Ghost hunting shows: Why so many?

[D_Portelay Porquesword]

When I lived in the south, there were many unexplainable things that took place in and near my home.

I have seen everything from ghosts to people vexed with possession of something demonic. My father was a minister and from everything I have witnessed, felt, experienced first hand....

There are some things you just cannot explain. I have been hit by them, followed by them and in one particular case been under what is known as a psychic attack.

Further, I am not asking anyone to believe me, as you really had to be there.

Do believe me when I say, you should be glad you were NOT there.

 

[D_Thoraxis_Biggulp]

This is gibberish. <etc.>

Incorporeal merely means formless and intangible. An idea is incorporeal. My thoughts are incorporeal, and through typing them, I give them form.

But without form, the intangible remains immeasurable by our current science. And until we have a way to give form to the externally incorporeal, it's going to remain that way. It doesn't mean that they aren't there, just that our cameras can't detect them. (No, I don't think this confirms the existence either. Just that it doesn't disprove it.)

It's like if you tried to measure wind speed with a police issue radar gun. There's a damn good chance, about as good as that of a digital camera not seeing a ghost, that you're not going to get anything out of it. (The extremely narrow possibility of catching a large piece of flying debris aside.) That doesn't mean the wind isn't there, just that you're using the wrong equipment.

See, this isn't the sort of thing you can compare to belief in a flat earth. The earth is tangible to anyone with nerve endings. And the flat earth notion can and has been scientifically disproven, all the way down to photographing it from outside the atmosphere. As for ghosts, all we've really proven is that we don't know how to universally detect them. But if you're so sure of the human race to believe that we're at the pinnacle of technology, then you have every reason to believe that we're not going to find a way if we haven't yet.

 

[TwasBrillig]

A bit of ambivalence on my part showing here. Well, maybe ambivalence is not exactly the right word. I do not believe in ghosts or luck. However, I shall not reject them out of hand for to do so would be pusing my luck without a ghost of a chance of finding true enlightenment through watching ghost hunting shows.

Huh? Did I just write that? I need anolther cup of coffee. Or maybe scotch.

The reasons so many ghost hunting shows exist are that people want them, networks need to fill digital transmission capacity and as with all "reality" shows are relatively cheap to produce. As has been well articulated in previous posts, people want to believe.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

Incorporeal merely means formless and intangible. An idea is incorporeal. My thoughts are incorporeal, and through typing them, I give them form.

not true. By typing them you encode your thoughts symbolically. The information remains formless and incorporeal. Without another MIND that is familiar with this method of symbolizing thought... your writing is as meaningless, as formless, as random noise.

The point being that information is incorporeal...
And yet, by your own admission, we have ways of dealing with, recording, and perceiving information.

DNA by itself looks like nothing but clumps of goo... but the information in it is still accessible.

And although information is incorporeal... information does not exist without
a physical, MATERIAL method of holding and manipulating that information.

A computer can create an incorporeal virtual space thru sheer manipulation of information... but that virtual space can not exist without the computer...

Just as your thoughts can not exist without the material processor that is your brain, nor DNA without the physical molecules that encode genes.



You have no evidence whatsoever of anything incorporeal that is not emergent from some material basis.

Your thoughts CAN be read by electronic means... we aren't very good at it yet... the AirForce has a flight simulator that can be controlled by the pilots thoughts... and there is a game available now that you can control via thoughts...

But the key thing to note is that your "incorporeal" thoughts STILL leave physcial, detectable evidence of their occurrence.
Its just a matter of deciphering the symbology represented by the electrical patterns of the brain to figure out what you are thinking.


Once more... ALL things that are REAL have a physical trace.

By definition, that which leaves no trace whatsoever does not exist.

But without form, the intangible remains immeasurable by our current science.

Prove this statement. You can not simply make stuff up and claim it to be valid without evidence of it being valid.

I just demonstrated that the only intangible formless thing you could cite actually IS detectable and actually relies entirely on physical matter.

Saying that we can't measure something because the definition of intangible means its beyond our measure is circular logic... a term that defines itself.

How convenient it is to wish to believe in something that can not be detected... without any evidence it exists.

