Spirits and other incorporial things

This is a very interesting question Dormamu.
It is the one that has always given me the biggest problem when it comes to whether or not to believe in God or not.My dilema is that I grew up in a house that was quite obviously haunted by something, in fact a group of somethings, that equally obviously were not made of matter. At least they weren't matter as I understand the term.I was also brought up in the unusual position of having a religious mother and a non-religious father. However, both of them (also my younger brother and I) saw and experienced things which could not be explained by conventional science. Things moving on their own, strange inexplicable noises and voices from nowhere, the occasional sighting of some glowing figure walking through the house.In all there seemed to be 5 different entities (and I use that word loosely) inhabiting the house with us. None appeared to be malicious and at least one was almost a friend to me while I was young.As far as science goes I have no explanation for any of this. All I know is that something is going on that we can't catagorise with known scientific facts. Equally, religion tends to view such entities either as evil or as signs from God. I don't subscribe to either viewpoint. I just know something is there. This isn't faith. It is personal experience backed up by any number of family members and friends who have been there during inexplicable episodes and saw, felt, heard exactly the same as I did.I welcome anyone who would like to explain any of this in a logical and non biased manner.PYPS I seem to keep bumping into you Dormamu. Maybe I am drawn to the same threads as you.

Nope. Can't say that I did. We didn't actually own a video camera, tape recorder or anything beyond a very basic TV with 2 channels in those days.All this means is that I can't prove any of this stuff to you or anyone else. If you were there at the time then I assume that you would have saw, felt, heard the same as I did but from an evidence point of view, I don't have a jot of it. Just like I have no evidence to prove catagorically that I put on a clean shirt this morning. Completely besides the point I know, but I know I did just like I know what I saw. I have heard all the arguments about hallucination and group hysteria and I don't buy any of them. They have less evidence than I do. I saw what I saw while they are just making suppositions.All I am saying is that something inexplicable happened.PY

Hi Lam

quote:

---

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.

---

I have often wondered the same thing myself. I always watch all the shows I find that relate to this on TV and I am amazed that nobody has ever put forward one ounce of credible evidence (that I know of)for paranormal activities

quote:

---

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.

---

I don't quite agree with this but I do see your point. I would say that eyewitness testimony would always be considered as better evidence than someones unfounded theory to explain away what happened, particularly when the events were witnessed by multiple people who will all swear to the same story.I agree that memories become embelished over time and tend to become more exagerated with each retelling of the story. I recognize that in myself just as any rational and honest person has to. I have had dreams that have become very powerful memories and are extremely difficult if not impossible to distinguish from real life on occasion.Anyway, my point was that I propose that there are a lot of different things, states of matter (or not-matter) included, that science cannot explain (yet). My hope is that these kind of things can be investigated by mainstream science and not relegated to the realms of "crackpot" psychic investigators. Science in general does not seem willing to either beleive in or look for anything supernatural.Who knows? There might be a whole new feild of science just waiting to be discovered.PY

quote:

---

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.

---

The unfounded theory I was talking about was actually "group hysteria" which seems to be the favorite put down for anything involving masses (more than 2 or 3 anyway) of people who all see the same inexplicable thing at the same time. I don't know whether you were talking about the same thing or not since I don't know anything about these lab experiments regarding alien abduction.

quote:

---

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.

---

All very true and reasonable. It quite possibly explains a whole bunch of otherwise inexplicable things that people remember. In this particular case though, I am not refering to a single incident but to something that I lived with for 25 years with hardly a day going by without something strange happening.All I really know for sure is I grew up in one heck of a weird house. Something was totally not right about the place. I think it would be pushing it a little too far to assume that every one of my thousands of distinct memories is completely false. Some may be. Some may be exagerated. A few might be dreams even, but too much stuff happened over too long a period to dismiss it out of hand.

quote:

---

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.

---

Been there. Done that. Bought the T-Shirt. Came to exactly the same conclusion. I have yet to come across any kind of pshychic that isn't a bare faced charlatan (prove me wrong Anyone!) out to deceive the unwary and divest them of their cash.
I have tried all kinds of stuff to find sensible answers but either nobody has any or they ain't talking.

quote:

---

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.

