They’ve always said that. That doesn’t mean you can get here from there.
People don’t like it when you imply that they are gullible. They get defensive.
Worse, most people tend to trust their senses - and get defensive if you suggest they are faulty. Even though an aspect of humanity is imperfection.
My perceptions of the spirit world are shaped by Saturday morning cartoons. As it happens, it isn’t unusual for me to have purely auditory dreams, particularly when I’m first going to sleep. Maybe it’s because of my crappy eyesight, hearing and balance, but I’ve never wholly trusted what my senses and I’ve thought it odd that others do, often defensively. So I’ve had pretty vivid auditory dreams while lying in bed, but I’ve never imagined they were real, at least after I had woken up.
I can believe others would though. Dreams can be pretty realistic after all.
OK, guys, let’s split up!
This is slightly tangential to the OP but I believe it’s worth bringing up in this discussion. Something I’ve noticed and grown rather weary of and frustrated over is the phenomenon/trend in spinal-cord injury rehabilitation of doctors or other medical professionals to very early on in the recovery stage tell the patient that they will likely never walk again (or some variation of this sobering information).
This can often times turn out to be an inaccurate diagnosis as it found that the spinal cord sustained less actual damage than initially thought. But from the perspective of the medical doctor, I understand why such an approach is made. Even if there is a chance of misdiagnosis (higher than the patient might realize) and thus a higher chance of that patient walking again, those overall chances are still infinitesimally low and extremely unlikely. So rather than have the patient chasing false dreams, they rightly set their expectations low and let any good news come as a great surprise.
However, this leads to an unforeseen problem for many of those who do gain unexpected recovery and function: it causes them to believe that the sheer power of their will and/or God’s specific plan for them, made the irreversible damage to their spinal cord repair itself. And then they tell every other person who suffers from a spinal cord injury that they too could get out of their chairs and walk again, if only they ‘wanted it bad enough’ and ‘never gave up’.
With the advent of the internet, such people flock to disability messageboards, hammering everyone with judgmental baloney about how everyone else isn’t trying as hard as they are; not to mention all the fucking offensive implications made with such silliness (like someone who isn’t spending their existence committed to getting out of the chair is “giving up” on life, etc.) And the religion angle comes in all the time, too. God hooked them up because they prayed, evidently. :rolleyes:
It just drives me insane because it propagates this ridiculous idea that spinal cord injury is somehow different than other physical maladies and illnesses and can be ‘beaten’ by strength of character. This mentality is what fills a kid with false hope who’s sitting in the hospital with a severed spinal cord. And it’s surprisingly common within the spinal cord injury community (the mentality, that is).
Sorry, ramble over. :mad:
Basically it comes down to two reasons:
- Humans anthropomorphize
- Thinking scientifically, and critically, is something humans naturally only do some of the time
To elaborate:
-
One bias is we tend to put a human face on everything. Stare at random patterns for a while, and you’ll inevitably see faces. If there’s some unexplained phenomenon happening, people tend to assume a human-like intelligence is behind it.
Note how often paranormal phenomena are some form of human-like intelligence, compared to an unthinking physical effect. -
We do think critically at least some of the time or we’d barely be able to function at all.
But humans have plenty of biases (the above point is an example of one) because there are behaviours which are not strictly rational in an objective sense but nonetheless were beneficial in our evolutionary environment. Generalizing, assuming causation where only correlation has been seen, superstitious thinking, erring on the side of assuming everything is a threat and so on.
Yes, yes, yes.
The ridiculous notion that ANY human being who ever existed somehow earns an everlasting afterlife for being good in a finite period is the poison that feeds the delusions of the paranormal.
I usually excuse myself when people, especially from my age group (40s), because it’s the same crap-- they like the idea of being rewarded big for doing very little. And since religion is constantly mixed with local folklore, like spirits who get in the way by controlling some realm of existence that some god doesn’t notice, hence ghosts exist. What makes it more funny is the hypocrisy that those who claim to be religious and worship “the one true god” seem more likely to believe in ghosts, meaning they believe is many, many other powerful spirits BESIDES their one true whatever.
But I digress. A better reason people may believe in ghosts is just because people love stories and imagination. They think they exist because it’s cool. :rolleyes: Think how boring a book like “A Christmas Carol” would’ve been without ghosts changing Scrooge supernaturally. Would it be a classic if he just woke up, looked at the poor people in his town and had a change of heart just like that? Snore.
It’s no more stupid or gullible to believe in ghosts than it is to believe in Christianity. What are the Gospels, but ghost stories you are instructed to take as literally true?
