Religion Thread

[TheMightyEthan]

Atheism is certainly a lack of faith, but I'd argue that some people take their conviction that there is no god to such an extreme that one could say they have faith that there is no god. That's what I would call anti-theism.

 

Someone who is certain there is no god has no more of a scientific outlook than someone who is certain that there is. The scientific outlook is to say that without evidence to show the existence of a god we will assume there is no god, but without evidence disproving god we can't actually say that one does not exist. Now I realize atheism and a scientific outlook are not the same thing, but enough atheists use "science" as an argument against god that the point must be made. The truly scientific outlook is technical agnosticism with atheistic assumptions.

[Johnny]

Sure, we can't say God doesn't exist. In the same way we can't say that there isn't a teapot orbiting around mars.

[MasterDex]

Oh god, ghosts? You mean like John Edwards and those ghost hunting shows on tv? I just can't abide that one. If I meet someone who actually thinks that shit is real, I will openly mock them for it. Maybe not the coolest thing to do but I'm sorry, even my tolerance has its limits.

 

You'll mock them for John Edward and those ghost hunting shows or for believing in ghosts in general? I'm right there with ya for the former, they're scams to take money from gullible people, though I don't think mocking people who believe in them is the right thing to do. You have to remember that, at least in the case of John Edward, the audience are people who have lost someone, whether years ago or just recently and as such, they open themselves up to the man because they want to believe they can communicate with a lost one.

 

On the topic of ghosts in general, I can only give my own experience. When I was around 5 or 6...maybe 7, myself and my brother were in the abandoned house next door. It was the middle of the day. As young lads do, we were being a bit destructive. With our father's sledgehammers in hand, we were banging old stone out of the wall of what I presume was at one point a woodshed. Deciding we'd be a bit more destructive, we entered the house to break the plaster off the inside walls. We stepped into the house from the back door that would have led to the kitchen. the door faced a wide window and shafts of sunlight penetrated through the dusty glass.

 

There was something else there in the light as well however. It was the image of an old woman dressed in black, standing around the midway point of the room, facing us. My brother and I both saw her. The first thought that crossed my young mind was that this was some neighbour that had caught us in the act and we were going to be in trouble. We both ran, but not before we realised that the woman, while we could make out the details of her dark dress and curly hair, could be seen through and the window was visible, the shafts of light going through her.

 

When we returned home, we ran to our father and told him what happened. The conversation went something like this.

"We saw someone in the old house"

"Yeah, we could see through her!"

"We saw a ghost, daddy!"

"You're imagining things, it was probably just a trick of the light."

 

For a few years, I went on believing that and my brother, still to this day, dismisses it as such. However, when I was older, maybe about 10 or 11, I found some old photo albums in the closet and began going through them. I saw wedding photos, photos of my father looking quite stoned, from the 70's, poking his head out of a tent and giving the peace sign and then I saw this older, small, black and white picture of a woman in a black dress with dark curly hair. It was the same woman I had seen on that day and when I showed the picture to my mother and asked her who she was, my mother said "That's black nan, your great grandmother.". It had been her house we were destroying that day.

 

Since then, I've believed in ghosts, not quite in the way others do, but I cannot not believe now. The belief, and the lack of quality scientific evidence to back it up, flies in direct contrast to most of what I believe and I've tried many, many times to unite those contrasting views to no avail. That truly annoys me. Take it for what you will and mock me if you like but that event was burned into my mind and I doubt I'll ever discount it as "just a trick of the light."

Edited September 13, 2012 by MasterDex

[TheFlyingGerbil]

have you read the new evidence about infrasound creating chills, hallucinations and other effects associated with ghosts. It's entirely possible that you'd seem a picture of your great grandmother before, which is why you'd see her particularly. Though of course I have never seen anything supernatural myself so it is easy for me to dismiss.

[TheMightyEthan]

Sure, we can't say God doesn't exist. In the same way we can't say that there isn't a teapot orbiting around mars.

 

Not even remotely the same. The popular Western conception of God is of a being existing outside the "regular" universe, which while we lack any evidence suggesting its existence beyond that fact there's not any specific reason to say it doesn't exist. With the teapot we know those to be man-made objects, created on Earth, which would suggest that there isn't one orbiting Mars unless we put it there; given that as far as available knowledge goes he haven't put one there we have a fairly compelling reason to believe that there is not, in fact, a teapot orbiting Mars.

