Let me explain something.
For hundreds of years people explained the world they lived in through a belief in God . He supposedly wrote the Bible and whatever the Bible said was God’s word. Some these explanations were not very rational but they were still believe. People were even killed if they didn’t believe them.
Then 4 to 5 hundred years ago science began to come into existence. Science too would be explaining the world we live in and trying to make life better for people. Within the last 70 years people have been leaving churches and believing science even though some of the science explanations were not very rational. So at this point in history science is beginning to take over what religions used to provide. It has one big flaw, there is no place in science one can find solace and peace, no love or acceptance.
Therefore science will fail to replace religion completely. There will be a new spirituality. Which incorporates the best features of both. You can see an example of it if your watch Joel Osteen in the Lakewood church in Houston. This is the new belief system coming into view. His church is the largest in the US. There are seven million people watch him every Sunday. Spirituality has it all. Rational thinking and positive lessons so people can feel better about themselves and fulfill their mission here in the physical.
I know you won’t believe me. Joel gets slammed from the religions side as well as the science side of the aisle. But he won’t give up because he knows like I do that the way can only be unconditional love.
Very brief googlery suggests Joel Osteen is a homophobe. I’m not entirely sure he’d be someone i’d want to tout my agreement with. At the very least, it seems unreasonable to tout him as an exception in his unconditional love.
The movie I mentioned, “The Conjuring”, claims to be “Based on a true story”. It was a case from paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Who were also famous for the Amityville investigation.
My point being that they were probably the closest thing to an expert in that field at the time. But them saying they saw what they saw and did what they did, isn’t proof. Even though they setup cameras with infrared triggers, they didn’t get any photos. Or blobs of ectoplasm. They setup a museum in their house for souvenirs they collected in their career but nothing in it proves anything. They can say they saw an object floating or whatever but it doesn’t float now.
I know someone that I respect who has said she has seen a ghost. And I believe she really believes she did. That was one of the reasons I asked the question in the first place. I’m 53 years old and I’ve never seen one. I guess I don’t have “the sixth sense” (another movie reference). Maybe what she saw can be explained by scientific knowledge. Maybe it can’t.
I was asking about real, irrefutable proof because I tend to be skeptical about such things, religion included. And I really want to know. I didn’t intend to start an argument thread.
Joel makes it clear where he stands in this video. I think it is the best one he has made so far. I have watched it many times and each time it raises my state of awareness. Listen carefully you may find yourself in it.
I appreciate your honesty. I believe there is real proof of spiritual entities. But not with the methods science likes to vaunt. I don’t think just because the scientific methods can’t find spirits, that they can’t be found.
A short case in point.
A man is having surgery and his heart stops for 5 minutes. The surgical team frantically work on him. He finally comes back to life and tell the team he saw them working on his body while he was out of body near the ceiling. He describes what they said and other unusual events that may have happened like a chair being knocked over. The team verifies the accuracy of the patients account. That is proof and there are hundreds of this type of event. The patient was clinically dead yet he lived in spirit form. These are called vertical NDEs. University of Virginia collects them.
Skeptics make-up all kinds of explanations none of which is relavent.
I’m not sure I am interested in having this futile argument again. In case I can work up the nerve, what does this opinion piece have to do with your earlier post? This is a column where the author says church attendance has decreased.
The only thing irrelevant here is your post. What does it have to do with providing evidence of ghosts, demons, or evil spirits. Got evidence for any of those three?
I think the reason why one has to reach for the Dungeon and Dragons Manual to see how they looked like is that the old time religions have punted on the idea of how they are supposed to look (Yes, there is a popular idea of how demons look, but that is not what the defenders of the faith think); after all the idea of the possession of evil spirits and demons is virtually the same and then it follows that a demon or evil spirit can be even **behavior **that does not conform to the one approved by the church. So there is no need to seek how they look like, for the old time religions it is what they “do” what counts.
When one goes to check the way old time religions use to describe them, one can see that a demon does not depend on how do they look:
For the ones that will go the TLDNR route: The Catholic encyclopedia points out also that the demons are related to rebel angels, so besides being capable of looking ugly they can also look beautiful; the idea is that, for example, that mundane cases of addiction in ancient times could be declared to be the result or a cause of demon possession. The implied point was that drugs or sex can look appealing and beautiful at the beginning but they will lead to your doom. IMHO what happened was the symbolic becoming literal as a way to deal with antisocial behavior in the ages before science.
lekatt, I think you’ve been noted for this before, but posting a link without any other material is NOT debating in good faith. Do it again and get warned and other consequences may follow.
