I don't believe that you can show them to be knowingly wrong.

hooray for open minded people!

I've seen ghosts and UFO's that couldn't be easily explained away and was corroborated by other witnesses at the scene.

Now this is something that truly makes me mad; people using "open-minded" to justify their beliefs in absolute bullshit. They're taking my word! People should be open-minded to trying a new food or listening to a genre of music they think they won't like. Don't try and justify any sort of paranormal belief by saying "I'm open-minded", because that is not true and doesn't cut it. Say "I'm weak-minded" or "bloody-minded", because you're believing in something which has no basis in reality. Don't try and excuse your beliefs by bastardising the concept of open-mindedness.

</rant>

Now this is something that truly makes me mad; people using "open-minded" to justify their beliefs in absolute bullshit. They're taking my word! People should be open-minded to trying a new food or listening to a genre of music they think they won't like. Don't try and justify any sort of paranormal belief by saying "I'm open-minded", because that is not true and doesn't cut it. Say "I'm weak-minded" or "bloody-minded", because you're believing in something which has no basis in reality. Don't try and excuse your beliefs by bastardising the concept of open-mindedness.

</rant>

Or maybe, just maybe, they want you to be open-minded because, I know, I know, you probably think you know everything, and trust me I have been there and I have done that. But there's bad news on that front, ya don't. and to say definitively that there is no Ghost, there is no UFO, or the Paranormal in General is absurd because quite frankly, Science really haven't un-cover everything about the Universe, or about our subconscious mind or, dare I say it, the after life. Now don't get me wrong, I support Science, and I'm always giddy when we make new discoveries or invention, but the fact is, Science is lacking in explaining some areas of our life, and in this case, the after life.

/rant.

Or maybe, just maybe, they want you to be open-minded because, I know, I know, you probably think you know everything, and trust me I have been there and I have done that. But there's bad news on that front, ya don't. and to say definitively that there is no Ghost, there is no UFO, or the Paranormal in General is absurd because quite frankly, Science really haven't un-cover everything about the Universe, or about our subconscious mind or, dare I say it, the after life. Now don't get me wrong, I support Science, and I'm always giddy when we make new discoveries or invention, but the fact is, Science is lacking in explaining some areas of our life, and in this case, the after life.

/rant.

Wtf are you talking about? Are you five? The knowledge that science has given us has thoroughly debunked any notion of an afterlife; we now understand how our bodies work and what constitutes our thoughts and consciousness (our brain). When we die our brains cease to work and that is the end. There is no little loophole, get the fuck over it.

Wtf are you talking about? Are you five? The knowledge that science has given us has thoroughly debunked any notion of an afterlife; we now understand how our bodies work and what constitutes our thoughts and consciousness (our brain). When we die our brains cease to work and that is the end. There is no little loophole, get the fuck over it.

So when did Science debunk that there was an after life, and how did they do that exactly?

I invite you to my house. You will see a ghost. I promise you. Illinois has to be one of the most haunted places in the world. Go to Alton. You'll find out a lot about the supernatural. Its not foolish to believe something exists when you have seen it with your own two eyes. Its foolish for others, that haven't had the experience, to totally discredit it, though. ;)

SPIRITS ARE ALWAYS WITH YOU!

With no personal evidence for or against these matters (and therefore no way to have a reasoned opinion), I'll defer to Don Kanonji. ;)

I invite you to my house. You will see a ghost. I promise you. Illinois has to be one of the most haunted places in the world. Go to Alton. You'll find out a lot about the supernatural. Its not foolish to believe something exists when you have seen it with your own two eyes. Its foolish for others, that haven't had the experience, to totally discredit it, though. ;)

Hmm, can I bring my equipment to your house? I actually have a Ghost Hunting kit.

Let's just call them idiots instead.

I'd be much more prone to think they have some sort of psychiatric diagnosis along the line of a brief psychotic disorder, or if lasting longer but with milder symptoms a schizotypal personality disorder (with its typical proclivities for the supernatural and/or cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behaviour), or perhaps it's as simple as being of an organic cause à la temporal lobe epilepsy. Still, none of that precludes them from being idiots at the same time...

I've had objects thrown across the room by something that doesn't exist.

I've had a door shake violently just before the handle was reached for after I saw a shadow attached to nothing jump away.

I've had several instances of something whisper words in my ear while no one was around to do so.

There was a room at a house I lived in that several people had felt was very negative. People would become disturbed and not be able to bear being inside of it. It would suddenly become cold for no reason sometimes too.

A couple of times I had visions of the future that played out like I saw them.

See? Auditory and visual hallucinations along with delusions are hallmarks of psychosis, but as I mentioned might just be presentations of complex partial epileptiform seizures from the temporal lobes.

Nobody can prove an unrecorded event that they experienced alone or with a group of people actually happened to someone who wasn't there.

With the right tuning we can see things that are as of yet unexplainable.

And with proper medication and therapy a lot of people can be helped instead of having their delusions indulged and entertained.

So when did Science debunk that there was an after life, and how did they do that exactly?

Are you being intentionally obtuse? Because it is bloody obvious. By learning that the brain is the centre of consciousness and our personality, and that the soul does not actually exist. It is pretty simple, really. For example Romans, among others, used to think that the heart was where the soul was, and that it was responsible for consciousness and thought. Why exactly do you think the idea of a soul even exists? It is just an historical remnant like religion. We know understand how the human body. Maybe not entirely, but we know that the brain gives us consciousness, and its death is the death of us, forever. There is no scientific evidence that it is possible for "us" to survive after we and our brains die.

I admire how you could have ever had a more optimistic view on humanity prior to this article.

Every time I think my faith in humanity has hit it's low point they do something dumber!

Provide me with evidence and confirmed data, and i'll believe in such worldly phenomena. Until then, I don't know, don't care, and frankly have never seen evidence to the contrary.

What they said ^

I am one of those educated folks, and I don't particularly believe in ghosts, but I have experienced something that I have no better tag for than "ghost".

How about tiredness induced hallucinations?



And I say again:

Nobody can prove an unrecorded event that they experienced alone or with a group of people actually happened to someone who wasn't there.

I've no need to go any further. Rage on.

How convenient.

I think it is possible that aliens (maybe even intelligent ones) exist, but I also think it is extremely unlikely. If you believe in evolution (no offence to anyone, but if you understand the theory properly it doesn't make sense to not believe it, unless you believe reality to be an illusion or something like that; it's basically a complicated chain of common sense), then it shouldn't be too difficult to work out that it's extremely unlikely that any life would exist anywhere at all, considering all the coincidences that would need to occur at the same time in the same places, and even more unlikely that it would be started more than once with each instance being completely independent of each other, let alone them occurring at points in time or space even remotely close to each other, or them being intelligent enough to even be able to attempt to come close to us without us ever finding any conclusive evidence. Then again, whether or not it occurs the first time doesn't really affect the odds of it happening a second. It's just that it's a miracle it ever happened at all, and there are so many other variables with extremely low chances of coming out with the right conditions. Of course, it's not impossible, but very, very unlikely.

Unlikely from planet to planet + bloody enormous universe + different kinds of life = likely.

so many different forms of life existing and having the technology to get here + so many different forms of life caring about us =/= likely.

That's my opinion.

Only once do I think I might have possibly seen a ghost. Even if it was.. it's no big deal. Anyway .. neighbors step dad died.. me and him (Charles .. we were around 8? maybe .. ) were on his back porch playing cars like we always did (Matchbox.. Hotwheels) .. and a shadow walked across his backyard. That's about it. Me and Charles saw it. We weren't scared though.. we just saw it.

Are you being intentionally obtuse? Because it is bloody obvious. By learning that the brain is the centre of consciousness and our personality, and that the soul does not actually exist. It is pretty simple, really. For example Romans, among others, used to think that the heart was where the soul was, and that it was responsible for consciousness and thought. Why exactly do you think the idea of a soul even exists? It is just an historical remnant like religion. We know understand how the human body. Maybe not entirely, but we know that the brain gives us consciousness, and its death is the death of us, forever. There is no scientific evidence that it is possible for "us" to survive after we and our brains die.

It's not obvious to me...I make leaps of faith, it's part of the whole religious belief package, but to say that the question of the soul is somehow "obvious" and settled is a massive leap that makes audacious religious claims pale in comparison.