How easy it seems for you to dismiss actual scientific findings that show, conclusively, exactly how humans mis-perceive ambiguous stimuli... in favor of a fantasy of elaborate and complicated nonsense for which you have not the slightest explanation or theoretical underpinning.

Again- Ockham's razor applies..... "one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything."

Is it possible that there are things we have not yet learned how to detect? Sure... almost certain.

Is it possible those things we can not detect are, nevertheless, something we can perceive, personally?

No. That is not possible... we fully understand the inputs to the central nervous system... they are ALL material phenomena well within our ability to detect.

If something else were inputing, something we can not detect... we would be able to observe the anomalous reaction of the brain itself to some input we were not detecting... again- there would be evidence that we were sensing something that our instruments could not show.
This does not happen... ergo, it is not happening.

And until we have a way to give form to the externally incorporeal, it's going to remain that way. It doesn't mean that they aren't there, just that our cameras can't detect them. (No, I don't think this confirms the existence either. Just that it doesn't disprove it.)

Again.... this is gibberish. ALL incorporeal phenomena are emergent from material matter and energy. You have no evidence of any other form of energy... no evidence of any thing at all.
OUr cameras universally can not detect things that are not there.

That explanation fits the fact perfectly... all you have to offer is a storyline...

once more... I can SAY something that is pure fantasy...like, "undetectable incorporeal flying super-intelligent whales"...

You can not prove there are no such things.

The fact that you can not disprove it does not make the statement even potentially valid.

The fact that I can not prove they exist makes it practically certain that such a statement is invalid.


hmmm... perhaps I am not being clear... let me explain philosophy of proof.
-To prove something I must show evidence of that thing.
Proof, therefor, is reliant on evidence.

I can not prove things for which there is no evidence.... The very concept of proof is emergent from evidence.

If you say God answers prayers... I can prove that there is no evidence of God answering prayers... they have conducted studies that have shown conclusively that prayer has no effect on recovery from illness.

This is not proof that there is no God, nor that God does not answer prayers... I can not prove things for which there is no evidence....
Rather, this is proof that there is no evidence that God answers prayers. We looked for evidence... and there was none.

In the realm of proof... total lack of evidence means that proof can not apply.

Ergo, when some says you can not prove there are no ghosts...... they simply do not understand the concept of proof.

There is no end to the impossible nonsense I can invent for which, being invention, there can be no proof.

Lack of evidence is always proof of a lack of evidence.
All things that are NOT real leave no evidence.

For EVERYTHING attributed to ghosts, we have alternate, proven and tested explanations that predicts and match observation perfectly.

Thus far, your claim is that humans can perceive an external event that is indetectable to modern science.
Okay... BY WHAT MEANS? toss out a theory...

Your perception of the world around you is entirely invented by your brain from the raw data of sensory input.

There are no colors to the world, no 'smells' those experiences are invented. YOu do not see the marking on flowers that Bees can see... because your eyes can not perceive that light, just as your ears and nose can not smell nor hear what a Dog can...

Your brain creates the immersive illusion of the space you believe to be external... but it is an illusion predicated upon a very tiny fraction of the information available.

Proof? Shut down your brain, totally lose consciousness, and external reality ceases to exist. ( for you )

The reason dreams can seem so vivid is because the same machinery that creates for you the illusion of waking reality... can operate without any external stimuli at all...

Therefore- things you perceive are highly dependent upon the nature and assumptions of your brain.

Our personal perceptions have a high likelihood of being mistaken, delusional, or prejudiced by our assumptions and beliefs.

This is why science demand replicable evidentiary proof.

It's like if you tried to measure wind speed with a police issue radar gun. There's a damn good chance, about as good as that of a digital camera not seeing a ghost, that you're not going to get anything out of it. (The extremely narrow possibility of catching a large piece of flying debris aside.) That doesn't mean the wind isn't there, just that you're using the wrong equipment.

Again... gibberish... I can absolutely measure wind speed with a radar gun... all I need to know is that radar can not measure wind directly... so I must measure the EFFECT of wind... toss some aluminum chaff into the air and the radar gun will give you a very accurate measure of wind speed.

