| Ghosts; Do YOU beleive? :p | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: 13th June 2007 - 07:34 PM (915 Views) | |
| Mebob | 15th June 2007 - 05:09 PM Post #31 |
|
Pants are for the weak!
|
I remember reading a book about something like that, places were many poepel had urges to kill themselves etc, the explanation the book gave for these places was actually magnetism, the somehow (it explained but i cant remember what it said) the unusual strength of the magnetism in those areas effected human brains somehow making people more inclined to..well jump. Another intersting story i've witnessed myself: A few years ago me i went on a family holday (In Spain) now, me and my sister shared a room, (two beds) now, on the very last night i woke up in the middle of the night, the light was on, so i simply got up, walked over to the switch and turned it back off, suddenly as i was going back to my bed, i instantly thought "theres something in the cupbaord" (which covered the whole of the wall opposite our beds)(it was the kind of demanding thought which is somehow always right) so rushing back to bed, i lay there at night unable to sleep, scared and felt a strong prescence watch me. Now that was weird, but in the morning i asked my sister if she turned on the lights last night, she then told me that she did turn on the lights because she was scared and thought there was something in the closet, now i hadnt told her that i thought there was something in the closet, so that was very creepy. Also, something my mum told me, was when my sister was a young child she used to creep yout my mum loads by talking about people who wernt there, now according to my mum she jsut took it as how children are, but according to her, she only got really creeped out when i started saying the same things after i was born. Although i don't remeber this (i was pretty young) i trust what my mum's saying is true |
|
For proffesionaly made corsets visit: Elegantly bound Classic looks for the modern woman (click the name!) ![]() Clan Notch ![]() Rukarthan 23rd and Order of Sanctuary (Imperial gaurd and Sister of Battle) My Devaint Art account | |
![]() |
|
| Blood Vixen | 16th June 2007 - 02:11 PM Post #32 |
![]()
All hail the Age of Skaven
|
ghosts are real but not in the way people think as such ghosts commonly are fragmantations of the mind, like in my case for example when i visit the place my dad died in a car crash years and years ago i can see the wreakage small pool of blood comming out of it (being rescued from it and all i suvived), this was one of the most traumatising experiences in my life and my memory makes sure i dont forget it but in my mind i know its all just halucinations so with that i continue to live my life what is there is a ghost but a ghost from my past, something my mind causes me to see nothing else and every time i see this happen (isle of wight is suposbly full of ghosts.) people dont seem to have a supernateral experience untill they know about the ghost and its experiences again it comes as being a halucination and mind games its when people belive it happens that it becomes real and you can see smell taste feel everything that is controled by the mind in the seven senses so yes i belive in ghosts but not as people see them |
| Shhhh I'm not here | |
![]() |
|
| GutterRunner | 16th June 2007 - 08:53 PM Post #33 |
|
The PiPboy
|
this quote kind of relates to my RPG and also show my point of view on this. It really isn't hard to make people see things. The brain is a sensitive electronic device and these day there are many this that can disrupt its functioning. |
![]() |
|
| Morkskittar | 16th June 2007 - 10:20 PM Post #34 |
![]()
The Tunnel's Resident Rodent Ecologist
![]()
|
In response to my previous statement on this: I think the poll is unnececessary, but this discussion is amazing! ![]() I really have little insight to offer on this... I personally do believe in God, an 'afterlife' of a sort, and all of that. However, I do not believe in 'ghosts' of the conventional sense. Many of my cousins, however do. One of them claimed a ghost tried to kill him with a knife once... ![]() Pillz |
|
The Eldritch Wastes: A Post-Lovecraftian Online Serial Novel (Author Website) Pub Fight Deaths: 334. Pillz and Pyllz are © by Morkskittar. ![]() Complete Works of Morkskittar / You Have Just Lost the Game 'zodi | |
![]() |
|
| The 13th Master | 17th June 2007 - 01:09 AM Post #35 |
|
One of Many, Many as One
|
