Topic: I saw a ghost tonight.

[Redman0151]

Yes and she doesant do it for money she just loves helping people, but she does have a gift i am convinced of that, without doubt there ARE charlatans out there, but just because some are twats dont mea some cant do it.

Get her to do a test under controlled conditions then, it'd change the entire scientific world if she can prove it

[JohnnoWhite]

Get her to do a test under controlled conditions then, it'd change the entire scientific world if she can prove it

See, that's where the powers that be are always challenged for "proof". Why should such "powers" lower themselves to such insignificant challenges? Sufficient for me that it is demonstrably possible to communicate with receptive individuals and not to any global circus put on for entertainment / monetary advantage purposes. There are greater powers that we are perhaps not yet permitted to fully understand and I accept this.

[Phil M]

See, that's where the powers that be are always challenged for "proof". Why should such "powers" lower themselves to such insignificant challenges?

Sorry Johnno but why should they not?

In a world where parasites posing as "psychic mediums" profit from taking money from innocent gullible people via cold reading and using other fraudulent methods why not take the opportunity to prove
that not all of them are charlatans?

Were someone who believes they truly have a gift or power to take up one of these challenges and prove to people that there are genuinely gifted people who can communicate with the dead or foresee the future or heal someone using alternative methods etc.  then it would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these methods do exist and that these people can be trusted.

Edit: Interesting piece Derren Brown did a few years back on "psychic " Sally. http://derrenbrown.co.uk/testing-psychics/

[El Lobo]

Maybe because such 'powers' are always proven to be some trick, or technique which doesn't remotely prove any contact with the deceased.

Science isnt there to be tricked. Its not saying I dont believe in elephants. Cos elephants exist, and its proven they exist. I've seen loads of elephants. Even heard them. I've got a photo of an elephant at a safari park. A lot of museums have bones of elephants. David Attenborough is an elephant expert, he's seen loads of them. Actually stood in front of them and interacted with them. They definitely do exist.

[nick_8589]

See, that's where the powers that be are always challenged for "proof". Why should such "powers" lower themselves to such insignificant challenges? Sufficient for me that it is demonstrably possible to communicate with receptive individuals and not to any global circus put on for entertainment / monetary advantage purposes. There are greater powers that we are perhaps not yet permitted to fully understand and I accept this.

This is purely wishful thinking, you die, you rot you are reabsorbed into the ecosystem and you never come back, there's no such thing as a soul and life is just a fleeting accident.

For people who do believe in life after death how do you explain away the first law of thermodynamics.

[youll never walk alone it]

thanks johnno, do you know anyone with such power?  and maybe she cant speak to the dead but she does do something unexplainable, she has proved it to me and when they say do this under strict conditions that suggest she is trying to fool someone?
There is nothing to gain here for her, she would be very reluctant to recieve any payment from her gift.

[Titi Camara]

[JohnnoWhite]

This is purely wishful thinking, you die, you rot you are reabsorbed into the ecosystem and you never come back, there's no such thing as a soul and life is just a fleeting accident.

For people who do believe in life after death how do you explain away the first law of thermodynamics.

I don't seek to explain the (currently) inexplicable by our set of existing knowledge. I tell you only what I believe. There are for me and many others without doubt "powers" greater than we know. Because we don't/can't yet understand or explain them DOES NOT MEAN THEY DO NOT EXIST! Question people smarter and better informed than me and draw your own conclusions. Can you for example explain why it is that giant trees which are cut down to leave only a stump are sent nourishing roots to assist them to re-grow from other trees? No didn't think so and I don't have any answers to it either. I only wonder at what nature can do.

[RedRabbit]

That's just an argument from ignorance. Why would you Base a belief system on that?

[electricghost]

Can you for example explain why it is that giant trees which are cut down to leave only a stump are sent nourishing roots to assist them to re-grow from other trees?

Have you got any more information on this ?  Never heard of that before

[The Gulleysucker]

Have you got any more information on this ?  Never heard of that before

I'm not too sure if Johnno is conflating this together with something a bit woo'ish.

Google Mother Tree and there's lots of people who appear to have seized on this discovery to unfortunately then go off on assorted speculative interpretations, many of them woo'ish.

[MichaelA]

I'm more or less of the view that if believing in this sort of thing allows people to get through their day, then I'm really in no position to take issue with it. If it's harmless to others -  especially in the context of organised religion, which has the added bonus (usually) of attempting to make people live a good life and be nice to each other - then all well and good, as you were, etc. Believing in ghosts is largely harmless and might be a bit of fun.

The problem comes when people cannot come to terms with basic science or empirical evidence that refutes their own beliefs. The problem is exacerbated when it exploits vulnerable and damaged people, which is why I find mediumship and the spiritualist movement so odious; the practices are well known, debunked and explained. Yet people still want to believe in something - or have been so hurt and damaged - that their grief can be exploited by these people.

[The Gulleysucker]

Remote healing.

If only Macca was around as I'm sure he'd pass some suitably scabrous comment like "That's great as I'm suffering from a monstrous erection at the moment so any chance your missus could give me a remote wank to ease my pain and heal me"...

 

[cg82]

Love that this thread comes back from the dead this time each year (going to ignore the nay-sayers posting in this thread......Get your own thread!!  ).

Heres one my grandmother used to tell when I was a kid . She is 93 and still going strong although dementia has been gradually stealing it's terrible grip on her for a good few years now. The story concerns her mother so its my guess that this would of happened sometime in the early 1920's. So Belfast in the first quarter of the last century, a suitably errie setting.

