Spirits and other incorporial things

Sidelined All I was trying to say is that I don't have a clue what was going on and nobody has ever given me a possible explanation which is any more credible than my own theory (rather, postualation as it certainly isn't a theory by scientific defininition)All I have ever stated in this thread is evidence from my own senses. Unlike some people, I would not automatically assume that I am insane rather than be really observing a real phenomena caused by something as yet unexplained by science.
The odd one or two things could be swept away perhaps but there are just so many things that I have no explanation for.Just offer me another possible explanation that is at least as plausible as mine and i will entertain the possibility that mine is wrong. Can you say the same?I know you can probably site a bunch of cases where a skeptical shrink has picked holes in stories of alien abduction and stuff. Just bear in mind how many false memories are also created by such shrinks and how many times they get it wrong. Most in my opinion. I wouldn't trust a debunking psychologist as far as I could throw one. They, like others, set out simply to disprove what they already know (by some beleif method rather than science) is wrong. This isn't open mindedness!PY

Ifen Why not?
Isn't that what scientists are doing to explain the missing mass in the universe? Positing an unknown and as yet untestable suggestion?Isn't telekinesis often given as the explanation for poltergeist activity rather than accept that there may be actual ghosts there?
How can you explain something with a solution which doesn't exist?
Obviously these people beleive it is more likely for an adolescent to have some form of uncontrollable unknown ability than it is for ghosts to be throwing stuff about.Bit of a double standard here I think.PY

It's not untestable - the gravity of that mass is undeniably there. On talk radio, maybe. I've never heard this explanation offered by scientists.

First of all I have to state that I've very little knowledge and even less experience with this stuff.I know often the "activity" of ghosts, poltergeists etc. has turned out to be either frauds or misunderstandings so it's tough to weed out. The other thing is most forces are there to study. Tough as it's been to understand gravity it is at least always there when you want to study it.You seem to be citing western phenomena and theories. India and Tibet have there own lore on special abilities and supernatural entities.
It think Tibetan Buddhism has the most sophisticated stance I've come across. It sees deities and demons as creations projected from the mind. This goes beyond halucination, they are held to be a valid energy or thought form. However, the goal of the aspirant is to recognize the basic creative power of the mind and then these created forms are dissolved back into it. Reading about the Indian and Tibetan approach might give you some new perspectives on all this.lfen

Well, they would not be "completely unknown". One school of thought agrees with you somewhat in that these non-corporeal entities DO interact with humans in various ways.
The other school of thought labels all such events into imagination and fantasy, much like unicorns, leprichauns, and fairies.A science- minded and logical person will most likely NEVER be convinced of such a realm EVEN if subjected to an experience similar to what you or I have experienced. By nature, a logical person will attempt to seek explanations that are measureable, verifiable, and that make sense. I would venture to say that many of us who DO believe in such supernatural and unexplainable entities are predisposed to acceptance and even desire of such reality.

Do you mean that IF such an entity existed, the mass would HAVE to be measureable? What if such entities could use the bodies of those already present? They would thus be unmeasureable since all that would be observable would be the people already present?
1) They would be figments of ones imagination.
OR
2) They would be otherworldly yet would influence susceptible people.

What do you mean by "entity"? Does a meme meet your definition? Sort of like software code. The code that results in someone doing something disapproved of would be a demon entity, and a meme that results in someone doing something approved of would be divine entity.This view says these entities are information and hence must be executed by some pre existing structure. This of course is not a supernatural explanation."Susceptible" seems to me an important criterion, but it points to hynotic susceptiblity i.e. active receptive imagination often with good intelligence so I'm not saying "stupid" but rather sensitive and susceptible.lfen

The author of this book undertakes a rational study of a documented event that he believes is likely evidence for spontaneous human combustion hereafter noted as SHC. SHC is not supernatural but is controversial. The author has a strong science background and related the documented circumstances of a woman found burned to ashes in a chair in her apartment in a circle of scorched rug. However the flames did not go on to start an apartment wide fire.I was impressed on reading the event as the author protrayed it and thought well maybe there is something to this stuff. Then an internet search turned up alternative information some of which the author gave. The woman was a smoker who took a sleeping pill before retiring and she was also fat. The documented account clearly support the interpretation that she had taken a sleeping pill, sat in her chair and lit a cigarette. If she nodded off and caught her clothing on fire, or the chair once it was hot enough her body fat would be melted and fuel the flames enough to almost completely incinerate her.Having to choose between this sequence and SHC explanation I choose the former.The point I'm making is that I was almost convinced of the possiblity of an implausible scenario based on incomplete evidence and persuasive presentation. Most of these stories of supernatural things have far less documentation and are presented with a heavier investment in persuassion. It's just not enough to go on for me. I fall back to the more plausible explanation of suggestibility, perceptual error, seizing on a traditional explanation rather than looking at other possibilities. The quantity of data is maybe adequate but it's usually of poor quality. I'm reminded of all the studies on the variability of eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony is not that reliable. That is how stage magician as well as con men do there tricks. The human sensory system has flaws, it can be deceived and is.So I'm sticking with science and skepticism until better data and testing is developed. Or for an adolescent to express their emotional turmoil by breaking dishes and disclaiming responsibility, so on and so on, etc?lfen

I was talking about the dark matter that she was referring to - though we have no specific observations of dark matter, nor a clear idea of what it is, we do know it's there, because its mass is what holds the galaxy together. Then we could detect them through their influence on those bodies.But if you're saying that spirits or gods or whatever never act in ways that are any different than the stuff that normally goes on, then what on earth are they being used to explain?

