Our BetterMost Community > The Polling Place
Do You Believe In Ghosts?
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: Kelpersmek on October 24, 2006, 03:20:31 pm ---I have to say that while a gravitational eddy is simply the explaination of someone desperate to fill the blank in "I don't know why that happened", I still believe that there is a rational explaination for things.
The thing is it's ok to say "I don't know" without that automatically meaning "A ghost did it!"
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Or automatically coming up with a "logical explanation" that's about 10 times loopier than "a ghost did it". However, that's irrelevant as I wasn't speaking of any supernatural goings-on. Telekenesis has zilch to do with ghosts.
--- Quote ---By the way, if you have control over your telekinetic powers to any degree, there is an organisation offering a $1million reward for proof of any supernatural, paranormal or occult gift or event.
http://www.randi.org/research/index.html
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Randi is a nutso fanatic who has built his entire life and career on "debunking". This would NOT be any kind of rational or objective venue to approach, even if I had control over the telekenetic episodes, which I don't. And the "reward" is an exact counterpart to the "rewards" offered by organized Holocaust deniers. The reward will never be given out, as no amount of evidence of any kind would be acceptable to them.
--- Quote --- I hope this doesn't come across as an attack on your belief in the paranormal, but I am an adherent to the "Western superstition", and felt compelled to explain my position.
--- End quote ---
Yes, superstitions do die hard.
Marge_Innavera:
--- Quote from: horo35 on October 29, 2006, 12:35:04 am ---Ghosts...do they exsit? Possibly. I believe in an after life..but do we run around haunting houses and stuff? Hard to say...I haven't died yet! I guess we'll all find out the truth sooner or later...preferbly much later! ;)
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I have three theories as to what ghosts are, other than instances of hoaxes and overheated imaginations:
1) A person who has died a sudden and violent death (which seems to be the context of most haunted houses) and is a little disoriented, not knowing for a little while what's happened. And since time as we know it doesn't likely operate the same way on the other side, "a little while" could be anywhere from a few seconds to a few centuries.
2) Someone who has unfinished business of some kind. People who have had near-death experiences often remark that they didn't want to come back but did because someone in their lives needed them, usually minor children.
3) Just something on the order of leftover energy that the living person is seeing or hearing as a ghost.
These aren't, of course, mutually exclusive so if there's anything to these theories all three could be operative.
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: Marge_Innavera on November 16, 2006, 02:20:45 pm ---Randi is a nutso fanatic who has built his entire life and career on "debunking". This would NOT be any kind of rational or objective venue to approach, even if I had control over the telekenetic episodes, which I don't. And the "reward" is an exact counterpart to the "rewards" offered by organized Holocaust deniers. The reward will never be given out, as no amount of evidence of any kind would be acceptable to them.
--- End quote ---
I'm going to have to disagree here, Marge. Randi is a quite rational man whose scientific method is well established. If you read his books - and his work is backed up by CSCICOP - his approaches are not only rational, they're extremely objective. He forces no one to come to him, the people who approach him claim they have a supernatural talent that they can control and display.
He merely sets up the conditions under which they are tested. Being a magician himself, he is well aware of scammers and fakers and how they dupe others. Sometimes these people are con jobs, other times they truly believe they can do these things and end up not being able to demonstrate that they can.
Science is all about empirical evidence. Being able to measure something. They can't test something unless what is being tested can be repeated.
They can't test your telekinetic episodes if you can't reproduce the ability on demand so it would be a useless exercise. Kelpersmek pretty much laid it out. If you have control over it, your ability should be tested. If you don't have control over it, there's nothing to test.
That's not saying you don't have these episodes, it's simply saying that there is no scientific basis for them until someone with such abilities who has control over them comes forward to be tested and then there will be.
David In Indy:
Congratulations Dellaluvia On Your 1000th Post!!
:) :) :)
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: David925 on November 17, 2006, 12:36:26 am ---Congratulations Dellaluvia On Your 1000th Post!!
:) :) :)
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:o :o :o :o
Here I was following my count for a week, then forgot all about it tonight when I was posting.
Yay me!! ;D ;D ;D
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