Do you belive in ghost?

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Do you belive in ghost?

Post by lightningbolt » 13 Sep 2004 17:00

Okay, this is pointless (that's why it's in the kicking circle) and inmautre (that's me) BUT

Do you belive in ghost?

I kind of do and kind of don't. The whole concept freaks me out. Dead people moving around scary to me. I like to think once your dead, your gone. Not roaming earth anymore.

But alot of people that I know, have seen ghost. I think I could have even. My frined has a couple freaky ass picture of one.

Do you belive? Or is It just bullshit?
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Post by ShredPirate » 13 Sep 2004 17:28

i believe in ghost pirates.
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Post by zachatree » 13 Sep 2004 17:55

i have 100s of crazy storys, yes i belive in them 100% not sure why they are here but there here.

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Post by Jeremy » 13 Sep 2004 18:06

Personally I think it's just bullshit. I think that most of the time when people claim to see a ghost, what they really see is something that they can't explain - and so due to their cultural background they assume it must be the spirit of a dead person moving around. In about 90% of the stories I've heard of people "seeing" ghosts there has been no evidence that what they are seeing actually a "ghost" - there are plenty of equally plausible explenations. It could be the spirit of a person from the future using a new hardcore drug. It could be a military experiement. It could be an alien. It could be a mad scientist with a device that pulls out uncomfortable memories from peoples minds and displays a hologram of them in the air. There are hundreds of unlikely theories of what they are seeing and no reason to assume that the "ghost" theory is the correct one. The main reason they think it's a ghost and not something else is because ghosts are a more common story.

10% of the time I think the person just makes up the story to a great degree, or most of what happens happens in their head not in reality. - These are the ones where people actually do claim to see people that are known to be dead - although again this could also be cultural - they see something they can't understand - they look for an explenation and come up with "ghost" and see some details to make them think it's a particular person or whatever - but they are already thinking "it's a ghost" so they are looking for details to help them recognise the "ghost" - they are trying to compare the ghost to people or stories that they think would be trying to contact the real world from the spirit world or whatever.

Basically it's not a logical process at all - people who want to see ghosts see ghosts, people who just see what's there see something which they can't explain the reason for it's appearance - most likely some kind of optical illusion.

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Post by zachatree » 13 Sep 2004 18:38

can i request this thread moved to the disccuion ?

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Post by Whatsfootbag? » 13 Sep 2004 19:02

i feel that there are ghost in sense...if energy is never created or destroyed,i feel your life energy is still around after death,be it in heaven hell on earth or wherever...never really had a ghost experience but ive had those times when you see someone out of the corner of your eye and they are gone,or hear those footsteps coming down your stairs when you'r ehome alone...weird stuff

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Post by SpaceMonkey » 13 Sep 2004 19:07

I do not believe in Ghosts.
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Post by Senor Grommet » 13 Sep 2004 21:11

GhostS. Do you believe in ghosts?!

sorry, just had to make that correction clear.
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Post by sPinko-Mania » 13 Sep 2004 21:43

No. The deepest sin of the human mind is to believe things without evidence - Thomas Henry Huxley. I have not seen compelling evidence yet.

Importantly, this doesn't mean ghosts don't exist.
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Post by mosher » 14 Sep 2004 06:05

sPinko-Mania wrote:No. The deepest sin of the human mind is to believe things without evidence - Thomas Henry Huxley. I have not seen compelling evidence yet.

Importantly, this doesn't mean ghosts don't exist.
Well hey now, you just gave me another entry in my quote book.

I agree with all the things you have said, especially your last remark. I think that your quote can also be applied to the other end of the spectrum, if you believe that ghosts don't exist then you are no less foolish than the person that thinks they are real. NEITHER of you have evidence!
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Post by Tsiangkun » 14 Sep 2004 12:23

I've lived in two supposedly haunted homes.

