Why do ghosts wear human clothes?

[Magical Realist]

Assumptions aren't laws. And they don't have mathematical models.


So it defies ... an assumption?

No..it defies the laws of nature, which assume cause and effect relationships. I was pretty clear on that.

Please feel free to read up it the known mainstream physics of quantum mechanics. It's a bit more complicated than an assumption.

I will when you learn how to read simple statements.

The assertion has been refuted by the simple act of referring to known physics. I'm not going to go around in circles about it.

Entanglement still defies the known laws of nature by defying cause and effect. It's an established fact.

 

[Daecon]

So... because quantum entanglement, therefore ghosts? And bigfoot? And flying saucers?

 

[Magical Realist]

So... because quantum entanglement, therefore ghosts? And bigfoot? And flying saucers?

No..the "it defies the known laws of nature therefore it can't be real" argument is blown to shreds. Try to keep up here.

 

[Daecon]

So... that means ghosts, bigfoot, and flying saucers are real, then?

What about witches? Or dragons? Or God?

 

[Magical Realist]

So... that means ghosts, bigfoot, and flying saucers are real, then?

What about witches? Or dragons? Or God?

Is there evidence for witches, dragons, or God? Accounts of sightings? Photos? Audio? Why not? Wouldn't people believing in God mean they'd be hallucinating him all the time as you claim with ghosts?

 

[Daecon]

You're obviously incapable of understanding that people can be mistaken without it being a hallucination.

 

[Magical Realist]

You're obviously incapable of understanding that people can be mistaken without it being a hallucination.

It's hard to mistake a voice in an empty room, a ball of light, a scratch on your back, or a full body apparition for anything else.

 

[Magical Realist]

 

[Kittamaru]

Quantum entanglement does not align with the known and accepted laws of the physical universe. Answered prayers don't. The Big Bang doesn't. And consciousness? Who ever heard of matter being conscious? We have to bear in mind that the laws of nature are subject to what we have so far been able to infer and discover. The paranormal could simply be operating on a level we haven't discovered yet.

IF that were the case, then why is it that things such as quantum entanglement, the big bang, and consciousness all have solid physical evidence and/or mathmatical proofs to support them, where as ghosts have nothing more than vaguely coherent ramblings?

Paranormal entities have been measured with sophisticated equipment, notated, interacted with, and analyzed.

Please state this "sophisticated equipment" - if you mean things like on "ghost hunters" where they walk around with various so-called tools that beep and bloop, I've seen more convincing "implements" on Doctor Who...

The unperceived isn't part of reality? That's a rather anthropocentric view isn't it? Like an ant assuming all it perceives around itself constitutes the whole of the jungle.

What is reality for a person but what they are able to perceive; how can you integrate something that you cannot fathom into your awareness?

It's germane to your accusation that I'm psychotic for believing in supernatural entities if you also believe in supernatural entities. Why should you apply one standard to me and another standard to yourself? Isn't that hypocritical?

You are attempting to conflate the simple belief in something (religion) with the idea of proving something to be a physical, tangible thing (what you have claimed with ghosts, UFO's, etc). Last time I checked, I never claimed God or any other deity came down and abducted me.

Nope..insulting people when you have no argument to make is what trolls do. And I have to right to call anyone out on that when they behave that way.

Except that isn't what you do - you insult and ultimately ignore people when they poke more holes in your claims than a block of good Swiss cheese using facts and evidence; meanwhile, all you can do is mewl on about how people are "mean to you" because they don't accept what you say at face value with no supporting evidence.

It's hard to mistake a voice in an empty room, a ball of light, a scratch on your back, or a full body apparition for anything else.

No, it isn't. It's quite easy. Hell, notable flights of fiction have fixated on that very fact... take "A Christmas Carol" for instance...

When the spectre asks, "Why do you doubt your senses?" Scrooge scoffs that "...a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more gravy than grave about you, whatever you are!"

It's a well known, documented, and proven FACT that our senses are fallible, and that our minds excel at looking for, and finding, patterns, even where none exist.

 

[DaveC426913]

No..the "it defies the known laws of nature therefore it can't be real" argument is blown to shreds. Try to keep up here.

No one has made such an argument. Straw man.

Is there evidence for witches, dragons, or God? Accounts of sightings? Photos? Audio?

Yes. Every video and audio you have linked to is as much evidence for God or magic as it is for ghosts.

It's hard to mistake a voice in an empty room, a ball of light, a scratch on your back, or a full body apparition for anything else.

Yup. They're all God.

 

[Kittamaru]

Is there evidence for witches, dragons, or God? Accounts of sightings? Photos? Audio? Why not? Wouldn't people believing in God mean they'd be hallucinating him all the time as you claim with ghosts?

There's as much evidence for witches dragons and/or God as there are for "the dead coming back from the grave in an incorporeal form" or "aliens capable of crossing interstellar distances coming to abduct us for use in science experiments"... which is to say, none at all

 

[DaveC426913]

I will when you learn how to read simple statements.

.insulting people when you have no argument to make is what trolls do.

I'm not calling you names, I merely quoted you.

 

[Magical Realist]

IF that were the case, then why is it that things such as quantum entanglement, the big bang, and consciousness all have solid physical evidence and/or mathmatical proofs to support them, where as ghosts have nothing more than vaguely coherent ramblings?

I can direct you to a site that has 16000 first hand accounts of the paranormal. There are probably thousands of audio recordings of voices in haunted buildings. There are photos and videos and investigations by the thousands that prove their existence. You'd have to be an ignorant denialist to claim there's no evidence for the paranormal.

Please state this "sophisticated equipment" - if you mean things like on "ghost hunters" where they walk around with various so-called tools that beep and bloop, I've seen more convincing "implements" on Doctor Who.

EMF meters that spike in unpowered locations. Thermal cameras that pick up cold spots. Infrared cameras that can see in the dark. Full spectrum cameras that film ultraviolet ranges of light. Audio analyzers that examine the voices recorded on digital recorders. Motion detectors that alarm when set off by changes in a laser beam. Vibration detectors that sense vibrations on the floor. Need I go on?

What is reality for a person but what they are able to perceive; how can you integrate something that you cannot fathom into your awareness?

LOL! So when you're not perceiving 99% of the world outside your house or the rest of the world, then it's not part of reality?

You are attempting to conflate the simple belief in something (religion) with the idea of proving something to be a physical, tangible thing (what you have claimed with ghosts, UFO's, etc). Last time I checked, I never claimed God or any other deity came down and abducted me.

So because I believe in the supernatural based on evidence and first hand accounts, and you believe in the supernatural based on...let's see...the Bible?, then I'M the psychotic? That's pretty flawed logic there if you ask me.

Except that isn't what you do - you insult and ultimately ignore people when they poke more holes in your claims than a block of good Swiss cheese using facts and evidence; meanwhile, all you can do is mewl on about how people are "mean to you" because they don't accept what you say at face value with no supporting evidence.

You haven't poked any holes in my evidence or arguments so far. You just swoop in like usual and call me names like psychotic. That's troll behavior and you know it. Own your own actions.

When the spectre asks, "Why do you doubt your senses?" Scrooge scoffs that "...a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more gravy than grave about you, whatever you are!"

LOL! After which Scrooge spends the entire night with three real spirits. I don't think you should be quoting "A Christmas Carol" as evidence of there being no ghosts.

 

[Magical Realist]

 

[James R]

Magical Realist:

The laws of the physical universe assume cause and effect relationships. Quantum entanglement is a phenomena that defies that. It defies the known laws of the physical universe, as does the Big Bang, and as does consciousness.

The very concept of quantum entanglement wouldn't exist were it not for the existence of an immense and well-tested body of scientific theory and experiment. Quantum entanglement is a derived consequence of the "laws of the physical universe" as we understand them, not a defying of those laws.

Similarly, the basic idea of a Big Bang is a conclusion that we are driven inevitably towards once we appreciate that the universe is expanding. Wind the clock backwards on an expanding universe and what do you get? A universe that used to be smaller in the past. Wind it back further and you conclude that the entire universe must have, at one point (and we can easily calculate how long ago), been in essentially the same place at the same time.

Consciousness appears to be an emergent phenomenon that arises from a complex-enough neural network. The concept itself is not currently very well defined, as far as I am aware. But there is no reason to expect that consciousness won't be completely explained in terms of accepted science.

