The paranormal, ghosts, hauntings and poltergeists...

I don't know if this has come up before, but I would appreciate your comments here.

I have a serious question to my fellow posters here. It is a question that has been left unanswered to me, and difficult to reconcile with my rejection of the supernatural as a side-effect of being an atheist. It is for this reason that I explicitly use the term paranormal here.

How do most of you view the thousands of reports and experiences of phenomena of this nature, especially, in some cases by witnesses who were previously total skeptics and "non-believers" of the supernatural? I understand most of these are anecdotal non-repeatable experiences, with no scientific research basis whatsoever. Can all of this be dismissed as hallucinations, or any number of the things Cal usually refer to in his posts?

Of course I limit my question here to those listed, and not visions and 'experiences' of an obvious religious nature, including possessions and demons. :rolleyes:

[inkadu]

Atheism and skepticism are two different things. As long as you don't believe in God, you're an atheist. HOWEVER, if you do believe in paranormal phenomenon, I don't know why you wouldn't belive in God. Because if ghosts can be walking around, so can faeries, nymphs, spirits, gods, and even the big God.

So,. to answer your question, yes, they can all be dismissed, because everything relating to paranormal phenomenon has been exhaustively researched and has turned up absolutely bupkus. Explain to me how a phenomenon can be so completely unrepeatable; and besides, most paranormal claims are, in theory, repeatable (telekinesis, astral projection, etc). And yet none of these claims, theoretically repeatable and just as wide spread, supposedly, as the non-repeatable stuff, have ever been shown to exist.

Second, science is able to measure obscenely small things and obscenely distant things using obscenely discriminating measures. How likely is it that something any rube can see would have completely missed detection?

Third: there are several abilities that human beings have that are perfectly amazingly normal. We can discriminate colors, for instance. Pretty cool. We can communicate our thoughts with speech. Pretty amazing. Yet nobody doubts our ability to do these things, because it's perfectly obvious we can do them. People with special talents, such as deaf people use can use echolocation, can prove their abilities pretty handily. People with paranormal talents always fail when it comes to a test. If people did have special abilities, I think it would be accepted; also, people wouldn't be the only critters to use psychic powers -- there'd be a whole evolutionary psi-war going on...

Anyway, so that's the short answer. You might pick up "Why People Believe Weird Things," which describes a lot of phenomenon. Most of the time, people see what they want to see; sometimes they see something vague, which through hypnotic suggestion, becomes something more weird. People used to see Saints in the heavens, now they see UFO's. What's the easier explanation: that people ahve a tendency to believe they see weird shit, or that the UFO's are having a war with the saints in the heavens, and that's why people see more UFO and less saints nowadays?

[calpurnpiso]

"V" wrote

I don't know if this has come up before, but I would appreciate your comments here.

I have a serious question to my fellow posters here. It is a question that has been left unanswered to me, and difficult to reconcile with my rejection of the supernatural as a side-effect of being an atheist. It is for this reason that I explicitly use the term paranormal here.

How do most of you view the thousands of reports and experiences of phenomena of this nature, especially, in some cases by witnesses who were previously total skeptics and "non-believers" of the supernatural? I understand most of these are anecdotal non-repeatable experiences, with no scientific research basis whatsoever. Can all of this be dismissed as hallucinations, or any number of the things Cal usually refer to in his posts?

Of course I limit my question here to those listed, and not visions and 'experiences' of an obvious religious nature, including possessions and demons. :rolleyes:

You must take into account that, as Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The fact is that you could be a very strong atheist but if you ingest ACCODENTALLY a little clavicepts purpurea infected rye--this is commonly referred to as ergot and is where LSD comes from --you will EXPERIENCE and SEE many irrational absurd things that your mind will accept as REAL VISIONS swearing they are REAL!.

Religious people, IMHO, have these chemical imbalance NATURALLY occurring in their brain which due to genetic mutations in their ancestry has developed a propensity to go berserk accepting delusions as reality. These delusions based on fantasies produce dopamine which is highly addictive. Karl Marx was not aware how correct he was when he suggested Religion was the opiate of the masses. The MRI of a highly religious person shows the dopamine assimilation centers forming interesting patterns of colors, not unlike those of the drug addicted or schizophrenic.