First off, it's been repeated before and it will be repeated again. Lack of current scientific evidence doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's that simple, and that fact will never change; we know things today that would've been complete garbage only a century ago, even 50 years ago and which fly in the face of previously accepted concepts. Secondly, nobody really knows just what causes consciousness, so to say "the brain does it" is greedy reductionism of the highest and worst order that completely rules out the fact that the conscious observer plays a central role in the universe, which kind of supports the idea that consciousness is more than some random byproduct that simply dies without purpose at the end of biological life, even if said outcome doesn't fit the immortality of conventional religion. Third, the origin of consciousness is so completely and utterly unknown right now that we can barely begin to understand what causes it, let alone use it to argue against something as vague as a "soul". Hell, we don't even have a concrete definition of what a soul is or what exactly it does, so we can't even begin to pursue the argument to begin with.

And, of course, this totally ignores material possibilities of postmortem survival or the various skeptical arguments that call all knowledge in to question. This is a question that will never be fully resolved by science because we can only observe so much using our physical senses and the tools based upon them...we hit a hard limit at a basic, axiomatic level, and it's at that point where something else has to fill the gap.

Provide me with evidence and confirmed data, and i'll believe in such worldly phenomena. Until then, I don't know, don't care, and frankly have never seen evidence to the contrary.

You sir, completely missed the point. If there was evidence and confirmed data, we wouldn't be discussing this in the first place.

You sir, completely missed the point. If there was evidence and confirmed data, we wouldn't be discussing this in the first place.Actually... You missed the point; we shouldn't be discussing this. For exactly the same reason we don't discuss Snot the Saviour, the amount of magical bricks in our heads, or all the poor bastards that get eaten by their fastfood.

But alright, let's. Show me one single recorded event of a burger trying and failing to eat someone. Or just one autopsy performed with instruments capable of detecting magical bricks, or a single person who've ever managed to reach deep enough into the gooey mess and show Snot the Saviour isn't made entirely out of snot. I bet you can't.

Or you could explain why we aren't discussing those, when we are discussing shit like souls, religions, ghosts and whatnot.

By the way, my neighbour claims to know for fact that if you don't punch yourself in the face daily, you don't get an afterlife, no matter what kind of afterlife you were expecting.

Oh and.. We needn't limit this to purely silly superstitions. What about disproving Muslims are evil? I bet you can't do it. I can't, and I'm in love with one. Shifting the burden of evidence isn't just a logical fallacy, it's a slippery slope of incredible proportions, opening the floodgates for all sorts of nasty shit, from common racism to genocidal ideas like corporations and the invasion of Iraq.

It's not obvious to me...I make leaps of faith, it's part of the whole religious belief package, but to say that the question of the soul is somehow "obvious" and settled is a massive leap that makes audacious religious claims pale in comparison.

The answer to the question of a soul and any of the organised religions (at the least) is obvious. The concept of the soul was developed by humans just as we developed religion. If we didn't come up with it ages ago when we were slobbering fools looking to the supernatural for answers, we would never have developed the word or what it means.

First off, it's been repeated before and it will be repeated again. Lack of current scientific evidence doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's that simple, and that fact will never change; we know things today that would've been complete garbage only a century ago, even 50 years ago and which fly in the face of previously accepted concepts.

Wrong. It isn't that there is no evidence for an afterlife, but that there is evidence against it. That evidence being for someone to continue "living" after they are dead they would obviously need all the information and processes related to a brain, at the least. Since the brain stops working and begins to decompose, this is not possible. But of course you are right in also saying there is no scientific evidence for it, but that is not, like you seem to think, a positive argument for an after-life. There is also no evidence for the Easter bunny.

Secondly, nobody really knows just what causes consciousness, so to say "the brain does it" is greedy reductionism of the highest and worst order that completely rules out the fact that the conscious observer plays a central role in the universe, which kind of supports the idea that consciousness is more than some random byproduct that simply dies without purpose at the end of biological life, even if said outcome doesn't fit the immortality of conventional religion.

I will reply to the bold part, because the rest makes even less sense; we do KNOW what causes consciousness. Take even a broad definition such as the following:

Consciousness is a characteristic of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment.

Those mental faculties are directly caused by brain activity. To say we don't know what causes consciousness is the most absurd thing I've heard for a long time, as it is indisputably false. It is like saying we don't know what makes clocks keep time.

Third, the origin of consciousness is so completely and utterly unknown right now that we can barely begin to understand what causes it, let alone use it to argue against something as vague as a "soul". Hell, we don't even have a concrete definition of what a soul is or what exactly it does, so we can't even begin to pursue the argument to begin with.

We don't have a definition of a soul? I assume you mean in the context of this discussion. In which case feel free to post a definition and, assuming you use one that is aligned to the generally accepted meaning of the word, I'll show you something there is ZERO evidence to support.

And, of course, this totally ignores material possibilities of postmortem survival.

Uh, I don't have the vaguest idea of what this is supposed to mean or what possible point you're trying to argue.

There is lots of evidence for ghosts just because you are to narrowminded to accept it doesnt mean there isnt any.



Bigots. :upyours:

"I knew a little about airplanes and helicopters, and it was not that," he said. "It's one of those things that sticks in your mind."

like a spear?

The answer to the question of a soul and any of the organised religions (at the least) is obvious. The concept of the soul was developed by humans just as we developed religion. If we didn't come up with it ages ago when we were slobbering fools looking to the supernatural for answers, we would never have developed the word or what it means.
From wiki:"The Ancient Greeks used the same word for 'alive' as for 'ensouled'"
Perhaps it's just the case that the meaning was corrupted since then.

Wrong. It isn't that there is no evidence for an afterlife, but that there is evidence against it. That evidence being for someone to continue "living" after they are dead they would obviously need all the information and processes related to a brain, at the least. Since the brain stops working and begins to decompose, this is not possible. But of course you are right in also saying there is no scientific evidence for it, but that is not, like you seem to think, a positive argument for an after-life. There is also no evidence for the Easter bunny.I don't think he was suggesting that that was a positive argument for an after-life, more that he was saying that there is nop negative case against it. The positive case for it would be the (purported or not depending on your view) personal experiences.

You sir, completely missed the point. If there was evidence and confirmed data, we wouldn't be discussing this in the first place.

You're my hero. :)

There is no conclusive proof that ghosts exist. However, skeptics cannot show many who profess to have had experiences that led them to believe in ghosts/spirits to be knowingly lying. I do not believe I am lying when I say I have had experiences that completely changed my mind about the existence of ghosts/spirits.

And no, I will not share them. I would only expose myself to further ridicule by NSG atheists who think that humanity already knows everything.

And no, I will not share them. I would only expose myself to further ridicule by NSG atheists who think that humanity already knows everything.

It's more like that yer average atheist or agnostic acknowledges we don't know everything - anything? - but doesn't jump into conclusion that if something unexplained happens it must be caused by magic, be it through spirits or gods.

If ghosts are proven to exist then there has to be a natural mechanism for their existence. It's as simple as that.

And no, I will not share them. I would only expose myself to further ridicule by NSG atheists who think that humanity already knows everything.

Sound like a medium or astrologist who doesn't want to submit to a scientific test.

Now this is something that truly makes me mad; people using "open-minded" to justify their beliefs in absolute bullshit. They're taking my word! People should be open-minded to trying a new food or listening to a genre of music they think they won't like. Don't try and justify any sort of paranormal belief by saying "I'm open-minded", because that is not true and doesn't cut it. Say "I'm weak-minded" or "bloody-minded", because you're believing in something which has no basis in reality. Don't try and excuse your beliefs by bastardising the concept of open-mindedness.

</rant>

Speaking of which, just watching Enemies of Reason and Dawkins said:

I've always liked the saying we should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our heads fall out.

Sound like a medium or astrologist who doesn't want to submit to a scientific test.

Sounds like the very attitude which is the reason sharing my experiences isn't worth it on this forum.

Why should I? No one's opinion will be changed and I will just be mocked, called an "idiot," "fool," "moron," etc.

What possible reason would I have to subject myself to that sort of treatment for no benefit whatsoever?

I mean, I fully admit to being a little bit of a sexual masochist, but seriously, not enough to share any experiences that don't fit with Atheism on NSG.

Sounds like the very reason sharing my experiences isn't worth it on this forum.

Why should I? No one's opinion will be changed and I will just be mocked, called an "idiot," "fool," "moron," etc.

What possible reason would I have to subject myself to that sort of treatment for no benefit whatsoever?

For the lulz?

For the lulz?

Sorry, lulz are a good reason for many things... but they're not enough for me to lay myself bare and share my experiences on this subject with NSG. I've been here long enough to know it would be a very bad idea.

For the lulz?

Why should we?

ah...no it isn't.
Finding out that 1/3 of the world still believes in pixies and fairies and ghosts and goblins is not horrifying, absolutely or otherwise.
It's sad at worst and unsurprisingly at best.

