I won’t say that all atheists are deluded and wrong, but I will say that anyone who believes that they live in an objective reality doesn’t understand the fundamentals of ontology or epistemology. So I guess I sort of am saying that they are deluded and wrong.
420 open the doors of perception er’ryday.
There is no afterlife, so no. Death means you can’t contact anybody.
Why would proximity to a cemetery increase the frequency of the experiences you describe?
What does being an Atheist have to do with not believing in ghosts?
I’m sure you’ll show me where I said anything of the sort. But for the record, whether I’m a bad person or not also has no bearing on whether science determines truth or not. You’re arguing that 2 + 2 = 38, and that your opinion is just as valid as those who believe it’s 4. More valid, maybe, because they’re being “uncivilized.”
Want to have an actual civilized conversation? Produce evidence. Not a personal story, not anecdotes about close-mindedness, certainly not dreams-as-evidence or “it happened to me and I just KNOW that I couldn’t be mistaken.” Produce something objective, testable, and ideally reproducable. Serously, we’ve been asking for evidence for centuries, and nobody’s produced anything beyond anecdotes and blurry photos. Nobody’s mind should be THAT open; there has to be some level of proof at which you say “this belief is wrong.”
Well, we’re there. This belief is wrong.
Our minds are just not so open that our brains fall out onto the floor.
That’s what skulls are for 
The short answer is no.
The long answer is sort of, but still no, at least without appealing to spirituality. That is, relationships with people don’t end just because that person has died. We still carry on memories of who they were, and we can in fact even repair that relationship or even learn new things about a person after they’ve died. Who they are is every bit as real in that sense in our memories and hearts as is they were still alive. So, to that end, just as we might think about what someone would say or how they would react before they died, we will still have those thoughts after. The difference is, beforehand, we realize that it’s not actually them, but afterward, we might wonder if that person was talking to us from beyond the grave, particularly while we’re in the process of grieving. And so, in that sense, we kind of do still have a contact with them, it’s just with our mental model of who they were, which will often be pretty well fleshed out for a loved one.
That’s your problem right there. You’re closing off your perceptual input by filtering out what doesn’t fit your preconceived notions of how the world works. Don’t be ashamed of it, that’s pretty much a hardware issue; it’s a human design spec. We’re bombarded with more sensory data than our brains are capable of handling, so they filter out whatever doesn’t fit. A ghost or whatever could jump right up and stick its dick in your ear and you’d be all like “hell naw, I got an earache” instead of “get cho ecto-dick outta my ear, ghost!”
All you can do to maximize your perceptual reality is to refuse firm beliefs about anything. That way you get the most empirical data and have the most accurate schema. It won’t be objective reality, of course – that isn’t something you can reach – but it’ll be closer than pretending you know jack about shit.
Oh yeah, like scientists in 2213 aren’t going to be all "LOOK AT THESE DUMB 21st CENTURY MORONS. LOOK AT THE DUMB SHIT THEY BELIEVE. THIS SHIT IS AS RETARDED AS ETHER OR HUMOURS OR NEWTONIAN PHYSICS. GET A LOAD OF THESE PAST-LIVING MOTHERFUCKERS AND HOW THEY THOUGHT THEY KNEW ABOUT SHIT WHEN THEY COULDN’T EVEN EXPLAIN GRAVITY OR MAGNETISM OR STRONG AND WEAK NUCLEAR ATTRACTIONS WITHOUT GOING “SHIT I DUNNO JUST CALL THEM FUNDEMENTAL”.
Also in the future they have no lower case letters. That is a technology that is lost with time, like greek fire. Trust me, TimeWinder, our science is as much bullshit as every iteration that came before, and we’re only starting to realize that none of it actually works on the smallest levels.
Everything you think you know is bullshit and you’re too wrapped up in the contemporary mindset to know it. Anyone who sincerely believes that we just HAPPEN to be living in the time where humanity has finally got shit figured out is as dumb as the guys who advocated the crystal sphere theory of astronomy. Since you don’t get science let me explain it:
Science is the process of disproving what we believe to be true. Eternally.
As you wish.
