Once upon a time educated people considered the existence of invisible intangible entities that people occasionally perceive to be a straightforward prosaic fact. Nowdays such sightings are automatically considered to be delusions, altered mental states or hallucinations- that is, they have no reality outside the mind of the person experiencing them. When exactly did the latter paradigm replace the former, and on what evidence? Was the theory that such experiences have no objective reality ever proven in any scientifically rigorous way?
Just wanna point out that it seems to me like your first question is basically asking, “When did people stop believing in God and start believing in Science?” and that there may not be a factual answer, other than the very general, “During the 18th century Age of Enlightenment”.
And that your second question seems to be, “Has anybody ever tried to prove the existence of ghosts, and has anybody ever succeeded?” to which the answers would be, “Yes” and “No.”
“Once upon a time” is a poorly chosen phrase, since it suggests fairy tales and prejudices the discussion. “Invisible entities” can refer to ghosts, poltergeists, demons, devils, gods, angels, and a host of other things. Many highly educated people today believe in at least some of these. I’m not saying they’re right, but I am saying you’re wrong to consign the phenomenon to the past or to the uneducated. It would help if you’d pin down “invisible entities.”
Again, this is not true. It varies wildly by community. Many respectable scientists accept God as valid, while rejecting demons out of hand. And if you want to take a look at contemporary ghost beliefs in the USA, I suggest you’d be surprised at how seriously they are taken by educated people, though in my experience it’s situational: academics don’t admit believing in ghosts to each other the same way they do to friends and family.
There was a gradual shift beginning in the ancient world, but picking up steam in the Enlightenment, to require positive proof before accepting the existence of the unseen. That, combined with better measurement and description of other invisible phenomena (wind, gas, sound, etc.) has led to the paradigm shift at the upper levels of society, but I don’t think one has replaced the other. They exist side by side in our culture, and you find both believers and skeptics in all subcultures, though obviously in different proportions. As long as God counts as an invisible entity (and he seems to meet both qualifications), I don’t think you can say the skeptical view is even the dominant one, at least in America. Maybe a sociologist will pop in with numerical data.
I question your premise.
For sentence #1, I’d want a clearer definition (not just an example or two) of what counts as an “invisible, intangible entity” that people stopped believing in. Do germs count as “invisible entities,” for instance?
For sentence #2, I’d say that, in many cases, a skeptic would be at least as inclined to believe that the “sighting” was of a real, natural entity that the person misinterpreted than that it was a hallucination.
Man, do you have this backwards. First of all, there is no such “theory.” A theory is an explanation for an observed phenomenon, confirmed by testable predictions. It is simply a default assumption that magic is not a credible hypothesis for explaining anything at all, unless and until some kind of evidence can be produced for it. No evidence (or even a good argument) has ever been produced in favor of a “ghost” hypothesis as an explanation anything which has ever been observed in the universe. The word “ghost” doesn’t even have a workable, scientific definition.
In short, ghosts, just like pixies, or sprites or leprechauns, have to be proven, not disproven. Scientific method has simply helped us to clarify what the right questions should be.
The more we found out about science the more we realized how well it worked.
Once our scientific knowledge was developed enough, people realized that the scientist could make better predictions than the preacher.
Once we started to rely more on science and evidence we stopped believing in supernatural events that would lack such evidence.
This assumes that by supernatural you mean things like demons and witches.
I don’t know that you could give an exact date. Conan Doyle, definitely an educated person, believed in fairies less than 100 years ago. Many people stopped believing as science removed things whose cause was unknown.
No, and such a “proof” is impossible. Lack of evidence for the supernatural makes it very unlikely, along with the success of naturalistic science, but that is not a “scientific proof” - which is an oxymoron, to a certain extent.
If this makes it any clearer, I was thinking of the recent “night terrors” thread; and to give a specific example, when did people start believing that having an otherwise inexplicable bout of dread and terror was the result of a brain malfunction, and not due to the influence of an invisible presence?
Yes, it might be better, and perhaps less condescending, to simply say that, over time, we came to know what exists and what doesn’t, than to ask when people stopped believing in the “supernatural.” I’m not sure what “proof of the supernatural” would be: if you could prove that something existed, in what sense would it be supernatural?
I am reminded of the exchange between Ebenezer Scrooge and Marley’s ghost in A Christmas Carol:
From this it’s clear that, at least as far back as when this was written, the idea was common that “apparitions” could (if not must) be the result of internal rather than external causes.
- When this was published. (Though I’d still like you to be more precise about which people you mean; I’m assuming “the general public via press releases / pop science from the mass media.” Scientists, by and large, dismissed both explanation AND phenomenon.)
For one thing, people have not stopped believing in the supernatural, as the prevalence of astrology columns and psychics indicates. And I hardly think we can say for sure what exists and what does not, even today. We do better than we did 200 years ago, but we are hardly perfect.
The term “scientific proof” is a pet peeve of mind. Lumpy used it innocently, but asking for “proof” of evolution is a favorite tactic of creationists.
“It must be something I ate” probably predates that - but people have had night terrors without eating something upsetting. The demonstration of a physical cause, and thus an explanation for incubi as well as alien abduction experiences, is far more interesting.
I read recently that many “ghosts” and other paranormal auditory and visual phenomena are now considered to be the result of carbon monoxide leaks in old houses. I’m not saying that this definitely accounts for everything, case closed, but it’s an interesting nugget nonetheless.
You’re saying that CO leaks out of the house in a way that’s visible?
I think he’s saying that CO leaks have an effect on the body which causes the phenomena associated with ghosts [cold spots, terror, noises] to be perceived, and then interpreted as ghosts. I don’t buy it, mostly because ghost beliefs and narratives are such a complex system that a simple reductionist one-trigger physical explanation is unlikely in the extreme.
It wouldn’t be a source or a cause for ghost beliefs, but an example of a phenomenon for which people attibute ghosts as an explanation.
As many posters have pointed out, your question can be reduced to “When did scientific thought totally displace religion”
Well, it hasn’t.
I am an Engineer of a hard science, quantitative background. Yet I, and people I know & trust implicitly, have experienced events that are not explainable by science as it stands today, and which have had deep spiritual meaning for those involved.
No I will not tell amazing stories for your entertainment. And don’t take my word for it. Just look into Medugorje, Lourdes, or Fatima, if you want some pretty well documented manifestations of the supernatural.
Oh, and this probably doesn’t belong in GQ.
Many, perhaps most, Icelanders believe in elf-like earth spirits, to the degree of the government taking them into consideration when making land-use decisions. Cite.
There has never been a single verifiable example of a genuinely “supernatural” event in all of human history. Stuff like Lourdes and Fatima do not demonstrate anything that “science cannot explain.” Your friends have not experienced anything unexplainable either. Just because they don’t know the explanation doesn’t mean there isn’t one (and there always is one). It’s a fallacy to say, “I don’t know why X happened, therefore it must have been magic.”
Never. My wife is pretty smart, and I love her dearly, but just try telling her that her hypnogogic hallucinations are just that—hallucinations. It’s like talking to a brick wall. :rolleyes: