Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Freedom of Anonymity on January 20, 2010 at 12:16am

I can't argue that, it does seem to be the case.

So it leads to another question: shouldn't atheists be adverse to woo and woo peddling?

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on January 20, 2010 at 12:44am

no. I don't think that we should be adverse to ANYTHING.

seriously. do you profess to be a free thinker while being biased against any form of hypothesis about things that aren't currently explainable?

I will concede to this only: until we know exactly what natural causes contribute to ghosts and other phenomenons, we are not to be "adverse" to any theory as long as it attempts to prove itself.

Be adverse to people who do not bother to defend their beliefs, but do NOT be adverse to concepts. There is a big difference.

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Permalink Reply by Freedom of Anonymity on January 20, 2010 at 1:20am

do you profess to be a free thinker while being biased against any form of hypothesis about things that aren't currently explainable?

When have I ever "professed" being anything of free thinker? I will profess this now: I'm an obdurate asshole and a Machiavellian ... which may actually be redundant.

Ghosts are not a "theory", not even a hypothesis; they are the claim of woomeisters and woo peddlers. Ghosts have been empirically debunked time and again. There is not now, nor has there ever been a single shred of empirical, reproducible evidence for ghosts.

Be adverse to people who do not bother to defend their beliefs, but do NOT be adverse to concepts.

I am adverse to all things proven to be untenable. A concept of woo is no different than the woo itself; because neither are provable outside that individual brain. But thank you for telling me how to operate in my existence ... kind of felt like when I was il raggazo a pezzetti forced to sit in the pew, and hear oration from the pulpit ... thanks, it's good to revist those times occasionally.

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on January 20, 2010 at 1:32am

ok well just getting that out in the open. If you cling solidly to your own bias then I have nothing really to discuss with you.
If you do not seek to analyze all claims equally with reason rather than bias then you're right, there is no reason at all for you to accept what I'm saying.

Ghosts are not a "theory",

anything that is attempted to be be proven is a theory. People can irrationally cling to concepts, but if they attempt to prove them, they then have a theory. Just because most don't use the concept of ghosts as a "theory" doesn't then mean that no one does. A false universal generalization.

Ghosts have been empirically debunked time and again.

No, specific claims have been debunked. Specific theories about the heliocentric theory have been debunked. This means nothing except that people shouldn't believe in the heliocentric theory until the right evidence surfaces. For you to claim that the heliocentric theory was credible from its original conception is hindsight bias.
Obviously, the more claims that are debunked, the less likely the theory seems, but that does not mean that you should not analyze specific claims based on new evidence that may surface rather than dismissing a theory as rediculous
You can not disprove a concept without proving a mutual exclusive and that has not been done.

There is not now, nor has there ever been a single shred of empirical, reproducible evidence for ghosts.
again, never said there was.

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on January 20, 2010 at 1:42am

"where is the evidence supporting spiritual thinking?"

you don't need evidence to support spiritual thinking. It is not a truth claim. It is a "hm... that's funny" that should lead to examination. Spirituality with a truth claim I define as "religion" or pseudo-religion which I'm definately not ok with.

"we have the right to question them"

obviously. i did not say that we shouldn't question anything. the word used was "adverse" which has an antagonistic connotation. That isn't the same as skeptical.

"and until we find those explanations it's much better to say we don't know instead of resorting to spirituality"

right. like i said, spiritualists don't profess to know. they are "spiritual" and not "religious" because they sense something they don't attempt to make a truth claim about. They just investigate what they are curious about. They may never find evidence, but they generally accept that they can't find any, so they simply play with the idea of "chi" or whatever and wonder at what they can't explain.

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on January 20, 2010 at 2:59am

again, spirituality is not necessarily deistic.

the only real spiritualists i approve of are people who experience things themselves, but can not prove it to me.

If something isn't possible to be repeated, then obviously it should not be accepted by anyone but the one person who experienced it and that person should also explore alternate explanations until all others don't make sense.

I don't rule out the possibility that other "spiritual" types possess some kind of sense that can't be proven to us because we don't have the same ability to replicate it with. However, obviously it is useless to accept what doesn't effect me personally or what I am unable to experience myself.

