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Spirits real or fake??

^ Yeh technically you are correct, I was using the term somewhat loosely, well caught.
 
There is a variety in the minds of everyone regarding what the term 'spirit' refers to. In this thread we are referring to ghosts, demons, and angels. While these three may be commonly acknowledged in some religious beliefs I think persueing a tighter definition might help a lot.

I think we can all provide insight or more thoughtful opinions if we can focus our definitions a bit.

At a sporting event or a concert we can feel the "spirit" of the crowd as a palpable entity does it become a ghost or even have a conscience? I'd think not but certainly there is a spiritual activity taking place.

At a large religious event (I would guess any religion), the same should be true as well. When we gather in mass with a purpose we create a spiritual pressure that seems to be felt by all participants often regardless of initial individual perspective. It could be said there is a spirit of conformity that seems to take place when we meet with a purpose.

These levels of spirituality or these existences of 'spirits' I can conceded to, beyond these I'm of the opinion it would require personal experience and or faith both hard topics to really prove.

While I do 'feel' there is more to our existence then we can currently empirically experience, I'm hoping science eventually makes the leap from missing all things spiritual to exploring spirituality,

If the OP's idea was disembodied humans floating about looking for the exit door I'm not really in but I certainly can't prove otherwise either.
 
Attempts to scientifically study the paranormal have been attempted from time to time over the years. The problem is once proper controls are put in place, it fails to find evidence of it's existence. This goes for a wide range of paranormal phenomenon. Mind reading, Astro projection, remote viewing, apparitions and ghosts. That's why I'm so skeptical of their existence.

Has not one scientist died, become a ghost, and tried to make it easier for us to detect their existence?

Let's say we go to a haunted house and try and scientifically validate the haunting. We set up an array of monitoring devices, and in the end find nothing.

And we already have an explanation of peoples perceptions of ghosts. Studies have shown how with certain brain stimuli we can even induce in subjects the perception of experiencing the paranormal, like ghosts or out of body experiences. We can induce in people the perception that god has spoken to them. The brain is an amazing thing but it's far from an accurate observer of reality.

We know how the brain can be fooled. In the face of that, and the absence of scientific evidence of the existence of a range of paranormal phenomena. It has to be concluded on a balance of evidence that likely it does not exist. However for people who have experienced such phenomena. They have a cognitive bias and invested reason to not believe the evidence. That's not being open minded, that's the definition of being closed minded. Believers in psychics are some of the most close minded people I've met.

I'll tell you one thing for sure, psychics are a sham. I've had the misfortune of meeting a lot of psychics and watched in awe at how peope totally fail to notice their mistakes but continually are impressed with their vaguely lucky guesses.

And then there's the especially bs stuff like tarot card reading. Tarot cards history is well known and they originated as a regular card game, they were only appropriated by psychics in very recent history.

I'd love to believe in all sorts of paranormal phenomena, it could revolutionize our understanding of the world, it would be a whole new unexplored field of inquiry. I'd be ecstatic if it were real. But I gotta deal with the evidence as a whole and it's very disappointing.

Is it simply a coincidence that so many experiences only happen when we're children? Supposedly children are more able to perceive the paranormal, but we also know for a fact that they're especially prone to their minds playing tricks on them. It's simply that children's brains have a far reduced disconnect between imagination and reality. It's the same reason our imaginations tend to be far better as children. That same ability also causes us as children, at a time when we're less aware lf what's a regular occurrence and what's highly unusual. To be much more likely to see paranormal activity as a plausible likely event and by extension have our minds trick us into seeing things.

I used to see all sorts of things as a little girl, I saw my dead pets out of the corner of my eye, chairs move without being touched, inanimate objects moving. But always in a blink and you miss it fashion. As an adult I now see how those experiences are exactly what you'd expect in an overactive Childs imagination. They didn't really happen. They don't happen to me anymore.

Our memories are also highly unreliable. I've seen objectively first hand how my memory and the memories of others have been show to be highly inconsistent with what actually happened. That too adds to these sorts of experiences. Turning far more explainable occurrences into far more than what really happened at the time.
 
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Science has got a lot better at detecting field phenomena, but the detection threshold is still at a very dense plane compared to what ghosts, spirits and entities are residing at. And those terms are frankly primitive because if we had full visible access to those planes, we would probably come up with complex category systems for the kinds of life we find there. Ghosts of dead humans are at the densest level, so in theory we are the closest to technology that can detect those... we know this because most paranormal encounters are ghost related. People very rarely see other kinds of things.

