TheScholar
Scholar
So here's a question. Do you believe in ghosts or spirits, why or why not?
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Do You Believe in Ghosts and Spirits?
- Thread starter TheScholar
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Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
I see nothing substantial to think there is anything like that. Even if such phenomena manifests for sake of argument, would be subject to the forces of nature suggesting something other than supernatural.
I definitely do.
Every bit of scientific evidence we have points to the mind being just "what the brain does." IOW, no brain function, no "spirit".
Yes I do. Because of the quantity and quality of the evidence. And because it is consistent with my eastern worldview; that life exists on various levels/planes beyond the physical.
Sees
Dragonslayer
Yeah, experiences are the swaying factor for things like this.
If it's up for debate that means it's not obvious and not all people experience it. It would actually be strange to not see people saying "I see no evidence for _______."
A common theme is "If I don't know/experience/whatever, then neither do you...you must be crazy, mistaken, lying, etc."
I don't think that's it.Yeah, experiences are the swaying factor for things like this.
If it's up for debate that means it's not obvious and not all people experience it. It would actually be strange to not see people saying "I see no evidence for _______."
A common theme is "If I don't know/experience/whatever, then neither do you...you must be crazy, mistaken, lying, etc."
There's more to concluding that ghosts exist than just having an experience. It's a three-step process:
1. You have a perception
2. You decide that the perception is better explained by something in the external world than by a quirk of your own mind.
3. You infer a particular external cause (e.g. ghosts).
It's only for step 1 that the person who had the experience is necessarily the best judge. Occasionally we can catch people in a lie, but in general, we have to take as given that the witness is sincere. Once we know what the person experienced, anyone can employ reason to do step 3. Often, it's difficult for us to assess our own state of mind, so much of the time, someone other than the witness is the best judge for step 2.
Most objections I've seen to paranormal claims like ghosts tend to focus on step 2 or 3, not 1.
BTW: why do you think that people who don't believe in ghosts haven't had the same experiences as people who do? It could be that many do have these experiences but just come to different conclusions in steps 2 or 3.
omnifarious
Acolyte of Revelation
I don't believe in ghosts per se, but I do believe in energy or charged residue of living or once living entities. To call that a ghost is a bit of a stretch.
Eeeh... I said "maybe" because it depends entirely on what is meant by "ghost" and "spirit." Generally speaking, as an animist, I find the contemporary beliefs in such things within the paranormal communities to be.... how to put it... silly and/or shallow from my perspective? I know that sounds demeaning, but I don't know how else to put it.
For any given individual event I prefer a naturalistic explanation as the more probable. Nonetheless I do believe in the supernatural which can interact with us in certain circumstances.
Well it depends on how compelling said experience is. I've had the odd experience myself that while one could claim supernatural origin for, could also be explained by other means. Eg. Hypnagogic hallucination, sleep paralysis, et cetera. But if you get dragged out of bed or car by "aliens", possessed or witness your furniture being thrown around the room by nothing then despite your utter inability to prove your experiences you'd nonetheless be inclined to trust in the validity of what you are seeing.
9-10ths_Penguin said:
Well it depends on how compelling said experience is. I've had the odd experience myself that while one could claim supernatural origin for, could also be explained by other means. Eg. Hypnagogic hallucination, sleep paralysis, et cetera. But if you get dragged out of bed or car by "aliens", possessed or witness your furniture being thrown around the room by nothing then despite your utter inability to prove your experiences you'd nonetheless be inclined to trust in the validity of what you are seeing.
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I like a quotation from the movie "The Others"
"I believe that sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead"
"I believe that sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead"
Pegg
Jehovah our God is One
yes of course they are real.
But they are not dead people. They are the rebellious spirits who joined with Satan in opposing God.
There are only two types of spirit.... those who are faithful to God and remain with him in heaven (angels) and those who rebelled and have been cast down to the earth (demons)
How often do the claims of those really compelling experiences happen? They're not representative of the vast majority of "ghost" accounts. They're quite rare, and in at least some cases, they've been found to be outright frauds: investigators find the fishing line that they used to "magically" throw books off shelves and the like. In some cases, the fraud is perpetrated by the witness themselves; in other cases, it was someone else gaslighting the victim.
Also, we shouldn't forget about mental illness. I'm sure that nobody here will dispute that mental illness is real and sometimes serious. We know that mental illnesses that involve hallucinations and delusions exist (e.g. schizophrenia). We also know that people can sometimes slip through the cracks and have their mental illness undiagnosed.
This goes back to those three steps I talked about: if someone does have a mental illness so severe that they're experiencing hallucinations and delusions, then their judgement and reason may also be seriously impaired, so they're not the best judge of whether they're interpreting the world rationally.
I voted no.
I think there are some phenomena that remain incompletely explained or unexplained at all, but out of all the possibilities we currently have as to why such phenomena occur, ghosts or spirits seem to me to be rather unlikely. I would say they are as likely to exist as, say, sound waves' being conscious entities that purposely influence our senses to bring about specific reactions from us.
I think there are some phenomena that remain incompletely explained or unexplained at all, but out of all the possibilities we currently have as to why such phenomena occur, ghosts or spirits seem to me to be rather unlikely. I would say they are as likely to exist as, say, sound waves' being conscious entities that purposely influence our senses to bring about specific reactions from us.
Runewolf1973
Materialism/Animism
Of course I know that ghosts exist, I AM one. I just happen to be inhabiting this physical body at the present time...not for long though.
Many of us do seriously consider all those things you mention above. And we still believe ghosts/spirits exist beyond reasonable doubt. In other words, the 'natural' explanations are not satisfactory to our rational minds to explain away ALL of the phenomena experienced in the course of the human experience. It seems like an attempt to force-fit something into a box that it doesn't fit in. I personally think the teachings of the east, that life exists on many planes/levels, provides a more believable explanation of what is going on. You can believe the 'natural' explanation is more reasonable and we will just have to accept we disagree. Not a shocker between us of course
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