What's horrifying would be having a dream where a zombie snapping turtle with black rotten teeth is chasing you while a giant wasp is stinging you in your liver.

Or coming home to find your spouse whacked out of their mind on crack and indulging in coprophilia with several homeless people.

Those are horrifying.

I invite you to my house. You will see a ghost. I promise you. Illinois has to be one of the most haunted places in the world. Go to Alton. You'll find out a lot about the supernatural. Its not foolish to believe something exists when you have seen it with your own two eyes. Its foolish for others, that haven't had the experience, to totally discredit it, though. ;)

If it's as simple as just going to your house, why isn't your house "the house that proved ghosts exist"? Isn't odd that everyone's eyes are so reliable when we can prove that eyewitness testimony is for crap and we're supposed to ignore the mountains of scientific data that one after another shows up at these "haunted" places and finds nothing. Interesting how that works.

Open-minded means accepting ALL evidence, not ignoring all the more-reliable evidence for the less-reliable evidence.

For the lulz?

Why? We're getting plenty from a person suggesting he relies on reason while making a giant leap of faith. I know I laughed.

You show me a scientist who produced and published a paper that disproves that souls exist and I'll show a scientist who has since been laughed out every reliable scientific circle.

"We have no evidence for something" is not the same as "we've proven something doesn't exist." That's the problem. Proving non-existence requires a very specific definition. Since most people admit to not knowing exactly how the soul works, it's impossible to disprove. At best, we can say if it exists, it doesn't exist in certain forms. Like we can about gods. Like we can about unicorns. Etc.

How about tiredness induced hallucinations?


Well, I wasn't tired, it was midafternoon, and I have never had an hallucination based on being tired, but yes, that could be a possibility for someone.

As I said, I don't have an answer. I am aware of hallucinations, and I discounted them as I know that was not the case. It was also not mechanically produced by someone else, I was the only one there. It was not some sort of hypnotic or auto suggestion, I had never heard that the house was haunted, nor was I afraid of or particularly looking to see a ghost. It wasn't a trick of light, or if it was, it was a such really amazing one that I cannot imagine how it could possibly have occurred naturally, and as I mentioned, I was the only person around.

So what was it? Again... I don't know.

I don't know about "ghosts" per se, but I do know that the brain is capable of many strange things, not the least of which is affecting the world around it consistently. Optimists will have good things happen to them more often.

Sentient spirits... I don't know if I believe in that possibility. I won't say I believe in the impossibility either, because there's nothing that I've found to prove or disprove much of anything on this or related topics. I can prove that you don't have a soul in the sense that it is not measurable by any known methods, but I can't prove that you don't have, say, a link to another plane on which you exist in plasma form. On the other hand, if you tell me that's exactly how it is I'll probably laugh at you.

But... I know that "Residuals" exist. Echoes of strong emotion or heavy thought. My uncle, dead now for over 8 years, is still pacing every night at about 2 AM in a house somewhere in Arkansas. He was doing that when he lived in Missouri, for years before he died. And he probably will continue to pace, every night at about 2 AM in a house somewhere in Arkansas.

I'll have to agree with a former poster on this thread: It's not ignorant to believe something you've seen with your own eyes. Nobody can blame others for not believing what they didn't experience.

Some people have an innate ability to just Know things about other people - it's an observed and recognized trait, and it's called Empathy. Some people have it, and some people do not. Some people also have strong intuition, and some people can fool themselves into experiencing things that are completely unreal. Ghosts in the capacity that I exemplified above are very real. I know this. But then, many ghost stories are false. I know this as well. The problem is sorting out the true from the false, and if, as I suspect, there is something you either have or don't have that allows you to experience 'ghosts', it will remain a problem. It's not real unless it can be a shared experience, and it's not scientific unless it is recordable and duplicable.

Not sure what my point was, really. Sorry to ramble.

Hmm, can I bring my equipment to your house? I actually have a Ghost Hunting kit.

Remember, NEVER cross the streams!

Occam's razor: All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one.

Ok lets see, lets look at the equation....... Glowing forces of energy floating around with some past agenda about thier previous life vs. Humans have a repeatedly demonstrated ability to misread thier own preceptions.

Lets see, as a rational person, what part strikes me as more likely....

I can't wait for next week's Disenchantment seminar. That poll will fuck everybody's essays up royally.:D

Are you being intentionally obtuse? Because it is bloody obvious. By learning that the brain is the centre of consciousness and our personality, and that the soul does not actually exist. It is pretty simple, really. For example Romans, among others, used to think that the heart was where the soul was, and that it was responsible for consciousness and thought. Why exactly do you think the idea of a soul even exists? It is just an historical remnant like religion. We know understand how the human body. Maybe not entirely, but we know that the brain gives us consciousness, and its death is the death of us, forever. There is no scientific evidence that it is possible for "us" to survive after we and our brains die.

Well,

1) There is no necessity to believe the results of science by:
1.1) refuting science as the only valid method of obtaining knowledge about the aspects of existence (which I tend not to do, but it is an option), especially when the subject matter in question per definition (as I have laid out above) transcends the realm of physical reality for which science has a valid explanation by the means of today. Which brings me to the second point:
1.2) we can, without risking to be hastly blamed fanatic fundamentalist morons, refute that the scientific explanations of today are sufficient to explain every single phenomenon we face. Likely, everyone will agree with me that science cannot yet, and perhaps never will be able to, give satisfying answers to a great variety of questions that seem mundane compared to the question about the nature of consciousness.
2) Even if we know what gives rise to it, this is no answer to what becomes of it. Things like quantum immortality and the (hypothetical) law of maintaining complexity (I'm not sure wether this was the correct name), pose scenarios of a (hypothetical) immortality of consciousness on a scientific basis.

Of course, all of this requires a definition of what actually constitutes "soul" or "personality". Are you the same person that you were when you were 3 years old? If yo, why don't you scream if your mommy won't buy you icecream? And whatabout those people that fall subject to brain damage or dementia? If you can't even save a coherent self over your lifetime, I think it is unlikely it can be passed on as an unchanged entity into the afterlife. But even without touching more complex questions, the physical laws alone determine that that what Pacificville has defined here as a person's self - the mere physical aspects of one's body - will continue to exist, albeit they do not constitute consciousness anymore.

This propably all sounds a little messed-up, and I think I have to get myself to seriously thinking this matter over, and then correct some statements here. (Be it that they have not been torn apart and ridiculed in other posts by that time).

I know for a fact there are ghosts. I am one. I'm posting from beyond the grave. Boo.

I know for a fact there are ghosts. I am one. I'm posting from beyond the grave. Boo.

Errr..... eek? :eek:










Alternatively, sitting around in graveyards and hiding behind tombstones may not be the best way to go there, If. Someone may get strange ideas about you. Plus, all that damp and dank can't be good for your computer.

Errr..... eek? :eek:

*floats into the girl's changing room*

The answer to the question of a soul and any of the organised religions (at the least) is obvious. The concept of the soul was developed by humans just as we developed religion. If we didn't come up with it ages ago when we were slobbering fools looking to the supernatural for answers, we would never have developed the word or what it means.

And we could say the same thing about science. I have little doubt our current methodologies will be seen as little more than primitive stumbling in a few hundred years.

However, since I don't rule things out due to the fallacious assumption that "primitive" ideas are wrong, I don't think that way. Just because humans developed something doesn't mean it doesn't exist; that really doesn't even make a lot of sense if you consider the fact that pretty much everything we know and do was developed by humans at some point.


Wrong. It isn't that there is no evidence for an afterlife, but that there is evidence against it. That evidence being for someone to continue "living" after they are dead they would obviously need all the information and processes related to a brain, at the least. Since the brain stops working and begins to decompose, this is not possible. But of course you are right in also saying there is no scientific evidence for it, but that is not, like you seem to think, a positive argument for an after-life. There is also no evidence for the Easter bunny.

If you assume that the soul can't perform similar functions to the brain, then that's possible, but that's not necessarily the case. There are a lot of alternative theories about the soul that don't necessarily require consciousness after death. Reincarnation, of course, being the biggest.

And there is no evidence for the Easter bunny, that's true. That's why science doesn't investigate it...there's nothing to form a hypothesis.
I will reply to the bold part, because the rest makes even less sense; we do KNOW what causes consciousness. Take even a broad definition such as the following:


Those mental faculties are directly caused by brain activity. To say we don't know what causes consciousness is the most absurd thing I've heard for a long time, as it is indisputably false. It is like saying we don't know what makes clocks keep time.

No, it's not. No neuroscientists on Earth would be presumptuous enough to say consciousness is explained...it's the single biggest unsolved mystery in science and philosophy that currently exists. Our knowledge of how the mind works is constantly shifting and changing, and to say that there is a direct causal relationship between brain activity and all consciousness is completely unfounded.

