Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Enki on August 24, 2023, 11:37:03 AM
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Some people on this forum will remember Floo(later she came back as 'Roses' I believe.) They might also remember how she talked about a farm she lived on in North Wales which had a field where a vision of the Virgin Mary had been claimed.
Yesterday evening I came back from dancing and was idly flicking through various TV channels when I happened to see the last part of a BBC1 programme called 'Paranormal:The Girl, The Ghost and the Gravestones'. As I watched the last ten minutes I slowly realised I was probably watching our friend Floo talking about the ghostly happenings at her Penyffordd Farm.
As all of the four episodes are on BBC IPlayer, this morning I watched the first one and, sure enough, It was all about this 'ghostly' farm and there was Floo in all her glory.
I am not going to comment on the quality of the programmes, but, for those who remember Floo(Roses), you might well find it interesting, especially as we have some considerable background knowledge of her many posts on this forum.
If you want to watch the four episodes, IPlayer has them all. Just use search and put in the word 'Paranormal'
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I made a post yesterday in 'What are you watching?' in 'Literature, Music etc.' on the same subject. Here's a link to the first programme (of four): Roses herself appears in the last programme. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0g31444/paranormal-the-girl-the-ghost-and-the-gravestone
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Floo's experiences were discussed here some years back.
http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=10788.0
In case anyone is interested.
Here is something more..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/northeastwales/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8359000/8359261.stm
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The programmes could have done with a lot of editing, but with some fast forwarding there is an interesting story there. One of the questions posed is why would any person or persons carry out the acts, or lie about them, and yet no one ever asks why any 'spirit' would act like that.
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What do we know about the compulsions and motivations of another level or form of life altogether? We can only observe that they are there....
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What do we know about the compulsions and motivations of another level or form of life altogether? We can only observe that they are there....
....or we can quite reasonably suggest that someone is having us on.
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Only habitual skeptics would do that. There are too many cases around the world and across generations, for it to be dismissed so casually.
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Only habitual skeptics would do that. There are too many cases around the world and across generations, for it to be dismissed so casually.
Who you calling habitual? I'm only sceptical when any day in a week has a "y" in it.
There are lots of unexplained phenomena for sure. I don't happen to believe they have a supernatural element. I don't believe in ghosts because the evidence is lacking. Whenever people have told me they have seen a ghost the descriptions and the circumstances lead me to believe they were dreaming/hallucinating/misinterpreting matters.
You seem to be oblivious to the fact that human beings have always been great story tellers. I apply that in the literal sense of story telling or in the more pejorative sense of telling untruths.
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What do we know about the compulsions and motivations of another level or form of life altogether? We can only observe that they are there....
How?
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How?
What do you mean 'how?' The same way Rose and others observed it.
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What do you mean 'how?' The same way Rose and others observed it.
How do you get to your idea that it was some non human entity?
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There is no reason to believe otherwise....unless you are a sworn materialist....!
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There is no reason to believe otherwise....unless you are a sworn materialist....!
So when people saw the 'Miracle of the Sun', the sun really was swinging around in the sky?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun
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There is no reason to believe otherwise....unless you are a sworn materialist....!
Yes, because in the whole of human history no-one has been mistaken, no-one has misunderstood, no-one has tried to mislead, no-one has tried to mystify others. Ever.
Crop Circles. Cottingley Fairies. Amityville Horror. All absolutely true. There is no reason to believe otherwise. Oh wait....
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There is no reason to believe otherwise....unless you are a sworn materialist....!
Bearing in mind that the claim is 'ghost' and taking into account the provenance of the claim, and the key claimant, I reckon we can just dismiss this claim and this plodding TV programme.
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Philosophical ideas of a soul and spirit are well known. NDE's are well known. Based on these...there is no reason not to accept ghosts and spirits. Such experiences are very common world over for thousands of years.