Having never had a 'ghostly experience' or anything appearing supernatural happen to me, I'm more swinging towards not believing. However, I'm never one to dismiss an idea outright. I have my own theories, and you must remember that I am talking as if they DO exist, even though I don't believe they do. I always challenge the idea that a ghost is a physical threat to people. The idea of poltergeists and other spectral beings able to interact with the physical world or even manifest a visible appearance is preposterous to me as the original idea of malign spirits as a thing to be feared was that they follow (haunt) you and repeat your bad deeds and secrets till you become incurably insane with guilt. They were never meant to be able to throw chairs across rooms Ghostbuster Style and personally, I find the psychological menace to be far more frightening than one that can interact with the physical world. I mean, if a spirit is the same thing as a ghost, what reasoning can one come up with to explain physical interaction? They are not made of any mortal substance and therefore no mortal laws of physics apply to them. No momentum, inertia, gravity, mass, particles, none of Newtons laws of motion. This renders them unable to even, by conventional science interact with our world through the vocal/psychic methods described above. This leaves only the possibility of some laws we haven't discovered yet, or that they exist, but cannot be measured or observed by any means but exist nonetheless. This is the possibility that leaves me voting for the 'They might, but I just don't know' option as it is similar to my opinions on any purported purely spiritual beings such as gods (of any variety), angels, djinn, demons etc. Physical supernatural beings however are another matter. Don't get me started on Gnomes, Brownies, Faeries and Trolls etc. |
![]() My Army Diary... Diary
| |
![]() |
|
| Skaskrit Venomclaw | 18th June 2007 - 07:59 AM Post #36 |
|
Ex-Councilrat
![]()
|
Uh... yes, we might. But it's rather pointless to speculate about so many unknowns, isn't it? There certainly is no reason whatsoever to believe such vague possible future knowledge will prove ghosts exist... it might just as well prove that mice secretly build the earth as a super-computer to calculate the secret meaning of life...
Well, our current angle works. It can be tested and explains all kind of things. No matter what more we learn... I doubt current ideas will be thrown out altogether. Though it may very well prove to be just part of the truth.
How then do you define a soul? That would be a good starting point. Mine would be "incorporeal spirit that houses a person's personality, character, etc. that can live independently of the body."
All of this isn't nearly as outlandish as it seems. Those people practicing celibacy and such... it's very rare, really. Most don't. Most priests didn't. It runs counter to our nature, as you say. Why do people invent it? Because we're thinking creatures. Our acts and thoughts aren't purely ruled by a survival instinct anymore. It stands at the root, but we put layers and layers of social conventions and philosophy on top of that. Not eating meat or fasting is counterproductive, evolutionary. But people can do this because they have willpower and self-control, which are very useful survival abilities. A mother who can feed her children even though it means she herself will go hungry for a while... she's helping the survival of the species. Likewise, having some people prepared to martyr themselves for the good of the group is an immense advantage. Suppose the group is attacked by a lion, but one of the people sacrifices himself to delay the lion whilst the others get away... the group survives. The difference is, humans with our ability to think and rationalise and fool ourselves use these abilities in all kinds of ways they weren't originally evolved for. Those martyrs and people fasting and such are still doing it because they believe it's right, because they believe it will earn them or their friends and family a place in heaven. Doesn't matter, because these side effects hardly impact the survival of the species as a whole. But the main point is there are layers and layers of social conventions and beliefs put over the basic evolutionary urges which can lead people to do tons of seemingly irrational things. |
|
"I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo... within 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge?" Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale | |
![]() |
|
| scrivener | 18th June 2007 - 03:22 PM Post #37 |
![]()
*toot*
![]()
|