And, of course, the clock doesn't work as comparison because we make the clock and design it from the bottom up. We don't build our brains or the conscious thought that runs on them.

We don't have a definition of a soul? I assume you mean in the context of this discussion. In which case feel free to post a definition and, assuming you use one that is aligned to the generally accepted meaning of the word, I'll show you something there is ZERO evidence to support.

There hardly is a generally accepted meaning. Pretty much all religions and most individuals have a different definition. The only concrete similarity is the fact that said soul exists after death in one way or another and is presumably immortal.

Again, absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. You can believe all you want, but don't make the presumption that there is any level of fact behind your statements.

Uh, I don't have the vaguest idea of what this is supposed to mean or what possible point you're trying to argue.

I think it was a part of something else that was later removed. Disregard it.

The biggest problem with this debate, and possibly the reason it has been going on for thousands of years, is that everyone sees things differently. There is not much getting around the fact that everyone sees things differently. No-one actually 'knows' anything for sure; for all we know everything could be an illusion that is a product of some aspect of existence that we don't even know about. All we have to go on is the data fed to us by our senses, and how we interpret that data into information. One illusion that we do have is that we actually know anything at all, other than what our senses are telling us personally, and even then there are gaps. When we say we know something, what we actually mean is that we have come to a certain conclusion based on the information at our disposal within our own personal context, which may be different to the conclusions reached by others, and we may not even realise or accept. As a result of this even the use of the word 'know' is somewhat flawed, and we only use it for the sake of easiness and for the lack of a more appropriate word. The mistake people frequently seem to make is that they do actually know anything, which can lead to them thinking that anyone reaching a different conclusion based on the same available sensory information is wrong, even if somewhere along the line in the reasoning there are different yet equally viable routes with different destinations (I've been reduced to using metaphors to attempt to explain this now).

If we accept that we don't know anything, then it is reasonable to suggest that any system of logic of any person could potentially be correct, no matter how ridiculous it may seem to others. But because we can't possibly learn which, if any, view of the universe is correct, it seems that the best thing to do is to at least attempt to accept that others have their own views, and the right to them, and that they should all be given equal respect. The only possible exception is the view that the opinions of others should be disregarded and the opinions of one individual be forced upon them, as this goes against the whole idea entirely, and is basically a lack of respect, which causes among other things discrimination and conflict in all its forms. If we're all going to have different views of things (which can't be avoided), we might as well try to feel as if we are all as happy as possible, which can't happen when we don't respect each other.

The problem with this theory is that if it is taken as true then that is assuming that there is knowledge that it is true, which in itself goes against the theory, in the first place. So this theory logically denies the logicality of any theory, itself included. It seems to make no sense and perfect sense at the same time to me, which confuses me further.

To summarise, dissing points of view different to your own is one of, if not the most, stupidest things you can do.

I realise that sentence may not have made sense, and it is possible that an awful lot of what I said is incomprehensible to anyone else reading it, so apologies.

There's something I want those of you who believe in ghosts to consider. You are supposed to be able to detect them by sight and sound, correct? Possibly by touch via cold shudders or smell or taste via whatever other such thing you might come up with?

In essence, you've stated that our extremely limited five senses are capable of detecting these entities. If that is the case, then surely our much more powerful sensing equipment based on the five senses and so much more ought to be able to detect them as well, correct? Being much more powerful they ought to have no problem at all.

Yet it's never been done. Countless examinations of supposedly haunted places and it has never been done. I find it extremely hard to believe that you could sense something with your limited human senses and find that it completely baffles all powerful sensing equipment. That simply shouldn't be possible, unless you want to try suggesting that ghosts and spirits "show themselves" to humans but "hide" whenever sensing equipment comes around, and since most of you are otherwise quite sensible you'll realize how foolish that sort of notion is.

Secondly, for a soul, we've never been able to detect any sort of energy or whatever leaving the body upon death, which presumably a soul would do. It wouldn't matter if we could identify the energy or not, but if it's there, we should be able to detect it. We're able to gather massive quantities of data about the makeup of stars and planets LIGHT YEARS away. Surely detecting some sort of energy leaving the body from a few feet or less away shouldn't be a problem, and no type of energy is going to go without some sort of detecting signature. It doesn't matter if we don't know what it is, we ought to be able to detect it by now.

Yet, again, we haven't. I'm aware of the fact that it IS still possible there are types of energy, radiation, or what have you that we cannot detect because of some phenomenon--say, for example, the fictional concept of subspace--but I find it unlikely at best that we would be so good at otherwise detecting radiation and energy no matter what the type but--again--be completely unable to detect when it leaves our own bodies. Given the realm, as it were, in which we live I don't think it'd be possible for any part of us to be made of up something from some other realm, again as it were.

Does this mean we completely close our minds to these possibilities? Of course not. But on that same token, given the bevy of evidence against both souls and ghosts, there is no reason to believe in them until such time that something else comes along to prove it. To do otherwise would be to engage in that foolish nonsensical idea of faith, and I'd like to think we're beyond such things in this day and age.

Magick was mentioned?(The occult guys there always type it with a K)

Chaos Magick is an interesting exercise of imagination and the best modern occult tradition, but it's that, an exercise of imagination reinforced by the belief you can distort the laws of nature with your will and the help of a primal force of chaos you believe that exists. And from what I heard its "mages" are interesting and very different people that would rock the boat in any party.

I believe in the possibility of psionics, but I don't believe in ghosts or magick. I believe in magic though as it's possible to make illusions for a large crowd so they think it was something supernatural.

Schroedinger's Cat and the possible Quantum Immortality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Immortality) are the only the hopes of afterlife for the skeptical, if they are right.

PS: I dislike mainstream science. It's an ivory tower and tends to ridicule any thing that challenges their status quo, even when it has foundations.

I believe ghosts, ESP & aliens are all possible.
But then it would be stupid for me not to, what with having precognitive dreams.
I still treat most sightings with a extra-large atheist induced dose of cynicism.

Absolutely horrifying statistics, fools will believe anything, apparently even educated fools.

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/TSHIRTS/95-301-98~The-Simpsons-Bart-I-See-Dumb-People-Posters.jpg

:D

I wonder how many people believe in atoms or protons or quarks despite never having seen one up close. I suspect most people just imagine them to be there because they were taught about their existence by other people.

I wonder how many people believe in atoms or protons or quarks despite never having seen one up close. I suspect most people just imagine them to be there because they were taught about their existence by other people.

Isn't their existence claimed by methodical experimentations and logical deductions rather than a belief passed from generation to generation?

Isn't their existence claimed by methodical experimentations and logical deductions rather than a belief passed from generation to generation?

1. The existence of both ghosts and quarks is claimed by lots of people who have never seen them. Both are also claimed by various groups of people who have very lovely and possibly thorough explanations for them and claim to have sensory data to support their conclusions. They both reach the conclusion by making a model to explain their experiences, and generally a model that has some historical basis (ie. atomic theory or spiritual explanation).

Granted, one set of groups has more prestigious social institutions expressing faith in them.

2. For logical deductions about physical reality to legitimately be considered accurate, you'd need to demonstrate that logic maps onto that physical reality.

3. It's quite possible to reach an erroneous conclusion repeatedly. Being methodical is hardly a guarantee of accuracy.

"I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a white ghost in my closet," he said. "I discovered I'd put a hole in my brand new white shirt. My mother and father were not amused."
I liked this part.
Except...
Where did he get the rifle? His parents just let him keep a loaded gun in his room when he was a kid?

1. The existence of both ghosts and quarks is claimed by lots of people who have never seen them. Both are also claimed by various groups of people who have very lovely and possibly thorough explanations for them and claim to have sensory data to support their conclusions. They both reach the conclusion by making a model to explain their experiences, and generally a model that has some historical basis (ie. atomic theory or spiritual explanation).

Granted, one set of groups has more prestigious social institutions expressing faith in them.

2. For logical deductions about physical reality to legitimately be considered accurate, you'd need to demonstrate the logic maps onto that physical reality.

3. It's quite possible to reach an erroneous conclusion repeatedly. Being methodical is hardly a guarantee of accuracy.
Here's the problem though. Your argument relies upon the idea that every single scientist ever to try those experiments has made the same mistake. I can believe one scientist or one group of scientists making the same mistake over and over, but every scientist that has ever tried the experiments? That's just not possible. Furthermore, we have many technologies that RELY upon the understanding of these ideas. Ever seen a nuclear bomb, or a nuclear power plant? That relies upon the atom, for instance.

