Do you believe in ghosts?

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  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 17,730
    That book is all in your imagination.

    So is this thread. You are feeling sleepy.
  • royale65royale65 Caustic misanthrope reporting for duty.
    Posts: 4,418
    Bit harsh on your own thread @Dragonpol - I'm quite entertained reading this thread. Not sleepy at all.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 17,730
    royale65 wrote: »
    Bit harsh on your own thread @Dragonpol - I'm quite entertained reading this thread. Not sleepy at all.

    Why, thank you, @royale65. It was just my little hypnotist joke there. Went down like a lead balloon obviously. ;)

    It has certainly been an entertaining thread and my most successful for quite some time as well. Long may it continue. :)
  • royale65royale65 Caustic misanthrope reporting for duty.
    Posts: 4,418
    Don't worry, I got it. Just teasing you old chap.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 17,730
    royale65 wrote: »
    Don't worry, I got it. Just teasing you old chap.

    Oh, I see. Again, I'm slow on the uptake!

    I'm here very much as a ghost/paranormal believer. I will give a more substantive post on my reasons for so believing soon.

    What can I say, I read The Fortean Times!
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    That's fort-unate.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 17,730
    That's fort-unate.

    I think I recommended it to you before, TP. I now never miss an issue after getting hooked on it in 2013.
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    I enjoy all the odd events and paranormal stories ( I just don't believe them )
    I used to watch the TV series of it hosted by the Rev Lionel Fanthrope .
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 17,730
  • Posts: 9,738
    As a supernatural Historian (with a masters degree I might add) I don't just believe things outright nor do I dismiss everything...

    Since others are bringing in all kind of mythical things let me bring in one of my own. there was once a mythical land called Troy... Wait I know what your thinkinking Troy isn't mythical it's a real place. Very true but before 1898 it was laughed about in the academic halls everyone including historians and archologists believed it to be a myth a fanciful tale and nothing more. The same is said about the myths of a boy king in Egypt perhaps you heard of him King Tut ring a bell anyone?

    Again Skpetics can laugh about ghosts etc all they want but eventually if these things are true the believers will have the last laugh as they did in the two examples I gave.
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    Thanks, I'll carry on laughing :)) us skeptics run the asylum, while you believers are the
    Inmates ! ;)
  • Posts: 19,339
    Thanks, I'll carry on laughing :)) us skeptics run the asylum, while you believers are the
    Inmates ! ;)

    At least be objective and not ridicule eh ?

  • Posts: 9,738
    see it's why I don't get involved in these discussions. and why by all means spenmd 30 bucks by a ouji board and see what happens after all it's all garbage anyways right
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    Oh sorry, so sorry, so sorry, so sorry. So sorry so sorry. Please check all my posts so they
    Fulfill all your holes and dreams, I'd hate to upset you, oh master of the forum. :( It's called?
    Humour, try looking it up some time. This thread was going along nicely till old grumpy turned up.
    One of the reasons I stay away is the amount of pompous people, who feel they have to take offence on behalf of others. A sort of passive aggressive trolling. I know you were away for a long time, so I don't know you, so at least I'm lucky that way. :)) Please continue our latest MOD. I'll just sit in the corner until you decide I can comment any more. OK. You can be the Big man on the forum. Thank God for the other place, were you can have a friendly discuss, with some jokes and leg pulling. While Barry007 makes one feel as welcome as a fart in a space suit. Nothing as entertaining as a self-righteous arse.

  • edited October 2016 Posts: 19,339
    Oh sorry, so sorry, so sorry, so sorry. So sorry so sorry. Please check all my posts so they
    Fulfill all your holes and dreams, I'd hate to upset you, oh master of the forum. :( It's called?
    Humour, try looking it up some time. This thread was going along nicely till old grumpy turned up.
    One of the reasons I stay away is the amount of pompous people, who feel they have to take offence on behalf of others. A sort of passive aggressive trolling. I know you were away for a long time, so I don't know you, so at least I'm lucky that way. :)) Please continue our latest MOD. I'll just sit in the corner until you decide I can comment any more. OK. You can be the Big man on the forum. Thank God for the other place, were you can have a friendly discuss, with some jokes and leg pulling. While Barry007 makes one feel as welcome as a fart in a space suit. Nothing as entertaining as a self-righteous arse.

    Im a self righteous arse ? ..that makes you an abusive prick....pussy by name and one hell of a pussy by nature....if you react like that to what @Risico007 and i have said,which was simply normal then i hope you dont have a girlfriend or boyfriend..serious anger problems.
  • mcdonbbmcdonbb deep in the Heart of Texas
    Posts: 4,116
    I've never seen a fart. They must not be real.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    mcdonbb wrote: »
    I've never seen a fart. They must not be real.
    This video shows a fart. =))