I think I’m beginning to get a better understanding of why people believe in ghosts. Unfortunately, I couldn’t repeat much of it to anyone other than a good friend, if assaulted by tales of ghosts.
Has anyone done any research on how our ideas of the paranormal evolve with the rest of our culture? I’d guess that, relative to 500 years ago, reports of incubi and succubi are way down, whereas reports of UFOs are way up. But I see the similarity in the stories, so perhaps they’re different interpretations of the same real event (such as sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations). I’d be interested in a deeper and more thorough analysis.
I often have similar thoughts, although it’s probably in cancer and other potentially terminal illnesses that I’ve noticed it especially. Survivors fought hard and earned their right to continue living. Those who died must have been lazy and didn’t deserve life, then?
On the other hand, if religion (or a belief in ghosts) gets people through paralysis or cancer, it has served a purpose, and I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to tell a loved one they were the specialest person on Earth if I thought it would give them a better chance.
There are zombies, too.
But I have tried to keep gods and religion out of this. There are enough threads on that subject, and while I think there is some overlap, I do see a difference. I think people are a lot more comfortable talking about their ghostly experiences than their divine ones. Perhaps this is evolving too - could ghosts be replacing God as a comforter?
I should point out that I like ghosts in stories. When I was a kid I used to read a lot of books on the paranormal, mostly UFOs but also hauntings and other fun stuff. I wanted it to be true, just because it would be simultaneously scary and really cool. Which brings me to this:
I like to think I have an open mind; it’s open to all possibilities, not just the unlikely ones.
One’s 80 proof, and one has no proof. 
Don’t forget the placebo effect. Where does it come from? Why does it happen?
We are all spirits, it is what we call the mind or ego. When we die our spirits return to the spirit world, at least most of them. Some that have strong attachments to the physical may remain in the physical as ghosts.
Beliefs are filters of the mind. If you believe strongly in “A” then “B” comes along and refutes “A” do you except it or ignore it. If you hold no strong judgments and are really open to probabilities as well as possibilities I think you would research it thoroughly before changing beliefs. It is the research that most are unwilling to do.
When I learned that something like 30% of the populace has sleep paralysis that went a long way to explaining a ton of the ghosts, goblins, witches, demons and even alien invasions.
Because we all think what we see is real all the time. But then I also read about how six eyewitnesses ten minutes after the account all have different statements! So obviously we all don’t see the same thing, and what we see is not what is always there.
Once I had those two facts in possession, I really took them to heart, and just like that, I stopped seeing ghosts or visions. I’ve had hallucinations without even the benefit of drugs - you can do it to yourself, with meditation.
What gets is me is I know someone who won’t listen to any scary stories or read scary books because she’s “not sure if ghosts exist or not”. This to me just seems stupid to say. If you’re not sure, then you probably think they exist! Stop copping out!
But I don’t say anything. It’s not my job to educate the world.
As has been alluded upthread, I really wish you wouldn’t make statements of fact for which you have absolutely no evidence. Even if human minds are really spirits, and even if there were such a thing as a spirit world, and even if that is where spirits go upon death, you have absolutely no evidence, nor is there any documentary proof, for any of it, so you’re just making stuff up based on something you have chosen to believe. You can believe whatever you wish, but at least stop polluting this discussion.
As others have said, humans have a propensity to ascribe a cause for anything they don’t understand, especially if it comports with something they want to be true. People who believe in ghosts do so for the same reasons people believe in life after death, and miracles, and gods, and alien visitation. These beliefs, rather than being supported by evidence, are bolstered solely by others’ belief in the same thing. The volume of believers in a thing shouldn’t (and truly doesn’t) have any bearing on its veracity, but that is precisely what believers use to support their argument, which makes absolutely no sense. If 10 million people believed the core of the Earth was made of candy, that contention, in and of itself, doesn’t make it so.
For some reason, it’s much easier for a brain to tell itself that something supernatural happened than it is to admit it’s fallible. They would rather trust faulty input and less than optimal processing than acknowledge the possibility of faulty input and less than optimal processing.
Brains are a bit defensive that way.
It’s not just that we’re imperfect, it’s that our sense are very foolable. They evolved to give us quick impressions and associations so we could avoid danger. They’re not cameras and recording equipment, they’re just supposed to keep us alive.
The brain is the most important part of the human body! Of course, it’s the brain telling us that.*
*from some forgotten comedian’s routine.
But there is a ton of evidence and research. Read the research being done on NDEs.
But it doesn’t work if you fight it!
And now let’s see who this really is!
[grabs culprit’s scary mask]
:eek: It’s Old Man lekatt!
Better yet, don’t.