And your implication that, somehow, 'digital' cameras, in particular, have difficulty in capturing ghosts is ridiculous. You believers ALWAYS have an excuse for your total lack of evidence... the perfect delusion...

Digital cameras can detect levels and wavelengths of light that will not affect film at all. They actually operate more like the human eye than film cameras.

Perhaps what you really mean is that its harder to get the BAD photography... the clumsy inexpert, out of focus, double exposure or blurry images that you can rely on from amateur ghosthunters using film cameras?


You remind me of that cult of imbeciles who are told to buy certain brands of cameras and take pictures of the sun to see " the doorway to heaven"-
which just so happens to be the exact same shape as that particular cameras Aperture...( showing up in the image due to lens flare ) they avoid the brands with Iris type apertures...
No amount of perfectly sound explanation, nor demonstration of their mistaken assumptions can convince these "believers" that the image is not the door to heaven.


Sad, really.

 

[D_Thoraxis_Biggulp]

Notice how I mentioned the possibility of catching a piece of debris with the radar gun. That and your idea of throwing some aluminum into the wind would be giving form to it, so to speak.

Whether you realize it or not, your argument only supports what I'm saying. We don't know how to measure what's being sensed, if there even is a way, because it remains formless. As I said before, thoughts are intangible, and all we know how to measure after all this time is levels of neurological activity. The actual details of them don't come to light until we give them form.

My implication was actually that any household camera isn't going to capture ghosts if they're not visible to the naked eye. And this isn't an excuse, it's a perfectly valid reason. But I wouldn't expect someone so close-minded to be able to accept that anybody has a good reason to disagree with you. Hell, you completely ignored my parenthetical statement, plus the whole idea of giving something form to measure it. Not to mention comparing the notion that we don't have a way to measure something to some Heaven's Gate knock off. Believe me, I know ridiculous when I hear it, and I know speculative when I hear it. Ghost Hunter shows, ridiculous. Ghosts in general, speculative.

Unfortunately, you feel the need to berate anybody who thinks differently than you about anything. Granted, there are things on which I agree with you, particularly political matters. But your behavior when somebody posts something outside your parameters of belief is nothing short of adolescent. Go take a vacation or punch a wall or something. You're too high strung for your own good.

 

[2322]

Science isn't going to win this. Until science can definitely describe and replicate ghostly activity and explain what is taking place in every circumstance, then science cannot answer to what is considered, by most people, to be a supernatural occurrence. Science describes the natural world. It can do nothing to answer the supernatural because the supernatural, by definition, is outside the purview of the natural.

You could drag every detection and recording device known to man to the top of Mount Olympus and still you could not prove that there is not a garden of the gods at the summit because science can never answer the lack of proof when faced with the argument that, "Zeus wills it."

 

[Phil Ayesho]

Every single instance of
ghostly activity" that has been documented HAS been replicated by ordinary means.
Every single bit of evidence demonstrated to be camera tricks or pure bullshit.


Every single one.


The problem is not even the idea of the supernatural... Its the idea of the supernatural having an EFFECT on the natural.

Your conscious, perceiving brain is a phenomenon of the natural world.

Claims that ghosts can affect the temperature in a room, appear as visual images, or impart motion to material objects are claims that CAN be tested.

And all such claims fail.


I can not prove that there is no God... but I CAN prove God does not answer prayers.

Its when folks claim the impact of the supernatural on the natural that their claims can be tested and, being tested, shown to be fallacious.

 

[JustAsking]

And what if nobody ever believed the yet-to-be-proven to be possible?

I don't think belief is as important to innovation and discovery than you think it is. Scientists and engineers speculate all the time, but that speculation is based on accumulated evidence. At the frontiers of science, you would be astonished at what scientists speculate about.

However, what keeps scientists being productive is that they don't waste their time speculating on things on which they have no evidence. There is no point in doing that.

There is an adage that one must keep an open mind, but not so open that one's brains fall out.

