Ghosts galore

[Outrider]

The reason I am citing phenomena such as multiverses etc....is that these are just possibilities that are acknowledged by science. That is all that is required for NDE's and ghosts etc. also.

That's not 'all that's required' - multiverses are considered viable because there are models that predict the existence, and now we're looking for evidence.  With ghosts we have claims of existence but not the reliable evidence to support it.

They cannot be regarded as imagination because they happen regularly across the world, across different groups  and have many consistent details. Dismissing them as imagination is foolish.

Nobody is blanket dismissing them as imagination, in at least some of these instances there are very real experiences; what's being doubted is whether the claims of the source of the experience are valid.  They experienced 'something', but it seems unlikely that it was a disembodied spirit.

As to what they may be...we don't know.

There we go, that wasn't so hard, was it.

So what if we don't know what they are or are unable to provide evidence of them or are unable to investigate them?

So we keep investigating, we don't just go 'let's assume they're ghosts'.

They are real phenomena that real, honest and intelligent people experience, that is all.

That's not all, that's the start - phenomena are the start of the journey, now you have to try to come up with an explanation, consider what the implications of that explanation might be and then test those implications to validate the idea. 

Denying them or calling them hoaxes doesn't help.

We're questioning your explanation, not the reality of people's experience.

Lumping them together with religious beliefs and mythology is also a mistake.

Why?  You have claims without sufficient evidence, and the reinforcement of prior presumption is used to justify the claim, sounds like it shares at least some traits with mythology to me.

Accepting NDE's and ghosts as real is not the same as accepting the six day creation or Adam & Eve or stories of different gods.

Six day creation and Adam and Eve no, I'll grant, but belief in different gods... how is the claim 'god did it' differentiatable from 'a ghost did it'? Or, to put it differently, if I have an experience and two different people give me those two explanations, how do I test between the two?

Secular but exotic phenomena exist and they have to be accepted as real regardless of our ignorance of them

Exotic is not the same as supernatural, though.

Atheism should not be habitual denial of anything that is not yet a part of mainstream science.

This isn't about atheism or theism - there will be people of faith who do believe in ghosts and people of faith who don't, and the same for non-believers.  That I'm an atheist doesn't inform this opinion, rather my atheism and my 'a-ghostism' come from a similar place: we have phenomena, but there isn't sufficient rigorous evidence derived from or about those phenomena to support the claims being made.

O.

[Stranger]

The reason I am citing phenomena such as multiverses etc....is that these are just possibilities that are acknowledged by science.

Scientific conjectures and hypotheses are acknowledged because there are arguments that have been made for them based on, or extrapolated from, current theories.

That is all that is required for NDE's and ghosts etc. also.

Near death experiences are acknowledged by science, it's just your explanation for them that is being questioned because we have no evidence for it and good reasons to think it's false. Ghosts are also experiences that people report having and we have no solid evidence for them existing as an objective reality and nor is there any current science that we can base a hypothesis or conjecture on.

You really do need to understand the difference between what people experience and your preferred explanations - they simply aren't the same thing at all.

[ippy]

These so called N D Es are exactly similar to altitude sickness, lack of oxygen going to the brain, why not start taking dreams more seriously, why confine the investigation of various brain activities to N D Es alone?

ippy. 

[SweetPea]

I don't know if anybody else has tried using a Ouija Board situation.  I tried it with 4 family members each lightly resting their fingers on a drinking glass surrounded by all the letters of the alphabet arranged in a disorderly fashion so that it was impossible to remember their position.  Questions were asked and gradually the glass moved to spell out answers which suggested a deceased personality.  One such 'personality' indicated that he had been in a German prison of war camp where he had died.  The glass moved so fast that it seemed impossible that any of us were deliberately answering the questions.  However, we thought that if that 'person' has spent so long in that prison he would be able to speak some German.  My brother was the only one of us who could speak German and so he took his finger off the glass and asked a question in German.  The reply came back in German.

Nobody has addressed ekim's above comment.

So, can the Ouija Board experience be explained away by science?

