[smack] So much for relying on Firefox’s new spellchecker to do my proofreading for me!
“Just ask for evidence–hard, confirmable evidence.”
No, not really-although I kinda wish they did exist. Just because I absolutely LOVE ghost stories-I’ll read those “Famous Haunted Houses of America” type books, or watch those, “Haunted Castles of Europe” specials, if only because the stories are just so fascinating.
So while no, I don’t believe in ghosts, I think it would be cool if I THOUGHT I saw one.
Okay, but I never said I was open minded. I also never said you were not. My comment about narrow mindedness was directed at the hardcore skeptics who just say “No!” then don’t even want to discuss why they feel that way. And by “neutrality”, I don’t mean that I’m indifferent. I want there to be ghosts. Infact, I want to be one! (preferably after I’ve lived a long life). But, for every ghostly encounter, that someone describes, there are so many other things that could be the cause. It should be required that before you can claim a ghostly encounter, you first have to go to the location armed with a carbon monoxide detector, a mold detector and an EMF detector. An MRI would probably be a good idea too. Carbon monoxide, mold and excessive EMFs can do some weird things to your brain.
I just don’t understand this. No one in this thread had that attitude, so why were you bringing it up? For that matter, where outside this thread have you come across this attitude?
The main places I interact with skeptics are here and on the JREF boards. In both places, skeptics are positively rabidly mindboggling tediously keen on discussing the paranormal and why they are skeptical about it.
A suspicious person might form the conclusion you suggested skeptics are narrow minded in the way you allege as a deliberate strawman to misrepresent skeptics as something they are not in order to have a basis for attacking them, frankly. But that can’t be it, because that would mean it was you and not the skeptics using the aggressive and unpleasant tone.
Quit taking everything so personal. I can “bring up” anything I damn well want to. It doesn’t mean I’m pointing my finger at you or anyone else. You’re proving your narrow mindedness right now, by not being able to realize that it’s not about you. And your doing exactly what you accuse me of. I’m really happy for you, that you’re able to have lengthy conversations with skeptics. But, I don’t go seeking them out.
Every MPSIMS or IMHO thread on the subject, that I have seen has atleast one drive-by post along the lines of “They don’t exist.”
I’m putting this in a seperate post so Princhester won’t think it’s directed at him. :rolleyes:
This is ridiculous. I thought I could partake in a rational discussion. And learn about other views on the subject and find out if anyone shared my views. Instead, I get thinly veiled snipes about my mental state and inteligence. And going around in circles trying to disprove the accusation of things I didn’t say in the first place. Maybe it’s because there weren’t any absolute believers in this thread, so I was an easy target. But Jeeze, some of you guys need to loosen up.
Well now, that’s just silly. Obviously the definition of extraterrestrial life is simply life (by our standards or any other that we can detect) that does not already exist on our planet.
But I get the point you’re trying to make. However, if I may speak for DtC, it’s not that one can’t talk at all about a subject until one precisely defines terms (obviously we can and do), but rather defining a term like “ghost” before a discussion prevents either side from “moving the goalposts”. That is, after a valid point has been made, one side saying “well that’s not the kind of ghost I’m talking about”. Like talking about time travel (from South Park), you’ve got to explain that it’s “Terminator rules” (as in one-way portal, no items can be brought through) as opposed to “Back to the Future rules” (two-way).
Unless I mis-read the OP, no one was looking for a serious discussion of their existence. “Do you believe in ghosts?” is not equal to “debate the existence of the afterlife”
Hmm,
Nope, no request for a serious discussion of existence, which is why, IMHO, this thread got tossed over to IMHO and not GD. In GD there is, of course, absolutely no freakin’ way that a ghost can possible exist, in exactly the same way God can’t exist. But trying to force rational explanations for ghost stories around Halloween, just to grab a random for-instance, is kind of pointless I feel.
I might believe in leprechauns and yet have no desire to convince anyone else that they exist, and also be able to carry on in my public life without letting this belief interfere. See where I’m going with this? Just admitting that one believes in “ghosts”, however that individual defines them, doesn’t mean that they are trying to teach school kids that… um… Oh crap.
Yes, just because you can’t see evidence at the present moment, doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Round and round we go!!!
Tell me about it…they are as annoying as those hardcore mindless believer Christians!
…but that’s the way to bet.
Seriously, this statement is true, but irrelevant. If we’re going to accept “we don’t have any evidence at the moment for X, but it’s not impossible that some exists somewhere” as a valid argument for the premise “X is true,” then we can’t determine the truth or falsehood of anything.
The root of all the arguments come down to this: when faced with limited evidence for a proposition, and substantial evidence against it, it is irrational to accept the proposition–even if there is a chance that the evidence isn’t all in.
You’re free to change your mind if new evidence arises, but until it does the odds are in favor of the proposition being wrong.
Let me try to define “ghost.”
- A remnant of a dead person, separate from their body,
- which occasionally and temporarily manifests in matter or energy,
- can take actions on the world usually reserved for living beings (responding to stimuli, speaking intelligently, explaining the true meaning of christmas),
- isn’t an intentional construct of man (to exclude things like photographs, and robots),
- isn’t a mental construct of man (i.e. not a mistake, hoax, or lie),
- exists uniquely for dead people, never for living ones, and can be associated with a specific dead person, and
- manifests in a a way that personal observers will generally agree upon: i.e. when questioned afterwards they’ll give similar and nonconflicting descriptions.