Hey Crash.First up, quit calling me "she"
I have a wife and kids and last time i checked I was male.If you need proof of that then.. heck we live in the same town. I can come round and talk to you in personOn a more serious note though, from what I understand of dark matter (which isn't that much I admit), it is an undefined something which must be there in some form in order to make the rest of the universe make sense. Nobody has seen it. Nobody has touched it. Nobody has directly measured it. All the evidence we have for its existence is a gap in science that has to be filed with something.Does that about sum it up or am I wrong here?In that case it is in fact a postulation and has not yet been elevated to a theory.What if the missing matter is actually something else. Maybe not matter at all, after all DM is not really matter as we normally understand the term.What if phsychic energy is the reason behind the apparent discrepency rather than DM? To me either postulation is equally valid. They are both just ideas to explain the data.This is obviously a gross oversimplification of the situation but it still makes the point.PY

Phatboy This explains my problem pretty well.I like to think of myself as a very scientific minded person. I never really accept anything on faith without seeing it tested and proved. There are even parts of general relativity that I personally don't agree with as I can see other explanations that make just as much or even more sense to me. But that is way off topic so I won't go into it.
If I hadn't had all of these experiences personally I would be on the other side of the debate here. On the one hand I want to see proof as much as the next person but on the other I have the proof of my own senses which, in a court of law would be all that is needed to get someone the death penalty. Apparently it means nothing in science though.PYThis message has been edited by PurpleYouko, 12-05-2004 01:36 PM

You are way over simplifying this. Eyewitness testimony can successfully be impeached on a vartiety of grounds. And I'm not sure it means nothing in science but in and of itself it is not sufficient.I'm not sure what you mean by being "science minded" but you seem to fail to grasp some important foundations of science. Relativity is grounded in the mathmatical formulations that can either be proved or disproved. The proof of a scientific theory is not that the explanation makes sense to me, or to you, but that the theory holds up to the scrutiny of peers. I don't understand the math so I take the consensus of physists who can do the math.Your statements here increase my skepticism about your observations. I think that what you experienced was if not sourced and least heavily modified by your beliefs. Nothing unusual in that it's just how the nervous system works, but it's more likely that it was an artifact of your brain function rather than a source external to your physical organism. Subjectivity then accounts for capricious and highly variable discriptions of these phenomena as ghosts, spirits, telekineses, poltergists, etc.I believe your time would be more productively spent learning how your mind has produced these experiences as there is something known about that. There is very little cause to believe you will ever find an external source as it's most likely it doesn't exist.lfen

Well I would need some more background as concerns the ESP and telekenisis however you state in one post the following. I will assume,for the moment,that by encountered you actually saw these entities? If so then they are amenable to scientific investigation since light waves are required to stimulate your sight.Anything outside of your own brains states that are capable of producing an image necesitate the use of a light source.An incorporeal entity implies being incapable of such a phenomena.Have I misunderstood what you mean here?

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"Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."
--Don Hirschberg

Phatboy The appearence of such phenomena is of course subject to many explanations and of course a person is entitled to their opinion, yet there were recent shows on T.V. that give a good example of the interplay of phenomena that have been debunked over and over and yet like the Kennedy asssasination still drum up new angles through the generations.One concerned the Roswell crash back in The '40,s and the other was about crop circles.The point that I once heard raised concerns this. Consider a race advanced enough to venture into space.Reagrdless of whatever the social structure of this alien race spacefaring from even the next nearest star by any means is an expensive,let me repeat that for proper emphasis, EXPENSIVE IN THE EXTREMEventure.Now after the unbelievebly intricate delicasy of travel across unimaginable gulfs of space these aliens of superior intellect and technical prowess crash when they get here or in the other case find it necessary to leave geometrical diagrams in fields of cereal.Perhaps I am being thick but I think given the level of poor imagination demonstrated by these aliens would it actually be a good idea to even bother trying to find them?

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"Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."
--Don Hirschberg

I apologize, but in my defense:1) "Youko" is a female name.
2) Your avatar is a catgirl. It's a lot less mysterious than you make it sound. We detect the gravity of a great deal of mass in the galaxy that we cannot see. Since we can only see the mass that is in stars (because it's luminous) that's not especially surprising. Of course no one's touched it or observed it - it's millions of lightyears away.There's no "gap in science" that we ad-hocced dark matter to fill. We detect it, quite plainly, from its demonstratable gravitational effect on the galaxy. Why would "psychic energy" have gravity? If it had such a powerful force that it could hold the galaxy together, then why does the "psychic energy" conviniently evaporate in laboratory settings?