Spirits and other incorporial things

Technically, they have more evidence than you do. All the evidence you have are memories, which we have proven over many times that they cannot be trusted.Memories aren't like photographs where everything stays the same. Over the years, things are added onto them and in some cases they become comletely different things. The phenomenon is called false memory syndrome. I have false memories just like everybody else. Tell you the truth, I can remember things that never happenned.I am not trying to say that you are wrong. I don't know you and I don't have enough evidence to go either way, though the total lack of evidence would lead me to believe that there were no such things that you described.My question is how come claims of paranormal activities almost always have no evidence at all? Even when there are photographs or video, they would be out of focus.

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Well, it's not just an unfounded theory. There have been experiments that showed that you can reproduce the same kinds of paranormal experience in laboratory conditions.Take alien abduction, for example. Scientists have been able to observe people being "abducted" in laboratories. After those experiments, all of the subjects swore that they were indeed abducted by aliens the previous night when in fact they were in the the beds in the lab the whole time. What happenned? The scientists didn't do anything. Those people experienced what we call sleep paralysis.So, when you speak of eye witness accounts, you need to also think of the eye witnesses that you are talking about. Untrained people tend to jump to conclusions at the slightest hint of whatever it is they are looking for. Combine that with a simple dream, many years afterward, and false memory syndrome and you get a fantastic story of paranormal experience.In laboratory conditions, scientists have video footages that can prove that things happenned. People's memories versus video tapes. You decide which ones are more reliable. As an objective person, I completely agree. There is one thing we know for certain. What we don't know is a lot more than what we do know. Yup. I've always wondered why psychic powers don't work if we have an unbeliever in the room. Just why is that?I've read many accounts and I've been to one of those psychic readings with some friends. They all seem to share the same introduction: if there is an unbeliever in this room, my "gift" won't work.I mean, what the hell is that? Does a tv not work if you don't believe in it? Does your computer not work if you don't believe in it? Here is why. Science deal with things that are consistent and things that can have a direct effect to their surrounding environment. By definition, supernatural "stuff" are not consistent and by golly they don't seem to have any affect on their surrounding environment.If we can't measure or see, how the hell can we find out how much the car weighs?

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Well, you are half way right but not completely. There seem to be certain mindset that sets out to disprove something that doesn't agree with conventional view because that is exactly the case. Officially, that is what a scientist is suppose to do, set out with the goal to disprove anything that isn't conventional. When he realizes that he can't disprove it, then it becomes part of the conventional.In a way, modern science is largely influenced by 2 major philosophies of all times: Pragmatism and Skepticism. According to both of these philosophies, you question before you believe. The purpose is to avoid any possibility of "group think" in which one agrees simply because everybody else seems to agree.So, if there is something that comes up that isn't part of mainstream science, it will have to stand up to much scrutiny before it can be accepted as part of modern science. A classic example is the big bang theory. There was a time when almost every physicist and astronomer in the world was skeptical of the theory. Well, in a way you are right but in another way you are wrong. It is science's greatest strength to criticize itself and any new aspect of it. It was a great leap foward when philosophers came up with skepticism and showed that the old scientific method (if there was such a thing), which was based heavily on indoctrination and conclusion-before-experimentation, was inadequate when dealing with direct observations.For example, projectiles when fired parallel to teh ground seemed to always fall in a parabolic shape, and yet people insisted that they go in a straight line and take a 90 degree turn toward the ground when they run out of "horizontal energy" as was predicted by Aristotle.So, I would say that what you described is a weakness because sometimes it takes a long time for progressive ideas to be accepted. However, it is also one of science's greatest strength because it weeds out the "crackpot" ideas that people come up with. An example is creationism You are right. Right now the official name for it is dark matter. We also have a name for such matter. It is called neutrinos. Pretty cool hypothesis. I believe there are those that are trying to make the study of supernatural phenomenon a valid branch of science. However, this group of people are currently standing up to scientific scrutiny that darwinists used to face. You are right. However, it does prove that at least some of the reported cases of alien abductions are nothing more than sleep paralysis and that we need to be critical, not necessarily skeptical, of alien abduction in general. Truer words can't be said.

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But how are you suppose to know if the "theory" is valid or not unless you've illuminated every possibility that could potentially make the thoery invalid? The only way for you to be able to illuminate those possibilities is to be skeptical of the theory itself and seek out and investigate those possibilities.It may seem like closemindedness but I assure you it is the best way to make sure mainstream science doesn't turn into a joke.Besides, if a theory is really valid, why would it be afraid to stand up to scrutiny?

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That's right, blame it on poor me.Added by edit.For the remote possibility that some people might want to compare science's belief in the existence of DM and DE and people's belief in spirits and ghosts, here is why you can't compare the 2.Suppose you take a walk throught the woods and you come across a really deep and big footprint. You might think "hey, there's some kind of big animal I haven't seen before. Wow!" Well, some months later, you come across another set of footprints that are identical to the last one and you say "wow, big animal." You go back to your town and you want to assemble a searching party to seek out this big animal that's been leaving behind footprints.When you are trying to convince your fellow townsmen about the footprints, someone says "hey, why don't we start looking for ghosts and spirits too? The town's crazy man keeps saying that he sees ghosts and spirits."My question is which set of evidence do you think is more worthy to note? The words of the town's madman or the set of footprints that anyone can take a look himself?You can't compare scientific theoretical concepts to things like ghosts and spirits.This message has been edited by Lam, 12-09-2004 11:44 AM

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When I said you, I didn't really mean "you you". I meant "generally, you..." Yup, because back then there was no evidence for it whatsoever... actually, DM was already firmly established 50 years ago.But anyway, the point is if someone suggested that Uranus was on it's side rather than its south pole 50 years ago, it would have been justly deemed as a crackpot idea simply because there was absolutely no evidence for it.If we start considering every crackpot idea without any evidence, we might as well start teaching the existence of pink unicorns and centaurs. It doesn't mean that they will do so either. This is the way science works. If there's no evidence for it, it's kinda silly to believe in it, doesn't it?

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That's just it, people have been giving the paranormal serious time and effort for centuries before they gave up because of lack of evidence and predictability.Besides, if something is truely paranormal, our scientific instruments wouldn't be able to detect it at all, wouldn't you agree? If our instruments can detect these things, then they are not paranormal at all. Science is designed to investigate things that are predictable (to some level at least) and things that are repeatable. Based on what we perceive the paranormal is, it's just not possible for conventional science to do much with the paranormal.You mentioned before that you are a chemist. Would you like to propose an experiment (hypothetical situation, of course) that might produce consistent results to imply the existence of the paranormal?Added by edit.Coincidently, here is a picture of the person, my idol, that first proposed the existence of DM to explain the behavior of the galaxies in 1933 (I believe). This message has been edited by Lam, 12-09-2004 03:14 PM

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Oh yeah, I forgot to say his name. The brilliant astronomer above is Fritz Swicky.