Is there evidence for witches, dragons, or God? Accounts of sightings? Photos? Audio? Why not? Wouldn't people believing in God mean they'd be hallucinating him all the time as you claim with ghosts?

There are plenty of people there who will tell you there is as least as much evidence for witches and God as there is for ghosts or aliens. There are plenty of "sightings" of God and Jesus and the like. As for dragons, I'm not really aware of any community of "believers" out there, but there probably is one somewhere.

I can direct you to a site that has 16000 first hand accounts of the paranormal.

16000 anecdotes?

There are probably thousands of audio recordings of voices in haunted buildings. There are photos and videos and investigations by the thousands that prove their existence.

You misused the word "prove" here. If the existence of ghosts was in any way "proved" then scientists would have to accept the reality.

Yes, there are lots of fuzzy, poor-quality photos of ... something(s). Yes, there are lots of scratchy, poor-quality audio recordings of ... things. No, there aren't any convincing photos or recordings of ghosts - at least, none that I've seen.

You'd have to be an ignorant denialist to claim there's no evidence for the paranormal.

Probably. There's evidence - of a sort - just very very low-quality, shoddy evidence, the vast majority of which has a perfectly rational natural explanation and the rest of which is undecidable due to lack of information and/or quality.

EMF meters that spike in unpowered locations. Thermal cameras that pick up cold spots. Infrared cameras that can see in the dark. Full spectrum cameras that film ultraviolet ranges of light. Audio analyzers that examine the voices recorded on digital recorders. Motion detectors that alarm when set off by changes in a laser beam. Vibration detectors that sense vibrations on the floor. Need I go on?

All of the instruments you mention need to be used properly to be of any use. A lot of "ghost hunters" don't know what they are doing with an "EMF meter" or a thermal camera.

You haven't poked any holes in my evidence or arguments so far.

Er.. what? Have you forgotten all the stuff that's been posted in this thread? Everything you have presented has been met with plausible alternative explanations.

---

I am interested in why you classify the bible, say, as fiction, but you take all anecdotes about ghosts to be true. Tell me: how do you, personally, decide whether a ghost story is true or fiction?

 

[Yazata]

But... if we assume that science describes the regularities in existence, describes how reality around us typically behaves, then scientific understanding would describe what is normal just by definition.

It may describe what is the norm, but its description doesn't define the norm as being normal.

I don't understand that.

Perhaps part of the difficulty is an ambiguity in the meaning of the word 'normal'. Dictionaries define 'normal' as "conforming to common standards, usual". The problem is that those don't mean the same thing, unless conformance to "common standards" describes what happens most frequently. The first meaning has a moral-evaluative connotation (that isn't normal!), the second is more statistical.

My remarks up above weren't intended to have any moral-evaluative content and weren't meant to suggest that normality is good and abnormality is bad. I only intended to say that if science describes the order of nature, then it describes what can be expected to happen most frequently.

It was normal before science ever came along and described it. Lightning is normal for thunderstorms, but that doesn't mean it wasn't normal before science could explain it. Consciousness is normal for living humans, but that doesn't mean science can explain it.

Right, I agree entirely.

I then proceeded to outline Hume's argument against belief in miracles. If science describes the order of nature, and if the order of nature describes what happens most frequently, and if miracles are violations of the order of nature, then miracles will be unlikely by their very nature.

I don't think any natural order is being broken with paranormal phenomena. I just think what we believe to be "natural order" is much more flexible and varied than what we presently know. I think you would agree, seeing you accept the possibility of anomalous fortean phenomena.

Maybe. My thinking about that is still a work in progress. (See my remarks below.)

That's not to say any laws of nature are being violated. It's just saying there are many more phenomena out there than we presently know that fall outside what we observe to be lawful and regulated behavior. Does it mean they don't have their own laws? No not at all. We just haven't discovered them yet.

Part of the difficulty with "paranormal" phenomena is all the interpretive stuff that comes along them as with baggage.

If we restrict ourselves to saying that a seemingly unusual and subjectively uncanny event happened in such and such a place, then I wouldn't have much problem believing that. The questions I would have would be whether the event was subjective or objective, and what its explanation was.