[BeRational]

I don't know if anybody else has tried using a Ouija Board situation.  I tried it with 4 family members each lightly resting their fingers on a drinking glass surrounded by all the letters of the alphabet arranged in a disorderly fashion so that it was impossible to remember their position.  Questions were asked and gradually the glass moved to spell out answers which suggested a deceased personality.  One such 'personality' indicated that he had been in a German prison of war camp where he had died.  The glass moved so fast that it seemed impossible that any of us were deliberately answering the questions.  However, we thought that if that 'person' has spent so long in that prison he would be able to speak some German.  My brother was the only one of us who could speak German and so he took his finger off the glass and asked a question in German.  The reply came back in German.

The thing about anecdotes is that fantastic things can be claimed and the person making the claim seems so sincere.
But it is almost certain what you think happened did not actually happen.
Do you think that if this was tried under scientific scrutiny the effect would still  be there.
Of course not, these things only happen in sincere anecdotes and always fail when tested.

Memory is a funny thing, it is not like playing a video in your head of the events.
I had this brought home to me recently when something I had a clear memory of, was shown to be wrong when we found some old super 8 film of the event. I would have sworn my memory of the event was accurate when it was not.

[Sriram]

OK...since the experiences themselves are not being questioned (NDE's and ghosts, for starters)....who is to say what  the correct interpretations of  these phenomena are?! Only atheist explanations are valid?!!

[Sriram]

That's not 'all that's required' - multiverses are considered viable because there are models that predict the existence, and now we're looking for evidence.  With ghosts we have claims of existence but not the reliable evidence to support it.

Nobody is blanket dismissing them as imagination, in at least some of these instances there are very real experiences; what's being doubted is whether the claims of the source of the experience are valid.  They experienced 'something', but it seems unlikely that it was a disembodied spirit.

There we go, that wasn't so hard, was it.

So we keep investigating, we don't just go 'let's assume they're ghosts'.

That's not all, that's the start - phenomena are the start of the journey, now you have to try to come up with an explanation, consider what the implications of that explanation might be and then test those implications to validate the idea. 

We're questioning your explanation, not the reality of people's experience.

Why?  You have claims without sufficient evidence, and the reinforcement of prior presumption is used to justify the claim, sounds like it shares at least some traits with mythology to me.

Six day creation and Adam and Eve no, I'll grant, but belief in different gods... how is the claim 'god did it' differentiatable from 'a ghost did it'? Or, to put it differently, if I have an experience and two different people give me those two explanations, how do I test between the two?

Exotic is not the same as supernatural, though.

This isn't about atheism or theism - there will be people of faith who do believe in ghosts and people of faith who don't, and the same for non-believers.  That I'm an atheist doesn't inform this opinion, rather my atheism and my 'a-ghostism' come from a similar place: we have phenomena, but there isn't sufficient rigorous evidence derived from or about those phenomena to support the claims being made.

O.

Ok...if you and your wife together see a dead relative standing in front of you and smiling at you.  What is the 'scientific' explanation you would offer?

[Stranger]

OK...since the experiences themselves are not being questioned (NDE's and ghosts, for starters)....who is to say what  the correct interpretations of  these phenomena are?! Only atheist explanations are valid?!!

NDEs are being investigated. As for ghosts, there isn't really anything to study because they seem come over all shy when people try to get proper scientific evidence, so all we have is a bunch an anecdotes.

The starting point is always what we already know (as the article you posted on the other thread pointed out). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and, so far, the extraordinary claims about NDEs and ghosts lack evidence entirely.

[Steve H]

They experienced 'something', but it seems unlikely that it was a disembodied spirit.

I don't think anyone's claimed that they are disembodied spirits, just that they are, as you put it, "something" rather than nothing. I certainly don't think they are disembodied spirits, but I do think there is some kind of reality behind the many reports, a lot of which are hard to dismiss as fraud or delusion (though of course there's also a lot of both).

[Stranger]

So, can the Ouija Board experience be explained away by science?

As well as what BeRational said the way the glass moves is well understood, it's called the ideomotor effect.

