Are Ghosts Real? (a poll)

[MoonSong]

The leap needed to get from "math has axioms" to "therefore, ghosts" is a quite a lot.

I fear this is one of those cases where the rhetoric to justify something makes me trust it less than if nothing was said at all.

Guilty as charged, I guess. ( Though sassy me would say "given my tagline, it must have been a giant surprise n_n )

In my defense I lean more towards "some stuff is outside the paradigm of reason. I won't pretend I can understand it rationally when it's obvious I won't ever, and that's ok, but that doesn't mean I reject rationality altogether".

 

[MoonSong]

Had a similar experience, but our professor's follow on question was, "How many of you saw it right before, during, or right after sleeping?"

Think he was onto something since only one person lowered their hand...

Sleep paralysis explains everything. The feeling of someone touching my forehead, the feeling of being strangulated by a dark figure, me waking up with an anguished voice, the door bursting open at the right time, the bed jumping ! All of it is sleep paralysis.

 

[briggart]

But there comes a point where all knowledge relies on one or more leaps of faith. We need some faith in order to have knowledge, otherwise we end up on a neverending cycle of requiring proof after proof after proof. We at some point need to have faith in others and take their data and knowledge at face value (or end-up like the terraplanists) We need to have faith on our senses showing us reality and ourselves being real (or go crazy). Even math requires us to start from axioms and to make the jump from pure logic -or go the long way to try to prove 1 plus 1 is two that takes like fifty pages.

Some faith is not bad.

IMO there's a difference in that math concerns itself only with internal self consistency. Sciences use math to describe reality, based on empirical evidence.

In a sense, math is like grammar. "On December 23rd 1954, Wulliburtz 'Bathtub' Macaroni II of Woodworth, ND was the first elephant seal to land on the Moon." may be a grammatically valid sentence, but it did not happen in our reality.

 

[overgeeked]

You want to debunk the existence of ghosts? Here goes. The US South is not overrun with millions of ghost stories centered around the angry ghosts of enslaved people. Germany and Eastern Europe are not overrun with millions of ghost stories centered around the angry ghosts of the Nazi’s victims.

The fact that the US South is inhabitable by white people is proof ghosts are not real.

The fact that Germany and Eastern Europe are inhabitable is proof ghosts are not real.

 

[TheSword]

Sleeplessness, Dreams, Hallucinations, False memories, Delusions, Drafts, Wooden houses expanding and contracting due to heat, Water pressure, Anxiety, Paranoia, The desire to feel important/unique.

I have definitely experienced false memories where my parents are adamant that funny anecdotes I have as a child never happened even though I can remember them vividly. My brain has filled in the gaps. One example was what I thought was a cast iron ghost encounter and when I told the anecdote at a family gathering my parents told me none of it had happened. There were details in the memory that couldn’t have been true.

On a side note, I love the Conjuring universe of ghost stories so nothing against it per se. I just don’t believe the scant evidence is credible, even based on what we know now.

 

[Li Shenron]

I believe ghosts exist in the Monster Manual, they are there in practically every editions, it's a fact.

 

[Aeson]

If ghosts are real, and I became one I hope I haunt someone or something or somewhere cool. I would definitely be a move things or something in corner of your eye kinda ghost.
Maybe I'd haunt a young woman that likes making stuff out of clay.

 

[Morrus]

Now I said no on ghosts but it is funny how almost every culture believes in some kind of spiritual power

I don't know if it's funny, but it certainly provides an insight into human psychology.

 

[Morrus]

Sleep paralysis explains everything. The feeling of someone touching my forehead, the feeling of being strangulated by a dark figure, me waking up with an anguished voice, the door bursting open at the right time, the bed jumping ! All of it is sleep paralysis.

I used to get that quite a lot. It used to take the form of an intruder into the bedroom, and me not being able to move. It's quite horrible. It hasn't happened in a few years though.

 

[Morrus]

I know personally other scientists, some with quite strong records themselves, who do not think the scientific method can be employed appropriately to this question (also ghosts) given the stigma surrounding it. That seems correct to me.

The scientific method has been applied to pretty much every supernatural phenomena you can think of, hundreds of times. There's a reason there's no proof of this stuff.

Who was it? James Randi? I can’t remember who but somebody offered a million dollars to anybody who could show the existence of supernatural phenomena under controlled scientific conditions, independent verified. He died a couple of years ago, but the prize went unclaimed.