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I haven't seen compelling enough evidence to believe in the supernatural.
That said, we do seem to be well on our way to engineering ghost-like phenomenon. People will set up LLMs and generative AI systems that imitate dead people, if they haven't already...
No ghosts IRL? No problem! We'll make ghosts!
Thanks Humanity. 🙄️
they did that for Christopher Pelkey, so he could testify at his killer's sentencing. For some travesty of justice, the judge was an idiot and allowed it as a "victim impact statement".
I have both feet planted firmly in the real world but I have experienced three or four undeniably supernatural things in my life and yeah it does happen sometimes.
If ghosts existed it'd be the biggest fucking news and all research would focus on it. Proof of an afterlife? Another universe beyond this one? We'd go there instead of space. Elon would want to set up a colony.
What type are we talking about? Sexy?
Or scary?
Either way, Dr Beverly Crusher would be aroused.
(yes it was a tough choice between this and the yoga one)
Nope. All "evidence" is fake. For example pretty much all UFO vids disappeared once 4k cameras got invented
Even within the perspective of religious philosophy, the existence of ghosts in the sense of a spirit that stays on Earth and causes noticeable effects is difficult. Mainly- ghosts would not be made of matter, but could interact with matter. Within the realm of religious philosophy there are all sorts of explanations for the "mundane" version of this question of how a spirit attaches itself to the matter of the body in the first place, but all of those explanations kind of go out the window when the spirit sticks around and starts interacting with other matter. If ghosts only appear in sensory visions and do not truly interact with matter (I believe this was the view of Aquinas), then you have a major problem in proof and then ghosts effectively do not exist for practical purposes. The Catholic Church believes that the dead can appear to the living in visions but takes no stance on physical manifestations.
Within science, of course, there has never been a scientific observation of any supernatural being such as a ghost or effects it might have. But that doesn't disprove the idea of purely spiritual apparitions. Then again, it also doesn't disprove that Zorlon the Gorilla God appeared to me in a dream either. I think we can pretty conclusively say that you can live your life under the assumption that ghosts don't exist and be completely 100% fine.
I think it's fine if people believe in ghosts and spiritual stuff. My wife believes in ghosts, genuinely and fervently. I don't really care to battle her on this because regardless of what she believes and what I believe we ultimately end up doing the same thing in the end - nothing. I think it's a bit childish, but it's no more or less unreasonable than faith in a god or a higher power and people will fight you over that.
I think the delineating factor is how much belief in ghosts or the supernatural play into your decision making and your worldview.
If a person believes ghosts are real, but never really act on that belief, it's harmless.
if a person believes ghosts are real and alter their behavior in meaningful ways as a result, it's maladaptive.
For example, say you hear a creaking noise in the middle of the night that startles you awake. Person A, Person B and Person C each check to ensure there's no intruder in the house and determine that all the doors and windows are still locked and there are no signs of forced entry.
Person A comes to the conclusion that it was just the sound of the wood joists expanding or contracting as the temperature fluctuates and goes back to bed.
Person B comes to the conclusion that the sound could have only been produced by a ghost and therefore their house must be haunted, and so they call an emergency priest to come exorcise the house with holy water and they stay up all night clutching charms and wards to fend off spirits.
Person C comes to the conclusion that the sound could have only been produced by a ghost, says a quick (10 second) prayer for protection/guidance for the lost spirit and then goes back to sleep.
You can see how Person A and Person C have conflicting views about the origin of the sound, one which relates to scientific explanations for real phenomena and the other that delves into spirituality and faith to explain it. Regardless, they are both able to resume their normal behaviors (sleeping) afterward, while Person B shares the same view of the origin of the sound as person C, but their view is extremely disruptive and illogical. Their belief in ghosts requires them to take extreme measures to feel protected against them, but there is no evidence that anything bad would have happened as a result if they had chosen to do nothing instead. Nor would there have been a guarantee that something bad would not have happened anyway if they did all of the "proper" things to remain safe from ghosts.
Does your friend consider themselves on the left or the right side of the graph?