Plus, your argument is also extremely faulty when it comes to those who claim to have had experiences involving ghosts and the like who under no circumstances subject themselves to the same standards as scientists and to say they do is insulting. You also ignore the fact that many claims have been repeatedly examined by scientists and nothing has ever been found.

You didn't even make a good attempt here, Hotrodia. Bad form. I expect better from you.

Here's the problem though. Your argument relies upon the idea that every single scientist ever to try those experiments has made the same mistake.

Not really. People can make a variety of mistakes in the course of coming to an erroneous conclusion through repeated experimentation.

Aether theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theory), for example. It was once a respected scientific theory with plenty of evidence behind it. But no longer. I'm not so uncharitable as to suggest that every scientist who did experiments to test the claims of aether theory were making the exact same mistake, but apparently they did make mistakes of some kind.

Furthermore, we have many technologies that RELY upon the understanding of these ideas. Ever seen a nuclear bomb, or a nuclear power plant? That relies upon the atom, for instance.

No. But I've seen images of them in books and movies, and some people claim to have seen them personally. Is that sufficient to justify my belief in them?

Plus, your argument is also extremely faulty when it comes to those who claim to have had experiences involving ghosts and the like who under no circumstances subject themselves to the same standards as scientists and to say they do is insulting. You also ignore the fact that many claims have been repeatedly examined by scientists and nothing has ever been found.

Come now. I specifically mentioned that it was quite possible to reach an erroneous conclusion repeatedly. That's hardly an indication that I'm ignoring the repeated examination by scientists. On the contrary, I'm confronting it pretty directly.

You didn't even make a good attempt here, Hotrodia. Bad form. I expect better from you.

Fair is fair, I suppose. Your response wasn't much better.

I wonder how many people believe in atoms or protons or quarks despite never having seen one up close. I suspect most people just imagine them to be there because they were taught about their existence by other people.

We have measurable evidence for each of those things. We created hypotheses and tested them, having them hold up.

I'll succumb to the fervor for ghosts when someone produces a testable and falsifiable hypothesis relating to a particular ghosts and produces the data to support. Real data. That actually supports it.

Here's the thing. People who claim to have seen ghosts might have. However, you'd have to actually be a lunatic to believe that human perception is more reliable than testing. It's been proven repeatedly that humans are rather unreliable witnesses. In fact, it's the human factor in most tests that make them somewhat unreliable, thus the reason for repetition, different types of tests, and peer review.

Science isn't infallible. It doesn't claim to be. Science doesn't claim that ghosts don't exist. It claims that there is no data to support the existence of ghosts. In every case, any attempt to collect data proves that we must accept that ghosts for some reason make a distinct effort to avoid record.

Not really. People can make a variety of mistakes in the course of coming to an erroneous conclusion through repeated experimentation.

Indeed, such as coming to believe in the existence of ghosts.

Aether theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theory), for example. It was once a respected scientific theory with plenty of evidence behind it. But no longer. I'm not so uncharitable as to suggest that every scientist who did experiments to test the claims of aether theory were making the exact same mistake, but apparently they did make mistakes of some kind.

The mistake being a predetermined assumption made due to a lack of sufficient understanding, not that they made a mistake in the experimentation itself per se. It was furthermore discredited long ago and was not as respected a theory or as long existing a theory as you are trying to make it out to be.


No. But I've seen images of them in books and movies, and some people claim to have seen them personally. Is that sufficient to justify my belief in them?

There is a difference here, Hotrodia, that is plaguing your argument. You keep suggesting that the idea of people claiming to have seen ghosts that claim they are real is the EXACT SAME THING as people claiming the existence of provable scientifically understood phenomena which is absolutely ludicrous. Would the pictures and the like be enough? Not necessarily, but unlike the ghosts, you can go to that nuclear power plant and verify it exists. You can do the math(and believe you me, math is extremely important in this and many other regards) and reach the same conclusions. You can perform the experiments and reach the same conclusions, cause the same thing to happen again and again.

Ghosts and spirits on the other hand can have nothing of the sort be done. You can't test their existence. You can't verify the claim made by going to where it was claimed and witnessing the same event most of time(and when you can it's something repeatedly happening that has an explanation that does not involve spirits.) You can't run experiment after experiment to show the same result. You can't do the math because no math exists.

I again bring to mind those experiments run. You are suggesting that every single examination ever performed--and there are undoubtedly thousands, if not tens of thousands--has made either the same mistake or some mistake along the line that failed to detect what our puny-by-comparison five senses could detect. That is just plain stupid. At some point someone would have caught something. If our five senses can pick it up, then so should our much more advanced equipment, much of which is capable of detecting things far beyond the limits of our five senses, yet again NOTHING IS EVER FOUND.

I also say once again that I am not dismissing the possibility. I am, however, saying that the odds, the bevy of evidence against the likelihood as well as the simple fact that no claim has ever been truly verified by any scientist who actually utilizes the scientific method and remains open-minded to ALL POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS(that means those who claim to be scientists who find their "evidence" which almost always can be easily shown to be something far more mundane are at best untrustworthy) says to me that we have no reason to believe in ghosts. Show me concrete undeniable evidence and I'll be happy to accept it, but until then I will not believe simply because I can conceive of the possibility.

Why? We're getting plenty from a person suggesting he relies on reason while making a giant leap of faith. I know I laughed.

If that is referring to me I'm not quite sure what you mean. I don't make leaps of faith because they make zero sense. Looking at evidence and then extrapolating that to the most logical outcome is quite different than blindly believing in something with no evidence and calling it faith.

You show me a scientist who produced and published a paper that disproves that souls exist and I'll show a scientist who has since been laughed out every reliable scientific circle.

There is no need to write a paper proving the soul doesn't exist, because a paper about how the brain works does it at the same time; accounting for the once unknown sources of consciousness which primitive people claimed related to the soul because they didn't know better.

"We have no evidence for something" is not the same as "we've proven something doesn't exist." That's the problem. Proving non-existence requires a very specific definition. Since most people admit to not knowing exactly how the soul works, it's impossible to disprove. At best, we can say if it exists, it doesn't exist in certain forms. Like we can about gods. Like we can about unicorns. Etc.

Go read Kyronea post up the page a little; if ghosts are supposed to be perceivable by human beings then they rely, at least partly, on our own physical dimensions, and thus would be able to be proven by scientific methods.

And we could say the same thing about science. I have little doubt our current methodologies will be seen as little more than primitive stumbling in a few hundred years.

That is vastly different from the reasoning used by those who invented the soul; what a hilarious attempt at a rebuttal. Modern science will obviously appear primitive in mere decades, but the difference is that what we are using now is still evidence-based investigation within the generally correct rules and laws we have developed, as opposed to not knowing how something works and baselessly attributing it to the soul. It is just as silly as myths about rainbow serpents and Genesis. The creation myth about God creating the world in seven days is a good example; people, with no knowledge of the how the world worked came up with a story to explain its creation. Since then scientific process has produced evidence debunking the seven days theory.

However, since I don't rule things out due to the fallacious assumption that "primitive" ideas are wrong, I don't think that way. Just because humans developed something doesn't mean it doesn't exist; that really doesn't even make a lot of sense if you consider the fact that pretty much everything we know and do was developed by humans at some point.

By no means do I believe because humans developed something means it doesn't exist- that accusation doesn't even make sense. We have developed a cure for smallpox and technology to put a man on the moon, but this was done with knowledge. The soul was developed out of questions we did not have the knowledge to answer. Since then we have answered these questions, but some people show the need to hold on to such antiquated concepts.

If you assume that the soul can't perform similar functions to the brain, then that's possible, but that's not necessarily the case. There are a lot of alternative theories about the soul that don't necessarily require consciousness after death. Reincarnation, of course, being the biggest.

Reincarnation requires consciousness after death. It may be in a different body, but still. Anyway there is also no proof at all that there is any evidence for these theories. It is ridiculous that we are debating this. Are you trying to get me to admit the possibility? Because if so I should remind you of Russell's teapot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot); just because it is possible doesn't mean it makes any sense to believe in it. I rule out the possibility of the teapot as there is no evidence for it just as I rule out the possibility of the soul or for ghosts for the same reason.

And there is no evidence for the Easter bunny, that's true. That's why science doesn't investigate it...there's nothing to form a hypothesis.

Only difference with this supernatural stuff is that people believe in it other than kids.

No, it's not. No neuroscientists on Earth would be presumptuous enough to say consciousness is explained...it's the single biggest unsolved mystery in science and philosophy that currently exists. Our knowledge of how the mind works is constantly shifting and changing, and to say that there is a direct causal relationship between brain activity and all consciousness is completely unfounded.

