Yes, because when you start throwing infinity into the mix you start getting logical paradoxes, not just contradictions of physical law.
Mm, I think your militant hatred of Christianity is clouding your logic on this one.
When you’re talking about a postulation that has never received even the scarcest support from real scientific inquiry either way I’m not sure how there can be a difference of degree.
To me a claim of an omnipotent God is just as fantastical as a claim that a human consciousness can continue to exist once the biological human being has died, and that this remnant consciousness is both ethereal but able to interact with the physical realm at will and manipulate objects. Further, that this post-life human can perhaps persist for hundreds of years after the death (if not indefinitely), their presence being sustained by energy sources unknown to man.
Their ability to pass through solid objects would violate one of the fundamental laws of physics, so that in and of itself makes it “just as impossible” as anything else. Impossible is impossible. There isn’t degrees of impossibility. It is impossible for me to accelerate a rock to 20 times the speed of light and it is impossible for me to accelerate to 1.01 times the speed of light, one isn’t more impossible than the other. It is a binary state, not one of degree.
So your personal experience about something you could never hope to prove is more valid than the personal experience of thousands of religious people throughout history who have claimed to see the Madonna, spoken with God directly, raised the dead with God’s power and etc? From where I sit you’re all talking about impossible things that can not stand up to any scientific test designed to falsify them.
This may be of interest:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178219865054585.html
Interesting. It seems to back up the Chesterton quote that Mr Moto cited earlier (and, interestingly enough, concludes with another, similar Chesterton quote).
For those who want to know what the article says before clicking on it, the gist is
Yep. It’s not like seeing things that at least seem to be ghosts is a particularly unusual experience…if I was the only person I know who had had such an experience, I’d be more likely to think I was hallucinating. But I’m not. I know lots of people who have compelling, first person experience ghost stories.
I don’t personally know anyone who claims to have spoken to God, seen the Madonna, or raised the dead (really?). Those few I’ve read about seem to be either crazy or interested in making money on the experience, so I don’t take them particularly seriously.
That said, while I do believe, sort of, in ghosts (but not in God), it’s not something that is important in my life. They’re just a fun little thing to me, nothing like religion usually is to those who believe in it. If I’m wrong, oh, well, nothing lost.
Again, unless it can withstand some scientific falsification, they are equally unlikely to me.
There are actually many people who have said they have personally heard God talk to them directly not “felt the presence” but heard God talking to them. There are many people who claim they have interacted with the Virgin Mary, or seen the Virgin Mary appear before them. There have even been several instances in South America where large numbers of people claimed to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary.
Throughout the 20th century the Catholic Church has even “confirmed” some dozen or so apparition appearances by Mary as being “legitimate” and many more as being “fraudulent” in fact the current Pontiff a few years back spoke out admonishing people for coming forward with some many fraudulent viewings. St. Faustina Kowalska was visited by apparitions of Jesus Christ himself and was Sainted for it.
So I don’t doubt you haven’t met people like this, but there are still plenty of them, probably millions. I would wager you might meet more if you spent more time with devoutly religious people in Latin America or Eastern Europe where these phenomena are more common.
Claims of raising the dead were extremely common from Christians up until the 17th century or so, and tapered off after then. I said that one mostly in jest as I’m not aware of any such widespread claims in the modern era, but until 200-300 years ago Christians regularly made claims in writing and in speech that, with God working through them, they had been able to bring the dead back to life.
How could it be otherwise?
(1) Traditional Christians are enjoined not to believe in those things. St. Augustine himself wrote a debunking of astrology.
(2) Belief in crystal power, astrology, etc., is much easier (and less dangerous) than belief in Christ because it requires no form of moral commitment.
That’s fine. I’m not trying to convince you (Martin Hyde) that ghosts exist, only saying why I don’t find the belief in ghosts to be incompatible with atheism, as per the OP. You’re right that I have not carefully examined the claims of South American Catholics, mostly because I don’t really care. Like I said, it’s not a big thing for me. My experience and that of many of my friends and family suggests to me that there is some phenomenon in this world that is not adequately explained by current laboratory testing. I find it interesting, is all.
