Yeah, I know about good old Randi. I think skepticism is good. I also think too much skepticism puts you in a situation where you blind yourself to ANY possibility of something outside your assumptions.
And, more to the point, I don’t think it’s possible to prove ghosts exist. They don’t follow the laws of physics, they don’t show up and sit down for experiments, they don’t wander around for the benefit of cameras, etc. I enjoy ghosts for the stories they give us and the thrill of being scared. I don’t try to prove or disprove that they exist. But, like I said, some stories I’ve heard are pretty darn compelling.
It’s true… lack of evidence doesn’t necessarily mean something doesn’t exist, Randi is just trying to disprove people who do claim to have solid evidence of paranormal phenomena.
(Post 246 & 247 of this page.. There are many ghost stories involving black haints in the south. I once had a job driving a van for mental patients in group therapy and it took me into some very rough areas of Montgomery, AL (i.e. you’d be surprised that Montgomery has areas this scary) and some of the residents [not just the mental patients] were terrified of “Jackie”, a dead teenaged whore who according to the slightly suburban legends roamed the housing project looking for her killer and her children.)
The earth is made of custard. We cannot prove this, but there are compelling stories to this effect and denying it is merely proof of your closed mind.
More seriously.
We have been looking for evidence for thousands of years and we have a few blurry photos (the better ones are the obvious frauds) and a few unreliable accounts (which some people find scary and others do not) and some theological justification (and some theological refutation, but you can use theology to justify or refute anything whatsoever) and … nothing else. It is the same level of evidence we have always had. For millennia. Why is that, do you think?
Do two psychically “fully sighted” people see the same things at the same time in the same place?
Given that millions of people were killed in the WW2 concentration camps in violent and cruel ways I would have thought that if ghosts exist then surely some would have materialised out of this scenario.
I suppose the same could be said of the millions of soldiers killed in battles the world over not to mention civilians killed in bombing raids etc.
If ghost tours are included in that, then I take strong exception!
Kidding. The real people who need shutting down are pop psychics who prey on bereaved relatives and so forth. I say they all need to go.
Oh, and, ghosts most certainly are rare by any standard. Why they seem to pop up in some places but not others, I dunno. Even assuming they don’t exist, one would expect ghost stories to be reported at the concentration camps too!
The world is saturated with neutrinos and nobody notices them.
We presume much, if we presume ghosts are taking up space as we know and experience it. Who are we to say that all of the ghosts ever created by death in the last hundred million years are not comfortably cohabitating on the head of a pin somewhere in Tulsa, Oklahoma? Or nestled together underneath the last bar stool on the left at Bertha’s Mussels in Baltimore?
We can repeatably and verifiably ‘notice’ them whenever we set up detectors in well-known ways and kinds of places. People don’t claim the ability to see them and people don’t accuse people who do not make such claims of being ‘colorblind’.
So people who have determined to believe invent ever more complex rationalizations, ever more complex epicycles and ad hockery, ever more complex reasons why none of the experiments are repeatable instead of coming to the conclusion that the supernatural does not exist. The difference between ‘colorblind’ and purblind seems to be the ability to step back from absurdity.
Did you try, as a possible alternate explanation: people make stuff up?
I find it a good alternate explanation for a lot.
What do they do, then?
I’m not aware of any basis for this statement. I have never particularly seen him distinguish between amateurs and professionals. Also, his challenge is that someone prove their ability. I’m not aware of him trying to disprove anything much.
Not arguing or anything, but I’ve seen him on lots of shows and he holds a lot of contempt for people who claim to see ghosts, have abilities and make money off the stuff. I’ve even heard him speak of disproving them in so many words. Just going by what I’ve heard him say.
(a) Absolutely. But when ten different people give ten identical stories about the same place, none of whom know each other or even know anything special about the location, you start to wonder.
(b) Same thing dark matter and Higgs bosons do all day, I suppose.
Heh, it was a joke. They’re both things that are predicted by modern quantum physics but have yet to actually been seen or observed in an experiment. Like ghosts.
And, no need to repeat yourself, I get your point. Again, I’m pretty goshdarn skeptical myself, given the cockameme stories I hear from tourists on a weekly basis. But, leaving one’s mind open to all possibilities - as any open-minded, skeptical, logical person should - if identical stories come in from various people about a single place, it becomes increasingly less likely they’re all making it up, and more likely that there’s some reason they’re all having the same experience. Doesn’t have to be ghosts; maybe there’s a funny reflection from a streetlight outside or a leak of laughing gas in the hallway or something. But it merits investigation if it’s more than some one-off story you hear a couple of times.