No, it is not. I didn't mean to suggest we completely understand the precise mechanisms of how our brain works, but we do know that consciousness is derived directly from the brain.

Consciousness is a characteristic of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment.

How the hell can you argue any of those are not governed by the brain? People with brain damage are a great example as they show that a person's abilities to be consciously aware of themselves and the environment are diminished.

And, of course, the clock doesn't work as comparison because we make the clock and design it from the bottom up. We don't build our brains or the conscious thought that runs on them.

Irrelevant, as the analogy is of our understanding of both what causes consciousness and how clocks work. We understand both (though one more thoroughly than the other) and to suggest otherwise is a lie and nothing more.

There hardly is a generally accepted meaning. Pretty much all religions and most individuals have a different definition. The only concrete similarity is the fact that said soul exists after death in one way or another and is presumably immortal.

That seems a fair and broad enough definition.

Again, absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. You can believe all you want, but don't make the presumption that there is any level of fact behind your statements.

As mentioned earlier: Russell's teapot.

1) There is no necessity to believe the results of science by:
1.1) refuting science as the only valid method of obtaining knowledge about the aspects of existence (which I tend not to do, but it is an option), especially when the subject matter in question per definition (as I have laid out above) transcends the realm of physical reality for which science has a valid explanation by the means of today. Which brings me to the second point:
1.2) we can, without risking to be hastly blamed fanatic fundamentalist morons, refute that the scientific explanations of today are sufficient to explain every single phenomenon we face. Likely, everyone will agree with me that science cannot yet, and perhaps never will be able to, give satisfying answers to a great variety of questions that seem mundane compared to the question about the nature of consciousness.

Perhaps. But as mentioned elsewhere people claim these ghosts or souls are on "another level" and are thus unable to be studied with scientific methods. However people claim to be able to see/hear/communicate with these ghosts, so they are obviously somehow present in our physical reality, and thus they are able to be monitored. For example people claim to see ghosts. Obviously sight works with the brain interpreting the light that is received through the eye, so the ghost must be reflecting light and thus actually present, so the ghost should be able to be at least proven if not studied. But yet there is no actual evidence... Wonder why? The entire universe is governed by a set of laws and rules, and there is no evidence so far that there is a special set of souls that have immunity to these laws, thus science is the only method to use to investigate our why things are as they are. If there was a technological breakthrough which proved ghosts, souls, fairies or God existed I would happily partake in a serious séance, but there is not currently a single shred of evidence that suggests I, or anyone, should.

2) Even if we know what gives rise to it, this is no answer to what becomes of it. Things like quantum immortality and the (hypothetical) law of maintaining complexity (I'm not sure wether this was the correct name), pose scenarios of a (hypothetical) immortality of consciousness on a scientific basis.

I assume you're referring to the soul here and how I mentioned why it was "created". You said this doesn't answer what becomes of it- well... of course it doesn't. It's just a human construct so nothing happens. I skimmed over the Wiki-page about the quantum suicide thought experiment and I don't really see its relevance to this discussion as it is an entirely unproven concept and doesn't pertain to the supernatural.

Of course, all of this requires a definition of what actually constitutes "soul" or "personality". Are you the same person that you were when you were 3 years old? If yo, why don't you scream if your mommy won't buy you icecream? And whatabout those people that fall subject to brain damage or dementia? If you can't even save a coherent self over your lifetime, I think it is unlikely it can be passed on as an unchanged entity into the afterlife. But even without touching more complex questions, the physical laws alone determine that that what Pacificville has defined here as a person's self - the mere physical aspects of one's body - will continue to exist, albeit they do not constitute consciousness anymore.

Umm not sure exactly what you're getting at there. Actually I've always thought the fact that our personalities do change, for instance in the case of brain damage or trauma, proves that we do not have a single, ultimate being that is dictated to us by a magical ever-lasting soul.

This propably all sounds a little messed-up, and I think I have to get myself to seriously thinking this matter over, and then correct some statements here. (Be it that they have not been torn apart and ridiculed in other posts by that time).

I guess I understand what you, and others, are saying, but my mind keeps going back to Russell's teapot; because these supernatural activities take place on another level and there is apparently no way to directly disprove them doesn't mean we should accept them. There could also be a pixie in your fridge who vanishes moments before you open the door- you can't disprove this, but it is absurd and with no evidence to support it, so why would you believe it?




That was a long post. I don't look forward to the replies. :D

Indeed, such as coming to believe in the existence of ghosts.

As a personal note, I have no particular opinion on the existence of ghosts. I'm primarily just amused by how plenty of people who believe in things they've never personally seen or experienced are so horrified by evidence of the same phenomenon in other people.

The mistake being a predetermined assumption made due to a lack of sufficient understanding, not that they made a mistake in the experimentation itself per se. It was furthermore discredited long ago and was not as respected a theory or as long existing a theory as you are trying to make it out to be.

I'm very tempted to argue that, because I think you're reading more into my statements than was there. Again.

But let's assume your counter-assertion was correct. How does the respectability of a theory or the length of its existence legitimately help it? Those seem to be rather subjective factors to be basing an assessment of a scientific theory upon.

There is a difference here, Hotrodia, that is plaguing your argument. You keep suggesting that the idea of people claiming to have seen ghosts that claim they are real is the EXACT SAME THING as people claiming the existence of provable scientifically understood phenomena which is absolutely ludicrous. Would the pictures and the like be enough? Not necessarily, but unlike the ghosts, you can go to that nuclear power plant and verify it exists. You can do the math(and believe you me, math is extremely important in this and many other regards) and reach the same conclusions. You can perform the experiments and reach the same conclusions, cause the same thing to happen again and again.

I'm really not sure where you're getting the idea that I'm claiming the two are the "EXACT SAME THING". I drew points of comparison, certainly. But I do recognize that one set of claims comes from the scientific community (with it's attendant procedures and conventions) and the other does not.

<snip repetitive arguments>

I also say once again that I am not dismissing the possibility. I am, however, saying that the odds, the bevy of evidence against the likelihood as well as the simple fact that no claim has ever been truly verified by any scientist who actually utilizes the scientific method and remains open-minded to ALL POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS(that means those who claim to be scientists who find their "evidence" which almost always can be easily shown to be something far more mundane are at best untrustworthy) says to me that we have no reason to believe in ghosts. Show me concrete undeniable evidence and I'll be happy to accept it, but until then I will not believe simply because I can conceive of the possibility.

That's cool. I have no reason to believe in them either.

I'm just not going to suggest that having such a belief is horrifying. A person is allowed, I think, to trust their own experience to a large degree. A person is allowed, I think, to choose the community of experts they believe to be the most reliable. Or to reject the findings of such a community if they do not believe it to be reliable.

I like science. I think it's a wonderful and powerful tool. I'm just not so sure that it's in a much better position epistemologically than other approaches are. I'm also keenly aware that I'm ultimately trusting my senses to inform me of what scientific information exists, what makes scientific information reliable, and that I'm trusting lots of other people to be doing their jobs and know what they're talking about. As a result, I'm very reluctant to cast aspersions on people who believe differently because their beliefs do not accord with my own.

As a personal note, I have no particular opinion on the existence of ghosts. I'm primarily just amused by how plenty of people who believe in things they've never personally seen or experienced are so horrified by evidence of the same phenomenon in other people.

I can see where you're coming from, and if you were correct I'd agree with you and share in your amusement, but your perception is NOT correct, because personal experience is at best unreliable when it comes to science. That's why we developed the scientific method in the first bloody place to try to keep personal experience from interfering.


I'm very tempted to argue that, because I think you're reading more into my statements than was there. Again.

It wouldn't be the first time.

But let's assume your counter-assertion was correct. How does the respectability of a theory or the length of its existence legitimately help it? Those seem to be rather subjective factors to be basing an assessment of a scientific theory upon.

It doesn't. I actually thought you were suggesting it was and was arguing against that notion. My apologies.


I'm really not sure where you're getting the idea that I'm claiming the two are the "EXACT SAME THING". I drew points of comparison, certainly. But I do recognize that one set of claims comes from the scientific community (with it's attendant procedures and conventions) and the other does not.


I "get that idea" because you're saying that because I believe in, say, the atom, or quarks, or something else SCIENTIFICALLY provable I shouldn't have a problem with the idea of believing in ghosts. That's stupid, plain and simple. I keep saying there is a difference because there is one.

<snip repetitive arguments>

That stuff was relevant, you know, in emphasizing and attempting to make clear exactly what I'm saying.


That's cool. I have no reason to believe in them either.

Good.

I'm just not going to suggest that having such a belief is horrifying. A person is allowed, I think, to trust their own experience to a large degree. A person is allowed, I think, to choose the community of experts they believe to be the most reliable. Or to reject the findings of such a community if they do not believe it to be reliable.
I never said they couldn't. That doesn't legitimize what they think. Plenty of people think blacks are just "stupid niggers" and they're welcome to believe that. That doesn't legitimize it.

I like science. I think it's a wonderful and powerful tool. I'm just not so sure that it's in a much better position epistemologically than other approaches are. I'm also keenly aware that I'm ultimately trusting my senses to inform me of what scientific information exists, what makes scientific information reliable, and that I'm trusting lots of other people to be doing their jobs and know what they're talking about. As a result, I'm very reluctant to cast aspersions on people who believe differently because their beliefs do not accord with my own.
Again, I can see where you're coming from. Science is hardly perfect, nor do I believe it to be so.

I trust it, however, because it at least TRIES to test what it suggests. It tries to find out if that crazy idea actually makes sense or not, whether that notion is real and can be applied or is simple fantasy. People who believe in ghosts usually don't do that. They have an experience, attribute it to ghosts and then adamentely deny any attempts to verify and/or disprove their claim. Many refuse to even consider alternative possibilities. That cold shudder might just be a reaction to a slight temperature variation. That flash of a person walking by might just be a trick of the light on your eyes. That sound might be anything from the fridge malfunction in some brief way to a mouse in the ceiling.

Basically, my point is, science gives me a reason to trust it, whereas beliefs and possible mistaken impressions do not. Do I trust my own experiences? I try to, but I'm hardly going to believe that, say, I have visions of the future just because of a moment of deja vu, which is now entirely explainable.

We have measurable evidence for each of those things. We created hypotheses and tested them, having them hold up.

I'll succumb to the fervor for ghosts when someone produces a testable and falsifiable hypothesis relating to a particular ghosts and produces the data to support. Real data. That actually supports it.

Here's the thing. People who claim to have seen ghosts might have. However, you'd have to actually be a lunatic to believe that human perception is more reliable than testing. It's been proven repeatedly that humans are rather unreliable witnesses. In fact, it's the human factor in most tests that make them somewhat unreliable, thus the reason for repetition, different types of tests, and peer review.

Science isn't infallible. It doesn't claim to be. Science doesn't claim that ghosts don't exist. It claims that there is no data to support the existence of ghosts. In every case, any attempt to collect data proves that we must accept that ghosts for some reason make a distinct effort to avoid record.

I quite agree. And I hardly need a lesson on science from anyone.

But I'm curious as to why you're so convinced that your (human) perception of the evidence regarding human perception is sufficiently reliable that you're willing to advance the idea that humans are rather unreliable witnesses. Doesn't your trust in your own perception to some extent defy your belief in its unreliability?

I can see where you're coming from, and if you were correct I'd agree with you and share in your amusement, but your perception is NOT correct, because personal experience is at best unreliable when it comes to science. That's why we developed the scientific method in the first bloody place to try to keep personal experience from interfering.

So it's not your personal experience that leads you to trust in science to a larger degree than other approaches?

It wouldn't be the first time.

It doesn't. I actually thought you were suggesting it was and was arguing against that notion. My apologies.

No worries. It's just a debate, mate. :)

I "get that idea" because you're saying that because I believe in, say, the atom, or quarks, or something else SCIENTIFICALLY provable I shouldn't have a problem with the idea of believing in ghosts. That's stupid, plain and simple. I keep saying there is a difference because there is one.

There's certainly a difference, as I've recognized before. I'm just having trouble seeing what the relevance of the difference is if, ultimately, your decision to trust science is based on your subjective personal experiences.

That stuff was relevant, you know, in emphasizing and attempting to make clear exactly what I'm saying.

I just wasn't interested in responding to arguments you've advanced before and/or explanations of matters I'm perfectly familiar with.

I never said they couldn't. That doesn't legitimize what they think. Plenty of people think blacks are just "stupid niggers" and they're welcome to believe that. That doesn't legitimize it.

Fair enough. What legitimizes the way you think?

Again, I can see where you're coming from. Science is hardly perfect, nor do I believe it to be so.

I trust it, however, because it at least TRIES to test what it suggests. It tries to find out if that crazy idea actually makes sense or not, whether that notion is real and can be applied or is simple fantasy. People who believe in ghosts usually don't do that. They have an experience, attribute it to ghosts and then adamentely deny any attempts to verify and/or disprove their claim. Many refuse to even consider alternative possibilities. That cold shudder might just be a reaction to a slight temperature variation. That flash of a person walking by might just be a trick of the light on your eyes. That sound might be anything from the fridge malfunction in some brief way to a mouse in the ceiling.

Basically, my point is, science gives me a reason to trust it, whereas beliefs and possible mistaken impressions do not. Do I trust my own experiences? I try to, but I'm hardly going to believe that, say, I have visions of the future just because of a moment of deja vu, which is now entirely explainable.

So in the end, you believe that your experiences are accurate insofar as they accord with science because science gave you a reason to trust it. Or did your unreliable senses just give you faulty evidence of a reason to trust it?

I quite agree. And I hardly need a lesson on science from anyone.

But I'm curious as to why you're so convinced that your (human) perception of the evidence regarding human perception is sufficiently reliable that you're willing to advance the idea that humans are rather unreliable witnesses. Doesn't your trust in your own perception to some extent defy your belief in its unreliability?

I'm not saying mine is. I don't expect you to accept my perception. I expect you to accept collected evidence such that you won't rely on my perception. That's the point. I place the evidence ahead of my perception. If I was standing a room and saw what I thought was you floating and then saw collected evidence that you were instead performing an illusion, which conclusion do you think I would accept?

I certainly wouldn't expect you to accept my perception. Or do you believe that when I perform a magic feat that makes a card appear in your pocket that I violated the laws of the universe as we understand them? We both know you'll think you were tricked by human perception is quite unreliable. But, hey, maybe Copperfield really did make the Statue of Liberty disappear. I saw it. It must be true.

So it's not your personal experience that leads you to trust in science to a larger degree than other approaches?

Err...yes and no. My understanding of science and how my personal experiences can be unreliable(not always are, mind, but CAN BE) suggests I am better off trusting in science than purely in my own experience and knowledge. This has been proven to me time and again through mistakes I've made.


No worries. It's just a debate, mate. :)

True...but many of us tend to forget that, myself included.


There's certainly a difference, as I've recognized before. I'm just having trouble seeing what the relevance of the difference is if, ultimately, your decision to trust science is based on your subjective personal experiences.

I suppose as I said up above this quote, it's not that personal experiences are always unreliable, but can be unreliable depending upon the circumstances.


I just wasn't interested in responding to arguments you've advanced before and/or explanations of matters I'm perfectly familiar with.

Fair enough.


Fair enough. What legitimizes the way you think?

That's a damned good question. I wish I had an answer for you that anyone could accept, but I don't.

My answer is merely that science will get things truly right. Not always, not the first time, and it can even go down the wrong path for a long time, but eventually, because of how it works, it WILL get things right, whereas simple beliefs never will.


So in the end, you believe that your experiences are accurate insofar as they accord with science because science gave you a reason to trust it. Or did your unreliable senses just give you faulty evidence of a reason to trust it?
Ah, but, again(and I really should've said this before this post) it's not that personal experiences are always unreliable, but they can be depending on the circumstances. The key is to recognize when they are reliable and when they are not. That's not easy nor do I succeed even half the time, but I do try.

I'm not saying mine is. I don't expect you to accept my perception. I expect you to accept collected evidence such that you won't rely on my perception.

Doesn't that just put me in the awkward position of having to rely on my own unreliable perception in assessing the collected evidence?

That's the point. I place the evidence ahead of my perception. If I was standing a room and saw what I thought was you floating and then saw collected evidence that you were instead performing an illusion, which conclusion do you think I would accept?

The one that fits better with your previous belief set.

Err...yes and no. My understanding of science and how my personal experiences can be unreliable(not always are, mind, but CAN BE) suggests I am better off trusting in science than purely in my own experience and knowledge. This has been proven to me time and again through mistakes I've made.

That's a damned good question. I wish I had an answer for you that anyone could accept, but I don't.

My answer is merely that science will get things truly right. Not always, not the first time, and it can even go down the wrong path for a long time, but eventually, because of how it works, it WILL get things right, whereas simple beliefs never will.

Ah, but, again(and I really should've said this before this post) it's not that personal experiences are always unreliable, but they can be depending on the circumstances. The key is to recognize when they are reliable and when they are not. That's not easy nor do I succeed even half the time, but I do try.