Not necesarily. That was my whole point. Some people may understand the reasons for skepticism and how to apply the logic of critical thought, but choose their one sacred cow that they never apply it to. This is far more common than someone being perfectly skeptical.
Martin Hyde is spot on about the “atheist” mentioned in the OP being a regular dumb lefty of Christianity/patriarchy/basic sanity hating variety. When people stop having to do lots of “sweat of your brow” for a living, many of them apparently migrate away from the cold reality of The Gods of the Copybook Headings - Wikipedia and gravitate to all sorts of madness.
Nevertheless, I don’t see why “ghosts” should be antithetical to atheism even in the most strict interpretation. We know empirically that many people claim “ghost” encounters, with some places yielding lots of such reports. So if you are a scientifically minded person who may have encountered this shit and have nothing better to do with your time and money you can go knock yourself out trying to study this phenomenon. Right up there with ufologists, hunters for Sasquatch etc who can be (and often are) atheist as well.
As somebody else has already noted here at SD in another thread, neutrinos (or some other such cosmic particle, not sure of the details) are observed very irregularly as well. Of course, the people who study that phenomenon have excellent job security and pay courtesy of large academic institutions.
Let us bear in mind one obvious but often-overlooked point before we proceed:
There is no necessarily logical connection whatsoever between the existence of God or gods, and the existence of some form of personal spiritual survival after death. Either could exist without the other.
Well I’m an atheist and I saw a ‘ghost’ twice a couple of months ago. I was lying on my bed when I felt something in the room, I turned and there was a white, semi-transparent woman by the door. I felt absolutely terrified, I guess like the emotions you sometimes have in a dream. Then I pulled myself together and the ‘event’ finished.
I could have believed it was a ghost, but since that seems very unlikely, and as I was taking medication for extreme dizziness that had all kinds of side effects I think it’s more likely my brain was making stuff up. Good how it fit in with the reports of ghosts I’ve heard of before, but probably also an indication of how uncreative my brain is.
I do agree that atheism does not have anything to do with believing or not believing in ghosts, but it does seem to me that to be a thinking atheist rather than just a disliker of religion you need a certain amount of critical thinking, and that this skeptical thinking should be used in realms other than God and his existence.
Neither does belief in Christ; you can use that to justify everything from genocide to helping little old ladies across the street. And belief in Christ is the exact opposite of dangerous in an intensely Christian nation like America.
I’d go further: there is no necessarily logical connection between the possible objective reality of the various disparate observed phenomena that are lumped together under the label “ghosts”, and the existence of some form of personal spiritual survival after death.
I’m sure there are rational, materialist, atheists who are of the the opinion that at least some ghosts might be some natural phenomenon that we don’t currently understand, for instance.
Having said which, of course, odd photographic effect = dead husband is a bit of a leap.
I did not mean “dangerous” to the believer.
I always tell people: “I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m afraid of them”
Take that however you want 
It’s clear your friend is not an atheist.
I’m atheist/anti-theist. There are no ghosts, no gods or goddesses, no spiritual psychic powers, no NDEs(don’t get me started on that crap), and you or anyone else does not have a soul.
The part of the ideology of your friend’s appearance of her dead dad in photos means she is in favor OF THE IDEA that her father still exists. He doesn’t, sadly.
This is the same reasoning of people who swear that their loved ones go to paradise because they love THE IDEA of a paradise for their loved ones.
I’m a fan of wishful thinking, only if it’s within the boundaries of reality.
I find it a little odd that she doesn’t believe in a supernatural being yet she believes her husband is now such. So she believes he has a spirit or soul, yes admonishes everyone else’s belief in a deity?
“Supernatural beings” are nonexistent by definition. If God exists, God is part of nature, part of the way things are. And so is a ghost, whatever a ghost might actually be. But, once again, there is no contradiction, because either could exist without the other.