---

This is the point where we might disagree depending on how open minded you are. From reading your posts in other threads I would say that you are pretty much so maybe you will see my point.Science does indeed deal with facts and reproducible universal constants but in certain scientific circles there does seem to be a certain mind set that sets out with the bias of dis-proving something simply because it doesn't quite agree with the conventional view. This has always been the case. Every scientist deviating from these views (with very few exceptions) has been initially greeted with ridicule or open hostility. There was a time when belief in a ball shaped world or that the sun doesn't revolve around the Earth, were punishable by all kinds of horrible things.I just feel that in some instances, science can be self blinding and this more than anything else, holds back the progress of new theories.Maybe there is something other than regular matter out there. Stuff that can pass through regular matter like it isn't there. Maybe "ghosts" or other "spirits" exist in another parallel universe but are occasionally able to affect ours.
I don't know the answers and I don't really know if anyone is seriously trying to find out. The fact that it is possible to reproduce "Alien abductions" in a controlled laboratory experiment does not prove that no real alien abductions have taken place. It just shows another possible explanation.It seems to me that this field has too many questions and not enough real answers.PY

So it looks as if we are pretty much in agreement across the board other than a few minor quibbles about scientific methodology. I still asert that some (but not all) scientists set out to disprove a proposal with a very closed mind and actively try to find information within the experimental results, which they can use to affirm their position that the thing in question doesn't exist or is preposterous or some other terminology. (takes a breath)It is very healthy to set out with a skeptical attitude when examining a hypothesis but is is unhealthy in the extreme when the sole reason for the investigation is to disprove the theory rather than discover the unbiased truth in it. If an honestly investigated experiment yeilds an unbiased result that refutes the hypothesis then science is one step closer to affirming that the hypothesis is wrong. This is not always the case though.
Sometimes it appears that scientists are so set in their ways as to almost be a religion where it is sacraligious to even suggest anything against the commonly (but not always correctly) held view.

quote:

---

PurpleYouko writes:
Maybe there is something other than regular matter out there.
You are right. Right now the official name for it is dark matter.

​

Stuff that can pass through regular matter like it isn't there.

​

We also have a name for such matter. It is called neutrinos.

---

I considered saying "other than dark matter" in my original comment. I don't think anyone has ever shown that dark matter exists on our planet but then I am not an expert in that field.Neutrinos are subatomic particles aren't they? I doubt they could be responsible for "ghost" sitings but who knows?Perhaps there are consciencious researchers out there who are really looking for answers with an unbiased mind. I hope there are. Trouble is that they are all likely to be labeled as cranks and crackpots and are very unlikely to get any serious funding for their research.
Take the "Ghostbusters" as an example of how people view this kind of research.
Yes I know they weren't real. Even my memories aren't quite that distorted
It is just that the story does kind of ring true in the sense that their funding got cut just as they were starting to make headway.PY

Lam

quote:

---

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 wasn't my point that you shouldn't try every known test in order to find alternative explanations. Just that you have to be willing to accept whatever result come out of those tests whether it agrees with your preconceptions and beleifs or not. If the honest answers back up your hunch that anything supernatural is a load of old tosh then so be it.
The only closed-mindedness would be that you can't just run a [i]few[/] of the hundreds of possible tests, find that they could point to other possible explanations and then just state catagorically that the supernatural doesn't exist. Some people will always see what they want to see in the experimental outcome of whatever they are testing. You just have to go into these tests with a complete lack of bias and that is very difficult to do. Science only works to its best effect in the total absense of preconceptions.So Yes, do do have to be skeptical but you also have to be willing to allow the hypothesis to be proved right. I also agree that any theory worth a damn has to be able to stand up to scrutiny provided that scrutiny is applied in a completely unbiased manner.PY

quote:

---

As to the reinforcement, I have no idea - I know nothing about this persons actual life experience or circumstances. The point was not that this is necessarily what happened - the point is that it is more plausible than immaterial spirits.

---

You're right. You don't. Neither does anybody else except those who were there.
I certainly don't take offence at your hypothesis as that was just what it was, a hypothetical possible alternative that may or may not explain what happened. I can assure you that this isn't the case but your Freudian theory would expect that response anyway so it is kind of pointless to do so.The point I totally disagree with is that this is a more plausible scenario that the possibility that something hitherto unknown (or at least not understood) by science, actually happened. This is the kind of negative bias that I have refered to previously.
The best you can really say, given the evidence (or lack thereof) for either proposed scenario, is that both arguments are equally valid until proved one way or the other. And since that is pretty much impossible in this particualar case due to the lack of photos, videos, tape recordings or phsychiatric evaluations, we would have to perform experiments on currently happening phenomenon to explain them one way or the other.PY

Dormamuyou said

quote:

---

Umm, wouldn't an even more plausable explination than repressed memories of sexual abuse (a pretty serious and disturbing claim), be that he was a CHILD when he had these memories? When I was a child I beleved all sorts of crazy things, and was sure I saw monsters ghosts, aliens in my closet etc.