I can concentrate deeply going inside my brain experiencing awesome apparitions which I CONTROL. Since I DO it, I know anyone can do it too.This occurs naturally but in the case of the religious the anomaly makes them believe the spirits are REAL manifestations! It only takes practice, self control and drugs, in some cases to "summon them"..:lol:

I tend to think things have to fit into a pattern and the overall pattern has to make some degree of sense.

To an extent it comes down to the question of, "What are human beings, really?"

Suppose for a moment that the system works on reincarnation. Then what are "human beings" doing during that time between lifetimes. I have talked to 9 people who have told me they had had experiences with ghosts or spirits or whatever you want to call them. I tend to think that ghosts may be decarnate people who have a neurotic fixation on the physical plane and insist on hanging around. Human beings have free will, what can you do? :lol: :lol:

Of course this would mean that you are just ghost that happens to be attached to a body at the moment. :nanner:

[Choobus]

psikeyhackr wrote

Suppose for a moment that the system works on reincarnation.

No, it's fucking retarded and stinks of the same desperation as religon. Oh no,I'm going to die, I hope I can live for all eternity in a nice place, or maybe I can have a do-over and come back to life again. Reincarnation and religon; a bridge between assholes.

[inkadu]

psikeyhackr wrote

I tend to think things have to fit into a pattern and the overall pattern has to make some degree of sense.

I don't know if you're serious or not, but I agree -- the overall pattern has to make sense. That is, all the information should point in the same direction. And that direction is that our personalities and memories are created by our brains, and that damage to the brain alters personalities and memories. That if a soul exists, it it is undetectable and it doesn't do anything.

The pattern that makes sense to me is that we evolved consciousness as an emergent property of the brain, and when our brains die, we die.

That's pretty much the only overall pattern that makes sense to me.

[The Judge]

"V" wrote

How do most of you view the thousands of reports and experiences of phenomena of this nature, especially, in some cases by witnesses who were previously total sceptics and "non-believers" of the supernatural?

Similar to what Inkadu said, I view atheism as more a “side-effect” of scepticism or a sceptical nature.

You ask specifically about ghosts, hauntings and poltergeists. Despite one unnerving experience a couple of years ago I am still a sceptic and I don’t think that belief in such phenomena necessitates a belief in the after life though I can see how alluring this leap of faith may be to many.

The reason my experience was unnerving was because at the time I had no better explanation for the occurrences I witnessed. It was true to say that the place where we stayed was billed as a haunted B&B (friendly ghosts of course!) and we were treated to a few late night stories and anecdotes before going to bed.

However there was certain physical evidence that I couldn’t adequately explain given my knowledge at the time: One I witnessed, with my senses, the other was evident on digital media which I witnessed only after the photo had been taken and I looked at it on the screen of the camera.
These "events" were the TV turning on really loud in the middle of the night (despite the remote being on the bed side table – no I had not rolled over and accidentally touched it since I had to half get out of bed to reach for it when I was woken) and also the strange light phenomena on certain photographs I took of the room:




Now I can be the most devout sceptic in the world, but I’m still a human being with a brain that as a result of it’s evolutionary development accommodates (amongst other things[!]) what Teasdale and Barnard (1993) called their Interacting Cognitive Subsystems model.

A word of explanation:

Isabel Clarke wrote

(From here.)
“[This model has] nine subsystems…[two of these systems are] the implicational and the propositional. The propositional subsystem represents the logical mind, capable of fine discrimination, and the contents of whose memory store is coded verbally. It can take an objective, dispassionate view of phenomena, and in this way can learn much about the environment. There is probably some rough correspondence between this aspect of human functioning and the neocortex, the newer parts of the brain, though the rich interconnections within the brain make this sort of statement all but impossible to verify. The implicational subsystem, on the other hand, deals with perception of the whole, and with emotional meaning. Its memory system codes vividly in several sensory modalities, and its concerns are not the dispassionate study of the external world, but the inner world of the self and, in particular, its worth, and any threats to its survival or position. Again, this subsystem probably represents the older and deeper levels of the brain, to make a sweeping oversimplification of a complex subject.”

