Ghosts

Dave

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I find people who believe in ghosts almost as annoying as those who claim to have seen one, what say you?
 
Agreed. Is there any other discussion required?! ;)
 
I find people who believe in ghosts almost as annoying as those who claim to have seen one, what say you?

Yes i agree, especially those that get upset when you argue with them over it.

Does this have anything to do with the house thread?
 
My misses claims to be able to see them.
I just think she has mental issues.
 
Irrationality in general bothers me :(


I find it incredibly hard not to get drawn in to an argument or to call these people idiots.
 
Take one example, Dudley Zoo and Castle. There are supposedly many ghosts there, I even went on a ghost walk round there once which was great fun because actors scared the crap out of you at various points.

However, I visited the zoo and castle one day and listened to the many talks by the eminent Dr Dudley who is the resident zoologist at the zoo. He really knew his stuff so I even went to the castle tour to find out more about the castle etc. After a 2 minute intro this supposedly intelligent and rational human being started going on about how he was psychic and could see spirits. I've never lost respect for someone so quickly in all my life. I was gob smacked and then he went round the audience asking if anyone had seen a ghost, I simply couldn't stay there and walked off before he could ask me.:rotfl:

A friend of mine believes whole heartedly in all this psychic baloney. She was telling my wife about how the evil spirits kept coming to them and when my wife asked what happened apparently their "teacher" kept them away for them. That's right folks, she was paying someone to teach her how to be more psychic.:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I mean really for the sake of all that is good, WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THESE PEOPLE.

Sorry for the shouting but it's one subject I totally fail to see any credibility in the believers views at all.
 
I find people who believe in ghosts almost as annoying as those who claim to have seen one, what say you?
Yeah, keep your sightings to yourself instead of telling me and turning me into a nervous wreck.
 
Personally I haven't seen one with my own eyes and through my own experiences, so how can I possibly believe in them?

What are we also to make of Mediums then? These people who believe they can communicate with the dead?
 
There's an interesting book called Supersense by Bruce Hood that explains why people believe in the supernatural - including religion. Professor Hood is a distinguished academic specialising in neuroscience. He is currently Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol. He has been a research fellow at Cambridge University, at UCL, a visiting scientist at MIT and a faculty professor at Harvard. He delivered the 2011 Christmas lecture to the Royal Society under the title meet your brain.

The book is written for the layman and is very entertaining as well as highly revealing. Essentially these beliefs are functions of our unconscious (which academia refers to as System 1) struggling to explain our environment to our consciousness (System2). We think of System 1 as intuitive in that it delivers messages to our consciousness - laden with emotions - without our being aware of where they come from and without any conscious effort. One of the interesting features of the relationship between conscious cognitive System2 and intuitive System 1 is that most people do not judge their intuitive feelings at all or at best very lightly. But we should, these messages aren't logical they are the result of thinking methods that evolved when we were hunter gatherers. We are taking heed of a more primitive method of thinking.
 
There's an interesting book called Supersense by Bruce Hood that explains why people believe in the supernatural - including religion. Professor Hood is a distinguished academic specialising in neuroscience. He is currently Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol. He has been a research fellow at Cambridge University, at UCL, a visiting scientist at MIT and a faculty professor at Harvard. He delivered the 2011 Christmas lecture to the Royal Society under the title meet your brain.

The book is written for the layman and is very entertaining as well as highly revealing. Essentially these beliefs are functions of our unconscious (which academia refers to as System 1) struggling to explain our environment to our consciousness (System2). We think of System 1 as intuitive in that it delivers messages to our consciousness - laden with emotions - without our being aware of where they come from and without any conscious effort. One of the interesting features of the relationship between conscious cognitive System2 and intuitive System 1 is that most people do not judge their intuitive feelings at all or at best very lightly. But we should, these messages aren't logical they are the result of thinking methods that evolved when we were hunter gatherers. We are taking heed of a more primitive method of thinking.

Add that to our general fears, superstitions and weariness of the dark. Sprinkle a pinch of lacking in understanding probabilities and critical thinking.

To me, what you mention Bruce Hood's book mentions is fundamental to a lot of problems we see today in modern societies. A lack of awareness of how ones own mind works even in a basic way leads to all sorts of issues with things like applying perspective to what are important, how feelings, emotions and memories are not always a good reference for judging things, especially other people.

If all the TV shows about ghosts, pyschics etc we canceled and replaced with educational programmes explaining about the human mind and showing people how to be critical thinkers, a considerable amount of problems in the world would be reduced I have no doubt .... if only we could actually get people to watch them instead of turning over for a soap opera ;)
 
I mean really for the sake of all that is good, WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THESE PEOPLE.

Beats me - there's no ghosts, there's no psychics, there's no astrology, there's no that other thing. Get real people - focus on the real world!
 
We had a photo printed in the paper about 20-25 years ago which was taken in our house and we realised you could see a figure standing in teh doorway.

I find it funny though that people that dont believe in ghosts believe in other things that have never been seen.
 
It's easy to say people that believe in ghost are idiots when you have never experienced any thing but not so easy if you have.
I & my family have all witnessed some very strange things in our house & try as I might I can't explain them.
I won't bore you all with the details but will say on one occasion in the time it took me to switch off the lamp in my room my bed went from having nothing on it to having a hat placed neatly in the middle of it while both myself & my husband were in the bed.
Though I've never seen a ghost & I have no explanation for these strange things.
 
Elsie Partridge is a medium...:laugh:
 
I can kind of understand why people think they have seen or experienced ghosts. I have had several experiences which, had I believed in such things - I might be tempted to call ghosts.

However, I do believe that anybody who believes in ghosts, fairies, pixies, god or Santa are delusional.
 
As we know from the other thread there are around 100 billion deceased persons, or roughly 16-17 'ghosts' per presently alive person. Surely that's enough to make a move and take back the planet?!
 
The problem with not believing in ghosts is how do you explain what happened if you meet one and had a chat with them, especially if you did not know they were dead at the time. Elderly next door neighbor outside their house when they died that morning, former work colleague in the street when they died in a car accident the previous week.

I mean I can explain my mother sat in the living room after she had died based on the mind playing tricks, but how do you explain people you did not know were dead and to whom you had no emotional attachment.

I do not believe in life after death, I just treat it as one of those things and put it down to family history of insanity and family history of seeing ghosts. What are ghosts probably the mind playing tricks or malfunctioning and filling in details. Shrug shoulders think well that was weird then get on with life.
 
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Most people can't explain how a computer works or understand the national grid. Not being able to explain something doesn't mean it automatically translates to a supernatural cause. A trick, joke, camera or film malfunction, over exposure, too much caffine not enough sleep. It is amazing how many supernatural occurances turn out to be weather related.

If you know someone that is nervous and believes in ghosts, let a very small amount of air out of an empty pop bottle then tighten the lid. At some random time during the evening as the temperature and air pressure changes, it should make a cracking noise that can't half scare people who don't understand what is going on and when they look around to see what happened will see an innocent bottle by the sofa or under the table and think spirits are trying to communicate :)
 
I find people who believe in ghosts almost as annoying as those who claim to have seen one, what say you?

you should have posted this and immediately locked the thread.... ;)
 
I'm sure I saw a ghost of a small girl once on a road near my house...

It was however New Years Eve and I was being piggy-backed by a mate as I was too drunk to walk
 

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