Do you believe in ghosts / spirits of the dead?

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You're partly right 8, I'm not saying that science can explain everything now, nor that we are at its end, but the physical phenomena needed to scientifically explain the paranormal as something other than psychological delusions are simply vast. We would need to completely revolutionize all of physics since we already can accommodate all observed physical events, and none of the physical theories support something as e.g. astrology.

How do the planets affect our moods? Nope, can't be gravity. Can't be the electromagnetic force, and neither the strong or weak nuclear forces suffice. So you would need to come up with a fifth force. Good luck with that one.

Open up any psychology 101 book, and they will say that the human mind is easily tricked and will give you experiments with which you can trick yourself, or someone else. Look at the Dennett video I posted, he also talks about how the mind tricks itself when it comes to magic.

For all its boasting about how there is *something* there, the paranormals never bother to explain why the current scientific theories are insufficient to accommodate their observations. They never hold their ideas up to scrutiny and berate anyone who do as simply ignorant.

 

I also think dreams have alot to do with 'supernatural' events, people dream in different ways and the mind in a topographical sense subconciously interperates a dream. Many people have lucid (interactive) dreams where they are aware they are dreaming, other's have these dreams and are unaware of the dream, and recalling the dream later can mistake it for a real memory.
Waking dreams are another possibility, in a waking dream a bodies sensory organs may remain active while the mind is unconcious, allowing imaginary events to be 'imprinted' onto the real world.

 

Maybe so, but try telling someone who says they saw a ghost yesterday at 2:15 p.m. while peeling potatoes in their kitchen after having just gotten off the phone with Aunt Gertrude that they were dreaming and you're liable to get smacked in the head.

Why do you discredit your wife, Shoshino? (Honest question.) I assume she means it when she says has seen ghosts or whatever. (Peeling potatoes style as opposed to "I was in a shadowy glimmering room with Dawson from Dawson's Creek (only he had red hair), wearing satin sheets and purple slippers and floating six inches off the floor, when suddenly ..." style.) Is she that unreliable that the evidence of her eyes and ears isn't good enough?

 

I've never seen a ghost, so I can't claim to believe in them. At the same time I can't claim to know (in a Dak'kon sort of way) that there aren't any.

I do believe that there's more to our world than what we can see or touch.

 

I dont really discredit her, I think she jumps to conclusions. Most of the things she says have happened have perfectly plausable explanations and then to try to convince me that it was supernatural the story becomes more and more unreal.

for example, her friends father died recently, so she and another friend went to comfort her, they took her a cake which they cut in the kitchen and then they went into the living room. there was some kind of story about her father and not liking knives left on the counters, they heared a noise and then found the knife in the kitchen on the floor. They are convinced that steph's father's ghost threw it on the floor, and the kitchen now felt very cold (draft anyone?). I suggested that the knife was close to the edge and fell naturally aided by gravity and other potential energy influence, she argued, no the knife wasnt near the edge, and she was very sure of this, but also that the knife was a distance from the counter, I suggested that it bounced, she argued no, it made a single noise when it hit the floor, to which I replied that any object hitting the floor will bounce, even more so if it has been thrown to the floor.

simple questions:
> why would he throw the knife on the floor?
> If he could manifest himself in the world, why not see Steph?

 

Using logic on your wife ... enjoy being single again Shoshino.

 

I guess that's a bit different than seeing a ghost. I'd agree that there's no particular reason to think anything ghostly was going on (and that maybe it was all motivated by the common love for the sensation of a goose walking over your grave), but there's really no reason to think anything. The knife fell off the counter. End of story. IMO it doesn't really need to be argued, vehemently or otherwise, that it wasn't a ghost. You don't really have anything more to go on than she does ... other than your belief that there are no ghosts and subsequent desire to try to establish that.

 

Its both ways with us, she wanst to convince me there are ghosts, and I want her to prove it.

 

TMI ... just TMI....

 

That sounds perfectly reasonable. It just sounded before like you wanted to convince her there are no ghosts, and she wanted you to prove it.

 

Here's the famous astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson talking about belief in UFOs, it's pretty much applicable to this discussion.