Spirits and other incorporial things

Yeah, but that kind of mental dissociation happens. It's been the explanation for plenty of other phenomenon. On the other hand, "ghosts" has never turned out to be the explanation for anything.So, I think you're being unfair. I agree that these sort of psychological suppositions are largely ad-hoc; but it's certainly better than inventing an entire system of supernatural spirits that can somehow affect the natural world without a physical presence, all based on one mysterious occurance.Like, I saw a TV show the other day where, in a lighthouse that was supposed to be haunted, they were able to film a metal chair move, on it's own, in fits and starts across a totally level floor. There was only one door into the room and a researcher who had just left that room (and had been sitting on the chair) was able to verify that nobody had gone past him, and the camera could see both the door and the chair.There was nobody there to move the chair, and it moved on its own. Why? They said "ghosts." I say, it was a metal chair, in a lighthouse with enormous electric power use. Could magnetic fields have moved the chair? I don't know. But developing an entire theory of ghosts and spectres from one hopping chair is just ridiculous.To sum up, we just need to feel free to say "I don't know" a little more often. If ghosts exist, we would have found them by now. Plenty of scientists and science-minded folk have died, some presumably in gruesome, ghost-forming ways. How come they don't help us solve this mystery from beyond the grave? Surely they realize they're in a position to do so.

Yeah, and what I'm saying is, it's a better excuse than ghosts. Way better. While sometimes we posit psychological disease where there is no other evidence of it, psychological disease has very often turned out to be a legitimate explanation. That's never been the case with ghosts, so when given the choice to explain via psychology or via ghosts, we choose psychology every time. And I answered it. It's better because it's been right more often. "Ghosts" has bever been right. Most likely? Not ghosts. That's my point. "Ghosts" is not likely to be the explanation for these things. Unfortunately, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data." But it's not the same kind of thing. It's all kinds of different things, from chills and sensations of cold to bizzare almost-voices in radio static to objects appearing in strange places to outright visual manifestations.My dad teaches theatre at a state university in my hometown. His theatre is haunted, like all theatres. Their ghost manifests itself as a pair of boots. By dad swears that the ghost is real, but at the end of the day, all the reason he has to believe this is somebody's abandoned boots.

Or, say, the massive arcs created by the carbon-arc lamps used in lighthouses?At the very least, the lighthouse has a motor to rotate the reflector around the lamp. Maybe it generates enough magentism?Hell, I don't know. I'm just kicking around stuff that, as far as I can tell, the so-called "paranormal researchers" didn't even consider. I do appreciate your input though. Very (if you'll pardon the pun) illuminating.

Well, I mean, look. We know how eyes work. Light comes in and causes chemical reactions in the cells of the retina.So how does this "spirit sight" work, exactly? How do you see something that light won't bounce off? I bet you never even thought to ask that question.And that's why this whole endeavor is so dubious. Not only have you posited ghosts and angels and demons who interact with the world, you have a commensurate unknown mechanism through which they do that. In addition you have the unknown mechanism of an unknown sense that allows some people to percieve these transient entities, and an unknown pathway by which that sensory information enters the brain.There's a whole lot of unknown, unobserved secondary effects to this proposition. On the other hand, the hypothesis that your friends either hallucinated it or are lying about it requires absolutely no hitherto-unknown mechanisms or entities. Rather, these explanations rely only on phenomena and motivations that we already know exist - the capacity of imagination to fool memory, the capacity of humans to lie about experiences to fit in with their peers, the capacity of humans to repeat a lie so often that they remember it as the truth. (I'm ashamed to say that there are certain aspects of my life where I'm not sure what really happened, and what only happened in the lie I told to cover it up. So I know this can happen.)I'm sorry. I just don't see your supernatural explanations as any more credible than fantasy. It's simply much more likely that your friends did not really have the experiences you say they said they had.