Any graph like that where it puts their own beliefs as 'smart' and others beliefs as 'dumb' is inherently a pretty useless graph. Graph says them smart, you dumb. Does the graph not convince you? LOL.
Depending on where you live, your friend might be eligible for using public transportation completely for free with a special id. It is also possible that their job security is going through the roof. One needs to be tested first, though and from what you wrote about them, I'd suggest that you or another person close to them escort them to a clinic. This way they don't get lost and can get help speaking with the personell when the instructions or other information get too complicated for them.
If you ever watch the video of Karl Sagan describing what the fourth dimension is, that is a slight possibility for explaining poltergeist ghosts, possibly even alien abductions.
No, they can't
Your friend is likely to be a bit of a numpty
The more you know the less stuff you're comfortable ruling out.
There's nothing that disproves ghosts, but there's nothing that proves them either.
You could have said "souls" instead, because that's just another word for consciousness. But it doesn't work for ghosts
absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
not proof, no. but it is evidence.
There's nothing to disprove ghosts because there's no real definition of what a ghost is.
If someone gives me a real unambiguous agreed upon definition of what a ghost is, I'll explain why we know they don't exist.
I'm not going to rule out the possibility of something existing that we don't know of yet.
However, if we're supposed to look for anything in any way, we first need to know what we're looking for. So, what's a ghost? Is a a soul, and if so, what's a soul?
I think that's an interesting question with or without ghost.
People who believe in souls, should attempt to explain what a soul is and how they experience their existence. Is it an emergent feature of the electrons or brainwaves that can travel in other dimensions that our normal physics can't detect or something completely unknown?
People who have experiences with ghosts and souls should be investigated. How do they detect their observations? Are they somehow able to sense things that happen in other dimensions? That'd be really cool, and I still won't rule it out. The human mind can do weird stuff. For instance echo localization like bats do, seeing more colours than normal or even just perfect pitch. Stuff like that is provable and shows that our senses can be expanded by training. Perhaps we even have dormant senses like seeing magnetic fields like birds do.
So let's say some people can see ghosts but we just can't measure it currently, because we don't know how it works. We can still make an experiment where we compare the observations from these special skills and see if they align. If it turns out that the people who can see ghosts agree, then we should definitely investigate it further and find out what happens in their heads when they see ghosts. Where does the brain impulses come from? That'll teach us about the special sense, which could then prove the existence of ghosts.
I doubt their observations match up in a controlled environment. It's a shame because it would be really easy to prove the existence of ghosts.
Religion tends to justify itself in the face of absolutely no evidence with "proof denies faith." It's a garbage argument, but it's accepted.
Ghosts don't have any similar excuse to fall back on when we fail to see any credible evidence whatsoever.
Is the soul a thing? Does consciousness exist as more than the sum of the electrical network of the brain? Who am "I"? These are all interesting and probably unanswerable philosophical questions. "Do ghosts exist" though, is a pretty straightforward no.
You could ask him where he sees himself on that chart and what evidence he has that it's not on the left side?
ghosts are like religion: can neither be proven nor disprofen. what do you even consider a ghost? i do faintly believe in spirits:
when i am sitting at the grave of my grandfather, it does feel as he is around somehow. is that because i miss him and wish he is still with us? likely...
a friend of mine recently lost her father. they are both accomplished mountaineers. on a solo tour, she told me, she heared her father's voice reminding her to be careful - while not paying attention during a dangerous passage. was it her father reaching out? was it her subconsciousness taking the persona of the father? we will never know...
in the end it doesn't matter in the slightest, what these feelings of ghosts or spirits really are. if our ancestors keep watching out for us, that is great. if our subconsciousness keeps watching out for us, while taking on different personas, that is great. life goes on the same - even if it all was just imagination.
no, its unreasonable
IMHO "ghosts" is just an older word vor virus.
People in earlier times knew that some diseases jumped around from person to person and that that could be dangerous, but didn't have a proper explanation for it.
So they assumed that there must be something invisible in the air that creates the kind of spooky effect that people fall ill sometimes without being touched or physically hit in any way. Kinda spooky, if you think about it and only know about mechanics, but not about cellular biology.