I note that you’re still ignoring the last paragraph and main point of my original post:
I’ll also note that treating others with respect is not inextricably linked with having your demands met. You can be moderate and respectful even while disagreeing with someone. Amazing, but true. For example, I disagree with you, but I’m STILL not calling you deluded and wrong. Note what I HAVE said:
I’ll give the benefit of the doubt that this is a genuine question. It’s because I live right next door to a bunch of dead people. It’s like moving next door to a retirement home. Shortly thereafter you notice there are a lot of elderly people out and about in the neighborhood.
Let me know when you guys crawl back up out of that rabbit hole, o.k.?
You can tell how insecure someone is about the validity of their worldview by how vehemently they argue against the beliefs of others. I know I don’t know anything. I’m also pretty sure you don’t either. Certainty is intellectual death and the antithesis of scientific thought.
I wonder if it’s an expression of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
All I can figure out from this post is that ghosts want to have sex with me.
You know, there’s a happy medium between “We know everything!” (which I don’t think ANYONE believes) and “We know nothing!” Well, maybe you don’t know, since you claim you’re in the latter category. It makes me wonder how you manage to feed yourself or function in society if you literally don’t know anything.
I trust tangible verifiable evidence.
Sometimes stuff happens that can’t be explained by what we know now.
I’ve had multiple experiences with ‘paranormal’ activities but unless or until they can be explained… I guess that is why they are called paranormal.
Years ago when my father died I was pretty sure he came to me. It was likehe was standing right next to me and told me a few things. It could have been real, my imagination, wishful thinking, an hallucination or maybe I was dreaming.
However, later that same year my (now deceased ex bf) mother had died and she came to me when I was in that half-awake half asleep state. She was standing in front of me holding up a piece a paper which had her birthday 8-13 written on it. I said yes, I know that’s your birthday and was thinking that she was showing me her birthday as proof it was really her. Except I knew her birthday, so if I wanted to imagine her being there I could certainly imagine her showing me her birthday. Anyway, she kept smiling at me and pointing at her birthday.
Her birthday hit the lottery that night.
Strange coincidence.
The current SOs father died several years ago. I hadn’t had a chance yet to meet his father so I didn’t know him or much about him. Shortly after he died he showed up at the foot of my bed and asked me to give my SO a message. Don’t ask my how I knew who it was, I just did and the message made no sense whatsoever so I let it go. His father showed up a second time with the same message. Then a third time and he was getting more than a little cranky about it.
I felt really stupid, I didn’t want to say anything but I finally broke down and told the SO what had happened and gave him his fathers message - which like I said made absolutely no sense to me at all. My SO gave me a nasty look and walked away. I thought he was mad, or hurt, or thought I was crazy. A few minutes later he came back and said, ‘That is exactly what my father used to say to me’.
I had no way of knowing that, I never knew his father, I had never heard that said and while now I know what the message meant, at that time it was meaningless.
So who knows, real or not?
Who knows why some of us have these experiences and some people don’t.
Maybe we are delusional, hallucinating or seeing what we want to see or hearing what we want to hear.
Then again maybe those of you who have never experienced it are like the villagers in The Country of the Blind.
The problem is that without evidence, all one has are recollections of ones senses and feelings and all the audience has is one’s word on it. Memory and perception are notoriously unreliable, especially when infuenced by strong emotion, plus people sometimes just lie about stuff. Any ghost story presented without evidence has exactly the same credibility as any other extraordinary, unverifiable story.
You say you were visited by the spirit of a dead relative? Dead cat? Angels? Cool. I drank a few beers with Buddha and Yoda last night. I also ride around on my invisible dinosaur when nobody is watching. All of these statements are equally objectively true. If you disagree with me, you are being selectively close-minded and must be terribly insecure or messed up in the head or a big meanie.
But lots of people have died over the history of the human race. More dead than alive by a very large margin. Why would it be that you only sense the ones in the cemetery next door? What about all the other ones that are crowding the ether? The people in those graves didn’t die in those graves. They died somewhere else. Why are they hanging around their mortal remains?
My questions are largely rhetorical in nature. I’m not sure you can give me satisfying answers. Though I may be wrong so I’ll stand corrected if you have a reasonable explanation. More importantly, as others have repeatedly said up-thread and whenever this topic is brought up elsewhere… None of these claims you make have been substantiated. None are repeatable. None are testable with positive findings. So what is the rational for continuing to claim something that can’t be substantiated by independently verified evidence? I know it’s hard to admit that your mind plays tricks on you… but with an overwhelming lack of proof, isn’t it worth considering what you may be experiencing is just a trick of the mind?