Ghosts?

[owl]

I dont know what topic to put this under, but i was in the dark, shining my cell phone light around, and i seen a person, standing there, and it turned their head. it freaked the hell out of me!! Do any of you believe in ghosts? Have you ever seen a ghost before?

again, sorry if this was in the wrong topic..

[kyril]

Definitely not in atheism (we pretty much answer both of your questions "no" by definition)...maybe try "other" if you're looking for a response from more spiritual types?

[meh]

No, there would need to be extraordinary evidence to support it and so far all the claims made unfortunately do not support the notion that ghosts exist. Or UFO's, ESP, and souls for that matter.

When people say "ghosts" they are speaking about entities that are aware who used to be a living person. There is no evidence to suggest that we have a "soul". Our brain is what causes us to think, feel, sense, and have emotions. Everything we know points to the fact that our aware self is contained within the brain and nervous system. When we die, our brains die and our consciousness goes with it.

I don't know what you saw, but our brains are programmed to see human faces. We see them in clouds, smoke, shadows, fire etc. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

[spacial]

On the matter of being frightened.

An old lady once said to me, never be frightened of the dead, it's the living that want to harm you. (Nice thing to say to a child really).

Freud claimed, (I can't remember the details, and I hope it was Freud, if not, someone of that ilk), that such things are a manefestation of our subconsious, the fear being the accompanying emotional response to repressed memory, while the visual is an halucination with which we attempt to rationalise the fear experience.

Someone else, from the same period, (sorry, can't remember whom), said that spirits do indeed exist and the sudden fear that, those who have seen them, claim, is the principal manefestaion of their being. The fear itself is irrational but prevents us from being tempted to become too involved in their purpose.

Personally, I rather prefer the explaination given by that old lady. 

[carolynn2fem]

I dont know what topic to put this under, but i was in the dark, shining my cell phone light around, and i seen a person, standing there, and it turned their head. it freaked the hell out of me!! Do any of you believe in ghosts? Have you ever seen a ghost before?

again, sorry if this was in the wrong topic..

Going out on the limb here. No I have not seen a ghost but have felt there presents.

[Maddie Secutura]

Going out on the limb here. No I have not seen a ghost but have felt there presents.

I thought only Santa Claus gave out presents.

[Vaerama]

Definitely not in atheism (we pretty much answer both of your questions "no" by definition)...maybe try "other" if you're looking for a response from more spiritual types?

By common 'definition'*... atheism is only without gods. One can be plenty superstitious with unicorns, geese, ghosts, cantaloupe, fish, chain letters, Scientology, etc. without it including even one god.

*Please understand that I am an existentialist and see language as a form of communication and this so long as it is understood it has succeeded, and I do not disagree that it is silly to allow for ghosts and not gods... but it does remain another matter.

[kyril]

By common 'definition'*... atheism is only without gods. One can be plenty superstitious with unicorns, geese, ghosts, cantaloupe, fish, chain letters, Scientology, etc. without it including even one god.

*Please understand that I am an existentialist and see language as a form of communication and this so long as it is understood it has succeeded, and I do not disagree that it is silly to allow for ghosts and not gods... but it does remain another matter.

Well, it depends how you define "gods." Any consistent and thought-out atheist philosophy files pretty much all hypotheses of supernatural entities in the same bin - ghosts, unicorns, and alien overlords have no qualitative differences from deities. You can't just draw an arbitrary line - "these beings for which I have no evidence are gods, which I don't believe in, but those beings for which I have no evidence are totally plausible." That's what theists do; if you do that, you're a theist, even if your theology revolves around ghosts rather than creator-gods.

[Annah]

You can be an atheist and still believe in an afterlife, energies after death etc. The definition of an atheist is literally someone who does not believe in a god of any kind. However, that does not mean "nothing at all in any shape or form outside of this material life."

At my Seminary, we have a couple Atheist attending because of the Ethical and Philosophical aspect of religions and at our Unitarian Univeralist church in Lancaster, we have quite a few atheist who attend there too. I know quite a few Atheist who believes in a life after death.

The more specific term used for someone who does not believe in any form of the supernatural would be a Spiritual Nihilist.

In terms of Ghosts, yes I believe in them. I have just seen way too many things as my years as a Priest doing house blessings, etc. When someone sees a ghost with their own two eyes and every other sense they posses (tactile, auditory, visual, etc) then it is pretty hard not to believe in ghosts. As a Wiccan now, I have seen way too many things to just summarily dismiss it as being "my imagination." To me, dismissing such experiences in my life has saying they did not exist would be like me saying the Trade Towers never existed. It was that corporeal to me.

[AbraCadabra]

* No I have not seen a ghost but have felt there presence *

Same here.

As to the atheism part.
If you have a perception (Nietzsche says ALL is perception and I agree) you may choose to ignore or block it i.e. the perceived presence of a ghost.

If you ever had it --- it can be quite spooky, and if the person right next to you gets the same impression, maybe even more so.

We do not fully understand some of the energies that surround us and ghost may play a role in that.

Though there is a difference between perception and imagination. Not sure how to explain that right now. I'd be on too thin ice.

Axelle

[Vaerama]

Well, it depends how you define "gods." Any consistent and thought-out atheist philosophy files pretty much all hypotheses of supernatural entities in the same bin - ghosts, unicorns, and alien overlords have no qualitative differences from deities. You can't just draw an arbitrary line - "these beings for which I have no evidence are gods, which I don't believe in, but those beings for which I have no evidence are totally plausible." That's what theists do; if you do that, you're a theist, even if your theology revolves around ghosts rather than creator-gods.