There is enough unexplained stuff for which there is real and verifiable evidence to keep us busy for a thousand years. What we don't need to do is to consider superstitious belief (meaning believing things that are unverifiable) in the same light as scientific speculation.

Don't forget that there has been no other intellectual discipline that has been anywhere near as productive as science, measured either by sheer practical output, or sheer ability to modify and replace one set of explanations for better ones in the face of new evidence.

Consider for a moment how much progress has been made in electronic communications since Hertz detected the first signal from an electrical spark from the other side of his laboratory. Consider that this was less than 150 years ago, and then consider what kind of device you are using to communicate with at the moment. Then try to tell me that evidence based science and engineering are closed minded unimaginative pursuits.

Then consider how much progress has been made in ghost and evil spirit research over the last 150 years, which in my estimation is as close to zero as you can imagine.

 

[JustAsking]

I think it was Bertrand Russell who created a parable about this. He says that he believes that there is an extremely small teacup in orbit around the planet Jupiter. It is too small to be detected by any of our scientific instruments.

His challenge is to those who would disbelieve him to prove the teacup is not there. And he would also ask why anyone would be so close minded and unimaginative as to reject the notion of his orbiting teacup without any evidence to back them up.

The point is that there is no physical evidence that ghosts exist. There has never been a verifiable reproducible measurement of any physical parameter that would support the notion of supernatural ghosts. Finally, the only thing I have heard offered here that supports the existence of ghosts is that a lot of people believe in them. How many people have to have the same delusion before the object of the delusion is real? Russell was the only one to make claims about his Jovian teacup. Is that not enough belief to make it real?

So what about Zeus? There was a time when half the civilized world believed in Zeus. Did that make him more real than the orbiting teacup?

 

[2322]

I think it was Bertrand Russell who created a parable about this. He says that he believes that there is an extremely small teacup in orbit around the planet Jupiter. It is too small to be detected by any of our scientific instruments.

His challenge is to those who would disbelieve him to prove the teacup is not there. And he would also ask why anyone would be so close minded and unimaginative as to reject the notion of his orbiting teacup without any evidence to back them up.

Yet teacups orbiting Jupiter aren't reported by every civilization since the dawn of recorded history and even before. I argue that there is a phenomenon that creates ghosts. Whether it is psychological or something else, we need an answer. Surely solving this millenia-old mystery would do something to serve humanity. Ghosts frighten people no end. Teacups around Jupiter do not.

The point is that there is no physical evidence that ghosts exist. There has never been a verifiable reproducible measurement of any physical parameter that would support the notion of supernatural ghosts.

Science, by its very definition, cannot prove nor disprove supernatural phenomenon. Anything that is truly supernatural cannot be replicated or tested by science because science only applies to the natural. I know you know this.

Finally, the only thing I have heard offered here that supports the existence of ghosts is that a lot of people believe in them. How many people have to have the same delusion before the object of the delusion is real? Russell was the only one to make claims about his Jovian teacup. Is that not enough belief to make it real?

Many people believe in them because many people have heard stories of them or experienced phenomena that they believe to be ghostly. Consensus of belief counts for a great deal in human sociology and may, in some circumstances, constitute reality.

So what about Zeus? There was a time when half the civilized world believed in Zeus. Did that make him more real than the orbiting teacup?

There was also a time when the idea of monotheism was unheard of. Which do you think is more likely? Zeus or the teacup? A teacup can't will itself not to be detected by machines or, possibly, gods by their nature can never be detected by empirical means. The most I can ever say about the teacup is that no teacup has ever been detected orbiting Jupiter. I can never say that there is no teacup, just that it is improbable. Perhaps Pioneer or Voyager or Galileo surreptitiously carried a teacup which was secretly released into orbit around Jupiter.

Kant may well be right. We may never know what we know is truly real.

 

[JustAsking]

Yet teacups orbiting Jupiter aren't reported by every civilization since the dawn of recorded history and even before. I argue that there is a phenomenon that creates ghosts. Whether it is psychological or something else, we need an answer. Surely solving this millenia-old mystery would do something to serve humanity. Ghosts frighten people no end. Teacups around Jupiter do not.

