Spirits and other incorporial things

Hi AdminPhat,I don't think the two topics are that close. The other topic is more focused on Christian and religious doctrine or tales of demons and angels. PY's seems to not be approaching this from any doctrine but from naive experience and asking is this evidence of non corporeal entities or something else. I fear that unless the demon and angels topic is widen considerable the discussion we are having here will be deemed off topic and shut down. It seems to me that the two threads though they may be complementary are not identical and should both be allowed to continue.lfen

AdminPhatI have to agree with Ifen here. The thread as it is has absolutely nothing to do with Angels or Demons. It is more to do with the discussion of possible explanation for observed (or imagined) phenomena.
Further, it is attempting to find a way that such things can be rationalized through science.
I don't think this would be considered "on-topic" in a thread dedicated to Angels and Demons which are clearly based in religion and not science.PY

Hey Dormamu.You need to post the reference to my initial message about relativity in your new proposed thread. Otherwise it might not get accepted!See you there.PY

PY,Have you read Lyall Watson's book LIFETIDE? I just checked it out and have only given it a cursory overview. Seems like it is dealing with some of the stuff you are and using some of Jung's notions of collective unconscious to account for some of the phenomena. I have trouble with that but it is interesting.Lyall also seems to accept the fairy photographs that wowed Arther Conan Doyle but to modern eyes, except for Lyall's??? are clearly faked with drawings of fairies stuck in bushes so I'm worried about Lyall's credulity.It turns out he also wrote THE ROMEO ERROR, which I read decades ago and was impressed with and might be useful to revive a thread here. In that books he discusses the various accounts of people coming back to life after being pronounced dead. Three days in a coma with no visible signs of life (barring modern instrumentation at least) seems to have have happened in various periods, the victorians seems to be very concerned about premature burial, which presents an interesting challenge to Christian accounts and doctrines.lfen

No I haven't read that one.It has actually been quite a while since I really looked into this stuff much. This thread has rekindled my interest. What do you mean they were fake? Those fairys were obviously real. Anyone can see that!
Just kidding Does kind of make you wonder at his credulity though doesn't it. I will try to find it at the local library.Interesting thought about comas. I wonder what Lazerus would have thought of that? PY

The author of the book on Spontaneous Human Combustion showed the same startling lapse into credulity. I think the important thing is it keeps us humble. Very bright well educated professionals can have lapses particularly when then are dealing with issues not directly in their discipline. Randi offers that as an explanation of the scientist who tested Uri Geller and thought he wasn't cheating. They weren't used to dealing with cheats and their experimental controls were inadequate. Randi being a stage magician had the know how to construct tests that Uri couldn't get around.We are each of us fallible humans and make mistakes. Lyall is a very readable author on these subjects and raises some interesting questions, I'll give him that.lfen

Thanks for the feedback and advice, Ifen. You too, Purple Youko!
Scientific inquiry and hypothesis are not my cup of tea, but I can and will respect your efforts towards logical comprehension and communication in this "incorporial" field of study. Carry on, then!

lfen says: Actualy when I started this thread it was meant to deal with the question of how beings could be incorporial, and if it was possible for something to be made out of nothing.We have, since then, begun dicussing possible materialistic explainations of spirits and whether there is any rational basis for beleving in their exsistance.The thread is meant to adress the scientific validity of claims about the paranormal. Praticualry in regard to incorporial beings (ghosts angels and demons included).Incorporiality was the main point, hence our discussions about dark matter etc.

I'm not sure what your point is. You want this thread closed and the discussion taken over to the thread about demons and angels?lfen

I believe that our topic starter, The Dread Dormammu, wants us to focus on this: Dread Dormammu, Am I correct in assuming that you wish the concept of incorporealism to extend beyond the religious definitions of Angels and Demons?This message has been edited by AdminPhat, 12-08-2004 12:23 AM

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.

AdminPhat says: Yes. Religous beleifs may motivate specualtion about incorporial beings but I am more interested in hypotheies about how these beings supposedly operate.Actualy I think the question I was realy interested in was answerd in post 22 by Mr jack, when he said: I feel satisfied that my question about what spirits are "made out of" has been answerd. (Though I hasten to add this has not rekindeled my belief in them).If others still want to Discuss PY's claims I have no qualms about that. But I don;t think anyone has anything more to say about incoporiality. Perhaps I am wrong.

Glad we got that cleared up then.We don't really have a definition of dark matter then, other than to say that is is the name that will be given to the something that is causing the gravity effects that have been observed, if and when we actually find it. Sounds like a bit of a cop out really. Whatever we find, there's your dark matter!That is more or less what I have said all along. Lots of stuff could possibly emulate gravity I should think. How about a bunch of microscopic aliens with really big tractor beams?
How about effects bleading over from alternate universes.I have never seen these things of course but I can infer their existence from the observed effects. Just like dark matter really.But then by your own definition of dark matter, if we were to discover that it really is a bunch of microscopic (even sub atomic) aliens with big tractor beams, then they would be defined as "dark matter" wouldn't they?The only "silly" thing is to fixate on one theoetical answer to the exclusion of all others.PY

Not so. It's simply the non-luminous matter that contitutes the bulk of the galaxy's mass. That's the definition. Yes. Given that we see and observe gravity occuring everywhere we look, and we've never seen anything else that does the same thing, why should we start assuming that the invisible angels are responsible for something we can explain with gravity? If they were non-luminous, perhaps. Though we might decide to call them by what they call themselves. But gravity isn't theoretical. It's observed - it's the only thing like it that we've observed. That's why we prefer it to all the unoberved, entirely theoretical nonsense that you or I could come up with.

Why keep coming back to gravity?
I am not attempting to refute that effects have been observed which are (only) explanable by the presence of something which has apparent gravity.You are still left with an entirely theoretical substance which we choose to call "dark matter"All you can truly say about the stuff with absolute certainty is that something is there which has an effect on its surroundings, which appears to be gravity. That is a pretty vague description. Basicly something is there but we can't see it.
Also if it makes up the majority of the Galaxy's mass then would it be safe to assume that there has to be at least some of it right here on Earth? (incidentally that is not rhetorical. I would actually like to know the currently held view on this)If the answer to that question is yes then why can't we detect it, find it, pick it up etc. If no then how come it isn't in this particular part of the Galaxy.Also the term "non-luminous matter" implies some kind of unknown form of matter which (to my knowledge) nobody has ever even proposed a structure for.The whole argument boils down to this.
There is something there. It must be astronomically huge. We can't directly observe it but we infer its existence by observed phenomena which can only be explained by its presense.And I still think this is off topic since it has never been seriously suggested that ghosts and spirits (or the Angels that you keep coming up with) have any relationship to dark matter.PY