Eek! A spooky ghost!

[lasherman]

I dontcare.

Doesn't affect me, no way no how.

I dontcare.

Gee, thanks for that very insightful and relevant post.

Gee, thanks for your sarcasm.

I was attempting to make the point that whether i believe in something or not is, in the end, irrelevant unless it directly affects me.

So yes, my post was very insightful and relevant, and yes, you're welcome.

Well, sorry for not making a thread about a topic that directly affects you personally, but if you don't have anything relevant to say (and no, saying that "it doesn't matter whether I believe it or not" is not relevant or insightful), don't bother posting. I was asking people's opinions on the subject, so if you have no opinion, nobody is forcing you to post.

I just stated my opinion, you pilsener.

In case you need me to tell it to you again, it would be
whether i believe in something or not is, in the end, irrelevant unless it directly affects me.


Understand?

Well, first of all, no, you didn't give your opinion. An opinion on the subject of whether or not you believe in ghost would go something like this "No, I do not believe in ghosts for this reason..." You gave an opinion, but I was not asking whether or not believing in something affected anything. However, you have not given any opinion on the subject at hand, that is basically "Do you believe in ghosts".

I don't care if you don't want to share your opinion, but if that's the case, don't bother posting something totally off-topic.

 

[Z(ombie)fan]

Not, and yet I do.

See, I'm not a major 'GHOSTS R REAL!' guy, but I like the theory that 'Strange S#@$ exists.'

yea.

for all we know, lavecraft could have accidently wrote stories about renamed space monsters, and noone could say yes or no,really because WEIRDER shit is likely to shown up in real life,

and theres no way we COULDN't say it doesn't exist because all lot of it was based around stuff that only was noticed by one or two people, and the rest had shit in areas 100% impossible for the human race to reach (existance outside this unviverse for example).

 

[Tharwen]

There is no credible evidence for their existence, so I have no reason to believe in them.

We don't know where we go after we die so ghosts may just be spirits returning from the afterlife for a few brief moments. Who knows?

When we die, we end. That is all that happens.

 

[Rancid0ffspring]

There is no credible evidence for their existence, so I have no reason to believe in them.

We don't know where we go after we die so ghosts may just be spirits returning from the afterlife for a few brief moments. Who knows?

When we die, we end. That is all that happens.

To quote our loud friend Samual L. Jackson The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Ghost cookie for the ref

 

[lasherman]

I dontcare.

Doesn't affect me, no way no how.

I dontcare.

Gee, thanks for that very insightful and relevant post.

Gee, thanks for your sarcasm.

I was attempting to make the point that whether i believe in something or not is, in the end, irrelevant unless it directly affects me.

So yes, my post was very insightful and relevant, and yes, you're welcome.

Well, sorry for not making a thread about a topic that directly affects you personally, but if you don't have anything relevant to say (and no, saying that "it doesn't matter whether I believe it or not" is not relevant or insightful), don't bother posting. I was asking people's opinions on the subject, so if you have no opinion, nobody is forcing you to post.

I just stated my opinion, you pilsener.

In case you need me to tell it to you again, it would be
whether i believe in something or not is, in the end, irrelevant unless it directly affects me.


Understand?

Well, first of all, no, you didn't give your opinion. An opinion on the subject of whether or not you believe in ghost would go something like this "No, I do not believe in ghosts for this reason..." You gave an opinion, but I was not asking whether or not believing in something affected anything. However, you have not given any opinion on the subject at hand, that is basically "Do you believe in ghosts".

I don't care if you don't want to share your opinion, but if that's the case, don't bother posting something totally off-topic.

Let's get this straight:

Well, first of all, no, you didn't give your opinion.

You gave an opinion

That I held, thus making it my opinion.

------

To be perfectly honest, I don't think it's particularly blasphemous to think that the reason as to why I do or do not believe in ghosts is relevant to a topic about whether I believe in ghosts or not.

I'd venture to say that most people would agree with me on that.

All I was trying to say was that you just never gave your opinion on the subject at hand. That is, whether or not you personally believe in ghosts. Honestly, I don't care anymore, I just wanted to specify clearly what I meant: that in a topic about whether or not you personally believe ghosts exist or not, you made a post that didn't answer that question.

 

[King of the Sandbox]

I'm a huge skeptic, but I do believe there are somethings out there we just simply don't understand yet. Not that it's magic or ghosts or anything, just maybe, hell, I dunno, a weird type of energy that we just can't properly detect yet.

You're not very good at scepticism if you believe in "something out there that we can't detect yet". The sceptical response would be to hold judgement until evidence exists; to not believe in things, but not pronounce certainty in their non-existence either.

Although, even if you can't claim certainty, the default position (in the absence of evidence) has to be to not believe in a thing, otherwise you end up believing in every crazy idea you come across and/or every crazy idea you come across that manages to sound vaguely sensible, possibly without a shred of evidence.
-snip-

Well, I never claimed to be good at skeptisicm.

And if the default position is to not believe in a thing, then you close yourself off to the possibility of it existing. I think it is just as ignorant to out and out deny something without proof as it is to fool-heartedly take everything told you as fact. ('The Earth is round? Preposterous!')

I just choose to think openly about things, and any possibilities associated with said things, until definitive proof is found one way or the other.

 

[Tharwen]

There is no credible evidence for their existence, so I have no reason to believe in them.

We don't know where we go after we die so ghosts may just be spirits returning from the afterlife for a few brief moments. Who knows?

When we die, we end. That is all that happens.

To quote our loud friend Samual L. Jackson The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Ghost cookie for the ref

I'm not sure which of my points you answered, but I'll respond to both.