The problem with testing psychism is that it can't be produced predictably, in those who are truly psychic. A lot of the psychic experiences I've had in my life have been spontaneously and not reproducible. For instance, I grew up in a haunted house but only saw the ghost on a few specific occasions. What was unique about those occasions? The weather? My mood? My level of alertness? The ghost's nearness to the physical plane? I don't know.

If a scientist came into my home and tried to make me prove where the ghost was at that time, I'd have no idea.

Most people who call themselves psychic are just highly empathic or intuitive. They have non-verbal, non-linear faculties that are able to put together information in a way that modern science and psychology have not yet defined. Other traditions have, but most of them are pre-modern and therefore can't use language that science is willing to interface with. There are entire anatomies of how psychism works in a lot of pre-modern literature but the rise of rationality in the west has deemed it all superstition. Not for much longer though, thankfully.

True psychics are rare... maybe 1 in 10,000. The sensitivity level is very high. Most had dysfunctional childhoods and are outsiders in society. They have experienced rejection and abuse when they naively demonstrated their awarenesses in the wrong settings. A woman I was friends with for many years was regularly beaten by her Catholic parents anytime she tried to forewarn them (accurately) of upcoming calamities. She was called evil, and many other things. All you need to do is look to history to see how psychics are generally treated - as witches, demons, corruptors to be tortured and executed - to know why most don't come forward. When you're a psychic child living in a world that largely denies your existence and promotes material reductionism, you have to grow up experiencing a lot of intense and sometimes traumatic shit that other people don't see, completely alone, unless you get lucky and meet up with another psychic somewhere along the way. Because of the isolation and lack of institutionalism, a lot of psychics can't even qualify what they're seeing. For instance, they'll call it a ghost, but is it really? Maybe in a more advanced world we could delineate their experiences more accurately. For now they are alone among brutes. Why would psychic adults come forward to be cross examined by systems that treated them like shit from the get go?

The fact is... the world as it is, is not ready to accept that psychics and the phenomena they see are real. There is vast collective denial, compounded by centuries of Church rule. Even modern science, for all its empirical virtues, has been influenced by Christianity. The only country in the world that has done genuine, unbiased research into psychic abilities, the paranormal, and ESP, is Russia and the former Soviet States. Europe and North America are hopelessly biased against it, except of course in government where research into and use of psychics is rampant among intelligence services. Especially the U.S. government, which is obsessed with mind control. Btw, that woman I mentioned earlier? The CIA tried to recruit her twice. So it seems that we can busy ourselves with plausible denial, but it won't stop people at all levels of the world from depending on psychics!
 
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JessFR said:
And finally, science has tried repeatedly to find evidence in all sorts of paranormal claims and repeatedly come up empty handed.
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That's just not true unfortunately. Infact an objective analysis of the actual evidence only points in one direction. Have a look at Ben Goertzel's webpage which supplies a list of papers and books on the subject, all by legitimate researchers. The problem we have is some of the stronger voices, the psuedo sceptics, shout loudest and repeat the same tired tropes that there is no scientific evidence.

Well, here is some!

<snip for the moment>

“I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that [psi] is proven. "
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Richard Wiseman - Daily Mail 2008
 
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Well, I've looked and failed to find evidence I would consider to be, even by its own admission, to have been conducted with full scientific rigor. If you can provide such evidence I'd be happy to look at it. But if I see failures to conduct the research properly I'm not going to pretend I don't see it.

I looked for the website you mentioned,it appears to be compromised. I tried to find related stuff but didn't have much luck tracking down anything of note.

It certainly doesn't help that so many believers in such phenomenon most definitely don't believe it based on objective evidence and believe in various other claims many of which are DEFINITELY bullshit. So more plausible subjects are tarred with the same brush. Ironically the majority if proponents of the phenomenon are also it's greatest obstacle to acceptance. If a bunch of people who believe in completely absurd notions also believe in something else less absurd. Even with evidence it's going to be tarred with the same brush. Now personally I try to keep stuff like that in the background when I look into any one specific subject. I just need sufficient evidence and I'll be much more likely to believe. But it won't change the fact that the vast majority of self proclaimed psychics are bullshitters and that most stuff widely seen as part of this overall subject. Like numerology or astrology, is most definitely bs.
 