The first one I believed. All six of us had a lot of unexplained phenomena. Frequently we would wake to every window and door in the house being wide open. All of us heard all the cabinet doors slamming for a long period of time. Many times we could be certain someone was in the garage when there was no person there. I often felt like someone was right behind me, when I knew I was home alone. At dinner one night, a little 4.5 yr old girl asked, to the suprise of everyone at the table, "Mommy, why is that little girl making faces at me by the fireplace ? " , unfortunately her mother quickly told her to stop making up stories, shut up and be quiet.

The current home, I think the circa 1914 elevator is old and crickety and makes lots of noise. This, combined with the windtunnel dynamics of the warehouse, I think create the 'hauntings'.

I don't know what a ghost is, but I believe Intelligence/Information to be another form of energy. We already know that Energy is related to mass, and by the power of my unproven theory that Intelligence and Information are Energy forms and can be converted as such . . . It's not an unreasonable leap to believe in an intelligent quasi-matterous form of energy roaming about.

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Post by LinksYs » 14 Sep 2004 14:13

ghosts are real!

i went to Jack Brown Rd in Nj with my best friend and his sister.
we start to walk around and shit and then we were leaving this one home. We searched this whole house to see what was in it looked in every room. All that shit. Then as we were leaving we heard a big BANG!

IT WAS A GHOST

When we had the pictures developed they were covered in orbs EVERY SINGLE PICTURE!

At my sisters wedding there were even ghost. Ghost are real!
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Post by 420FootBager » 14 Sep 2004 14:20

NO.... ghost=bullshit...

I lived on a house built on a acient indian burial ground for 2 years... nothin ever happened.... my house was actually listed on the list of hunted buildings or something like that.....

BULLCRAP!!!
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Post by Tsiangkun » 14 Sep 2004 14:41

I've watched the sky many many nights and I have never seen a meteor crash into the earth.

Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.

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Post by sPinko-Mania » 14 Sep 2004 18:30

mosher wrote:Well hey now, you just gave me another entry in my quote book.
Glad I could help, I have one of those too :)

We should never start from the principal that all things which cannot be proven are false or nonexistant. But that doesn't mean people should believe in them either. We don't need to rely on faith (on either side as you rightly mentioned) to answer problems such as this.
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Post by Muffinman » 14 Sep 2004 18:55

90% of posts in this thread have misspellings @______@
EDIT: And I don't just mean the word "ghost", instead of "ghosts", either.

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Post by Jeremy » 14 Sep 2004 19:30

mosher wrote: I agree with all the things you have said, especially your last remark. I think that your quote can also be applied to the other end of the spectrum, if you believe that ghosts don't exist then you are no less foolish than the person that thinks they are real. NEITHER of you have evidence!
I disagree with this completely. If you believe that something is untrue because of a lack of evidence then if evidence turns up - obviously your belief has to change. I believe is that no evidence is evidence that something did not happen/does not exist. Because I have never seen or heard evidence that has led me in anyway to even think that there is some possibility that ghosts exist - the most plausible explanation is that ghosts do not exist. No matter what I think, ghosts either do exist or they don't - nothing can "maybe exist" - just because you aren't sure if it exists or not doesn't mean that it actually may or may not exist. I believe there is an actual answer to questions of existence.

Having the sit on the fence - "I believe that ghosts might exist" view means that you are bound to be wrong either way when/if the answer is found.


On my other point - reading both LinkYs and Tsiangkun stories about ghosts I could see no evidence that there was any connection between the events and ghosts. It's clearly a cultural thing to explain those events with ghosts - but there didn't seem to be any link with dead people's spirits or anything of that nature.


This post was spell checked just for Erik!