I'm of course not saying that a future theory will prove or disprove the existence of ghosts, I'm saying that the current paradigm of thinking simply does not imply the non-existence of ghosts by the illogic of it. The current angle works, but it may not be fully developed. I agree that what we have may be, though I think it's very likely, that it's just part of the truth. or not even the truth, merely our explanation of the truth in a manner we can comprehend. As Nietzsche kinda said, science does not so much explain the truths as give us analogies by which we can understand a simplified version of it via artificial concepts and quantifying. All throughout history we always thought we were at the peak of all there is to know, and we've only been in this modern science thing for like a century plus. The current angle seems to work because it is the product of the current paradigm, hence by applying the paradigm to the angle to test it's rationality, of course the angle appears rational, being the rational product of the paradigm. The reason why the concept of ghosts and spirits and gods is irrational in this current paradigm is because they are not the products of this paradigm, but were first conceived in a far more primitive paradigm, maybe about 6,000 years ago. Men have always been trying to answer the same questions: in the world of 6k years ago, the concepts of understanding that men have first grasped followed the lines of "egg=birth", therefore the world hatched from a really big egg. The fact that these beliefs are illogical today does not mean that the concept of the universe's birth is illogical and the universe has existed for infinity. The universe is finite, it did have a start date, just that we just know that egg today as the Big Bang (which still is a theory with a few holes in it, mind you, because our current paradigm has trouble wrapping around concepts of mass, space, time and infinity). Likewise, primitive man tried to understand the concept of life, of what animates us, and so we have the idea of the invisible soul, which looks just like a person, just without the flesh. Trying to rationalise this concept in its current state is like trying to find the yolk in the Big Bang: wrong paradigms, can't fit. And the problem with our current paradigm is that it tries to quantify what it can quantify via existing means. I have my own theory of how religion and philosophy comes from evolution, in that we're in the next stage of evolving: first we try to transcend the next animal, then we try to transcend being an animal, now we're trying to transcend nature by shunning the elements that make up our earthly state (the carnal, the Id, the emotions, the instincts, the mortality, the killfeedmaterepeat). We're simply trying to get on top of the evolutionary cycle by being gods. But to me, that still begs the question. I don't think that it's all a matter of complex circuitry, genetic programming and elaborate equations and cause/effects that can navigate humanity to one day desire to think that speed metal music makes them emphasize with mythical ratmen via some obtuse byproduct of out of millenia of less-than-precise yet machinelike processing from some primordial foundation. Or why almost every culture around the world has, completely independently, visualised the scaled, giant dragon as a creature that personifies the unknown primal nature, either of the human condition, or of the natural world. Any more than I think that this same mindless mechanics is responsible for a certain South American flower being able to replicate a nectar that matches the sex pheromone of a certain species of bee that coincidentally shares the same small yet specific location of habitat. All that doesn't mean the soul exists, but it means that there is something, some sentience behind all that mechanics that science had for long tried to explain via circumstantial evidence and convoluted theories of coincidence, and has only recently tried to explain within our paradigm via such studies as epigenetics. And now we're trying to explain this sentience by applying the molds of our current modes of reasoning, but it's still not answering the question. I think I've rambled too much (must be off my meds), so anyhoo, here's my definition of the soul. Assuming our level of science has advanced so much that we can synthetically create, from non-living matter, an exact replica of the human body, that we can get the hardwiring of the brain perfectly functional, all wiring perfectly in place and sparking correctly, to be more or less active in whichever parts of the brain we want, that we can programme the genes to be exactly as we want it to be, to be blonde or brunette, to be indisposed towards religion or disinclined to violence, to be promiscious or morally inept or have an affinity for german opera, and then we can make its lungs pump and its heart beat, and we can make it think and move and speak, we still wouldn't have created a human. We wouldn't have created something that can look at the clouds and see a donkey riding a chipmunk with a parasol, we wouldn't have created someone that could love a girl just because her eyes remind him of truffles, or someone who would dedicate all their life to collecting odd-shaped potatoes. Because we have discovered what animates us and makes us live, but that's just cogs and equations. It still isn't the thing that makes us alive. Lots of rhetoric, no founded theories, I know. I'll stop now...