---

Just to clear up a point and to add a little background. I lived in this house until I was 25. Weird stuff happened right up until I left. Stuff like furniture re-arranging itself while I (and everyone else) was out of the room, stuff disappearing and then re-appearing weeks later in exactly the same spot. All kinds of stuff.After I moved out to get married, my parents lived there for another 3 or 4 years before they sold up and moved out to. Over the next 3 years the house changed hands more than 10 times. On each occasion the family moved out after less than a month. (this can be backed up by electoral roles and land registry records etc.) Read what you like into that. Eventually the place was bulldozed and a brand new house built on the site. There have been no more unexplained occurences that I am aware of since then.I would also like to point out that the goings on just seemed "normal" to me as I had never known anything else so I was never really scared or anything while living there. It wasn't traumatic in the least.PY

Hi 1.61803I have read your comments on a lot of other threads.

quote:

---

In order for 'something to have thoughts, it must first think. Thinking is a function of a brain. So it is not possible to have something that has "thoughts" if it is immaterial.

---

Why is this the case?Can you not even see the possibility that some form of pure inteligence could exist based on some perfectly logical but as yet unknown mechanism.As many people have said, what we don't know about the universe is MUCH greater than what we do know. With that in mind how can you just dismiss something as being impossible when we clearly don't know all the facts yet?PY

quote:

---

Because by definition "thoughts" are the product of thinking. Thinking is a function of the brain. The brain consist of organic material. If there is something in the universe that can think without a brain then that would fly in the face of all known science and knowlege.

---

OK. You can't think without a brain. Up to that point I am in full agreement with you. It is the definition of the brain that I am disagreeing on.I fail to see why it must be organic. Computers think, even though they aren't self aware (yet).
Why can't we have a field of focused energy with nodes that are able to act as parts of a neural network? I know that is beyond today's science but that doesn't make it impossible.
Maybe it is possible to make a structure from dark matter. Maybe it will be able to thnk in some way.I have no idea if this is happening already in some part of the universe or whether we just have to wait for science to get us to that point. As I have said before, there is a whole lot more that we don't know than there is that we do know so any conclusions we reach now are going to be erronious as they are based on incomplete information. Hence the reason that Science deals in theories rather than absolutes. You can adapt a theory as more information comes to light but if you try to stick to an absolute then you are in fact following a religion.PYThis message has been edited by PurpleYouko, 11-19-2004 01:05 PM

quote:

---

Wrong. Just because a theory is based on incomplete infomation does not make it in error

---

Depends on how much error is involved. If a theory is based on most of the known facts (you obviously can't base it on unknown facts or it is just a suggestion as I have been making), then you have a mostly accurate theory. Anything not 100% accurate is, by definition, in error to some degree.
Since no science that I am aware of has the audacity to claim that it is 100% correct and has no room whatsoever for improvement, advancement or whatever then I stick by my statement that they are in error to some degree. Beyond that it is just a question of terminology.

quote:

---

Umm Purple Youko, what have you been smoking? What exactly do you know about dark matter? Dark matter has not been found to exist

---

What do I know about dark matter?
Only what I have read in scientific journals. In other words bugger all. Just like everybody else from what I can gather.I am just throwing possibilities around to get people thinking. I never claimed to know how a non-corporeal brain made of dark matter, energy or neutrinos could think or how it can pass through walls and move furniture in my bedroom from one place to another in complete silence while I go into the next room to retreive a book.

quote:

---

Ok, a field of focused energy. what is focusing it? And what is generating the energy? And what are these nodes? What do they consist of? And these nodes that are part of a neural network do they exist as non-matter?

---

How the heck should I know? I just made a suggestion. Maybe somewhere down the line, someone much smarter than me will figure out how to do it. In the mean time I will just sit back and watch with an open mind until somebody proves whether it can be done or not. After all, it wasn't so long ago that people thought that going to the moon was ridiculous.PY

quote:

---

I believe you know the point I am making and are arguing symantics.

---

Absolutely! Y' got me bang t' right guvn'r. Course I know the point. Just like I know that pi to the nth decimal is going to give me exactly the same answer as pi to 10 decimals when I calculate the diameter of a circle to 3 significant figures.

quote:

---

I am not one to say xyz will never happen, I am saying if xyz happens there will be an explanation that will correlate with the known body of knowlege and that it will be testable, verifyable and reproducable. If not then it will be dubbed bullshit.