[deanb]

[fuchikoma]

[MasterDex]

have you read the new evidence about infrasound creating chills, hallucinations and other effects associated with ghosts. It's entirely possible that you'd seem a picture of your great grandmother before, which is why you'd see her particularly. Though of course I have never seen anything supernatural myself so it is easy for me to dismiss.

 

I'm positive that I had never seen a picture until years later. Remember too that this was a shared experience so both myself and my brother would have had to have seen the picture beforehand. I doubt it was infrasound because, I'd imagine, that it would affect different people in different ways but that wasn't the case. The current pseudo-scientific reasoning I have for it and other apparitions is that a strong emotional event occurs and imprints an image of the surrounding matter into the environment that lasts over the years, fading as time goes by - akin to how an axe striking stone will leave a mark but will eventually weather away. This could also go towards explaining why battlefields are often cited as prime areas to see ghosts and why things like fog are often associated with ghastly images - taking the role of something similar to a projection screen. It's for that same reason that I believe that the light shafts are an integral part to the puzzle of my experience. If it is...matter distortion?...it may also explain why apparent sightings by children are more common - their visual cortex is still growing and learning how to process the information it receives from the world around it so while an adult's visual cortex has learned to filter out that which isn't important, the child's one hasn't yet reached that point and as a result sees more of the world we inhabit - Visual Acuity may also play a role with children's eyes having a greater possibility of having peak acuity when compared to an adult's.

 

I should clarify, lest I get the crazy hat thrown on me, that I don't believe what I saw was any sort of spirit or intelligence, merely an image stamped in space-time.

[Strangelove]

[Luftwaffles]

I believe this has now become the "ghost thread".

[fuchikoma]

Well, I can't say for certain as I wasn't there, but memories are actually very unreliable, especially if influenced by suggestion. Unless you and your brother didn't corroborate the sighting, and were separated, each testifying independently, it's possible that either one saw a photo of her somewhere and described it to the other, and somewhere along the lines it became a memory of both having seen her there? At least that would be the debunker's argument, I think.

 

I'm seeing more and more backing in neuroscience and psychology for the advice to live in the present or "the now," given how scarily inaccurate humans are in dealing with thoughts of the past and future.

 

(Also, as a kid I was way more prone than I am now to pareidolia. I'd pick up faces in woodgrain, voices in noise, etc, but with age/experience, it happened less and less.)

Edited September 14, 2012 by fuchikoma

[Mister Jack]

I remember when I was a kid this neighbor girl who lived a block away liked to talk about all the various reasons she just knew her house was haunted. I admit I was a pretty gullible kid, but even back then I was thinking to myself, "She's full of shit."

[CorgiShinobi]

Going to contribute to the "Ghost Thread!"

 

1 in 3 people believe in ghosts, and I'm one of those three, but I don't take to such drastic theories and behavioral superstitions. I find most ghost specific programming to be a load of crap, especially those "celebrity" ghost stories and that recent "Haunted Collector." I'm pretty sure the folks want to find a good antique and claim the "paranormal energy" is coming from it.

 

I don't expect anyone to believe in ghosts until they have an experience. Most of the time you can rationalize "ghosts," but I had one experience that I tried my hardest to disprove.

 

I was about 10 years-old and I was having difficulty sleeping. I was wide awake, but I also had this strange feeling I wasn't alone. I kept laying there and eventually thought maybe if I woke my parents they would have some idea of how to get me to sleep. Our house wasn't that large and was one floor. I was walking through the living room when I had that feeling again that I wasn't alone. I looked out the window and noticed the neighbors opposite out yard were leaving in their car. One of them worked late, so they would leave during the night regularly.

 

Before I entered the hallway, I saw in the reflection of a picture frame two red oval shapes. I instantly thought this was coming from through the window and was the neighbor's rear car lights. Thing was, they had already left. Where was the red light coming from? I looked at the red shapes more closely, and as I stared they blinked. Now, not flickered, but when someone blinks their eyes, the way the lids come together is very distinct.

 

I dashed for my parents' bedroom and jumped on top of their bed. I reacted, not imagined eyes staring back at me. It scared me real good, and for the next few days I came up with different scenarios of what could have happened. I didn't have any other experiences like this, or really any other at that house, but for the life of me I could not see where red light in the shape of two eyes could have came from.

 

My sister didn't believe in ghosts either, that is, until she had a roommate who was into all sorts of paranormal and "dark magicks." Freaky crap would happen sometimes and it didn't help that her roommate would welcome all of it. It's cliche, but kitchen cabinets opening up and things breaking with no one else around to do so? According to her, it would happen and she would always try to keep herself busy outside of her apartment. Not to mention all the dolls and figures this roommate had that she would decorate with were not "comfortable."