I don’t like that definition, as I suspect it’s not sufficiently qualified to get at the notion of what those third-graders mean by “ghost.” But taking it as a starting point, I’m going to claim that such an entity violates a number of physical laws (especially if it’s coherent energy), and violates our understanding of chemistry, biology, and the cellular nature of life itself. However, nothing in my description would prevent such a being from being measured, photographed, sampled, talked to, communicated with, and asked questions of. For matter-based ghosts, we could also examine objects which they used or interacted with.
And yet, despite hundreds of years of people attempting it, we don’t have a single example of such evidence that is generally accepted as real. In particular, even “reliable” ghosts simply don’t manifest in the presence of skeptics. Many pieces of evidence have been clearly shown to be hoaxes, the others are, without exception that I know of, of poor quality and highly doubtful lineage.
Could some of these “photos” be real? Could there be evidence we haven’t found yet? Certainly. And when someone presents it to me, along with an explanation for how such entities can exist in our world (or at least a demonstration that they’re not forbidden from existing by what we know of the world), I’ll change my tune. But to claim that the weight of evidence bears out the existence of ghosts at the present time is patently false.
No one said you couldn’t. What I said was why did you bring up what you brought up? Do you intend every single one of your posts in this thread to consist of misrepresenting other posters?
This is from your very first post in this thread:
So you came into this thread with a complaint about what you allege to be skeptic mentality, but you’ve produced nothing to back it up except a series of strawmen. And when your own rather offensive posting style comes under counter-fire, you whine about complaints about your “mentality”.
Ironic, no?
If ghosts are supposed to be the restless spirit / soul of dead people (the most common explanation), then how do you explain ghost ships (like the Flying Dutchman) and ghost buildings?
Nope, there are no ghosts.
True skeptics are looking for extraordinary evidence to support an extraordinary claim. If the ghost of Carl Sagan appeared at a dopefest you would see a whole lot of new believers. Problem is, the phenomenon you refer to has steadfastly refused to show up under scientific scrutiny. IF we can percieve it, it can be measured, light, heat, magneteic fields, movement, pressure, all can be quanitatively measured and defined. Shown such evidence from an unbiased source I doubt you would find more than a handful of people on the planet that would still disbelieve.
If I had the skills and the funding I would love to go ghost hunting. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to find a ghost and document it in an impartial and accurate manner to the best of my ability.
You could not be more wrong.
If there was good footage of a ghostly event that didn’t look like lens flares or a moth flying by inside the focus point of the camera it would be one of the highest traffic sites on the net and the person streaming that footage would be a millionaire in a few days just from the google ad exposures.
How is this "But here is what I don’t understand about the skeptic mentality… ", complaining? I really wanted an explaination. I wasn’t being snarky.
drachillix Opinions can’t be wrong. You may not agree with it, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Do you think I’m just pulling stuff out of my ass here? Trust me when I say I’m not that imaginative.
I have seen footage that I thought was pretty cool, and could not be easily explained. But, that was back when I used to hang around the paranormal sites. I didn’t see it on the evening news or YouTube. Now, you may say it probably wasn’t very good, or else it would’ve been in those places. And then I could say, “SEE! That’s what I’ve been trying to get across.” Everybody is going to have their own opinion about what could possibly, or not possibly, be interesting footage. I’m not talking about “proof”, just things that aren’t easily explained.
In my first posts, when I mentioned “skeptics”, I wasn’t even talking about anyone on the SDMB. But, of course by invoking that word, they all appeared! I didn’t realize they are such a tight group, that if you mention them in general terms, the ones closest to you will go into attack mode. Like fundies.
Live and learn.
You misrepresented the “skeptic mentality” by saying that they refuse to discuss the subject. They’re more than willing to discuss it.
I guarantee you saw nothing that could not be easily explained. Maybe it seemed baffling to you personally, but that doesn’t mean there was really anything very interesting going on and it doesn’t mean that magic is a necessary or credible hypothesis.
They ARE easily explained, that’s the point. Do you always assume that if you don’t understand the reason for something that it must have been done by magic? (not that “magic ghost” has any explanatory power anyway)
You weren’t attacked. You were asked to explain your own attack.
I appololigize to anyone who felt I was attacking. It wasn’t intended. Anyone who is familiar with my “posting style”, knows I rarely get involved in heated discussions.
I’ve already explained that.
This is incredibly rude. If you don’t want your buddies to see you appologize. My email is in my profile.
You don’t even know what I’m referring to. Or maybe you DO know. Are you pshycic?
Why is it rude? What do I have to apologize for? You’re the one who said you couldn’t explain internet “ghost” videos, not me. All I did was assure you that you saw nothing that doesn’t have a prosaic explanation.
Do you have to understand every illusion performed by every stage magician in the world to be able to say that stage magicians can’t really do magic? This is no different.
Maybe someone could start a another thread “Are the skeptics on the SDMB closed-minded and unwilling to discuss paranormal phenomena?”, so that we can get back to what we came here for: Discussing paranormal phenomena.