1: Why should I believe something that I have no reason to believe? Try this:

There is, at a subatomic level, a vast civilisation of 4-dimensional elephants. It's just too small for us too see with our technology. Believe it.

2: All we are when we are alive is electrical brain activity that believes itself to be alive. When we die, this activity stops. How can we be anything if we have nothing to 'be' in.

That's hard for me to understand, reading it to myself. Good luck.

 

[Diligent]

I'm not really a believer in ghosts. This is an article about some research into infrasound as it relates to explaining ghosts. It's pretty interesting:
http://flushrush.com/is-infrasound-the-explanation-for-ghost-sightings/

I don't think anybody can rationally deny that there are things we simply do not know about the universe, but to me it seems silly to attribute these things we don't know to angry spirits who have crossed from another plane of existence. Even if it takes the mystery out of it, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
This being said, I love the atmosphere of Halloween and ghost stories and such, because it really gets you thinking about the unknown.

 

[man-man]

Well, I never claimed to be good at skeptisicm.

And if the default position is to not believe in a thing, then you close yourself off to the possibility of it existing. I think it is just as ignorant to out and out deny something without proof as it is to fool-heartedly take everything told you as fact. ('The Earth is round? Preposterous!')

I just choose to think openly about things, and any possibilities associated with said things, until definitive proof is found one way or the other.

Hmm, maybe you misunderstand me; my default position is to not believe a thing, but that's purely a first reaction to an idea before evidence. If evidence then arrives that supports the idea (and there's a veritable mountain of evidence for the Earth being approximately spherical) then you change from that disbelief-by-default to believe it.

I don't claim 100% certainty, I can't put up a watertight denial of the existence of ghosts, but I can point to the complete lack of evidence and say "There is no reason to believe this, so until there is evidence I won't believe it".

Thinking openly about things is admirable, but not if 'open' means willing to believe for no good reason.

Think about odd ideas to see if they might make sense of the world, absolutely.
Consider it plausible, if there's some evidence in favour or the available evidence is conflicted.
But hold off on belief for when there's good solid evidence in favour and a lack of credible evidence against.
And hold off on claiming certainty indefinitely; there could always be further evidence that proves the most unlikely sounding thing.

 

[Aesir23]

I'm a little uncertain on the topic of ghosts. It's nice to believe in some form of afterlife or that those long since dead have stuck around for some reason or another. But on the other hand, I would also find it hard to believe unless I had seen one with my own eyes. I'm hoping to spend a night or two at the Fort Garry Hotel soon in the, supposedly, haunted room they have. So we'll see.

 

[MicrosoftPaysMe]

umm... I think there might be some ghosts but i'd rather belive in like a "Everyone is happy forever after they die" scenerio. I dont want to be a creepy ghost forever

 

[man-man]

Hear hear.

We are bound by our own perceptions. Just because we can't prove something does exist that does not prove it doesn't exist.

Believe it or not I'm not a religious person

We can't know of anything beyond our perceptions, that's tautologically true; if we can't perceive it we have no knowledge of it (unless we can invent a device to perceive it for us, and bring it into the sphere of 'things we perceive', albeit indirectly)

This means we can't claim anything about things we can't perceive - anyone claiming that there's a spirit world or a heaven/hell or ghosts or dungeon dimensions or mystical energy fields or anything at all that they claim is "beyond human perception" are categorically making a claim about something they can't know anything about.

If you can't perceive it, you have no knowledge of it. If you claim to have knowledge of it then you must have perceived it at some point (or you've made it up out of thin air).

So then the question is whether it's sensible to believe these claims - I say no, until we can perceive them, any of these things that are "beyond perception" lack any evidence or reason to be believed in.

 

[King of the Sandbox]

Thinking openly about things is admirable, but not if 'open' means willing to believe for no good reason.

Oh, I don't believe open means that. I just meant, basically, acknowledge that there is a possibility of things existing that we do not yet have the capability, or evidence, to perceive.

As an example to what I'm saying, take bacteria and viruses and such. Up until their discovery, people thought diseases and sickness were the work of God or devils or demons or witches, etc.

I would have been one of the people, who if told first, would have been like, "Ok. I suppose that sounds about as plausible as witches. Keep me up to date if you get any of that proof stuff."

I think we actually agree, I'm just a bit more (I'm starting to hate this word) open to accepting possibility, just not blindly.

 

[Abbie Cadabrie]

Like a parralel universe that we can sometime "feel" but nothing more?

 

[Flight]

I don't believe in the discovery channel "douchebag running around attack a ghost with a machete" ghost, but I do believe there is something more than just chemicals in the brain that compose who we are, and that if factor X is unaware it is dead/has unfinished buisness that we can still occupy this earth.

Well said. I agree.

 

[SilentVirus]

I am neutral on the thought really. I personally have never experienced a ghost encounter which is why I'm not going to say I believe. I'm also not going to say I don't believe in ghost because, there is so much in this world we just don't know or understand...who's to say that they don't exist? In fact, I have known people who apparently seen ghost, but since I wasn't there to see them myself I can't confirm anything unless I am presented with untampered proof. 'Hope I addressed why I am neutral on ghost.

Interesting topic might I add

 

[Necator15]

Honestly, I don't buy into the whole ghost thing. For ghosts to exist, you have to believe in some sort of soul or a way in which someone can continue after death, which I refuse to believe. Until I'm shown evidence to the contrary, I'll continue in my disbelief.

 

[SkullCap]

Yes. I do believe in Ghosts, spirits of the dead and forces that mankind is unable to explain.