Alien overlords would usually have the definitive difference of not being deemed 'nonmaterial' (ie: some theists use a 'spiritual realm' which has different rules to a material universe so that the likes of souls can still be asserted to exist and to defend their gods from being invisible.), unicorns would be corporeal creatures (even the invisible pink one), and ghosts are no longer living (quite unlike any deity I know).

Evidence is also not necessarily scientific in nature... if we believed nothing that was not the result of intersubjectively verified evidence attained via the scientific method: we wouldn't have a whole lot to do with our lives

'That's what theists do; if you do that, you're a theist' is an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

[Vaerama]

If you have a perception (Nietzsche says ALL is perception and I agree) you may choose to ignore or block it i.e. the perceived presence of a ghost.

All definition is indeed perception and observation. That is not to say unidentified existence is not so. Indeed, regardless of how much of whatever exists: Everything exists (the group of all sets exists regardless of if that set contains nothing), nothing exists (what is outside of everything, after all?), and at least three somethings exist (something, everything, nothing).

Fun

Though there is a difference between perception and imagination. Not sure how to explain that right now. I'd be on too thin ice.

Axelle

The difference here is that perception uses what the senses bring in and interprets that, whereas imagination conjures it up already interpreted and applies it to the world around one. As with eyes seeing well and poorly: imagination can be strong or weak.

So while both involve the use of the brain as a descriptive tool: one is external and the other internal.

[VeryGnawty]

I thought only Santa Claus gave out presents.

I am relieved to learn that ghosts give out presents.  I find the existence of ghosts much more plausible than the existence of Santa Clause.  Statistically, I have a much greater chance of receiving presents.

So do I have to be nice, or can I be Gnawty?

[Anatta]

Boo!

Bet that scared ya ! 

Metta Zenda

[AbraCadabra]

I am relieved to learn that ghosts give out presents.  I find the existence of ghosts much more plausible than the existence of Santa Clause. 

Ghost/Spook in the spellchecker is firing up your imagination honey.
Santa exists, I've seen him! Was about 4 or 5 and he had is fearful servant with him too.
Since I was good +/- I was not put into Knecht Ruprecht's*) sack.
And that was clearly "external "

*) http://www.oldeworldsantas.com/k-ruprecht.htm

Oh yes!
Axelle

[VeryGnawty]

Bet that scared ya ! 

Not really.  But it did make me think of the movie Monsters Inc.

[Maddie Secutura]

A few mornings ago I saw the light was on in my closet.  This is unusual because A: it's a motion activated light and B: no one else was in the apartment.  Was it a ghost that did it?  While I could jump to that conclusion as overwhelming evidence that ghosts exists i.e. there was no one else there and I was asleep all night therefore it had to have been triggered by an otherworldly presence.  However I'm willing to bet it was due to the thunderstorm.  In reality a voltage was sent to that part of the microchip's input and the program turned the light on.  That is an example of what we like to call critical thinking.  I could see certain events as "evidence" of otherworldly happenings but I take a moment to think about it and usually I arrive at a much more plausible explanation.  Thinking: always a good decision.

[Annah]

A few mornings ago I saw the light was on in my closet.  This is unusual because A: it's a motion activated light and B: no one else was in the apartment.  Was it a ghost that did it?  While I could jump to that conclusion as overwhelming evidence that ghosts exists i.e. there was no one else there and I was asleep all night therefore it had to have been triggered by an otherworldly presence.  However I'm willing to bet it was due to the thunderstorm.  In reality a voltage was sent to that part of the microchip's input and the program turned the light on.  That is an example of what we like to call critical thinking.  I could see certain events as "evidence" of otherworldly happenings but I take a moment to think about it and usually I arrive at a much more plausible explanation.  Thinking: always a good decision.

very true

but how would you explain me doing a house blessing when I was a priest and I encountered an apparition of a man standing at the first staircase landing about 3 feet in front of me. He was wearing a plaid shirt, suspenders, and jeans where the lower legs were "not there" and the apparition was fully identifiable as the previous owner who had passed away from the house.

When you see things like that there is just no other way of explaining it (well...if the current owners of the house pulled a prank on me by installing a 3 dimensional holographic imaging nodule into the ceiling above the staircase that gave the illusion ...but i dont think that was what happened lol). This occured in the middle of the afternoon and it was standing right in front of me for seven seconds so it was not a trick of the eye either.

Another encountered I had was last September when I was doing my first Wiccan ritual. I called all four elements but then the locked plastic covering above my air unit controller pop open (it was locked) and it flew off the wall, across my living room and landed on the sofa. Some could say it was a power surge, but that air conditioner controller has no power and the chords had been severed back in 1973 when the school decided central air was too expensive for students.  I learned to cast a circle first from then on out and nothing happened since.

Now, you could probably feasibly explain why or how the box did that; however, there is no explanation for the apparition I saw during the house blessing. And I wasn't hallucinating either because the entire family saw it at the same time I did as they were following me from room to room to bless their new home.

[dejan160]

I dont know what topic to put this under, but i was in the dark, shining my cell phone light around, and i seen a person, standing there, and it turned their head. it freaked the hell out of me!! Do any of you believe in ghosts? Have you ever seen a ghost before?

again, sorry if this was in the wrong topic..

Are you sure you are not having hallucinations or illusions? That can be very dangerous. I think you should talk to your therapist about seeing things nobody else is seeing.

[JessicaH]

Humanity's knowledge base has come so far in the last few hundred years but I have no doubt that the world of 2112 will look back on 2012 like it's the stone age. My point is,  the amount of knowledge and understanding that we have of the universe is dwarfed by the immense amount that we don't know. As engineers say, "we have known/unknowns and we have unknown/unknowns.

Just becasue we can't explain something today, doesn't make it other-worldly or supernatural. For all I know, ghost could be some sort of residual energy that is magnified by ripples in space time (unlikely) but there are so many unknown/unknowns to even guess.