How the ouija board really moves
Ouija - Scientific investigation

[Gordon]

Nobody has addressed ekim's above comment.

So, can the Ouija Board experience be explained away by science?

I've no idea if ekim is serious: after all stories like seances and ouija boards can be entertaining fiction. He may well be serious, but if so what we have here is an anecdote that involves a fantastic claim of communication with a dead person that involves replies in both English and German, and of course there were others involved whose testimony isn't provided.

Aside from the obvious point about reproducing this under controlled conditions, one aspect that intrigues me is the use of German. I'm presuming that the letters used to form the ouija board, and so determine the words in the 'message' were the standard English alphabet, and though I don't speak German myself I do know that the German alphabet routinely involves the use of 4 additional letters - so I'm wondering what these German words were, and to what extent they were spelled correctly as written German if these 4 additional letters didn't feature in the layout being used. 

[Enki]

Nobody has addressed ekim's above comment.

So, can the Ouija Board experience be explained away by science?

In the past I've used a ouija board several times, and on occasions I have deliberately 'controlled' the pointer without anyone in the group noticing. This was a relatively easy thing to do, and I was able to direct the board to give all sorts of 'information'. I stress again that nobody in the groups suspected a thing. Indeed I was able to take my hand away at selected times and the auto suggestion of the next letter needed(E.G. in someone's name) would appear as if by being spirit controlled, and I would therefore demonstrate that I was above suspicion. I have also taken part in sessions where someone else was guiding the pointer without anyone else's knowledge and I found it extremely difficult to figure out if it was being controlled or not.

I cannot comment on Ekim's experience. However I would be very interested in seeing the results he suggested under controlled conditions(I.E. all participants blindfolded, letters arranged in mixed order unknown to the participants etc.). This, of course, has been done and the results, predictably, have been shown to be nonsense.

[ekim]

Yes, my anecdote did actually happen and I appreciate that anecdotes are not acceptable as scientific evidence.  Up to the time of that event I assumed that somebody subtly manipulating the 'replies' even though it was difficult to do so because the glass was so designed that if you pushed it, it fell over.  The speed of its movement would make it very difficult to pre select the letters as they were arranged in a haphazard manner.  I understand the ideomotor effect and possibly there is a collective ideomotor effect but I am not sure what could have motivated the literal responses.  I am not making any claims for ghosts nor telepathy from my brother to influence the remote ideomotor effects nor that the stories which arise from the session have a factual base.  I tried on one occasion to see if there was any truth of 'a man who died falling from a tree in a certain  place at a certain time' but with no result.  I would like to add that there was no ouija board as such, just an ordinary table and a circle of lexicon cards and an unstable wine glass.

[jeremyp]

The reason I am citing phenomena such as multiverses etc....is that these are just possibilities that are acknowledged by science.

Science acknowledges multiverses because they are consistent with the laws of nature as we understand them. Science is silent on whether they exist or not because there's no evidence either way.

That is all that is required for NDE's and ghosts etc. also.

Nobody disputes that humans have experiences that have been variously described as NDEs or ghosts etc. What is in dispute is what the nature of those experiences is. There's nothing to stop you proposing that these things are something other than human psychological phenomena, but you need to propose an alternative hypothesis and a way of verifying or falsifying it. That is the bar you need to clear and you are currently a long way below it.

They cannot be regarded as imagination because they happen regularly across the world, across different groups  and have many consistent details. Dismissing them as imagination is foolish.

Except human brains are all very similar and likely to experience similar psychological phenomena.

They are real phenomena that real, honest and intelligent people experience, that is all.

Prove it.

Denying them or calling them hoaxes doesn't help.

Some undoubtedly are hoaxes.

[ekim]

I cannot comment on Ekim's experience. However I would be very interested in seeing the results he suggested under controlled conditions(I.E. all participants blindfolded, letters arranged in mixed order unknown to the participants etc.). This, of course, has been done and the results, predictably, have been shown to be nonsense.

Yes, blindfold them, gag them, block their ears and tie their hands behind them, that should sort them out.  Nothing to see here.  Move along please. 