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Post by sPinko-Mania » 14 Sep 2004 20:36

Jeremy wrote: I disagree with this completely. If you believe that something is untrue because of a lack of evidence then if evidence turns up - obviously your belief has to change.
I don't think mosher said anything otherwise, just that we should withhold judgement until such evidence (positive or negative) is available. This still does not mean it is correct to believe that ghosts exist because then you're still stating some sort of quality the universe has (ghosts occupy existence). And therefore the burden of proof is on you to back up this view.
I believe is that no evidence is evidence that something did not happen/does not exist.
To follow through this line of reasoning: do you have any evidence that I am drinking a glass of juice at the moment? No you don't. So that event never happened right? Ok, now prove it. You can't prove a double negative so you're stuck.
Because I have never seen or heard evidence that has led me in anyway to even think that there is some possibility that ghosts exist - the most plausible explanation is that ghosts do not exist
Are you comfortable making such a concrete conclusion about the nature of the universe when you have not witnessed a great amount of evidence that would likely have bearing on said conclusion? For instance, dying.

As was said earlier (in a different form) absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (Carl Sagan represent). If you say there's a footbag in my house and I check one room and then conclude 'said footbag does not exist' then I would be incorrect. If I were to check every room and the attic then you could say it with more conviction. Obviously this is were a subjective part comes in because some people will be satisfied with the lack of evidence after scouring every room. Someone else will say 'you haven't checked the basement so your conclusion is too hasty'.
No matter what I think, ghosts either do exist or they don't - nothing can "maybe exist" - just because you aren't sure if it exists or not doesn't mean that it actually may or may not exist.
Sometimes the best answer we have is 'I don't know'. This normally doesn't happen when we're dealing with physical problems such as whether putting fertilizer on your plants makes them grow quicker or what the gravitational constant is, but when you're dealing with metaphysical things that science can't assess normally, it's the best possible answer.

The position isn't on the fence, nor is it 'I believe that ghosts might exist'. It is: 'I don't believe in ghosts'. This is entirely different from 'I believe that ghosts don't exist'.
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Post by sPinko-Mania » 14 Sep 2004 20:44

Whoops, I made a mistake in this paragraph so I'm going to add to it a little:
sPinko-Mania wrote:If you say there's a footbag in my house and I check one room and then conclude 'said footbag does not exist' then I would be unsubstantiated but not neccessarily incorrect. Making unsubstantiated claims I think we can agree is bad. If I were to check every room and the attic then you could say it with a bit more conviction. Obviously this is were a subjective part comes in because some people will be satisfied with the lack of evidence after scouring every room. Someone else will say 'you haven't checked the basement so your conclusion is too hasty'. There is however a line that most people will cross where you will say 'that statement regarding the existence of the footbag has now been confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent' and get onto drinking some damn juice ;)
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Post by Jeremy » 14 Sep 2004 22:34

sPinko-Mania wrote: I don't think mosher said anything otherwise, just that we should withhold judgement until such evidence (positive or negative) is available. This still does not mean it is correct to believe that ghosts exist because then you're still stating some sort of quality the universe has (ghosts occupy existence). And therefore the burden of proof is on you to back up this view.
I try to use science and logic behind all my beliefs. Science is NOT about proving things - that is impossible with out assumptions - it's about coming up with the most likely explanation to events (that's a very brief description anyway). So from the evidence that I have seen, my theory is that ghosts under my understanding of the definition of a ghost - do not exist. It is impossible to prove that this theory is true. Even proving fairly simple things like the existence of gravity and even the existence of yourself are impossible. I think there are times when it's best to with hold your current theory on an event because you feel you don't know enough about it and may end up looking ignorant - this is especially true when answering questions within a closed system - since you can prove things with assumed context. But on the question of the existence of ghosts I am not afraid of being shown to be wrong and ignorant if somebody can convince me that ghosts exist.