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^Yeh I see what you mean about that website being compromsed, apologies. Below I will provide a seperate list.

JessFR said:
Well, I've looked and failed to find evidence I would consider to be, even by its own admission, to have been conducted with full scientific rigor. If you can provide such evidence I'd be happy to look at it. But if I see failures to conduct the research properly I'm not going to pretend I don't see it.
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That's perfectly fair. It's a complaint often levelled at parapsychology but is succefully agrued against on many occasions. PSI research has evolved to have extremely stringent methodologies due to that specific criticism.


JessFR said:
I tried to find related stuff but didn't have much luck tracking down anything of note.
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To begin with a list of useful books to get to know the science of the subject.


Outside the Gates of Science, by Damien Broderick
Randi’s Prize, by Robert McLuhan
The Evidence for Psi, Edited by Damien Broderick and Ben Goertzel
Basic Research in Parapsychology, by K. Ramakrishna Rao
The Varieties of Anomalous Experience, Edited by Etzel Cardena and Steven Jay Lynn

An article on the work Daryl Bem published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

http://hplusmagazine.com/2010/11/04...eleases-powerful-new-evidence-human-mind-can/

This is also an interesting article on Michael Persinger's work published in neuroscience letters

http://www.dailygrail.com/blogs/Pau...ight-Taking-the-Psychology-Out-Parapsychology

Here is Dean Radin's website which contains a list of published, peer reviewed studies.

http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm

It certainly doesn't help that so many believers in such phenomenon most definitely don't believe it based on objective evidence and believe in various other claims many of which are DEFINITELY bullshit.
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I agree, and there is so much bullshit in this field it's hard to know where legitimate research begins. Personal anecdotal evidence can be a strong factor, it's not that they want to believe, but based on genuine experience, invoking some form of PSI is the only intellectually honest avenue.
Of course there are frauds, hoaxers and people lacking rigour when evaluating their experience, but from my experience there is a real phenomena at play here, which is also supported by scientific literature.
 
I agree about the lack of evidence for many paranormal claims such as numerology and astrology, although there is more evidence in my opinion of ghosts. It's possible to actually see a ghost and observe them visually, but it isn't possible to really verify anything related to numerology or astrology. I agree that the latter are most likely bs, but the thing about ghosts is that seeing truly is believing. If you haven't seen one yourself though, I can definitely understand your thought on that. To be honest, I pretty much felt the same way until I actually witnessed ghost activity myself.

I think the reason for the public lack of belief is that many of the occupied buildings are simply very old and run down and no one lives in them. I'd bet that if you were to say do a survey of a population that would be around areas that are almost certainly occupied by ghosts (e.g. night maintenance workers at cemetery, people that live near old abandoned hospitals, people that live in stockade/colonial districts of cities, etc.) the belief rate of ghosts would likely encroach on 100%. Some people in these types of places may even encounter ghosts in their everyday lives but their experiences are dismissed due to the natural skepticism of those that haven't witnessed them.

For instance, I have heard that due to the massive number of deaths on both sides and the horrifically violent nature of many of the deaths, the Gettysburg battle site is inhabited by the spirits of hundreds of soldiers and bystanders that lost their lives on that day over 150 years ago. Many, if not most, people that live in the town and have walked in or by the actual battlefield at night say they have witnessed so many ghosts that the field appears as a haze, essentially an entire crowd of ghosts. There also are ghosts that can be seen at times in the houses and businesses and also walking the streets of the town. Not only that, but there are even reports of ghosts in the area that even appear nearly identical to a living person...... only after you are talking with them for a moment, they mysteriously disappear and you realize it was actually a ghost you were talking to! I have to say that would seriously scare the shit out of me if I was literally having a conversation with someone...... and then you suddenly realized it was actually a ghost you were talking to all along 8o I would bet if someone did a survey of people living in Gettysburg of how many people believe in ghosts and have seen them, it would probably be extraordinarily high, possibly even close to 100%.
 
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I've been to several conferences where fringe phenomena are discussed. These can be really exhausting to me personally though I enjoy them too. Many of these ideas exist in little bubbles where A is disconnected from B. There are billions of these bubbles floating around screaming for attention. People's desire for coherence causes them to connect these bubble in strange ways. I do it all the time too. So does everyone else. Let's not fool ourselves into thinking science was coherent from the get go and is coherent now when viewed in its totality.