[Mal]

My contribution to the topic at hand:

 

I don't believe in popular definition of ghosts but it wouldn't surprise me if ghosts or more specifically spirits exist. Life itself is pretty strange. We may grow according to our DNA but for animals (Yes, I'm calling us animals), we can move how we like. Looking at us humans, we're the oddest of the bunch. Just look around you to see what we have done. This cannot just be all genetic. There's an extra layer and that layer is what I am naming with the place card of "spirit".

 

But to be more on topic... I'm not sure if it can do creepy shit. Sucks if they do since I'm Chinese and we're notorious on how to deal with ghosts in movies...

Examples:

 

Woe to them.

 

Edited September 14, 2012 by MaliciousH

[WTF]

have you read the new evidence about infrasound creating chills, hallucinations and other effects associated with ghosts. It's entirely possible that you'd seem a picture of your great grandmother before, which is why you'd see her particularly. Though of course I have never seen anything supernatural myself so it is easy for me to dismiss.

 

Not just infrasound, a change in temperature in the room due to a draft can also cause a similar effect. In fact there was a whole hour long discovery channel documentary that exposed the effect of basically a loose tile that let cold air from the pipe vents lower the temperature of the room and make people believe a particular place was haunted. Everything was recorded and the hauntings pretty much came about at the time when the air cooled. It was fairly interesting to see how temperature and sound especially as a combo work on the mind. It makes sense considering that when you suffer hypothermia you also end up feeling 'hot' and take off all your clothes and freeze to death. We honestly still don't know all the effects of temperature on the human mind. Worth noting if you want to use that on a battlefield in the future (or not!).

Edited September 14, 2012 by WTF

[Hot Heart]

Not wanting to detract from Dex's story but it also reminds me of the science behind that feeling of deja vu.

 

Essentially, your brain 'tricks' you into thinking a new experience is a memory. It wouldn't explain the sighting so much as the association between the woman and your great grandmother.

[Thorgi Duke of Frisbee]

Well, there was that one time that I had stayed up for so many hours that I started to see apparitions...

 

Maybe they were there, and my foolish lack of sleep was only a coincidence. But I doubt creatures that look like the freaky shaky things from Silent Hill are really roaming the ethereal plane.

[MasterDex]

Not wanting to detract from Dex's story but it also reminds me of the science behind that feeling of deja vu.

 

Essentially, your brain 'tricks' you into thinking a new experience is a memory. It wouldn't explain the sighting so much as the association between the woman and your great grandmother.

 

I've considered this before but I've always had the image I saw on that day fresh in my mind and when I saw the old photo, it was instant recognition. Not too long ago actually, my cousin was telling me he saw 'Black Nan' as a child too. We were out drinking and got to talking and I mentioned my ghost story and, no word of a lie, he looked incredulously at me, then at his girlfriend, then back at me and said "You're joking, right? Where'd ya hear about that?" before excitedly telling me he had had his own experience in that house and thought I was just bullshitting to make him tell the story that he thought I heard from my mother. I'm not sure I believe what he said, he could have just been feeding me lines but the expressions on his face did look pretty genuine.

 

All that said, mad theories out in the world, I still have trouble reconciling my experience with reality. I'm a rational and logical man but that day is constantly niggling at the back of my mind. But hey! madness runs in the family so it could be just that.

[Thorgi Duke of Frisbee]

Dalai Lama posted this to Facebook on the 10th:

"All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether."

[Mister Jack]

The Dalai Lama has a facebook account'?

[Thorgi Duke of Frisbee]

The Dalai Lama has a facebook account'?

Yup. Modern holy figures are all up on their technology.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I bet there are a lot of priests on bebo.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

A history of religious imagery in the USA, after the recent problems. A short, easy read.

 

Refreshingly different view of religion from a man of the cloth:

Edited October 1, 2012 by TheFlyingGerbil

[Thursday Next]

http://www.bbc.co.uk...d-asia-19780692 I'll never tell anyone what they can or can't believe in, but seriously, it's just a fucking book. Burning books is not cool, but looting and burning villages is a teensy bit worse in my opinion. These people really need to get some perspective. Allah, Jehovah et al are all reportedly quite capable of doing their own smiting if they feel the need.

 

Link works fine for me. Trying a tiny URL just in case: http://tinyurl.com/8scopr9

 

Maybe it's a BBC thing?

Edited October 1, 2012 by Thursday Next

[TheMightyEthan]

Link's broken.