---

I am in perfect agreement with you here. My point is that when something happens that science hasn't yet progressed far enough to be able to test, it is still dubbed bullshit by a lot of people who should know better.If the particular thing that happens is in a field of science that doesn't yet exist (and I'm sure there are plenty of those) then there is no body of knowledge that directly relates to the problem. Unless postulations are put forward and rigorously tested by scientists who are genuinely willing to learn, then we will never be able to advance an explanation of the phenomenon as a scientific theory.In short, don't just write something off as mumbo jumbo without first exploring the possibilities that maybe it isn't. Prove an alternative explanation for the event is what actually happened and then you can quite legitimately dub it bullshit.Advancing a postulation like "maybe he was sexually abused and created a fantasy realm to retreat into" is really just inventing a fictitious scenario to explain away what science cannot presently understand. At best it is denial and at worst it is hypocritical science hiding in a little box and denying that anything exists beyond it.I know that in the earlier post, it wasn't advanced as an actual suggestion that that is what happened but it worries me considerably that some scientists would rather beleive this kind of thing than to really look at the universe with a completely open mind.PY

Hi Crashfrog.

quote:

---

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.

---

Sure it happens, sometimes, but I think that it is also used as an excuse when nothing else fits.

quote:

---

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.

---

Why is it better? I have asked this before. It seems to me that both possibilities are exactly that. Possibilities. What we want here is the truth. How can the assumption of one truth be better than another truth? There is only one real truth. Which one is it? or maybe its a third option that nobody has even thought of yet.Based on one incident? How about based on thousands of incidents? In my personal experience alone I have witnessed that many. Some may have been imagined. I don't deny that. Others may have become exagerated and warped in my less-than-perfect memory but there have been too many thing that have happened in too consistent a fashion to just dismiss it all without an alternative explanation that I can actually buy into.

quote:

---

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.

---

Perfectly good postulation. It should also have occurred to the investigators. (wonder if it did? it is kind of obvious after all.) The point is that a postulation like this could easily have been proved by directly measuring the magnetic fields in the lighthouse. I assume that they didn't do so or at least that they didn't report the results.
This seems like a case exactly the same as the ones I have repeatedly referred to before. The investigators are guilty of not examining all the possible explanations before settling on one that they went into the experiment attempting to prove. i.e. Ghosts rather than some other rational explanation.Why is it that both sides of an arguement like this keep distorting or ignoring all the facts. These people either deliberately fudged the result of the experiment by deliberate omision of tests that could have debunked their theory or more likely found exactly what they beleived they would find due to a biased attitude. The test was patently unscientific and only adds ammo to those who love nothing more than to dubb this kind of thing "bullshit".

quote:

---

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.

---

Again, I don't know. It actually feels good to say that sometimes doesn't it?
And please note that I have never, at any time, claimed that "ghosts", "spirits" or whatever kept messing up my house had anything to do with dead people. Frankly I see no reason or evidence to connect these strange goings on with some kind of left over remains of somebody who died. That really would be inventing something for the sake of it.All I contend is that something happened repeatedly and over a very long period of time, that cannot be explained by present day science. The same kind of thing has been happening repeatedly all over the world to all kinds of people and places for as long as records have been kept and presumably before that also.I have no idea what it is but I would love to find out.Does anyone have any rational explanations for any of it?PY

quote:

---

1. was it something physical like a cat.

---

I am refering to one incident among many here but let's play along to "something goes bump in the other room"1 The room in question has only one door, a locked window and no cat's, dogs, people playing pranks, or other animals.2 The other room that I went to led directly from the first one. Anyone entering the first would have had to walk pretty much through me to reach it.3 Cats are not normally capable of moving a bed up against a door that only opens inward, such that I had to push the bed away by forcing the door open.

quote:

---

2. was it a spirit or a ghostUnfortunatley all claims of the supernatural have been as of 19Nov04 not adequateley supported by verifiable evidence and hence dubbed bullshit.

---

Unfortunately this is just the historical response of people that are stuck in their ways. Surely a more reasonable answer would be to say. "I don't know how to explain this. I will look into it and let you know what I find out." Then you can just agree to call it "unexplained by present day science" and move on to something that you actually can prove one way or the other. Why can't anyone just admit that science doesn't know all the answers yet? Maybe in a hundred years or so, science will know all about the "supernatural" stuff of today. Maybe they will manipulate it to power their faster-than-light spacecraft. Maybe they will look back on this era and think about all the scientists who refused to accept what has become mainstream science to them, and laugh their heads off.Then again maybe they will have proved by that time that it is and always has been "bullshit".I just want someone who actually knows the answer to tell it to me. I think I am going to have a loooonng wait.PY

quote:

---

Maybe an astroid will obliterate the Earth and render man, and spirits moot.

---

Perhaps it will at that. Who knows? PY