At these conferences many are so far removed from the common thread so as to be easily ignored. Others simply require too much effort to understand what they are saying. However there are a few who are very eager to demonstrate that their metaphysical experiences are valid, reproducible and accessible. They talk to thousands of people. They create institutes where people can learn. They are openly willing to teach anyone and submit to most experiments skeptics and researchers offer. Many do this without any financial reward. Thing is they are mostly ignored by the mainstream, because mainstream doesn't care or intentionally wastes their time, energy and money.

There is little point talking to someone who has already made up their mind. They don't want to see and therefor cannot see. Perception, free will and all that.

For example, I met a guy who taught people practical techniques for attaining past life regressions and out-of-body experiences his whole life. He is one of the primary teachers at the International academy of consciousness. He is also very interested in demonstrating experimentally the validity of his experiences. The primary technique he teaches is the VELO technique, which is the vibrational state almost all people report before transitioning into an out-of-body state/energetic awareness state: http://uk.iacworld.org/how-to-achieve-vibrational-state-a-step-by-step-guide/

He tried doing it in an fMRI while in the vibrational state and it caused the fMRI to light up outside the boundaries of his brain under carefully controlled conditions. I had opportunity to talk to him quite a bit, he worked on me energetically which was a really interesting and helpful experience, I had the opportunity to gaze into his eyes for 5 minutes (which was wow). I wasn't there for the experiment but I believe him.

Anyways, he wants to reproduce his findings with other people and other machines. Very few people have offered to help him reproduce the experiment. Those who have back out at the last minute. Some have literally explained they are afraid their multi-million dollar fMRI will be labeled glitchy. He gave a Ted talk about it if anyone is interested:

https://youtu.be/Kr85BurAW_k

I'm admittedly biased against the materialist assumption. To me consciousness is a phenomenon that is expressed through the brain but resides beyond it. I've embraced this notion from both personal experiences, because science itself suggests it, and because it is the fundamental assumption that is at the crux of this debate and is ultimately personal preference whether someone chooses to limit what reality is. That assumption doesn't negate the reality of physical existence -- it builds upon it.
 
I have experienced ghostly activity in one instance, well actually many instances, in this one house where I was cat-sitting. Those experiences are irrefutable for me, because I saw and heard things that I have no other way to explain. I don't know what the nature of these sorts of experiences is, I only know that I experienced them. It appears there are places that are haunted, whatever that really means. I tend to not think they are actual conscious disembodied spirits, but perhaps recordings of people or events.

I have some other experiences that could be explained vias other means, for example, I was dreaming, but in this house, you'd walk in and experience phenomena the whole time.
 
Something you must remember. Something being unexplained says only that it's unexplained. Sometimes the available information precludes an explanation. That doesn't mean ghosts are the answer. It means an answer is unavailable from the information at hand. It also doesn't mean there isn't a simply answer,our inability to imagine an answer doesn't mean there's not a simple answer. It simply means it's currently unknown.

There is little point talking to someone who has already made up their mind. They don't want to see and therefor cannot see. Perception, free will and all that
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Very true, and some of the worst offenders in this regard are believers. There are skeptics like this too of course.

The problem with gaining mainstream acceptance, aside from as I already mentioned the liability of indiscriminate believers who believe in anything and everything. Is that the vast majority of claims turn out to be false. Because the majority are false. So isolating true paranormal, if it indeed exists is made very difficult.

It is also the case that many such claims, say for example ghosts. Not only faces limited evidence for it's existence, but is often incompatible with other observations that have been virtually 100% proven. In the case of ghosts. Apart from difficulties in finding evidence of their existence, we have already determined that the vast majority of what makes us who we are, is definitely produced by physical processes in the brain. And the existence of conscious ghosts completely contradicts the well established observations of the death of our brains with our body. Meaning for such ghosts to exist, their cognitive processes would have to be happening in some sort of replica of the brain with no apparent physical counterpart. So it not only requires proof of one thing, but is in heavy contradiction of something else far better established.

Subjective experiences can be so fallible, we know that to be well established too. From the overall evidence available one has to assume that it is the experiencers who are mistaken, rather than hundreds of years of consistent observation.

This is also entirely separate from the subject of psychic abilities. Which itself can be divided up into several separate claims. As far as this goes, psychic ability, for lack of a better term, is far less in contradiction to established understanding. It may not exist either, but it is far more plausible than ghosts and spirits.
 