Jason, yes, I agree that people have reported ghost phenomemon as far back as we know. I can accept the fact that it is psychological. I am not denying that ghosts are believed in by lots of people over the centuries.


Science, by its very definition, cannot prove nor disprove supernatural phenomenon. Anything that is truly supernatural cannot be replicated or tested by science because science only applies to the natural. I know you know this.

Don't forget that all you are doing is assuming that there is anything "supernatural" at all. You haven't really established that this is true. I can just as easily claim that the teacup is undetectable because it is supernatural.

Many people believe in them because many people have heard stories of them or experienced phenomena that they believe to be ghostly. Consensus of belief counts for a great deal in human sociology and may, in some circumstances, constitute reality.

We have no evidence that belief has an affect on the material world outside of our own physical actions. Otherwise, Zeus once existed, but faded out when he lost a lot of votes.


There was also a time when the idea of monotheism was unheard of. Which do you think is more likely? Zeus or the teacup?

I say they are equally likely (probability = 0), since they are both fabrications of the imagination.

A teacup can't will itself not to be detected by machines or, possibly, gods by their nature can never be detected by empirical means.

Yes it can. It is a sentient supernatural teacup. Since it is a mental fabrication and undetectable, I can assign any attributes to it I want, just like you are with other supernatural beings.

The most I can ever say about the teacup is that no teacup has ever been detected orbiting Jupiter. I can never say that there is no teacup, just that it is improbable. Perhaps Pioneer or Voyager or Galileo surreptitiously carried a teacup which was secretly released into orbit around Jupiter.

Now you are talking. I think you just demonstrated that the teacup is more probable than Zeus.


Kant may well be right. We may never know what we know is truly real.

I agree that epistemology is a still a problem. But I take a more pragmatic approach. Empiricism is a way of knowing that is belief-neutral. The atheist and the devout Christian will get the same results when measuring a voltage with a voltmeter. This is why empiricism has moved a bit faster than ghost and evil spirit research. One cures new diseases every day, where the other has simply caused people to be afraid of the dark the same way for centuries.

The problem is that one cannot simply dream up the notion of supernatural and invent beings that inhabit that realm and claim that it must be true. If that is allowed in the argument, that allows me to dream up anything supernatural I want in order to counter it. So I claim that all ghost phenomenon is caused by the capricious activity of the Jovian teacup.

As for belief, I have to ask at what threshold of consensus does belief begin to cause something to come into existence. Is Bertrand Russell's belief good enough for the teacup or does it take the entire population of ancient Greece to bring about Zeus's existence.

 

[B_625girth]

it's load of BS. and anyone could start his own show. rattle a chain in the next room or attic. tie a fishing line to a chair and tug on the line so the chair moves. and they are inaccurate, one show said voodoo had traces of the Catholic religion in it. that is false. voodoo is one thing, Catholic another. in the Carribean, the people were taught the Catholic faith by missionaries, and the people combined voodoo and some of the Cathoilic teachings on their own. this combined belief has a name of its own, I just can't think of it.

 

[Calboner]

Here is my favorite ghost-hunting show: Penn and Teller, Bullshit!, season 3, "Ghostbusters" (watch it here). Correction: Apparently the show web site does not have whole episodes but only short excerpts.

Non existent things all classify as incorporeal, too.

Pithy!

Science, by its very definition, cannot prove nor disprove supernatural phenomenon. Anything that is truly supernatural cannot be replicated or tested by science because science only applies to the natural. I know you know this.

It seems to me that you are trying to have things both ways: you claim that ghosts and the like have been observed, yet that they are supernatural. But if something is actually observed, and not merely fantasized, then it must exist in space and time, and interact with other observable things in space and time, such as our sensory organs: so it can only be a natural phenomenon if it is anything at all. But when someone wants to subject these putative observations to scientific examination, you say that science cannot prove or disprove them because they pertain to "supernatural" phenomena. But you can't have it both ways. Either ghosts and the like are natural phenomena, in which case their existence can be proved by the same standards of reasoning that allow us to prove the existence of other natural phenomena, or they are mere figments of people's imagination.

