I think science can explain a lot of things away but even a recording of an event in say a building is an unkown method it it exisits. also people who go to ghost events or mediums are in a highly suggestable state generally. I can only say that some of the stuff i have witnessed was interactive. could it be my mind playing tricks, i guess so. If our minds tell us it's real we usually beleive it but my quigi board experience where names of people i can barely spell let alone know came out is less explained that way. Houdini vowed to come back after death and let people know if there was an afterlife. So far i think he has been quiet. I think the spirits put an Asbo on him. And loads of people still see Elvis down their chip shop so maybe we never die and it's a conspiracy to sell coffins ?
Missed the alien thread (for the record I think the notion we are alone in the universe is highly improbable) however I have never seen a single shred of evidence to support the existence of ghosts.
When I was a child I was raised in local authority care and at a particular point, I think about 8/9, I was going through a really tough time and I was about to run away. However on the night I decided that I couldnt face things any more I had the most vivid dream and was visited in the dream by someone who just by there presence made everything ok. I woke up the following morning completely refreshed and able to deal with things. Back then I thought it was a spiritual experience. Now I think it was my brain rebooting and telling me to have a word with myself. Oh and do I believe in a god?..........Yes id do...........why?.................fook knows! it just makes me feel better
I like this thread. The problem I have with "ghosts" is the implications of them being real - if ghosts are real, where do they go during the day? Does that mean heaven exists and therefore so does hell? Does that mean God exists, and therefore also the Devil? What about angels, fairies, vampires, werewolves, zombies, smurfs, etc? Funky is right: millions of years of human evolution means that our brains are programmed to look for facial patterns in everything we look at, because that is how we recognise others and threats. It's a primal thing that you cannot control and is affected by all sorts of things like the sleeping state, brain chemistry including stress, hormones, etc. I'm often sitting watching tv when I think I'll see something out of the corner of my eye, but I know it's my brain playing tricks because you don't actually see much more than what is directly in front of you, and some of that is not visibile either, and the brain fills in the rest. Sometimes it gets it wrong and that thing you thought you saw isn't really there. The other thing is about human perception of what is real and what is not. It's a very weird thing as each person's perception may be different to everyone else's, or it may be exactly the same. The weird thing is that we'll never know because we can't step into someone else's mind/body and feel/see what they see. Pain perception is a perfect example (pain thresholds) but even weird things like colours, smells and tastes (qualia) are all interpreted by the brain, so we each have a unique view, but science isn't too sure how this works anyway (see explanatory gap). This video is excellent to explain these concept: Is My Red the Same as Your Red? That video also brings up the weird notion that even though some animals have been taught sign language and can communicate, they never ask questions about self-awareness, known as the Theory of Mind. This seems a simple concept to humans but it appears (and can be proven with the "Sally-Anne Test") that animals may not have this same behaviour. Apologies for the rather deep post, but this stuff is fascinating for me!
Hmm, let's see now. Totally agree with Antonye, it's just peoples imaginations filling in the gaps of perception. If ghosts existed, who gets to become a ghost? Everyone? If not, who chooses? What about animals? (this was on QI) where are all the cow ghosts?, the cats, dogs, spiders etc. If just 'man' ghosts, how far back does 'man' go? A few hundred years? Thousands? Cave men? Where are all these ghosts then? There must be billions of them. Wouldn't science have found some way of detecting them by now? Unless of course the ONLY thing that can detect them is the human mind, which brings us neatly back to the post by Antonye......It's all in the mind.
Don't get me started - there are far more freaky things to think about than ghosts! Aside from aliens*, you want to start thinking about our universe - why is it here, how did it get here, where does it end? There's a really mind-blowing concept that the universe may get renewed at some point, known as vacuum instability: BBC News - Cosmos may be 'inherently unstable' Or maybe it's the concept that we live in a "multiverse" rather than a universe, and there are many more universes out there which could also contain life, but again we would never know or be able to get there: BBC News - 'Multiverse' theory suggested by microwave background And don't get me started on what would happen if we did find life, even if it is microbiological, on other planets such as Mars, and when it was tested it would contain DNA which proved we had common ancestry... *Yes, the chances are more likely that they exists than don't, but we're too isolated to ever know. Probably.
I can tell you the theory of how it works based on what was told to me on the charity ghost night. Basically when we die our spirit goes onto another level. A bit like switching frequency on a radio as our minds and memories are thought to be largely electrically stored and they survive as our spirit. The spirit is supposed to to be capable of determining the level at which they operate to an extent and most who pass move to a frequency far enough removed from our own that we don't interact generally. Those that may want to communicate or do not want to release from the mortal world or are avoiding those in the higher frequency stay as close as they can and when we get cross over we see/hear them. The meduim in effect has a mind capable of wider frequency perception compared to the general population and are gifted in that respect as say a sprinter may be gifted compared to the general population physically. That is how it works as i'm told. We all pass into spirit but the level you hang around at determines whether you interact or not. Simples As to fairies etc, they do exist. Alan Carr, Julian Clarie etc etc
Happy to believe in ghostly phenomena. Not remotely convinced by the idea of spirits existing after death. That means life after death and that opens a whole can of worms. You might end up believing in God. Bad idea.
religion, ghosts etc......lots of snake oil salesmen involved, I think. I agree with the blunt view of a previous poster - load of old bollocks!
I've heard that if I put this magnet on my fuel line, it will align the electrons and make the vortex swirl more efficiently, thus increasing power in the engine. That's what I was told. On the internet. So it must be true.
Is that like the cylinder polishing when you get the motor to suck up a lot of sand? Sounds like a great idea. You saw it on the net first.
This quote,(although taken out of the original context), sums it all up for me: "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or vice versa".