Being from a poor district in Belfast, my great grandmother was sent out to work from a young age but I think she was in her early 20's when this happened. She cleaned the houses of some of the more well-off residents of the North part of the city and around the docks area. Many of the local girls and women took these jobs as a way to make end meet and support there young families. There was a particular house that some of the older women refused to work in- its been years since I heard this story- but think it was either a local GP or Priest who owned/lived in the house. A huge rambling 3- story affair long since demolished; it was reported to be haunted by a figure dressed in black. The story went that you would hear the swish-swish-swish of the long black cloak on the bare floorboads of the stairs as the figure descended.

Being young (and desperate for money) my great-grandmother took the house on. Whether she seen what she claims or whether she was amped up by all the stories she had been told I can't say. Occuring during the working day it was broad daylight obvisouly, with good strong coming in through the windows- she remembered the dust motes dancing in the sun beams as she cleaned. What I do know is that she fled the house after hearing the fabled swishing of the cloak, as she went about cleaning the main downstairs room. Taking a fleeting glance up the stairs as went, she claimed to have seen the figure descending and that it glided rather than walked and that it was hooded.

[boots]

For people who do believe in life after death how do you explain away the first law of thermodynamics.

BOOM 

[JohnnoWhite]

I'm not too sure if Johnno is conflating this together with something a bit woo'ish.

Google Mother Tree and there's lots of people who appear to have seized on this discovery to unfortunately then go off on assorted speculative interpretations, many of them woo'ish.

http://www.forestry.ubc.ca/2011/05/prof-suzanne-simard-talks-about-mother-trees/

Might be woo'ish on the face of it but can you offer an explanation as to how or why it happens if not through some form of support of like kinds/species?

[The Gulleysucker]

Johnno, rather than implying a magical strangeness to explain this, I would think along the following lnes.

We know that not all what at first seem parasitic behaviours necessarily have a destructive outcome, and we have an understanding that instead many mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationships have evolved and exist between many biological species, evolved being very much the key word.

Fungi are a very evolved form, at first glance seeming primitive, but ancient in evolotion lineage and they are incredibly varied and also undoubtedly complex in their relationships with both decaying and live matter.

Like any other lifeform, they too want to survive so endeavour and have evolved to ensure that the provider of their food source also survives.

This doesn't imply they have a consciouness or an awareness of self, it's all just part of life existing, its constant and holistic struggle to get by and survive, its evolution.

[JohnnoWhite]

Johnno, rather than implying a magical strangeness to explain this, I would think along the following lnes.

We know that not all what at first seem parasitic behaviours necessarily have a destructive outcome, and we have an understanding that instead many mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationships have evolved and exist between many biological species, evolved being very much the key word.

Fungi are a very evolved form, at first glance seeming primitive, but ancient in evolotion lineage and they are incredibly varied and also undoubtedly complex in their relationships with both decaying and live matter.

Like any other lifeform, they too want to survive so endeavour and have evolved to ensure that the provider of their food source also survives.

This doesn't imply they have a consciouness or an awareness of self, it's all just part of life existing, its constant and holistic struggle to get by and survive, its evolution.

Not implying that at all Gully - was simply stating that "it's life Jim but not as we know it." (Couldn't resist it sorry!)

Good to know that even non-sentient life forms assist other organisms to assure their mutual survival - by God, if only more sentient beings were as magnanimously symbiotic eh?

[McrRed]

This is purely wishful thinking, you die, you rot you are reabsorbed into the ecosystem and you never come back, there's no such thing as a soul and life is just a fleeting accident.

For people who do believe in life after death how do you explain away the first law of thermodynamics.

Phlogiston?

For me, as an agnostic, the first law makes the possibility of a soul more understandable. Our thoughts, conscious and unconscious activity exist as chemical and electrical energy at least.  This energy cannot be created or destroyed therefore must continue in some form. It's easy to see that most of this changes state and is absorbed by mother earth but it doesn't disprove that some of it may change state to a different form.

I have believed this since learning about Newton in school in the seventies. Since then, my views and thoughts have changed, my body's cells have all changed, my shape and size have all changed. What is it about me that is still me? And is it possible that some tiny element of this me-ness continue when I die?

[nick_8589]

Phlogiston?

For me, as an agnostic, the first law makes the possibility of a soul more understandable. Our thoughts, conscious and unconscious activity exist as chemical and electrical energy at least.  This energy cannot be created or destroyed therefore must continue in some form. It's easy to see that most of this changes state and is absorbed by mother earth but it doesn't disprove that some of it may change state to a different form.

I have believed this since learning about Newton in school in the seventies. Since then, my views and thoughts have changed, my body's cells have all changed, my shape and size have all changed. What is it about me that is still me? And is it possible that some tiny element of this me-ness continue when I die?

No that is just wrong on so many levels that's not how energy or thermo dynamics and the conservation of energy works, use of energy for one function prohibits its use for another unless you convert it and if what you suggest is true you'd end up with energy being tied up in one state, essentially forever and the amount of energy tied up would increase exponentially with every human born, causing the universe to eventually screech to a halt.
If you think that you have a soul and it never changes what about people who suffer massive and irreversible personality shifts as the result of bran injuries or disease.
One thing we do know about human consciousness is that is systemic and conditional on the entire system operating properly.

One thing I've always wondered, what about cow souls or dolphins or any other animal, or do you have to be able to attempt to rationalise your own mortality before you get one.