I would like to preface by stating that prior to moving to Georgia I never took seriously the issue of believing in ghosts. I just put ghosts in the same category with Santaclause and assumed that other adults did as well. Once we moved to Georgia, my sister started telling me that a lot the kids in her school believed in ghosts and some even practiced crude forms of divination. I assumed first that they were purposefully putting forward an idiotic face to see if they could get her to believe what they were saying and then make fun of her for being gullible (that’s the sort of stuff kids did in the places I grew up in), but the stories continued. So I just assumed that the children were a little slow or perhaps Biblical teachings were less pervasive in Georgia, and I forgot about it. Then when I was attending GSU finishing my undergrad degree, there was a girl in one of my classes, who I will refer to as X, who firmly believed that there were ghosts living in her house. After she made her statement there were others that felt like sharing their own ghost encounters. I was rather baffled. Then in some of my other classes I brought up the topic of ghosts while simultaneously concealing my position on the matter in order to goad people into speaking, and I found that a great many adults also believed in ghosts. When I was living in south Georgia many adults and children I encountered admitted to believing in ghosts. In those cases I just attributed it to a lack of education, but when I moved back to Atlanta and began work on my 2nd degree at Kennesaw, I actually had a professor who stated to the class that Kennesaw was an unusual campus because it had no ghost. He then went on for a bit about how the other campuses he worked on were all haunted. I believe that for most people the term ‘ghost’ refers to a disembodied human spirit which persists in the physical realm after the death of the body. It is my contention that there are no such things as ghosts.
In matters regarding the afterlife I tend to fall back on the Christian paradigm, which means that the spirits of the dead either go to heaven or hell and do not linger on earth. So my default assumption, in the absence of empirical data to the contrary, is that there are no such things as ghosts. The belief in ghosts falls within the realm of superstition, it is not something that has never been confirmed empirically nor can it be. Of course evolutionists/atheists frequently equate any belief in the supernatural with superstition (except for their own beliefs about the universe spontaneously erupting from nothing and forming itself, which somehow gets classified as science in spite of the complete lack of empirical corroboration), so I therefore deem it necessary to differentiate between religion and superstition. In this case I am going to rely on the definition provided by the historian Robert Redfield:
In a civilization there is a great tradition of the reflective few, and there is a little tradition of the largely unreflective many. The great tradition is cultivated in schools or temples; the little tradition works itself out and keeps itself going in the lives of the unlettered in their village communities. The tradition of the philosopher, theologian, and literary man is a tradition consciously cultivated and handed down; that of the little people is for the most part taken for granted and not submitted to much scrutiny or considered refinement and improvement.
Robert Redfield, The Little Community and Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1956), p. 41-42.
Superstition can be viewed as irrational and unstructured folk beliefs. Now that having been said, I realize that most people do not share my Christian background, so I will deal with the issue of ghosts on a strictly empirical basis.
The first question one must ponder is why do people believe in ghosts? They believe because they are told to and/or because they may have actually seen or experienced something unusual which they lack the experience or reasoning skills to understand, but ultimately they believe because they want too. At the end of the day, regardless of what the evidence indicates people will always believe what they want to believe. The first reason is simple enough to dismiss, most people hold a wide array of incorrect notions and beliefs, and just because someone says something is true does not make it so. In order for a thing to be true it must actually exist, or have existed, and while many things disappear from history completely, if a thing is common and widespread it leaves behind evidence. The belief in ghosts is widespread, but there is no evidence. Yet, the belief persists, why?
Before I deal with the issue of why, I would like to refute absolutely the notion that ghosts exist. First of all, I do not deny that consciousness and the state of sentience has remarkable properties. Cogito ergo sum. It is reasonable to assume that we are more than the sum of our molecules and parts. Is the body and it’s various parts the source of consciousness, or is the body a vessel for something higher? Those are metaphysical issues, and not so much scientific issues. It remains clear, however, that when a person dies something has definitely left the body. I find it easy to believe that the essence of consciousness endures free of the body, which as complex as it is, is still made up of dirt and water. At any rate, whether or not the essence endures beyond the body is difficult to verify one way or another without dying. One can approach metaphysics logically but not empirically as they deal with the unseen. If the human spirit, the essence of human consciousness is capable of enduring without the body, then it is not visible, and it is not capable of manifesting or interacting with the physical universe. Without a body, a person has no physicality or substance. A human spirit cannot have any substance therefore it cannot manipulate physical objects, which also means that it cannot reflect light so that it cannot be seen even if it does exist. In order to move objects in the material universe one must have matter and energy, and if the human spirit had matter or energy in order to interface with the physical universe then how could it reside within a body in the first place? And how would it be that when the spirit departs none of the matter in the body departs with it? Now some argue that there is a type of spiritual energy contained within the human spirit that can allow it to give off an ethereal glow and manipulate objects. I call this balderdash. If the spirit glows and gives off energy then why does one have to be dead in order to see the glow? Shouldn’t we be glowing now? OK, perhaps the body traps the mystic glow, but in that case amputees should have a glowing ethereal arm or leg where their physical arm or leg used to be. And if a human spirit can manipulate objects using some type of mystical energy (mana?) then we ought to be able to move objects without touching them without being dead first.