Yes. Until we had explanations of the mechanisms - observations of germs, expanding space, and quantum particles - those would have been dubious theories.You can't seem to tell the difference between me saying that all this ghost/angel/demon stuff is outright wrong, and me saying that we don't know if it's right or not. There's a scientific process to be followed, one that ensures that theories develop not from speculation or (worse) superstition, but from verifiable observation. What makes this whole business so dubious is that nobody seems to be able to develop a theory of ghosts without violating that process. If the only way to believe in ghosts is to cheat your reason, well, that doesn't give me much confidence in your ideas about the supernatural. As of yet, there never has been a supernatural experience. We've always been able to explain these phenomena with entirely natural means. Now, there's plenty of stuff we haven't explained yet, but jumping to conclusions that require rewriting everything we know about the universe and reality, based on the testimony of some kids, isn't a reasonable position to take. Through verifiable observation. The same way I could prove you were real.

But I can determine which is more likely; by examining the methodology used to arrive at each conclusion. You arrived at your conclusion by taking superstition at face value. That process has never been accurate. On the other hand, everything we know about the world, we know via the scientific method. The first, obviously. By having my observation verified by anybody that wanted to look. On the other hand, I and many, many others have asked to see ghosts, but have not been able to. There are no verifiable observations of the supernatural.

I can and I'm going to. For the reasons I've already described. By having other people verify my observations of them. And, yes, I know where you're going with this; the term is called "solipsism." But here's the thing. It's possible that every single experience I have is simply a hallucination, or a simulacrum, or the Matrix. But assuming the simulacrum is perfect, it doesn't matter. The scientific method still makes accurate predictions about what I'll experience in the future, even if the phenomena it describes aren't actually real.Science is solipsism-proof. It doesn't matter if my DVD player is really real or not; the experience I have of watching a movie (tonight, we watched "Ed Wood"; great movie) is identical.But you want to be careful about invoking solipsism. It's like a dynamite vest that undermines not just my argument, but yours, too. I can easily turn it around and ask you how you know any of your experiences are real, and how you know that your friends even exist.

People redact their memories in the light of testimony from others. It's not so much that they're lying to fit in as it is that we use the same parts of our brains to replay memories as we do to recreate events as they are described to us.You may not see any reason to believe your friends are lying, and as far as they're able to tell, they may not be. But that still doesn't mean that they really experienced what they say they did.

Yes. I'm biased in favor of the evidence, and in favor of the methodologies that have had great success in the past. In other words I'm a reasonable person. Not "I know" but "at this point, it is best to conclude." I'm not saying that the supernatural doesn't, for sure, exist. The way that the "supernatural" is formulated, I can't say that. But I can say that, at this point, there's absolutely no reason to invoke supernatural explanations when the natural ones, relying on mechanisms that are already greatly understood, suffice completely.

Were you there? When they told you the story, did you get their three stories separately, or did they all three tell you at once?Look, if I want to see evidence of, say, natural selection, I can (and have) perform the experiments myself. But whenever I go to see ghosts, nothing happens. I'd be a bit more inclined to accept the "supernatural", or at the very least, a bit less likely to dismiss the reports out of hand, if supernatural experiences were something anyone could have whenever they wanted, in the way that scientific experiences are.

Why would fulfilled "prophecy" be supernatural? everybody knows that you can "fulfill" prophecy without supernatural intervention; hell, the Greeks figured this out in ancient times.Of course, despite your complaints, I don't actually remember you successfully defending a single example of real prophecy. All you've ever displayed on the subject is your ability to retrodact vague predictions into situations where they don't quite apply.

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.

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?

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?

OMG Bishonen! Which we term "dark matter." Whatever that winds up being, it'll be called "dark matter." Newton didn't know how gravity worked; that didn't stop him from calling it "gravity". (I know he didn't actually come up with the name.)Yes, it's "something." That something is called dark matter. It's exactly the reason, because whatever is exerting that gravitational pull, that's what dark matter is. So how would it be distinguished from gravity? This is as silly as asserting that, while gravity works for everyone else, the only thing holding me down in my chair are invisible angels pushing down on my shoulders.