In short I like to think I’ve trained my propositional subsystem to largely run things in my head, but certain circumstances above allowed my implicational subsystem to become more activated in this instance and I just couldn’t ignore the evidence of inexplicable phenomena at the time. What it actually meant was what I wanted to try and answer and that answer is still up for grabs.

However I (as we all are to some degree) am a natural scientist and whilst I found myself faced with evidence that contradicted my firm scepticism, it did not “convert” me. Rather here was something new that I simply couldn’t adequately explain.
I went back and looked various things up like what to make of “orbs” and if there were any distinct differences between naturally occurring physical particles e.g. dust, water vapour etc. and any other kinds of orbs.
I still remain sceptical as to the validity of such apparently discrete differences in often poor pictures taken with less than adequate megapixel resolutions.

The pink mist photo (number 3) still baffles me though (and if I’m honest still kinda freaks me out a little).

I do not say that I believe in “ghosts” (what ever they may be). I am agnostic as to what caused the anomolies in the photos and what made the TV turn on so loud in the middle of the night.
Despite physical evidence of "something," for me to then make assumptions about an "after life" is a leap of faith I’m not prepared to make – there was after all no firm evidence of that – just of something…weird.

N.B. What I was trying to do was get a good picture of the whole room for posterity. It was quite a small (and lovely) room and in the absence of a wide-angle lens, I stood on tip toe, held the camera above my head and angled it down to what I thought might be a good view point of the main feature - the bed.
I was essentially taking the pictures blind.

I get those circles on every flash photo I take on my digital camera. I always assumed it was something to do with the optics or the sensor (it's quite an old camera) rather than it being an accurate photo of circles that are really present everywhere I go but are invisible to the naked eye. I mean, if I take a photo with an obvious lens flare I don't go "Wow! The sun has invisible lines coming out of it that you can only see in a camera!", I just chalk it up to the way the optics work.

[Choobus]

GaryM wrote

I get those circles on every flash photo I take on my digital camera. I always assumed it was something to do with the optics or the sensor (it's quite an old camera) rather than it being an accurate photo of circles that are really present everywhere I go but are invisible to the naked eye. I mean, if I take a photo with an obvious lens flare I don't go "Wow! The sun has invisible lines coming out of it that you can only see in a camera!", I just chalk it up to the way the optics work.

I suppose you don't think Jesus visits us in taco/grilled cheese form either! I don't know, kids today....

[The Judge]

GaryM wrote

I get those circles on every flash photo I take on my digital camera...

Except this was in broad daylight - no flash.

Thanks for the comments. I posted this after seeing this really scary video. If you are a skeptic, then watch this:


http://www.break.com/1408/sitter-cam-catches-ghost.html

[Choobus]

no flash, but still light, and hence optical effects. Also, digital cameras capture light on a CCD array, which is susceptible to magnetic fields, radiation, or just a bad readout (especially if the charge wasn't totally bled off after the last picture). In the list of possible explanations for the mystery mist "ghosts and shit" are quite far down, just after toxic farts containing photoluminescent gas that emits in the infra red and power waves emitted from Mysts super wang which create worm holes and pop up all over th eplanet....

The Judge wrote

Except this was in broad daylight - no flash.

True, though I would think it was a related phenomenon. Here's one someone took with my camera at an old gig on mine:



The circles all seem to be in the same plane, as if they were on the surface on the lens, rather than existing as 3D objects in space.

[Choobus]

yeah, but look at that really scary Ghost running out of the way in the top right hand corner. He's scared you're going to capture his soul with your magic image device, and his fellow ghosties are showing him the quickest way to escape with a ghostly arrow. That shit fucking freaks me out man.

[The Judge]

Choobus wrote

In the list of possible explanations for the mystery mist "ghosts and shit" are quite far down, just after toxic farts containing photoluminescent gas that emits in the infra red and power waves emitted from Mysts super wang which create worm holes and pop up all over th eplanet....

:lol: Absolutely.
Just curious given your knowledge of the area, in the last photo with two different anomolies do you think it's quite likely that two such faults could occur simultaneously? (i.e. "white orbs" and "pink myst mist")