The reason for a belief in ghosts

[jboking]

I suggest reading chapter 5 "The Roots of religion" in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. He gives somewhat better explanations than I.

For my own part, I was thinking that the religion was part pareidolia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia] and part anthropomorphism [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphism]. Dawkins confirmed and expanded on what my own untrained mind was already working on. The most import concept, I think, is dualism as I mentioned above. Without dualism, I think that religion would have died out thousands of years ago. But that's just my guess.

I never cared for his writing style, but I'll go take another look at it.

I'm pretty sure that site is a parody. I doubt if a real christian site would sell this [http://www.cafepress.com/objectivemin.111704665] in their store. They might, but I doubt it.

So that was all a prank, thank god (ba-dum-tish)

 

[jboking]

I believe in ghosts because I do. It's my opinion. I have seen many strange things in my life that cannot be explained. Such an event happened on the day my brother hung himself. I was walking outside at night. I looked up and I saw a white image of my brother hanging from the exact branch in the exact way he was when we found him.

I have heard footsteps in the hallway when I was alone. I have seen a picture of my grandfather slide across the floor to my feet. I have seen an apparition laying in my bed. My bed was the same exact one my grandfather died in.

Those are only a few of the things that have happened to me. I would also like to direct your attention towards a certain video I have seen. I believe it to be real in all aspects.

Please divert your attention to 5:29 through 7:25. I am not sure that the events other than the two between 5:29 and 7:25 are real.

Well that was definitely good for a fright. I may not go to sleep tonight. Thanks. =P

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

ghosts and all proof thereof are created out of a figment of imagination. People like your friend will probably "witness" a ghost at least once in their life and use that to justify their belief. There was a test done where they took two groups of people, and put them in an abandoned movie theatre for three hours. They told group A they where thinking of things they could do to redesign it and make it worth going to again, and they told group B that there was some supposed curse on the theater or some shit and that it was said to be haunted and it caused the owner to shut the theater down. Group B reported hearing ghostly noises and all these unexplainable "supernatural" phenomenons. Group A reported absolutely nothing.

 

[Hexenwolf]

ghosts and all proof thereof are created out of a figment of imagination. People like your friend will probably "witness" a ghost at least once in their life and use that to justify their belief. There was a test done where they took two groups of people, and put them in an abandoned movie theatre for three hours. They told group A they where thinking of things they could do to redesign it and make it worth going to again, and they told group B that there was some supposed curse on the theater or some shit and that it was said to be haunted and it caused the owner to shut the theater down. Group B reported hearing ghostly noises and all these unexplainable "supernatural" phenomenons. Group A reported absolutely nothing.

That's hardly definitive. That is, in fact, expected. I don't think anyone in the world was surprised by those results. A far better test would be to take multiple (at least 3 in my opinion) groups to a theater that actually is haunted (reputedly), and tell them all that they were simply being asked for renovation advice, or some other innocuous explanation.

If the people are preconditioned to believe that the place is perfectly normal, but still hear noises or other "supernatural" phenomenon, then that would be much better proof ghosts existing. If they don't, then they don't exist. Though it would be ideal to repeat the experiment at multiple sites, because even if ghosts do exist, many, many sites (I'm going to randomly say 90%) are false, people just leading each other on.