  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    edited October 2016 Posts: 23,453
    Participants of this thread,
    You have eaten well. But your feast is nearly over.
    I'm seeing kind people succumb to anger and name-calling, and intelligent people to the temptation of superstition. Both upset me. I shall have to cleanse this thread with holy water, exorcise the many demons that haunt this place and draw pentagrams on the floor to avert all evil spirits.
    Can we please leave Medieval thinking behind us and enter the 21st century? "Unexplained phenomena" are simply "as of yet unexplained phenomena", waiting to be explained - as they will be. There was a time when people "knew" the Aurora Borealis was a gateway to the spirit world. There was a time when people "knew" that an unexpected recovery from some disease involved witchcraft. There was a time when farmers prayed to the weather gods for a good harvest...
    Then quantum physics allowed us to explain the Aurora Borealis in a simple and logical fashion. Medical science learned about bacteria and viruses and about ways to defeat them. Meteorologists discovered some of the simpler mechanisms behind the weather; successful farmers nowadays consult them rather than a priest.
    Behind every UFO sighting, every "strange apparition", there's a perfectly logical explanation which may have eluded the fear struck observer but is there nonetheless. "Proof" of the supernatural is often faked, extremely vague and heavy-handed. At best one can call something "unexplained" in a practical sense, but to call something "supernatural" is to reduce one's own intellect to that of a child, prone to believe in fairy tales. I'm quite frankly baffled by some responses here. Either they're not meant to be taken seriously, coming from a place of alcohol abuse or signalling a dangerous mind, no better than that of those crazies who commit acts of terror in the name of a non-existent deity.
    For let us be serious here: if you are willing to accept, as only the uneducated or simple-minded are supposed to do, that ghosts are real, what happens if you start hearing "voices", and if those voices tell you to do things that put your name in the newspapers and that of other people on a tombstone.
    I wish some people had spent more time in physics class rather than in church, in the crystal shop or in conspiracy theory chat rooms. And if physics can't explain everything yet, then why don't you contribute to physics and enrich its understanding of the cosmos? I know, because that requires some effort.
    It's simpler to just trick yourself into thinking without thinking and calling something supernatural, which is a euphemism for intellectual laziness and lunacy.
    So can we please stop this nonsense? There are no ghosts. There's no such things as ghosts. Youtube videos and iffy sound recordings bear little evidence to support their sensation hungry case.
    But if you like to waste your time contemplating something that doesn't exist, by all means do so and be happy.
  • Posts: 19,339
    We agree to disagree on this DD as i have seen and encountered many things over the years but i respect you and Benny and you both know i dont take any crap if pushed for a stupid reason,so i will withdraw from this thread although im sure im due one abusive git who will respond who i will deal with....
  • Posts: 4,599
    These threads are like roller coasters for me. I get a little depressed when people fall for this guff and you lose a little hope for the future of the species as reality seems to be beyond our collective grasp.
    And then you see Darth's post above and see that there is hope. There are people who "get it" and perhaps all is not lost.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    Shame to see the thread crumble like this. I was happy to share my experiences with spirituality. I'm not a religious person by any means but I do believe in ghosts. That doesn't mean I'm some idiot who denies science either. There are so many things we don't know about life and humanity. Who knows for sure what will happen when we all truly die?
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 23,453
    @barryt007, you know I could never mean any disrespect towards you, right? And I'm sure that if you have seen and encountered things that strike you as odd, weird, strange, ..., you actually have. However, our disability to explain isolated events should not immediately give rise to notions of the supernatural. "This was strange but there's probably a rational explanation for it", is a much better way to evaluate such an event rather than "good Lord, I just had some otherworldly experience!" Most likely the event will never repeat itself, remain without direct consequences for your life and / or be explained in the future. Also, the human mind and its capacity to imagine things should not be underestimated. Nature is what it is; how we perceive it is an entirely different thing.
  • Posts: 14,800
    Risico007 wrote: »
    As a supernatural Historian (with a masters degree I might add) I don't just believe things outright nor do I dismiss everything...

    Since others are bringing in all kind of mythical things let me bring in one of my own. there was once a mythical land called Troy... Wait I know what your thinkinking Troy isn't mythical it's a real place. Very true but before 1898 it was laughed about in the academic halls everyone including historians and archologists believed it to be a myth a fanciful tale and nothing more. The same is said about the myths of a boy king in Egypt perhaps you heard of him King Tut ring a bell anyone?

    Again Skpetics can laugh about ghosts etc all they want but eventually if these things are true the believers will have the last laugh as they did in the two examples I gave.

    Except that the city of Troy as described by Homer and the Trojan war did not happen. There may have been human dwellings and armed conflicts that were at the roots of the poem, but there was no equivalent in history to the Iliad. Homer himself may not even have existed!

    And beside, this is false analogy: we know of plenty of things, animals, phenomenons, what have you, that do exist which we did not know of or believe in in the past. They in themselves are completely irrelevant and bring no evidence to the claim that ghosts exist.
  • edited October 2016 Posts: 4,599
    If you believe in ghosts, you have abandoned the basic principles of scientific method and respect for basic principles of physics. This is also confirmed by the final statement regarding "knowing for sure", nobody knows, thats because you are dead!, so you can speculate as much as you like, there an infinite number of theoretical things that could happen after you die. I perhaps could create some new ones? there is zero proper evidence of ghosts. But you have plumped for that one theory amongst the infinite theories and stated it as fact.