To follow through this line of reasoning: do you have any evidence that I am drinking a glass of juice at the moment? No you don't. So that event never happened right? Ok, now prove it. You can't prove a double negative so you're stuck.
This is illogical. Even if I saw you drinking a glass of juice and had three separate video cameras filming it I could not truly prove that it happened. I could definitely show beyond reasonable doubt that it had happened - but science is not Law and you can't prove things. Also I think using sociology (the science of societies) I could show that there is no reason to doubt your claim that you are drinking orange juice. I'd say there's probably a fifty percent chance that you were - since it is well documented that people drink juice in glasses. I have even done it myself. But there is an equal chance that you said it as an example and weren't really doing it at all. On the other hand there is very little documentation showing the existence of ghosts or leading to those conclusions. In this topic there have been two people tell stories which they claimed were ghost related yet there was nothing in the stories to suggest it was ghosts and not aliens or angels or mad scientists.
Are you comfortable making such a concrete conclusion about the nature of the universe when you have not witnessed a great amount of evidence that would likely have bearing on said conclusion? For instance, dying.
I am not making a concrete conclusion. Nothing in science is concrete. I'm simply giving what I think is the best explanation to the evidence I know of regarding the existence of ghosts. I agree that my experience on the topic of ghosts is limited and perhaps a scientist who studies paranormal behaviour might have a better theory. If you know of one, I'd love to hear about it.
As was said earlier (in a different form) absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (Carl Sagan represent). If you say there's a footbag in my house and I check one room and then conclude 'said footbag does not exist' then I would be unsubstantiated but not neccessarily incorrect. Making unsubstantiated claims I think we can agree is bad . If I were to check every room and the attic then you could say it with a bit more conviction. Obviously this is were a subjective part comes in because some people will be satisfied with the lack of evidence after scouring every room. Someone else will say 'you haven't checked the basement so your conclusion is too hasty'. There is however a line that most people will cross where you will say 'that statement regarding the existence of the footbag has now been confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent' and get onto drinking some damn juice
There is a big difference between evidence and proof. If you look in one room and don't find the footbag, that is evidence that it does not exist. There is no way of truly proving it's existence or non existence without assumptions. For example if you find the footbag it would be safe to assume it was real and not just a solid illusion of a footbag. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence!! It is not very strong evidence and it certainly isn't proof, but if you have a theory that the footbag does not exist and you look in one room and can't find it - That supports your theory! - Evidence is facts that support a particular conclusion. If I say that invisible pink unicorns exist what would your reaction be? Do you think that since there is no evidence to say that they do or do not exist you don't have a theory of their existence? So you would be unwilling to agree or disagree with my theory (that they do exist) - I would say that since there is no evidence of their existence as well as the lack of evidence of pink ungulates existing, the lack of evidence of unicorns existing, the lack of evidence of invisible creatures existing and the perceived paradox of an invisible thing having a colour - it would be a much better theory that invisible pink unicorns do not exist. Of course there is also evidence that they do exist - Unicorns are a creature that has been documented in mythology suggesting that they might exist and the fact that nobody has seen one is evidence that they are indeed invisible. However when you look at both sides of the argument, their existence still seems much more unlikely than it is unlikely and the theory of the inexistence is much more believable.

Sometimes the best answer we have is 'I don't know'. This normally doesn't happen when we're dealing with physical problems such as whether putting fertilizer on your plants makes them grow quicker or what the gravitational constant is, but when you're dealing with metaphysical things that science can't assess normally, it's the best possible answer.
As I mentioned earlier - saying 'I don't know' is sometimes better on a personal level. However if you are actually trying to work out the answer or trying to come up with a solid theory that makes sense - 'I don't know' is completely useless. The reason science is not good at dealing with metaphysical things is because they are usually illogical and usually have a much greater absence of evidence than of actual evidence. In fact I would say that science deals with the metaphysical just as well as it deals with anything else. It's just that often people don't like the conclusions science comes up with because their belief of the existence of something is strong they are unprepared to accept that it is most likely wrong.

The position isn't on the fence, nor is it 'I believe that ghosts might exist'. It is: 'I don't believe in ghosts'. This is entirely different from 'I believe that ghosts don't exist'.
I agree that an absence of belief is not a belief

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