[OT] Do you believe in ghosts?

[Viking Bastard]

Do little green faeries from Mars live inside your head?

Well, actually when you say it...

 

[Sodalis]

to jump off topic once again- that discussion of the monkeys and eolution reminds me of somethign that pops up a lot in these boards- "WOW, i just rolled 10 20's in a row!! what are the odds..."

and someone respond "the chance of that happening are the same as me getting a 5,2,7,18,11,.......17, in that order..."

why are people so obsessed wth probabilities...?

to continue the debate:
Supernatural things are natural- but outside the realm of our understanding. humans have a tendency to categorize everything, and to have somethign that they cannot explain, much less place in a group, is annoying, so we created a category, paranormal, that we can lump all this into.

When human understanding improves (as it will, because knowledge can only grow as long as it is built on the past) then we will be able to expand and create more categories that will beter excplain the presence of ghosts and spirits. But for now, "the unexplainable" is the only catgory we can come up with- and it will have to do...

 

[kenjib]

to continue the debate:
Supernatural things are natural- but outside the realm of our understanding. humans have a tendency to categorize everything, and to have somethign that they cannot explain, much less place in a group, is annoying, so we created a category, paranormal, that we can lump all this into.

When human understanding improves (as it will, because knowledge can only grow as long as it is built on the past) then we will be able to expand and create more categories that will beter excplain the presence of ghosts and spirits. But for now, "the unexplainable" is the only catgory we can come up with- and it will have to do...

My point of contention is that you are still calling them ghosts and spirits and stating that they are present. Therefore, you are providing an explanation (which breaks the paradigm you propose of paranormal being without explanation). Ghosts and spirits are the souls of the deceased manifesting in the real world by definition. By affixing this label to these occurances you are not leaving them open to future scientific explanation, which could include hallucination, air pressure (doors shutting or objects moving mysteriously), quantum fluctuations in electronic devices (in the case of electronics behaving in a strange fashion), or who knows what. You are saying that they are ghosts and spirits, which excludes many other explanations. Perhaps I misunderstood your post though and if so I apologize in advance.

Otherwise I would agree with you. If (a big "if", too) something traditionally considered paranormal were found to be supported by scientific theory, said phenomenon would no longer be paranormal by definition. However, until any given paranormal explanation is backed up by proof, as far as I am concerned it is pure unfounded speculation on the order of "little green men living in my head." It is quite possible that the explanation for said phenomenon will turn out to be something quite different than what the paranormal theory predicts. That isn't to say that it's completely impossible that ghosts and spirits do indeed exist though (even if I find it unlikely to an extreme degree).

Consider will o' the wisps/corpselights and gas emissions for an example. The hallucinations associated with sleep paralysis described in this thread are another. The famous case of Peter Plogojowitz, the vampire, is yet another great example. The "supernatural" traits considered to have been definitive proof of vampiracy upon exumation of the suspect's corpse are now known to result simply from the natural decay process of a human corpse. See Vampires, Burial, and Death by Paul Barber if you're interested in this last one. I found it to be a very interesting book. Incidentally, vampires are also in the category of creatures that have been described as sitting on the chest and causing one to be unable to move -- yet another manifestation of sleep paralysis.