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on January 20, 2010 at 4:42am

"They experience subjective experiences and have no way of proving any of it to you, or anyone else for that matter."

no they don't. if they did, they wouldn't be so intent on brainwashing, apologetics, and whatever else they do to make themselves feel better. The people I'm talking about are the ones who keep calm, collective, and contemplating. They truly believed that they have touched the force through direct spiritual connection and don't care who believes it and don't seem to have some kind of aggressive addiction.

Christians don't believe that. COME ON. when I was one, I spent all my time waiting for god to reveal himself to me through metaphors and symbols. Not the same thing at all.

I have no other choice but to completely ignore such claims.

wholehearted agreement there. ignoring claims that aren't proven isn't the same as being adverse to the idea of someone trying to prove it though

Permalink Reply by Johnny on January 20, 2010 at 12:55am

I wouldn't group all believers in paranormal concepts in the same category.

Yes, there are the woo woos that believe whatever makes sense rather than bothering with evidence.

However, there are more intelligent analyses of certain concepts. Ghosts are a phenomenon that have occured with identical accounts worldwide before worldwide communication was established. Clearly the stimulus, whether psychological or real, is something to be investigated.

There are people who attempt to scientifically prove certain paranormal claims with a scientific critique. With the evidence I've seen so far, nothing has really convinced me fully of any of these concepts, but nevertheless I do respect the pursuit that people have to figure out what these strange things mean. The question is more important than the discovery. If one is incredulous to the concept of spirituality, they might very well miss an important discovery.

I don't believe any claims based on what I've seen so far, but I am not so adverse to the concept as many atheists seem to be. Spiritual beliefs are far too individual and unique to be grouped into a "horde mind" like religion is. They need to be critiqued on an individual basis like their claims deserve.

Also, claims as individualized and hard to replicate as something like ghost sightings are rather hard to replicate because most don't claim to be psychics or anything... they just see it once. If I suddenly one day saw a ghost, obviously I would try as hard as I could to find a naturalistic explanation. If I couldn't, I might become what you call "spiritual" and have some kind of reverence for whatever I experienced but could not understand.

I think you misrepresent spiritualists as all being people who make truth claims. A good lot of them don't. They just have some kind of reverence for something fascinating that they can't understand.

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Permalink Reply by Freedom of Anonymity on January 20, 2010 at 1:03am

However, there are more intelligent analyses of certain concepts. Ghosts are a phenomenon that have occured with identical accounts worldwide before worldwide communication was established. Clearly the stimulus, whether psychological or real, is something to be investigated.

Psychological malady is just that; which means outside of the aberrant condition of such a brain, there is no empirical evidence for "ghosts".

If one is incredulous to the concept of spirituality, they might very well miss an important discovery.

That is called "willful suspension of disbelief"; which directly leads to religion, god/gods and all consequent forms of less rational thought.

I don't believe any claims based on what I've seen so far, but I am not so adverse to the concept as many atheists seem to be. Spiritual beliefs are far too individual and unique to be grouped into a "horde mind" like religion is. They need to be critiqued on an individual basis like their claims deserve.

Actually, you are incorrect. Tribalism>shamanism>spirituality>religion. There is only one critique for any woo peddling: strict empiricism. Which, consequently, has never found an ounce of credible evidence for any such claims, and neither has there been anything reproducible from such claims.

You are engaging in apologist rhetoric.

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on January 20, 2010 at 1:19am

there is no empirical evidence for "ghosts".

You have not heard of any or perhaps none currently exists. Don't think that I don't agree based on my current knowledge, but it is entirely possible that the evidence exists whether or not we've discovered it yet.
I don't believe what hasn't been proven to me, but making the opposite claim that it is impossible to prove and scoffing at anyone who attemps to is equally rediculous. I will always give any claim, no matter how rediculous, a polite openminded ear until I see their specific argument fall apart.


That is called "willful suspension of disbelief,"which directly leads to religion

No, that's called openminded analysis of new claims. Openmindedness does not require blindly accepting new claims, but it also requires not focusing on your presupposed notions and analyzing an argument based on its content. I won't deny the one (possible) intelligent argument for ghosts just because most I have seen in the past are crazy.


