Back off man i'm a scientist



Those willowisps are weird creatures and the problem is when you delv into ghosts you may have to consider folklore like fairies and sprites. When they were in Ireland the ghosthunters visited one area believed to be inhabited by the "wee folk" not exactly sure if it was leprechauns they were primarily searching for.

I'll pose the same question I pose in every one of these threads: Have you got a link to anything that has any sort of evidence under reasonable scientific conditions that could point towards the existence of ghosts?

No. I don't believe in superstition.

"Play dumb unintentionally" is like "turned up disappeared." I think you get what I'm saying. Just call me dumb if that's what you think I am. I can be dumb about one thing, can't I? Hell, if I'm only dumb about one thing I count myself as a lucky man.

I'm not saying the illusion role is impossible. But the whole "Scooby Doo" thing just doesn't work quite as well (unless you're in one of those paranormal TV shows, in which you have to exaggerate things to get the ratings). Sure, there's probably people who do it, especially if money is involved, but it's not as common.

And kids believe in Santa. But they don't get TV shows about finding his existence and the number of finding Santa sites are a lot less (I know there's at least two).

I don't know if they exist or not.

I think it' very unlikely that they exist. Like, 99%.

In todays society, if I were to try and be your kind of "open-minded" towards everything, I'd have no time to perform my most basic life functions. You have people believing that the Earth is flat, that USA fixed 9/11, that ghosts exist, new-age, Elvis being alive, electric allergy, UFO's etc. If you have proof, show me it and I'll see what I make of it. Don't tell me I'm close-minded because I choose to not believe your statement because you can't back it up with facts.

Actually, what I laugh the most about is when ghost-believers call the scientific community close-minded. I'd say it's the other way around. Scientists accept that there are some questions they can't answer yet, or never will be able to answer. Believers of the occult refuse to accept that there's something they can't understand, and instead find these things to believe, to create an illusion of understanding the world.

I don't believe in ghosts exactly. Well, not 'Ghosts' in particular, but I do believe there are... I guess you could say spirits? lol, so I guess, in a way, you could say yes. But in another way no. It's iffy, and depends on the description for me.

I do. A while ago now I was in bed (along with everyone else) and I heard big boots coming up the stairs. I lay there terrified unable to move, yet I didn't see anything. My mum also had this experience, and a friend heard the boots when we moved house and she was packing up.

I am a Christian, so I also believe that there is a spiritual realm. Whether those spirits can manifest in the physical realm at will (the Bible does contain occasions where a spirit is summoned or a demon is cast out, so it is possible) is not something that I have spent any time thinking/praying/researching about.

I do not believe in the highly stylized "ghosts" that hollywood frequently portrays.

(interesting note, Ghostbusters was playing on my iPod while I was writing this...)

Nope.

Cheer up, I was being light-hearted, although I know, the lack of smilies did indicate the opposite... I didn't want to offend you and I'm sorry if I did, I should be more careful about how the things I say look and sound to other people.


There are no documentary TV shows about Santa because it's not a fairytale advlt people tend to believe in, unlike ghosts.

Haven't there been documentaries about Santa? I'm almost sure I've seen at least one.

Defaulted and I meant the documentaries in which reported sightings of real Santa and proofs (" ") of his existence would be discussed.

Aye, I believe in ghosts. Seen a couple of them, one time a ghost appeared in front of me and a couple of others at the school I was at back in the 90s when I was a teen. It just floated there, though it looked like it was standing, it looked right at us then faded away.

Life uses a lot of energy, it seems wasteful if that life suddenly ends and the energy just ceases to be, some of that energy would most likely still remain even after the body had died and would continue to remain.

I believe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI needs to be brought to the attention of the people who like to play the "Open mind"-card on this, or any other, issue.

Fact of the matter is, by saying something is caused by ghosts or whatever, you are being the exact opposite of open-minded. See, having an open mind is about being open to different possibilities than one in particular.

By instantly identifying something as being caused by ghosts, spirits, fairies or whatever, you have already made up your mind and will refuse to accept any argument that would ever point to the event not having anything to do with ghosts.

If you have an experience that you cannot explain, the open-minded person would consider different possible explanations and the merits of each. The close-minded non-skeptic instantly hops to the explanation that there exists a parallel dimension that contains the non-corporeal souls of the deceased just because he heard the sound of footsteps.

Ghosts is one of those things where people often chant "If you had seen XYZ then you too would believe!". This is bogus! Believing something just because you had a particular experience is the exact opposite of scientific thinking. You aren't looking for other explanations, you aren't weighing the arguments, you aren't considering the logical implications, you aren't looking at what we know about the universe, you are just sticking with a story that you believe in by default.

That is not at all how energy works. Life isn't some kind of substance or kind of energy, it's not something that is somehow stored in the body and dissipates when we die. Life is just a large number of biological processes based on metabolism of nutrients.

There is no "life energy", it's a made up concept. Life is biological, when the body dies that biological activity ceases, and that's all she wrote.

No. Dead person stays dead, as far as I know from biology. Feel free to try and convince me otherwise, I do like like to learn why people think a different way than me.

I'm not offended, but if you think something I'm saying is dumb I do want to be called out on it. I'm serious when I said that.

EDIT: Of course, it could be Santa is real. Which is awesome, 'cause then I wouldn't have to buy any presents for my kid as Santa will break, enter, and deposit gifts. Of course, this hasn't ever happened, that I've heard of. Could be some bum called Crazy Steve did it instead of Santa, but a breaking and entering with intent to deposit gifts hasn't been reported. Poltergeist activity has. Doesn't matter if it's some bum called Crazy Steve beating his head against a wall, it's still reported and merits closer investigation.

No.

Yep, and that energy is in the form of chemical bonds, and I suppose a little bit of heat (though we're constantly losing and replenishing that via the breakdown of said bonds). We know what happens to that energy when we die. The head flows out of us, and the chemical bonds break down over time, either spontaneously, or with the help of other organisms which use the potential energy stored in our bonds to create new bonds in new organic molecules that they use within their own cells (or cell, if it's a unicellular organism).

The point is, throwing around things like "but there's energy in something alive!" doesn't really have much actual meaning at all.

Some people find it unimaginable that our self, our consciousness, our personality and all that stuff could just be a consequence of fairly complex physical and chemical processes in our bodies (brains) and that it is thus dependant on those processes and ceases to exist when those processes cease to happen. That is because they find it impossible, or don't want to, imagine that our self and our consciousness could be caused by complex interactions of non-conscious selfless physical processes, i.e. that consciousness can consist of a multitude of interacting sub-parts none of which are conscious, or to put it even more shortly - that consciousness can arise from non-consciousness.

So basically in laymans terms, they're too scared to face the fact that they are in essence, bags of meat that just happen to be capable of conscious thought. I don't see what's to be scared of, when I die I'm expecting to stay dead, nothing more, nothing less. And I'm okay with that, it gives me a reason to enjoy life while I can.

So do I, but you have to accept and understand that some people simply need more than that, and honestly this is as far as I'm going with this conversation and I suggest the same to other people.

That's the problem with these topics; one can argue one side but not the other.

Edit: I don't mean that one person can't argue both sides, I'm saying that one side can be argued for but the other can't, at least not to the same degree.