[Sriram]

Yes, blindfold them, gag them, block their ears and tie their hands behind them, that should sort them out.  Nothing to see here.  Move along please. 

Clear scientism.

What some people need to understand is that certain phenomena are spontaneous and cannot be restricted by laboratory conditions and strict methodologies. Nor is it necessary.

[Stranger]

Yes, blindfold them, gag them, block their ears and tie their hands behind them, that should sort them out.  Nothing to see here.  Move along please. 

Yes, heaven forbid that we try to investigate the phenomenon by removing variables like whether the participants need to be able to see the letters or otherwise know where they are.   

[Stranger]

What some people need to understand is that certain phenomena are spontaneous and cannot be restricted by laboratory conditions and strict methodologies. Nor is it necessary.

To the extent that you don't have a methodology, you don't have any means to distinguish what is probably true from just making shit up. The problem is that you obviously do have a methodology: "if it conforms to Sriram's preconceived ideas it must be true, if not it must be false."

[jeremyp]

Clear scientism.

What some people need to understand is that certain phenomena are spontaneous and cannot be restricted by laboratory conditions and strict methodologies. Nor is it necessary.

"Laboratory conditions" and "strict methodologies" just mean "not fooling yourself with subconscious or conscious bias". If the effect disappears under laboratory conditions: it doesn't exist. Simple as that.

[ekim]

Yes, heaven forbid that we try to investigate the phenomenon by removing variables like whether the participants need to be able to see the letters or otherwise know where they are.   

Yes, I think most people can see that but the conclusion was "the results, predictably, have been shown to be nonsense." rather than human eyesight is necessary for the process to work, as is fingers touching the glass and a collection of letters etc. 

[Enki]

Yes, blindfold them, gag them, block their ears and tie their hands behind them, that should sort them out.  Nothing to see here.  Move along please. 

I seem to have hit a nerve here.

Well, I can't see the point of gagging them or blocking their ears, and definitely tying their hands behind them would be counterproductive, but blindfolding them would tend to eliminate any human driven impulses and would reduce the risk of simply  having an entertaining parlour game with no other particular merit. It isn't my fault that the evidence seems to suggest that blindfolding them would spoil the fun, if that's what you're interested in.

And rather than 'move along' I think that it would be far more interesting to explore the reasons why people find such activities so fascinating.

[Enki]

Clear scientism.

What some people need to understand is that certain phenomena are spontaneous and cannot be restricted by laboratory conditions and strict methodologies. Nor is it necessary.

That's your take on it. I would actually be interested in finding out if there was any evidence that ouija boards can connect to something unexplained. I suggested one way is to test the participants, i.e. by blindfolding them. Why not? That seems very reasonable to me. I haven't the slightest interest in scientism  I'm only interestied in using any method which could give an insight into the actual working of this activity.  If you can suggest other methods, fine, suggest away.

[ippy]

OK...since the experiences themselves are not being questioned (NDE's and ghosts, for starters)....who is to say what  the correct interpretations of  these phenomena are?! Only atheist explanations are valid?!!

I'll go with you Sriram on this one.

ippy.

[Aruntraveller]

OK...since the experiences themselves are not being questioned (NDE's and ghosts, for starters)....who is to say what  the correct interpretations of  these phenomena are?! Only atheist explanations are valid?!!

I think you will find scepticism is not limited to atheists. I know many Christians who do not believe in ghosts in the sense that you are discussing them currently. The Holy Ghost (or Holy Goat if you are a fan of Rowan Atkinson) is another matter.

[Sriram]

We cannot objectivize everything and expect concrete external analysis of everything.  Our mind is not independent of observed phenomena.  QM tells us that. Certain mental states could open up our observation of certain phenomena that would otherwise be unknown.

Even though the classical world behaves in predictable and measurable ways...we could also be governed by non classical factors that fall outside our normal perceptions. These non classical factors could be exotic and may not be what we expect normally. These could be what you people like to dub as 'supernatural'...though there is nothing 'super' about them.

One problem many of you seem to have is clubbing such non classical phenomena together with religious beliefs and mythology That is a mistake.