 

[Calboner]

By the way, here is a grammar lesson that a number of posters need to learn:

phenomenon, singular noun

phenomena, plural noun

 

[Axcess]

I think it was Bertrand Russell who created a parable about this. He says that he believes that there is an extremely small teacup in orbit around the planet Jupiter. It is too small to be detected by any of our scientific instruments.

His challenge is to those who would disbelieve him to prove the teacup is not there. And he would also ask why anyone would be so close minded and unimaginative as to reject the notion of his orbiting teacup without any evidence to back them up.

The point is that there is no physical evidence that ghosts exist. There has never been a verifiable reproducible measurement of any physical parameter that would support the notion of supernatural ghosts. Finally, the only thing I have heard offered here that supports the existence of ghosts is that a lot of people believe in them. How many people have to have the same delusion before the object of the delusion is real? Russell was the only one to make claims about his Jovian teacup. Is that not enough belief to make it real?

So what about Zeus? There was a time when half the civilized world believed in Zeus. Did that make him more real than the orbiting teacup?

You are right in everything that you said about the believe in the supernatural stuff in your posts but the same can be said about all beliefs and religions including christianity . The probability or the odds of the christian god existing ( and the gods of others religions ) is the same in my eyes as the probability of zeus and other
" supernatural " stuff of being real .

 

[Phil Ayesho]

It seems to me that you are trying to have things both ways: you claim that ghosts and the like have been observed, yet that they are supernatural.

For one offering grammer lessons you demonstrate a poor reading comprehension.
I never said any such thing. People OBSERVE things. Some of them CLAIM these are observations are of ghosts.

That in no way implies that "ghosts...have been observed". It merely implies that people are claiming to have observed supernatural phenomena.

I DO not state that these are observations of the supernatural, because there is no evidence of anything supernatural.

And I discounted the idea that "supernatural" things can not be "recorded" even though they can be perceived with the same argument you make... that anything external that can be perceived must be, by definition, phenomenologically natural.

Photons are photons and human eyes only see certain wavelengths of photons.

If "ghosts" are external phenomena... then they MUST be interacting naturally for us to be able to perceive them. They must exude photons in the wavelengths we can see, or they must reflect photons in those wavelengths.

But when someone wants to subject these putative observations to scientific examination, you say that science cannot prove or disprove them because they pertain to "supernatural" phenomena. But you can't have it both ways. Either ghosts and the like are natural phenomena, in which case their existence can be proved by the same standards of reasoning that allow us to prove the existence of other natural phenomena, or they are mere figments of people's imagination.

Um, perhaps you are mistaking my posts for Stapled's?
I argued that IF they are external, and IF we are perceiving them, then science can absolutely detect the thing itself... OR the EFFECT the thing itself is generating that renders it perceivable.


However... ALL perception is illusory. There is no substantive external experience that is not a fantasy of the human mind.

Your eyes react to photons of a very narrow range of energy... and do not send PICTURES to your brain... they send DATA to your brian... and your brain creates the experience of color... of volume, of distance.

The natural world, in reality, has no quality definable as 'color'- no 'smell'.


It is precisely because our inner image of an external world is a fabrication of our brain that we can not trust what we imagine we are perceiving.


As an artist, I do not have to make a thing even remotely accurate- I do not have to sculpt hair as individual strands... all I have to do is create in the viewer's eye a pattern that is similar to something with which they are familiar. A pattern similar enough to hair, in the right context, and the viewer's brain will DECIDE that that pattern is hair, and actually SEE detail in the sculpture that I did not have to put in.

We can see a bunny in a cloudscape...


But more importantly... we can perceive something ambiguous, that creates areas of contrast in our visual field... like the scorch marks on a cheese sandwich, and our brain make the decision that is is a human shape... a face, a figure...

We are perceiving something external... but our brain embellishes this perception to fit it into a worldview that seems sensible to us.

Ergo.. these people are actually PERCEIVING human apparitions... yet there actually are no human apparitions.... their perceptions, predicated on actual stimuli, are false due to assumptions made by their brain in trying to make sense of ambiguous stimuli.