|
| |
![]() |
|
| Skaskrit Venomclaw | 18th June 2007 - 08:21 PM Post #38 |
|
Ex-Councilrat
![]()
|
This I completely disagree with. That would be a human, with human rights and human feelings. None of our knowledge about the human body indicates otherwise. Hell, if we got a computer advanced enough and implemented a data feedback loop it'd achieve sentience. We're not special. We're just the same as everything else that lives but with added processing power. That donkey in the clouds? You see it because you need the same talent to recognise the outline of a predator in the darkness. That girl you love? A shot of chemicals in your bloodstream, a hit of electricity in your brain, all needed to make the species reproduce. And those odd potatoes you're collecting are a combination of a hoarding instinct, natural curiosity, the need for competition within the group and showing yourself as distinct and original. That sentience behind it all, where's it hiding? What does it do that can't be accounted for by the mechanisms we know are there? How come the supposed effects change when you cut into the brain or inject some chemicals? How is it generated, how does it grow if it's not part of the body? Is it already there at the moment of conception? Or in every sperm cell? Or does it enter later? When? How? This spark of life, how do you recognise it's there? How would you tell your perfect human copy above there doesn't have it? How do you prove it doesn't? This entire concept sounds like nonsense to me. Sorry if that sounds harsh. I also think you're mistaken about the role of "coincidence" in evolution. It is not by any stretch of the imagination a coincidence that south american flower shares the habitat and sex pheromone of that bee. Of course not, that would indeed be too unlikely for words. They evolved that way, adapted to eachother. Flowers with nectar closest to the bee's pheromone replicate fastest, so it's natural they evolve in that direction. And flowers getting nectar smelling just the same way but growing somewhere without those bees have no advantage whatsoever, so quite naturally do not become dominant anywhere else. Evolution has a direction, and is guided by utility. It is not random, though it is mindless. |
|
"I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo... within 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge?" Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale | |
![]() |
|
| Mutator | 18th June 2007 - 10:00 PM Post #39 |
![]()
Retired fat dude
![]()
|
Dinosaur fossils can be found all over the place. |
| Mostly harmless | |
![]() |
|
| scrivener | 19th June 2007 - 01:26 AM Post #40 |
![]()
*toot*
![]()
|
My problem with conventional evolution to explain these traits is that the explanations are very obtuse and sometimes are just as unfounded.
If that is the case, there has to be a hundred million different variations of nectar for each species of flower in order to meet those odds. Each variation has to still exist at some point before they become extinct, or there is still the possibility that each variation smells of something that is pointless but has other traits that still ensure pollination. There has to be another million variations of Rafflesia that may smell of rotting meat but are of colours not matching rotting meat (the colour itself being irrelevant since flies don't see colours the way we do). If things like religion, philosophy or art are to be traced back to evolutionary processes, and yet have no discernable function, why are are we, with our advanced procesing power, not only creating these deviant side effects, but are actually going through the whole array of sequences to develop something that may or may not have circumstantial benefits, when the rest of our body seems to be evolving efficiently enough that even our nostrils can adapt to the temperature and climate of our habitat within a few generations, even in the modern world when natural selection can't dictate that the pure-bred anglo-saxons who migrated to desert/subtropical climate Australia in the past 50-100 years whose equally pure-bred offspring didn't develop the wider nostrils and flatter nose which is a fairly distinctive trait amongst Aussies today were less likely to reproduce or more likely to fall prey to dingoes. There already is an existing study called epigenetics that is filling in the holes that conventional theories couldn't cover, it's there, it still uses genes in its theory, and we don't need to create these convoluted equations to try to explain these things.