I think we're at a point where further debate would be counter-productive. Both of our points have been well-illustrated by now.

It was a pleasure having this discussion with you, and I'll just try to get some sleep shortly.

I think we're at a point where further debate would be counter-productive. Both of our points have been well-illustrated by now.

It was a pleasure having this discussion with you, and I'll just try to get some sleep shortly.

Indeed. Goodnight.

I'm inclined to call people who claim to have seen the more extreme end of the 'supernatural' outright liars, to be honest.

I think that's just stupid. After all some types of phenomenon can be brought about one persons own mind. "Poltergeist activity" can often occur under great stress. These things can be as vivid as our dreams at night so people can certainly believe it. Doesn't make them a liar, because they are convinced in their minds it happend.

There is no need to write a paper proving the soul doesn't exist, because a paper about how the brain works does it at the same time; accounting for the once unknown sources of consciousness which primitive people claimed related to the soul because they didn't know better.

The problem is, science can't account for everything that falls under the definition of the soul. Even if we figure out that the brain is the source of consciousness while alive, it would require investigation of what happens after death to actually explore the concept of the soul.

Go read Kyronea post up the page a little; if ghosts are supposed to be perceivable by human beings then they rely, at least partly, on our own physical dimensions, and thus would be able to be proven by scientific methods.

Only if we assume our current observational abilities and physical senses are the end-all be-all of our ability to make empirical observations. Given that we can't yet observe quantum phenomena, dark matter, or any number of yet-theoretical concepts, we have a long ways to go before making the claim that we can directly observe all known natural phenomena, let alone things in the realm of the supernatural.


That is vastly different from the reasoning used by those who invented the soul; what a hilarious attempt at a rebuttal. Modern science will obviously appear primitive in mere decades, but the difference is that what we are using now is still evidence-based investigation within the generally correct rules and laws we have developed, as opposed to not knowing how something works and baselessly attributing it to the soul. It is just as silly as myths about rainbow serpents and Genesis. The creation myth about God creating the world in seven days is a good example; people, with no knowledge of the how the world worked came up with a story to explain its creation. Since then scientific process has produced evidence debunking the seven days theory.

They had evidence; they saw something happen and developed a plausible explanation for it that worked based upon the knowledge of the time. Magical thinking and religious belief are the forefathers of modern scientific inquiry; even if their methods were somewhat different, the basic principles and motivations were the same.

Both science and religion seek explanations for natural phenomena and develop a complex framework of logical rules to explain it. The only difference is that science represents further development along the same lines.


By no means do I believe because humans developed something means it doesn't exist- that accusation doesn't even make sense. We have developed a cure for smallpox and technology to put a man on the moon, but this was done with knowledge. The soul was developed out of questions we did not have the knowledge to answer. Since then we have answered these questions, but some people show the need to hold on to such antiquated concepts.

Yet you implied it; humans developed the soul and religion to explain things, therefore the actual truth of such ideas should be doubted.

In addition, we haven't answered those questions yet. Nobody to date has found a way to objectively investigate what happens after death, so the question hasn't even begun to be discussed, let alone investigated and answered in a definite manner.

Reincarnation requires consciousness after death. It may be in a different body, but still. Anyway there is also no proof at all that there is any evidence for these theories. It is ridiculous that we are debating this. Are you trying to get me to admit the possibility? Because if so I should remind you of Russell's teapot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot); just because it is possible doesn't mean it makes any sense to believe in it. I rule out the possibility of the teapot as there is no evidence for it just as I rule out the possibility of the soul or for ghosts for the same reason.

I'm quite aware of Russel's Teapot...it and its various skeptical counterparts are used quite often. ;)

However, Russel's Teapot doesn't say to rule out the possibility; rather, the possibility isn't included when you are investigating something related to it due to the lack of evidence. It's possible that teapot is there, but since there is no evidence of it there is no reason to take it in to account when launching satellites or space probes.

That's different from ruling it out altogether. Irrelevance does not mean nonexistence. However, we could simply argue that the soul is in a completely different category from the brain and has nothing to do with our conscious processes while alive.


Only difference with this supernatural stuff is that people believe in it other than kids.

And also the fact that it is one of the single most important questions mankind faces and has inspired thousands of years of thought and debate. Religion is a very important part of mankind that has shaped and will continue to shape our beliefs and philosophies, and it will continue to do so.

No, it is not. I didn't mean to suggest we completely understand the precise mechanisms of how our brain works, but we do know that consciousness is derived directly from the brain.

Well, yes, I don't think anyone doubts that regardless of whether they believe in a soul or not. The questions are how the brain produces consciousness, what produces it, and why it exists.

How the hell can you argue any of those are not governed by the brain? People with brain damage are a great example as they show that a person's abilities to be consciously aware of themselves and the environment are diminished.

It's possible the brain is similar to a car. The driver could want something to happen all they want, but if the brake cables are broken or the battery is dead, it won't happen. Upon death, however, the soul may regain consciousness of some form or another.

Irrelevant, as the analogy is of our understanding of both what causes consciousness and how clocks work. We understand both (though one more thoroughly than the other) and to suggest otherwise is a lie and nothing more.

No, we don't. Consciousness is not understood other than the general knowledge that the brain has something to do with it. That's about as much as we've got right now.

As mentioned earlier: Russell's teapot.

Same response as earlier. However, the "evidence of absence" cliche doesn't necessarily mean said concept does exist, it merely means that it can't be ruled out. Being unable to be ruled out, however, doesn't mean that said concept should be included in any empirical investigation of a related topic.

So, there's no evidence of the soul, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. However, that also means that the soul should not be considered as a scientific explanation for the workings of the brain and should not be used as such when investigating it.

Perhaps. But as mentioned elsewhere people claim these ghosts or souls are on "another level" and are thus unable to be studied with scientific methods.


I actually don't believe this. I believe these phenomena can and will be studied once the right tools and methods are available; quantum theory used to be a completely unobservable and undetectable group of equations that were little more than mathematical ideas, but now we have a Large Hadron Collider and computers powerful enough to test them empirically.

Personally, I see some major evolutionary benefits for survival after death in some form and when combined with my personal beliefs and the sheer weight of anecdotal evidence suggests to me that something is going on here.

Absolutely horrifying statistics, fools will believe anything, apparently even educated fools.

They're not fools. They just have no appreciation for the power of sensory hallucinations. It's not a coincidence that so many visions of "ghosts" and such occur while falling asleep or waking up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnogogia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinations_in_the_sane

I've woken up in the middle of the night and seen faces in the shadows on the walls myself. I pondered the strangeness of the human nervous system for about a second before going back to sleep. :D (edit: In fact, it's entirely possible, even likely, that when I saw that face I was actually still asleep :eek: )

They're not fools. They just have no appreciation for the power of sensory hallucinations. It's not a coincidence that so many visions of "ghosts" and such occur while falling asleep or waking up.

I've read very few accounts of ghosts being seen when people are falling asleep. In fact, almost all of them seem to be seen while awake. That being said, hallucinations can't be ruled out for cases where people would be susceptible to them.

I've read very few accounts of ghosts being seen when people are falling asleep....That being said, hallucinations can't be ruled out for cases where people would be susceptible to them.

I raised the possibility because the article quoted by the OP described an experience a person had while sleeping. It is also consistent with my own experience. It is also consistent with the descriptions of very many alien abduction-type events, which have a tendency to occur in the middle of the night while a person is in bed, so on and so forth. (edit: at any rate, sleep paralysis seems to be commonly described across cultures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis#Cultural_references) and such. Such widespread experience shows that the event is actually fairly common.)

Of course, hypnogogia and sleep paralysis might not explain every single case of "paranormal" events, but they do seem to establish rather strongly a physiological/psychological origination for such events. Having reviewed the thread, I find that this explanation has already been proposed. (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13167617&postcount=60)


In fact, almost all of them seem to be seen while awake.


Or, at least, people seem to think they are awake or otherwise in some particular state of mind when they experience "paranormal" events.

Doesn't that just put me in the awkward position of having to rely on my own unreliable perception in assessing the collected evidence?

You're analyzing all of the evidence, not just that which you see. That's the point. See, in order to believe in ghosts, I have to reject evidence that is more reliable than eyewitness testimony. I know you're trying to play a philosophical game, but it requires me to pretend I'm saying don't trust anything, rather than saying that I should not trust something I've ONLY witnessed and not actually analyzed.

The one that fits better with your previous belief set.

The one that fits all of the evidence that I have, rather than accepting provably unreliable evidence over that which is more reliable.

Yes, it's true that I don't change my beliefs on evidence that is weaker than the evidence on which I forged them. I'm funny like that.