But if I am told that the event was the manifestation of the disembodied spirit of a dead teenager after a car wreck, I would be far more skeptical. That's because the account isn't just describing the event, it's leaping to proposing a whole theory about what it was. It's a ghost, a spirit, the animating life-force of a human being manifesting in what appears to be gaseous form. That seems to me to be an expression of an obsolete biological theory that's still knocking around in folk-metaphysics, quite at odds with science's understanding of physiology. I agree that it isn't impossible, but I wouldn't give it a very high likelihood of being true. I'd say that the likelihood of more mundane explanations, ranging from misinterpreting a cloud of vapor as a face to the possibility of a doctored photograph, are probably going to be higher than the 'ghost' interpretation.

If such anomalous phenomena are possible and sometimes occur, then dismissing them out of hand with "default positions" and skepticism seems prejudicial to me.

Maybe an analogy is winning the lottery. If we know that somebody won, then the probability of there being a winner out there is 1. But if hundreds of millions of lottery tickets were sold, the odds of my particular ticket being the winner would be damn near zero.

We will never really know if this is a real phenomena if we do not suspend our disbelief and at least accept the possibility that in every mysterious case the paranormal or anomalous HAS occurred. Then, if it gets debunked by mundane causes, no big deal. We move on to the next case, always open to the possibility that it may happen in the future. Note I speak with the perspective of one who accepts that the paranormal DOES indeed occur based on tons of accounts and investigations.

I have no problem accepting that all kinds of things happen around me that I can't personally explain. But that suggests that maybe I shouldn't go around promoting fanciful theories that purport to explain those things. Having said that, my view is that whatever the ultimate explanation of these things is, that explanation will more likely be in accordance with scientific understanding than in contradiction to it. That doesn't mean that contradictions with the belief-system of contemporary science are impossible, just that I consider them unlikely. It's basically a heuristic principle, I guess.

 

[sweetpea]

deleted.

 

[Yazata]

IF that were the case, then why is it that things such as quantum entanglement, the big bang, and consciousness all have solid physical evidence and/or mathmatical proofs to support them, where as ghosts have nothing more than vaguely coherent ramblings?

There have been countless reports of ghosts and hauntings throughout history. I'm sure that in terms of pure volume of evidence, ghosts totally blow away some of the more arcane beliefs of contemporary physics. The same thing can be said about religious miracles.

The problem isn't, as skeptics/atheists typically argue, that there isn't any evidence for the things the skeptics/atheists reject. The problem is that there's no evidence that the skeptics/atheists are willing to accept. The question then becomes, whether the skeptics/atheists reasons for rejecting such a vast body of evidence are plausible or not.

I'm inclined to say that the likelihood that religious experiences/hauntings/ufos exist as items of popular belief and folklore is almost certain. So their existence as subjective phenomena is almost certain. That's interesting right there, from the psychological, philosophical, historical, anthropological and religious studies perspectives.

It's probably a bigger question whether any of these things have any objective reality. I'm personally doubtful that there is a single objective phenomenon responsible for all ghost sightings, ufo reports or religious experiences.

And we are on even more shaky ground when we propose implicit explanatory hypotheses for what ghosts (disembodied "spirits" of the departed), ufos (alien spaceships) or religious experiences (God's holy spirit reaching out to us) supposedly are.

You are attempting to conflate the simple belief in something (religion) with the idea of proving something to be a physical, tangible thing (what you have claimed with ghosts, UFO's, etc). Last time I checked, I never claimed God or any other deity came down and abducted me.

The problem with the kind of subjective belief in non-physical beings manifested in religion, is that it is very difficult to disentangle it from imagination and wishful-thinking (or even from psychiatric delusion). Ghosts and ufos being physical and tangible would give us a handle on establishing their objective existence and ultimately on establishing what they are. Being physical and tangible would put ufos and ghosts within the scope of physical science.

 

[Magical Realist]

Magical Realist:


The very concept of quantum entanglement wouldn't exist were it not for the existence of an immense and well-tested body of scientific theory and experiment. Quantum entanglement is a derived consequence of the "laws of the physical universe" as we understand them, not a defying of those laws.

