Maybe you hallucinated it?
I am a skeptic, though, about other things. I will get in the trench and battle exploitative phony psychics, alt med scam artists, and the like. And I will probably investigate this someday, too. But I’m only human. Everyone’s got their soft spots as far as skepticism, or else they become like Diogenes and have a nosebleed every time people aren’t mean enough to someone whose experiences he doesn’t believe. And who would want to be like that? 
Attagirl, meenie.
You’re not delusional in my book. 
As a newbie, this will probably get me flamed pretty quickly, but I have to say it.
Ive lurked on this board for years now, and enjoy reading it every single day as one might read a newspaper were newspapers still relevant. I learn something just about every time i read, whether its something mundane in the CS forum or something wonderful and enlightening in GD. But wtf people. Anyone (besides Dio and those agreeing with him, of course) care to look at the top of the page and read the blurb right below the website name? You know, the part about FIGHTING MOTHERFUCKING IGNORANCE??
There are hundreds of sites all across the web that you could visit if you wanted to hear all about peoples “ghost” experiences, but the Dope should NOT be one of them, unless it is someone looking for a RATIONAL explanation for said experience.
I see Dio and others getting warned not to pick on Meenie, while lekatt gets to tell her all about what he “knows” to be true about this ghost! No one warns him to quit bullshitting a bullshitter. Is the point of this board to enable those with antiquated, irrational ideas? Or is it to FIGHT MOTHERFUCKING IGNORANCE?
Sure, the Dope has its own wacky cast, from lekatt and his posts that deserve their own “skip all” function, to the Andrew Jackson Was A Bastard Society, to the people that think there is still a debate about global warming. But these folks are greeted with reasonable questions to their presuppositions. In this case, anyone who dares question Meenie when she says (paraphrasing)“HAI GUIZ My ghost buddy Marcus went to go see WALL-E and gave it 2 apparational thumbs up LOL!!!11!!eleven!” is told to leave the poor girl alone.
Please, don’t do this. I can go to 10 million websites if i wanted to read Spooky Tales From Beyond The Grave, but the Dope should be a bastion of rational thought and dialogue. Please don’t let that change.
You know what? There are lots and lots of threads on this board I don’t read. What dread disease do you suffer from that makes you click on a thread about ghosts if you don’t want to read about them? And if the only reason you’d click on it is to see people who’ve had experiences made fun of and called stupid, then what the fuck is your damage?
And I would slit my throat before I wrote in crappy 13 yr old speak like that, so you can knock that off too, okay?
No dread disease darling, just wanted to see how a post about “Do you believe in ghosts” would go on the SMDB. Needless to say, i was very disappointed in the responses to the questions.
And yes, I realize that my disappointment matters not one whit to most.
And you are very, very wrong about me wanting to see ANYONE made fun of or called stupid. Again, this board is a bastion of rational discourse. Others coming in to the thread to rub your back and ask you what your fictional buddy thought of WALL-E is NOT rational discourse, just as calling you stupid or making fun of you wouldn’t be.
My problem was not with your thread, or even your question, but with how it was handled. Anyone who agreed with you was left alone, including those who told you such inane bullshit as “tell it to go into the light”. Those who stood up and said “Um, no, you’re clearly wrong, lying, or deluded” were told to take thier ball and go play somewhere else. To me, and maybe its just me, that’s not only wrong, but the opposite of what this board is here for.
As far as this is concerned, the person who said that to me, lekatt, is a sort of frequent flyer in those types of threads. I think the mods have despaired of correcting him. Your concerns about the moderation of the thread beyond that are your own opinion which you are entitled to hold. I’m glad you don’t want people to make fun of those with strange or minority opinions. I knew when I first posted about him that I would take some flak from people. I don’t mind the people who said I was deluded or have a mental illness, because that is a possibility, of course. What is not a possibility is me lying in this case. I absolutely am not.
So, do you think, as a self described skeptic, that you would be better off trading ghost stories with lekatt or getting yourself some serious help? Were it just a “sometimes i hear my name being spoken” or “Im not sure who moved my keys” type ghost story, then live and let live man. But what you are describing, (if true) is so far beyond those that I would seek medical attention as soon as possible.
Understand that people have been trying to prove the existence of ghosts for centuries, and not one, NOT ONE, has been able to make any kind of long standing claim in this regard. You are either a VERY historic first, or in need of some help. (And please know that I am NOT trying to be condescending in any way, the sympathy is lost in thought to text translation.)
Of course it’s a possibility. If simply saying “I’m not lying” was proof enough, we wouldn’t need courts.
I’ll list another - she could be right. Honestly haunted. The whole bit.
Do I believe she’s right? No. Not even slightly. Posts aren’t any sort of evidence.
But is it still possible? Heck yes! What kind of scientifically minded people are you lot? Extraordinary claims aren’t to be bought without evidence, but that doesn’t eliminate that hairline chance that there are things not dreamt of in your philosophy. Sheesh.