Our mechanisms don't account for a lot of things, or account for them only in vague hypotheticals. And where is it hiding, that makes the assumption of materialism, that it is something that has a location that we can understand. We have come up with the idea that the universe is expanding, but we have no clear idea exactly what sort of space can a void expand into. instead of dismissing something because it doesn't fit our current paradigm, we should be changing the paradigm to fit the question. |
| |
![]() |
|
| Mutator | 19th June 2007 - 06:30 AM Post #41 |
![]()
Retired fat dude
![]()
|
You dont have to start with all possibilities, and narrow it down to the ones that work. You just have to start with the possibilites that already work, and look for the ones that work better. This narrows it down quite a bit. Skaskrit's approach "unlikely, because there is no evidence to support that" is scientifically more sound than "maybe, because we dont know enough to exclude it, despite the fact there is no nvidence". Sure, we dont understand The System enough. But that doesnt render us unable to assign probability or "risk" (which is all science is). And currently the risk that ghosts are 'real' is orders of magnitude lower than the risk that ghosts are not 'real'. This means that yes, we can discount them. But with our open minds, we consider further evidence when it is presented, and re-assess the risks. Then decide whether to continue discounting them
|
| Mostly harmless | |
![]() |
|
| Skaskrit Venomclaw | 19th June 2007 - 08:20 AM Post #42 |
|
Ex-Councilrat
![]()
|
What Mutator said. Regarding all the quirk's of the human psyche... I don't think you should look at it that narrowly. There's no particular evolutionary reason why humans should create art or have a religion. It's not a real advantage. But neither is it a disadvantage. And it's quite reasonable to see certain other mechanisms which do have definite advantages enabling humans to develop religious feelings, artistic inspiration etc. Our brain started as a way to increase survivability. It still does that, mostly. But there's quite a bit of spare processing power to be used for all kinds of non-essential things when not in a life-or-death emergency. |
|
"I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo... within 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge?" Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale | |
![]() |
|
| scrivener | 19th June 2007 - 08:31 AM Post #43 |
![]()
*toot*
![]()
|
That system works, but IMO we should accept the possibility that works for now as what it is, a possibility to support us until we find the better one, rather than dogma to be upheld until overruled. And "unlikely, because there is no evidence to support that", is a sound idea, but it has a potential to swing between "No comment, we have no conclusive evidence as yet" and "No, because there is nothing to prove it". It's the diff between proving other lifeforms in the galaxy and whether pigs can fly. And I think that's the reason why so many believe in ghosts eventhough science can't prove them, is that people claim alot of evidence, it's just not legit evidence.
But wouldn't there be something that causes the human to take these side paths? This was what I was aiming at, there doesn't seem to be room for a complex genetically-run machine to develop quirks in the psyche, unless it was a deviant side-effect. If at least part of it exists independently of the human machine thing and is not an obsolete byproduct of something that is in it, then we have something that manifested outside of the human machine thing. |
| |
![]() |
|
| Skaskrit Venomclaw | 19th June 2007 - 09:34 AM Post #44 |
|
Ex-Councilrat
![]()
|
I with that on ghosts. People think they've got evidence. Of course, I think it's all crud, so for me they're in the flying pigs category.
No. They aren't side paths, as much as side effects. Or byproducts, as you say. For example, if something happens and you don't know why it's often better to try and guess at an explanation and try to do something about it than to simply do nothing at all and wait for it to kill you. After all, you might be right. And if you're wrong, you're no worse off than before. This mechanism can very easily lead to explaining thunderbolts flattening your grain fields as the wrath of Thor, and making sacrifices to him to try and appease him. Likewise, the human ability to recognise patterns and identify cause-effect is very useful in daily life. But it also allows us to recognise patterns where none exist. For example, between a drawing of a bison and the bison itself. A primitive man can think the drawing has power over the bison itself, allowing him to be more successful in the hunt. Bingo, art. This side effect doesn't matter greatly, though, so it stays in effect. So no. I don't see any reason to suppose "something" is putting ideas in our heads or making humans special. Hell, even if there were things not explainable by evolution it wouldn't be sensible to just suppose some "sentience" is doing it. Why would you assume that? It would merely be one of a large number of possibilities. There could just as easily be other mechanic explanations we simply haven't guessed at yet. We don't know --> therefore, god/spirits/powers/magic is not sound reasoning. |
|
"I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo... within 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge?" Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale | |
![]() |
|
| Mutator | 19th June 2007 - 09:47 PM Post #45 |
![]()
Retired fat dude
![]()
|
Fundamental flaw in your view of science. Science doesnt prove anything. Science is only able to disprove. And then, there is a degree of risk. Form a hypothesis. Test the hypothesis. If you cannot prove the hypothesis to be untrue then it remains... a hypothesis. That is science. |
| Mostly harmless | |
![]() |
|
| Go to Next Page | |
| « Previous Topic · Off Topic · Next Topic » |




