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Philosophical ideas of a soul and spirit are well known. NDE's are well known. Based on these...there is no reason not to accept ghosts and spirits. Such experiences are very common world over for thousands of years.
Harry Potter is well known.
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Philosophical ideas of a soul and spirit are well known. NDE's are well known. Based on these...there is no reason not to accept ghosts and spirits. Such experiences are very common world over for thousands of years.
Ideas and unexplained experiences aren't a reason to accept that ghosts exist.
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We should accept only your inane 'explanations' of hoax, shadows, wind, imagination etc. etc. ?! :D
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We should accept only your inane 'explanations' of hoax, shadows, wind, imagination etc. etc. ?! :D
You never will I know. You are to far gone and too certain about your beliefs to actually consider alternative explanations. Try actually addressing the points being made rather than labelling things as inane or talking about 'you people' or even worse posting links to your blog. Ideas and unexplained experiences - whatever they are - aren't a reason to accept any claim. Discuss.
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Philosophical ideas of a soul and spirit are well known. NDE's are well known. Based on these...there is no reason not to accept ghosts and spirits. Such experiences are very common world over for thousands of years.
Most people do not think scientifically or logically about such things. Many people find it easier to go along with popular superstitious claims rather than putting in the hard yards to eliminate the legacy of culturally induced irrational thinking.
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Maeght
If such complex and abstract matters could be resolved through mere discussions and opinions....we wouldn't have such fundamental differences, would we?!!
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Maeght
If such complex and abstract matters could be resolved through mere discussions and opinions....we wouldn't have such fundamental differences, would we?!!
Things can be resolved through discussion of facts if people are willing to do so and are able to accept that their opinions are not facts or evidence.
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Things can be resolved through discussion of facts if people are willing to do so and are able to accept that their opinions are not facts or evidence.
To be able to notice and understand the evidence, people should have the necessary faculty and insight.
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To be able to notice and understand the evidence, people should have the necessary faculty and insight.
That sounds like a recipe for confirmation bias.
One of the oddities in this whole pantomime is how an avowed and strident atheist found themselves able to also believe in 'ghosts'.
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That sounds like a recipe for confirmation bias.
One of the oddities in this whole pantomime is how an avowed and strident atheist found themselves able to also believe in 'ghosts'.
When 'eyes' open and the inner faculty awakens....the other reality can be 'seen' and understood.
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When 'eyes' open and the inner faculty awakens....the other reality can be 'seen' and understood.
We're straight back to confirmation bias again.
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Confirmation bias could be on either side. Even people who see evidence for such paranormal phenomena but refuse to accept it ...do have confirmation bias.
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Confirmation bias could be on either side. Even people who see evidence for such paranormal phenomena but refuse to accept it ...do have confirmation bias.
I'd suggest that may be because this 'evidence' isn't really evidence at all: the gist of this story, iirc, is to do with the ghost of a deceased child: before worrying about the alleged identity of said child I'd like to see evidence (not woo or pseudoscience) that the some form of essence from a once living person has survived their death and can interact in the physical realm.
It the absence of any credible evidence I'm inclined to dismiss 'ghosts' as superstitious nonsense that is only taken seriously by the highly credulous, which takes us back the one-time occupant of the property featured in this programme.
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To be able to notice and understand the evidence, people should have the necessary faculty and insight.
Or the necessary pre-existing beliefs and a vivid imagination. The necessary faculty of being credulous.
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See....how your confirmation bias makes you people think...?!
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To be able to notice and understand the evidence, people should have the necessary faculty and insight.
And there's your problem right there. Other people can have alternative experiences and consequentially different insights and understanding. Me, for instance. So, how do we differentiate between them? I suppose you could say that your experiences are much more valid than mine, or that my experiences don't really count, and I could say exactly the same about yours. So where does that get us? Precisely nowhere.
My response is to discount my experiences as subjective, and rely much more on as objective evidence as I can find. What's yours?
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See....how your confirmation bias makes you people think...?!