She’s not asking anyone for money and she’s not trying to stomp on anyone’s rights, so in my opinion she can believe any damned stupid thing she likes. Should she try to determine whether she’s got a real specter or just an imaginary friend? Probably - I’d be worried about the medical implications of being deluded, myself. But it’s really hard to work up ire against her for having a (probably) imaginary friend. I mean, come on, people.
Whom are you pitting, meenie7, those who aren’t attacking her, or, as your title suggests, Marcus?
I think you are just flat out of line. The OP asked
Those who said ‘yes’, explained why. meenie was one of them.* (Those who said ‘no’, BTW, for the most part offered some version of ‘because it’s impossible’.)
Her post was coherent and germane, does not attack any group of people on inherent characteristics, and made no demands for belief.
Unlike yours. Sometimes, Diogenes, people disagree!, and you are not on this earth to force them to agree with you. After all, you have been noted as presenting one assumption that was not only unwarranted but actually contradicted by the text of the post. Why should everyone bow to your opinion of the rest?
If I knew you, I would rap you on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and snap, “Sit!”
Do I “believe” meenie’s story? No.** I don’t know her, so I don’t know her to be a rational person, and her story is not banal, as are all the ones that give me that little frisson that, to me, indicates a real ghost story.***
Do I think there is anything pit-worthy about a story of a supernatural experience in a thread that invites them? Well, that’s a ‘hell, no’.
Go read about Homunculus, and then preach the infallibility of science.
- Full disclosure, I was another. Here’s part of my post:
** Sorry, meenie, but I don’t.
*** The most compelling stories to me are not those of high drama, but odd little ones, like hearing a loved one’s voice say, ‘I miss your lemonade’. Those give me the frisson.
We also wouldn’t need locks on bathroom doors, Canadian coin sensors on slot mochines or stripes down the center of the road.
Or lines on tennis courts. Oh I long for Truthtopia.
Geez, Dio, this thread is dickish even for you. meenie isn’t trying to get her friend a green card or campaigning for his right to drive an SUV covered in pro-Bush stickers while clubbing a baby seal with a cellphone. Her belief isn’t harming anyone, arguably not even herself, certainly not this board.
This is why there’s such a sharp divide among the atheists on this board - between you, Der Trihs, pseudotron ruber ruber and the rest of us who aren’t determinedly assholic.
Is not. It’s actually quite mild. After all, he’s not wishing that meenie7 die a horrible excruciating death for her different beliefs.
Well, not yet at least! Perhaps if she persists in annoying him, he will step up his campaign a little!
Maybe he is just a ghost, a confused spirit lingering between this forum and the Great Messageboard of the Cosmos…
I wish Padre Pio was alive and was a doper. I wonder if there are similar folks alive today. (responses such as “yeah they’re in asylums,” can be considered to have been already said thanks).
Here I was trying to be protective of you, and you are greater than I. Thanks for the lesson.
Yes (partially referring to your earlier posts), and the basis of fighting ignorance is testing so we know what’s what. We’re not draining government funds testing here, we’re asking for a simple dice test. Preferably meenie does the test and gets an answer one way or another, and if the answer is yes, she preferably follows up and shakes the scientific foundation. She seems perfectly happy, and her friendship with Marcus (real or imaginary) doesn’t seem to be detrimental in any way that needs addressing immediately. There are possibilities, however slim she’s right. The people who don’t believe there is a ghost (like me) want to see what happens, and the skeptics should be GLAD that she’s going to attempt to prove it, on the off-chance it checks out it would be a wonderful thing to learn more about the universe we previously thought impossible. Granted proving this over a message board is tricky without two cameras running at once, but if meenie is honest if it bumps out negative, or follows up with a reputable publicly visible organization if it’s positive this could be big. If it turns out to be the former, she gets help and we were right, the latter we get to be the ignorant ones for a change and get some very concrete advancement to our world view.
The mantra of the skeptic shouldn’t be “you’re lying” or “you’re sick” or any similar line, it should be “show me.” That final one is infinitely more constructive.
That depends on whether she really believes what she’s saying or not. If she’s lying, then she’s a troll. If she thinks she’s telling the truth then she’s deluded and people should not be humoring her.
But this was not an MHO or MPSIMS thread. It was posted in Great Debates. People are not supposed to just be able to post patently ridiculous, bullshit assertions without getting called on it.
It was posted in the debate forum, therefore her claims are fair game for challenge.
What assumption was that?
The main points in my OP were not opinions, they were facts. Eenie* is either lying or deluded. There are no other choices. That’s not an opinion, it’s a flat statement of fact.
Like I said, this was not some harmless creepy story about sheets on a line in an MPSims thread. It’s a series of extremely bizarre assertions in GD. Since when does crap like that get accepted so uncritically? If we start letting crap like that go in GD, then we’re going to lose something fundamentally distinctive about this board.
Now that I think about, I think I am more irritated with the uncritical response to meenie’s ludicrous posts than I am to meenie herself.