    Who knows for sure? You do.

  • Posts: 19,339
    [
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    @barryt007, you know I could never mean any disrespect towards you, right? And I'm sure that if you have seen and encountered things that strike you as odd, weird, strange, ..., you actually have. However, our disability to explain isolated events should not immediately give rise to notions of the supernatural. "This was strange but there's probably a rational explanation for it", is a much better way to evaluate such an event rather than "good Lord, I just had some otherworldly experience!" Most likely the event will never repeat itself, remain without direct consequences for your life and / or be explained in the future. Also, the human mind and its capacity to imagine things should not be underestimated. Nature is what it is; how we perceive it is an entirely different thing.

    For you my old friend its not a problem....i'm out of this thread....simple as that.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    I still believe in science and physics as well as spirits. What's so bad about that?
  • CASINOROYALECASINOROYALE Somewhere hot
    Posts: 1,003
    Went to "The Alamo" on a 100 degree summer day and when I stepped into certain rooms with no windows it was cold.... Super cold. No AC in the Alamo obviously. Explain that.. Also was the only one with some family members and you would hear footsteps or just weird noises, turn around and no one was there..
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 23,453
    Risico007 wrote: »
    As a supernatural Historian (with a masters degree I might add) I don't just believe things outright nor do I dismiss everything...

    Since others are bringing in all kind of mythical things let me bring in one of my own. there was once a mythical land called Troy... Wait I know what your thinkinking Troy isn't mythical it's a real place. Very true but before 1898 it was laughed about in the academic halls everyone including historians and archologists believed it to be a myth a fanciful tale and nothing more. The same is said about the myths of a boy king in Egypt perhaps you heard of him King Tut ring a bell anyone?

    Again Skpetics can laugh about ghosts etc all they want but eventually if these things are true the believers will have the last laugh as they did in the two examples I gave.

    Details about historical events or people can get lost, wrongly interpreted or copied, made-up or mixed up over time. Historians should always set themselves the task of filtering facts from the legends and myths.

    Ghosts being spotted today and supposedly recorded on tape is an entirely different thing. People see something they don't understand and from their arrogance assume that because they can't understand it, it must be out of this world, supernatural, ... What they fail to admit is that they know about ghosts and such from watching horror films, hearing scary stories when they were young, reading certain books, ... The brain selects a frightening what-if scenario from its memory and projects it as the currently best available "rationale".

    In reference to your final sentence: if ghosts are true... don't you think we would have reached a consensus about that centuries ago? If we go back in time, the idea of spirits is as old as the idea of a Devil, of voodoo spells, of sorcerer's stones. Such a common, simple idea... And yet science, which has discovered exceptionally elusive phenomena like black holes, electrons and quarks, the genome and relativity, has yet to find its first somewhat substantial evidence for the existence of ghosts. And with so many mass hysteria cases involving alien abductions, UFO sightings, demonic possession and haunted houses, one would assume that at least a couple of serious scientists would investigate and in fact objectively document one or two "real" ghost events. Some have done so, I know... greedy people who want to sell books and make television appearances. Usually it only takes one or two physics students to completely debunk whatever was postulated by those malicious "scientists".

    Sober up, people.
  • edited October 2016 Posts: 4,599
    Ive seen believers walk out of Alpha courses as they are not up for the debate. Non-believers in many areas are becoming more confident and assertive and believers, in my experience, are a little at a loss to know how to react and, often, withdraw from the debate (sometimes feeling a little bruised and battered),
    it also happens in forums as people can take criticism of their beleifs very personally rather than step back and take a colder approach. This is often IMHO due to an emotional investment in the choice to believe and a deep rooted fear of the alternative that is proposed. There is nothing more terrifying than death so its perhaps not surprising that discussions can get a little tense.
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 23,453
    Went to "The Alamo" on a 100 degree summer day and when I stepped into certain rooms with no windows it was cold.... Super cold. No AC in the Alamo obviously. Explain that.. Also was the only one with some family members and you would hear footsteps or just weird noises, turn around and no one was there..

    It takes time for heat to be conducted through walls. Thus, if one shuts out sun light and hot air, a room can remain fairly cold in contrast to the summer outside for a long time. I have a storage room in my house where I flee to on a hot summer day for that very same reason. It hasn't got AC; it's just shielded from hot air and sun light. Physics 1.0.1.

    Footsteps and weird noises? Rather vague, wouldn't you say? Matter "works". Solids expand and contract; air flows; water drips; sound waves are transported trough media, lowering or increasing pitch, volume, ... All these things produce sounds which our ears can pick up and which are then submitted to our brain for further interpretation. Selecting familiar sounds that are most identical to the ones we just heard, the mind will feed us suggestions which may be completely wrong. Like the backwards listening to certain albums and hearing subliminal messages amidst all the dissonant chaos. Or seeing signs in meaningless splashes of paint. The Rorschach test was developed to tell us what we're thinking about, not what we're seeing.


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