How many of you would spend the night on Poveglia Island, alone...... Here's the link to the place: 8o http://www.huffingtonpost.com/off-track-planet/poveglia-island-like-hell_b_4188986.html. This place would utterly scare the crap out of me. This place is literally teeming with ghosts, and I doubt even many non believers would be willing to spend the night there alone. Even though I'm a firm ghost believer, I sure as hell wouldn't be willing to spend the night there. The place is teeming with the souls of millions of people that died horrible deaths including being burned alive 8o This place is so horrifying I can hardly believe it exists but it does, when they did a ghost hunters episode there one of the guys literally was possessed by an evil spirit supposedly!!!!!!!! 8o Let's just say you were going camping alone on the island for a night..... I bet most of you non believers would still be too chicken to do it. I certainly would, no way that I'd spend a second at that place..... you'd be risking getting possessed by the devil or some diabolical spirit 8(
 
I would, do I have cell phone coverage? I dun wanna get bored.

I don't believe in ghosts, not even a tiny little bit. I stopped being afraid of the dark long ago. If you're not that's fine, but not everyone's like you.

If I'm certain ghosts don't exist, why wouldn't I be willing to do it?
 
JessFR said:
If I'm certain ghosts don't exist, why wouldn't I be willing to do it?
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I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to get possessed by an evil spirit 8o Supposedly that has happened from people merely going there. While I certainly wouldn't recommend it, I suppose you would have cell phone coverage since it's only about half a mile from Venice which is a major city....... of course, the ghosts or demons could disrupt the service thus leaving you without cell coverage 8( I guess if you're certain that's not a concern though you wouldn't be concerned about that, although I'd say it probably wouldn't be a good idea. The danger of being possessed or otherwise attacked by an evil spirit is just too great in my opinion.


I suppose it's possible that this danger is overblown and you'd be totally fine though. I personally wouldn't risk it most likely. Although, it's totally possible honestly that the place either isn't haunted in a dangerous manner or the danger is greatly overblown. It's totally possible that you'd be fine. I mean honestly maybe I would do it under the right circumstances, but I'd be scared as fuck the whole time 8( This whole evil spirit business scares the crap out of me, although the ghost hunters spent the night there without being possessed, sort of. Although, Zak claims that he had strange feelings and later felt that an evil spirit took him over and another guy on the ghost hunters claimed that a strange orb shot inside of his neck and he felt strange after 8o Of course, this is a TV show =D I've seen real ghosts though for sure though, but it obviously is impossible to determine that they were real other than my own personal claim of them.... which I obviously is real, although it wouldn't hold up scientifically. I was also sober and I don't see nonexistent figures in my day to day life, so I am inclined to believe my own experiences even though it wasn't anything that would hold up scientifically as simply my own witness of the spirits.
 
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I strictly believe in science. I believe that if such spirits and hauntings existed, we would have proven it by now. Since I don't believe in it, yes I would go there. Since I see no risk involves.

If however I am wrong, at least I will have discovered something that would revolutionize our understanding of science and the world, still seems worth it. I just don't believe it would happen. I've seen so many people be utterly convinced in things that aren't true. Seen exactly how they came to believe it and how it all works. For that reason I don't believe anything that is at all hard to believe based on personal account's. Because if you believe personal accounts, you must believe everything.
 
I agree that ghosts are a very difficult thing to believe if you haven't experienced them. They simply seem to fly in the face of science and common logic, yet in my experiences they actually exist 8o I never would've believed it until I experienced it myself. I used to feel the same as you for many years, and I used to strictly believe in science too...... until I realized that science made a mistake through things experienced by my own eyes which I personally would be inclined to trust more than science. Logic is generally right, but there are occasional exceptions in my experience. However, it is actually very wise of you to believe logic over personal claims rather than the other way around. I agree that I generally do not believe personal claims, as they can be wrong.
 
That's the difference between you and me though. I don't trust my own eyes more than science. Something I have seen through depression and drug use and mental illness is that yours eyes, your mind, cant be trusted. I've seen memories be wrong. With what ivr seen, I do trust science over my eyes alone. Science is the practice of many eyes performing many tests and using controls to as best we can eliminate the fallibility of our perceptions.

That's why I don't trust my or anyone else's experiences to reflect objective reality.
 
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