Tribalism>shamanism>spirituality>religion

Slippery slope? A fallacy.

" Which, consequently, has never found an ounce of credible evidence for any such claims, and neither has there been anything reproducible from such claims."

What the hell is your point? I never claimed that there was any evidence. However, engaging in your own horde mind and saying such evidence could never possibly be found is rediculous. Calling people idiots for their concepts without analyzing their individual arguments is also rediculous.


"You are engaging in apologist rhetoric."

So much for openmindedness. I am defending the openminded analysis of claims and rejecting your universal generalization. I have not made a positive claim. Straw man is a horribly theist concept.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Healy on January 20, 2010 at 1:33am

>You have not heard of any or perhaps none currently exists. Don't think that I don't agree based on my current knowledge, but it is entirely possible that the evidence exists whether or not we've discovered it yet.

Um.... if I can argue by an analogy.

We know brains don't send out signals - it's not consistent with what we observe or even what we might expect to observe about brains.

there are lots of different type of signals we can map the activity in the brain and see where all the nerves are active. We can even unscrew the top and have good old poke around inside and find when we prod that wobbly grey bit it makes the left leg kick and so on.

So if the next day someone comes running in and say "a-ha! I have it! Final and clinching proof that telepathy is real!"

It's not like neurologists are just going to switch of the MRI Scanner and say: damn we didn't see this coming.

Because one fact does no overturn all of the present body of knowledge. Very very rarely is their an insight that so undoes what goes before it (Newton-Einstein)

And I use fact advisedly, becuase we'd be talking about indepdently quantitatively verifiable evidence of telepathy.

We could do tests. We could find out if theres merely anecdotal evidence or if the outcoems are no better than chance, what in short is the evidentiary basis for such an extraordinary claim as human minds being able to have access to another's thoughts'

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Now the point about all of that is it's kind of the same for ghosts. There is no known mechanism for surviving death and several good philosophical reasons for worrying about the whole deal (why for instance assume that the thing that survives is identical to you: it could be a parasite. Souls- if they exist - might outlive the body but might not be eternal, you might die twice. etc...)

The evidence base for ghosts is weak, fuzzy photographs and digital artefacts, anecdotal in the extreme - and noticeably trendy with technology, i.e the invention of the camera.


So really the position that there's some vital bit of knowledge that we are lacking and if we only knew would revolutionise our thought.

Is I think - questionable and probably wrong.

Thought that might well be true in some instances (like how you unite Einstein and quantum )I do not think it applies here. and my reason for thinking that is that it is so unlikely to be the case. We already have a parsimonious answer for what happens when you die and it's that you are are dead.

So all claims to ghosts are probably mistaken, dubious or duplicitous.

or if there is some evidence it'd better be seriously impressive.

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Isn't there a rule?

Don't be so open-minded you brain falls out.

What I think rules out Gods, Ghosts and Telepathy is naturalism from which atheism can be and often is derived.

Because although atheism and spirituality (apropos Gouch's post) are spectra of different beliefs - the naturalist regards as incoherent claims of a super-nature.

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on January 20, 2010 at 2:05am

no known mechanism for surviving death

that is not the only theory about ghosts. there is also imprint of energy, parallel dimensions, whatever.... personally I don't care enough to investigate these claims but if it meant something to someone to explain it to me, I'd listen.

"probably wrong."
I never argued with that either. I'm not defending any concepts. I am simply putting in the thought that claims should be evaluated based on their evidence, not how rediculous the idea may be.
Relying on bias and "that doesn't make sense" is horribly closed minded and really annoyes me because theists do it all the time. Obviously "what makes sense" is a selfish and biased concept that has nothing to do with reality. If we are to reject supernatural claims on the basis that "they don't make sense" that is stupid.
The ONLY basis for claim rejection should be evidential. That's all I'm saying. Saying something is definately false and disbelieving it rather than doubting it takes another positive claim with evidence.

"So all claims to ghosts are probably mistaken, dubious or duplicitous."

with my current understand I agree wholeheartedly.

If super-nature is to be believed, it MUST have a root in naturalist concepts. There must be a natural explanation. Calling something supernatural just proves that it can not be explained and is probably false in that connotation.

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