Beyond that... the only reasonable argument for seeing ghosts ( and the ones the believer NEVER offer ) is that there is NO external thing at all. That perception of spirits happens in the mind only... that they are ideas that manifest in our consciousness as if perceived... but that there is nothing we can record with instruments because there actually is no external phenomenon to reocrd...

This would get around the fact that there is no physical evidence... since it suggest ghosts manifest in thought alone. But if this is the case, then there should be no photographic images at all that people could claim are ghosts.

However... if we accept this postulate... that the supernatural manifests in the incorporeal world of thought, only... then we abandon any hope of discrimination between delusion, and the supernatural.

The guy who says God told him to kill must be assumed to be acting on REAL supernatural input that manifests only in his mind.

We no longer have any basis on which to judge the validity of any claim... and we render fantasy the equivalent of reality.


Or- we accept that the only plausible explanation of ghosts is to be found in scientific findings that human beings are poor observers... that we jump to conclusions that support our worldview... that our brains seek patterns and often erroneously find recognizable patterns in ambiguous noise.
That we are, provably, subject to optical, sensory and auditory illusion... and that we are prone to fantasize the world to be the way that we find most comforting.

Internal experience is not evidence of anything external.
Your perceptions of the world tell you more about the nature of perception than they do about the world.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

And what if nobody ever believed the yet-to-be-proven to be possible?

Belief is not what proved the "yet to be proven"...
EVIDENCE is.

Hypothesis is nothing.... Theory is everything.

Marconi did not 'believe' in radio waves... he demonstrated them.

And the idea of "radio waves" was offered as an explanation of phenomena that WERE being documented and recorded.
The explanation posited a condition that, if correct, would result in certain, definable consequences... and when people LOOKED for evidence of those predicted consequences... they FOUND precisely what was predicted.

You have NARRATIVE... a storyline... you have no theory of how such a storyline could be true, no notion or suggestion of what mechanics might be involved... no description of forces that might be responsible.



What everything ever "proven to be true" has in common was that people had actual evidence and events that they could try and test and replicate.

So, fine... pony up the evidence...


Toss out ideas all day long... until you toss out an idea that can be tested... you're just spewing hot air and nonsense.

 

[Not_Punny]

Seriously, if any dead stayed behind, why would it be to visit a damn museum? They've obviously got some kind of agenda (or they've come up with one, if they're not here by choice), and visiting the old saw mill isn't one part of it.

Maybe the dead come back to visit the places they never bothered to when they were alive.:biggrin1:

Faith NEVER moved a mountain.
A bulldozer and some dynamite, actually will.

Yes, but before any of that can happen something has to imagine the moving of the mountain, and some as-yet-unquantifiable thing invented and improved upon the steam engine.

There are some things you just cannot explain. I have been hit by them, followed by them and in one particular case been under what is known as a psychic attack.

I have witnessed these as well.

Finally, the only thing I have heard offered here that supports the existence of ghosts is that a lot of people believe in them. How many people have to have the same delusion before the object of the delusion is real?

The majority of humans on this planet believe in SOME kind of religion that involves ongoing life after death. However, no one can prove heaven, hell or nirvana.

BUT if someone can prove the existence of ghosts, then life after death "must be true."

Which is what the majority of human beings want to believe.

So is it really any wonder why ghost shows are so popular?

 

[Not_Punny]

"Electricity" didn't exist in human knowledge until it was discovered.

I believe that we have only scratched the surface of things to be known. And I believe that the more we question, search and probe, the more we will learn.

Beliefs are aspirin for the human soul.

But the process of challenging beliefs is better than merely believing. The progress of humanity depends on it.

* buys a large bag of popcorn to sit back and watch the next one hundred years *

 

[Calboner]

For one offering grammer lessons you demonstrate a poor reading comprehension.
I never said any such thing.

Poor reading comprehension? Well, let's see: my comment, which you quote, appeared in my post immediately following a quotation of a comment by Jason_els. If you devoted a little less energy to venting your spleen and more to reading what you are replying to, I think that you would see that my comment was not addressed to you. You might even have noticed that the position that I was expressing was in agreement with the one that you had expressed up to that point.