...and your confirmation bias, doesn't!
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And there's your problem right there. Other people can have alternative experiences and consequentially different insights and understanding. Me, for instance. So, how do we differentiate between them? I suppose you could say that your experiences are much more valid than mine, or that my experiences don't really count, and I could say exactly the same about yours. So where does that get us? Precisely nowhere.
My response is to discount my experiences as subjective, and rely much more on as objective evidence as I can find. What's yours?
Floo's ghost sightings are objective... except that you people don't want to accept due to your confirmation bias. You would rather explain it away as a hoax or some other inane reason.
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Floo's ghost sightings are objective... except that you people don't want to accept due to your confirmation bias. You would rather explain it away as a hoax or some other inane reason.
And again
So when people saw the 'Miracle of the Sun', the sun really was swinging around in the sky?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun
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Floo's ghost sightings are objective... except that you people don't want to accept due to your confirmation bias. You would rather explain it away as a hoax or some other inane reason.
Talking of confirmation bias...remember this one Sriram?
https://youtu.be/cOEv6UcFFHA?si=UjuOFxVcNYZXnNR1
Who's confirmation bias kicked in quickly when it was first posted here?
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Floo's ghost sightings are objective... except that you people don't want to accept due to your confirmation bias. You would rather explain it away as a hoax or some other inane reason.
'Floo' and 'objective' are terms that don't really belong in the same sentence.
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Floo's ghost sightings are objective... except that you people don't want to accept due to your confirmation bias. You would rather explain it away as a hoax or some other inane reason.
That Floo believes she saw something is, probably, an objective fact. Given that we can't be sure she actually saw anything, let alone that she can correctly identify what she saw, to suggest that the entire claim is 'objective' is nonsense.
O.
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Floo's ghost sightings are objective... except that you people don't want to accept due to your confirmation bias. You would rather explain it away as a hoax or some other inane reason.
To the post that you replied to here I never mentioned Floo's ghost experiences at all, and the only other post on this thread that I made was the opening post where I did not pass any opinion whatsoever. So, you're response smacks of misdirected bias...not that I'm surprised. I have not looked at the evidence in any depth to form a concrete opinion of what really happened. I do know that any 'ghostly' stories that I have looked at, the so called evidence has either been lacking or very suspect. So, next time, Sriram, I suggest you try to contain your prejudices rather than attempt to smear all and sundry.
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Confirmation bias could be on either side. Even people who see evidence for such paranormal phenomena but refuse to accept it ...do have confirmation bias.
I understood that Floo accepted the evidence of what her senses seemed to be telling her, but was extremely unwilling to admit to any supernatural explanation of the phenomena in question. She expected there to be a scientific explanation, but so far none has been forthcoming. None that would give a full explanation for the phenomena that people claim to have seen. Buildings containing 'memory traces' imprinted on them has been one attempt at a 'scientific' explanation, but I'm not aware of any branch of science that deals with matters like this. That all sounds a bit like the garbage trotted out by practitioners of homeopathy, who claim that their phials of virtually pure water contain 'memory traces' of the substances once dissolved in them.
As NS has suggested, I suspect the origin of these phenomena lies in the psychology of the people experiencing them, whether they are believers in the supernatural or not.
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Something about the Enfield poltergeist...
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20231026-the-enfield-poltergeist-why-the-unexplained-mystery-that-shocked-1970s-britain-continues-to-disturb
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Remember it well. I also watched the Michael Parkinson mockumentary based on this subject at the time. You may well be interested in this article on the subject by a skeptic, Deborah Hyde, from the Guardian, May 2015.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/01/the-enfield-poltergeist-a-skeptic-speaks
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Has anybody been watching the BBC 2 series 'Uncanny' ..... https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001rcl0/uncanny
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Has anybody been watching the BBC 2 series 'Uncanny' ..... https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001rcl0/uncanny
Yep, mentioned it a couple of times on the What Are You Watching thread.