Quantum entanglement apparently demonstrates a kind of occurance that defies cause and effect. The spin of the particle doesn't cause the spin of its twin to change. It somehow happens instantaneously. That suggests a phenomena that does not and cannot conform to laws as we know them. It suggests what Jung anticipated as an "acausal connecting principle".

Similarly, the basic idea of a Big Bang is a conclusion that we are driven inevitably towards once we appreciate that the universe is expanding. Wind the clock backwards on an expanding universe and what do you get? A universe that used to be smaller in the past. Wind it back further and you conclude that the entire universe must have, at one point (and we can easily calculate how long ago), been in essentially the same place at the same time.

You have wound the clock back to a state of being in no time and no space. Of a singularity existing before there were laws suddenly exploding into our present universe. I see no conformity to laws here. I see rather an anomalous event that defies everything we know about the universe.

Consciousness appears to be an emergent phenomenon that arises from a complex-enough neural network. The concept itself is not currently very well defined, as far as I am aware. But there is no reason to expect that consciousness won't be completely explained in terms of accepted science.

Likewise then, there is no reason to expect that the paranormal won't be completely explained in terms of accepted science too.

There are plenty of people there who will tell you there is as least as much evidence for witches and God as there is for ghosts or aliens. There are plenty of "sightings" of God and Jesus and the like. As for dragons, I'm not really aware of any community of "believers" out there, but there probably is one somewhere.

I have not heard of any sightings or photos or audio recordings of God and his Son or of witches. Maybe I'm out of the loop on this. Can you direct me to a website with such documented evidence?

16000 anecdotes?

Right..like 16000 anecdotes of the Holocaust, and of the Civil War, and of 911, etc.

You misused the word "prove" here. If the existence of ghosts was in any way "proved" then scientists would have to accept the reality.

Unless there is such huge resistance to it for ideological reasons that they just don't research that field. That's my conclusion. That scientists conform to a peer-enforced bias against the paranormal as a pseudoscience that must always be dismissed and never taken seriously.

Yes, there are lots of fuzzy, poor-quality photos of ... something(s). Yes, there are lots of scratchy, poor-quality audio recordings of ... things. No, there aren't any convincing photos or recordings of ghosts - at least, none that I've seen.

A fuzzy photo of something is still good evidence something was there. Would you agree a fuzzy photo of ball lightning was still good evidence of it? Also, many evps are class A in nature, consisting of clearly enunciated words, laughs, whispers, moans, and screams that indicate something is definitely there. You can also tell immediately by the voice if it is a man, woman, or child. Many other voices are heard directly by human ears and recording on camera.

Probably. There's evidence - of a sort - just very very low-quality, shoddy evidence, the vast majority of which has a perfectly rational natural explanation and the rest of which is undecidable due to lack of information and/or quality.

No..the evidence is compelling and oftentimes jawdropping. It's just that when I present it you think making up possibilities of fakery for it is sufficient to debunk it. It isn't.

All of the instruments you mention need to be used properly to be of any use. A lot of "ghost hunters" don't know what they are doing with an "EMF meter" or a thermal camera.

Alot of ghost hunters DO know what they are doing and use this equipment properly on hundreds of investigations.

Er.. what? Have you forgotten all the stuff that's been posted in this thread? Everything you have presented has been met with plausible alternative explanations.

Like I pointed out already making up possibilities of lying or misremembering experiences isn't providing a plausible explanation at all. Plausibility requires some evidence. Are the eyewitnesses known for fakery? Are they charging people for their investigations? Are they mentally ill? Stuff like that.

---

I am interested in why you classify the bible, say, as fiction, but you take all anecdotes about ghosts to be true. Tell me: how do you, personally, decide whether a ghost story is true or fiction?

You really can't distinguish between someone in the 21st century telling you something they experienced firsthand and a 2500 year old book of myths and fables that has been redacted and edited and retranslated dozens of times over the centuries into its present form?

 

[sideshowbob]

Ghosts show signs of being pure imprinted energy as well. Poltergeists otoh display the traits of a psychically-amplified proto-entity.

How can something "show signs" of being "pure imprinted energy"?

How can something "display the traits" of a "psychically-amplified proto-entity"?

Besides sounding like gibberish, both statements are circular. For something to "show signs" or "display traits" of something, you have to assume a priori that that something actually exists.