So why then do so many people believe in ghosts in spite of the impossibility of it? Why would someone like X claim to have been harassed by ghosts? There are a few possibilities, X is hallucinating, X is lying, or X really was visited by something she could not classify. There are a few ways a person can hallucinate. A person can hallucinate through drugs, which probably accounts for a great many of the ‘paranormal’ experiences people claim to have. A person can be insane, in which case all of the ‘paranormal’ events are actually in their head. However, a person need not be insane or under the influence of drugs in order to hallucinate. When a person is sleep deprived for an extended period of time, their ability to think becomes muddled and if the deprivation continues they will begin to have episodes of microsleep and in some cases hallucination. The first time I was in college around test times papers were also due. What ended up happening is for extended periods of time I had to go without sleep, or at best minimal sleep of perhaps 2 hours in a 24 hour cycle, hardly healthy to say the least. Of course the most immediate symptoms were reduced thinking skills, sluggish movement, and decreased awareness. Things became truly strange when I would seem to be following someone (usually looking down and seeing their feet or legs), and then enter the elevator, round the corner, whatever, and no one was there. Or I might out of the corner of my eye see a person enter a room, and upon entering the room found that no one was in there. I began to question my own sanity, but then I thought about it a little more and came to decide that my altered state of consciousness was a result of my lack of sleep, just like my reduced thinking skills, reaction time, and physical sluggishness. There was no reason to apply a mystical explanation to those symptoms, so why apply one to the hallucinations, and at any rate, once I resumed my normal sleeping patterns the hallucinations subsided with the rest of the symptoms. A superstitious person might attribute the hallucinations to ghosts because rather than thinking things through analytically they leap to conclusions, they are unreflective, as Robert Redfield stated. It could be that a great many college students experience such hallucinations during testing times which might account for the belief that many college campuses are haunted.
What if they are fully awake, well nourished, well rested, not doing any drugs, and still see something? Of course ghost stories abound depending on which part of the country or which part of the world you are in. Whether or not the person is lying only that person can know. At any rate, I am going to refer to 2 examples of “ghost” stories I heard from students at GSU. The first was an impromptu speech given during a class discussion and the other was an “informative” speech given by a student in speech class:
X believed that her house was haunted and throughout the course of her speech her voice wavered and there was some sniffling. X stated that one night when she was in bed she heard loud chanting in a foreign language by monstrous inhuman voices, the source of which remained unseen. Her bed was also shaken violently by unseen assailants. She stated that she was terrified and asked God to make them go away. She said that the next day she checked for hidden passages or openings in the wall or floor or ceiling and found none. She also searched for speakers or electronic devices of any sort and found none. X described other encounters around the house but I can’t remember the details. I believe that they were fear sensations, or a sensing of evil. She said that her dogs were terrorized as well and were afraid to enter certain portions of the house. She concluded by saying that she didn’t care what anyone thinks because she ‘knows’ that ghosts are real and wishes to move out of her house as soon as possible.
Again, the possibilities here are that she is lying, insane, or that she is telling the truth. Due to the inflections in her voice and the fact that she risked ridicule and being classified as insane by telling such a story indicates to me that she at least probably believed that she was telling the truth. She could be insane, but if that is the case then her hallucinations would have to be quite complex and protracted, and they must extend to her dogs which she believes will not enter certain parts of the house and wimper when close to those places. Assuming her encounter is actually real, it certainly could not be ghosts because in order for the bed to be moved there must be a physical material substance involved and a dead human spirit bereft of it’s body no longer has access to any type of material. Which also rules out the strange chanting in a foreign language, because assuming it happened, sound is produced by vibrations moving through the air, and those vibrations must be created by a physical substance. So if there was something in there with her, it had to have some type of physical substance to it or it could not produce sound. That rules out the possibility of dead human spirits as the culprit.
Y believed that the spirit of the wife of a plantation owner was following her around and tormenting her. She said that she was visiting an ancient plantation on which the mistress was actually responsible for a great deal of the excessive cruelty that took place, and in fact had become famous by means of her abusive nature. The grave of the mistress was on the plantation and Y believes that when she stood before the grave something entered into her or became attached to her. Something evil and intangible which she believed was the spirit of the plantation owners wife. She said that after that she could feel an evil presence in her life that never completely left her, although was more pronounced at some times than others. Y stated that once she tripped and fell down a set of stairs and she believes that it was because the plantation mistress pushed her.
It is possible that Y perceives that she is telling the truth, however, even if her account is taken as absolute truth there is nothing in it that provides any kind of evidence that the paranormal is involved. It could merely be that she is experiencing a paranoid delusion, similar to hypochondria. Accounts like that can be easily dismissed.
The problem with the paranormal is that there is no way to study it empirically. And I think it is more than a coincidence that the people who are staunchly opposed to the belief in ghosts never manage to ‘see’ any. It seems that only people with a predisposition to such things ever think they see them. Furthermore, why do people no longer claim to see brownies, feys, pixies, faries, elves, etc.? People don’t see them anymore because people don’t believe in them. In all fairness however, there is no reason to assume that humanity is the only form of intelligence that exists, or even necessarily the highest form. The universe is a big place and there are things which cannot always be explained logically, however, there are bogus explanations which can be disproven logically, the existence of ghosts being one of them. It could be that ghosts, djinis, pixies, faries, brownies, etc. are all actually the same thing.
Yeah
why should I care about the world my daughter could enjoy or the future
generations, why? is always better to be concerned about an imaginary
future world lmao
I’m gonna recomend this post for people can see
how dangerous religion and christianism specially can be, I think I
wasn’t aware of how damaging and toxic religion could be till now, I’m
amazed.
At first I was rather speechless, but I decided that I ought to share my position on the issue of environmentalism before responding to such an amazing remark. At any rate, I believe with a relative degree of certainty that it is safe to assume that this person was an atheist, or perhaps agnostic since those are the sorts that typically self identify as not being religious and make sweeping generalizations about “religion.”
There are reasons to be concerned about the environment. First of all, we live on earth, and when the air and water are polluted, it affects us. Actually, pollution becomes more concentrated in organisms at high trophic levels than it does in lower life forms. So there is a danger. Air pollution is a serious issue. When I moved to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area I was given long term exposure to much higher levels of pollution than I was previously accustomed. The result was that I developed an incredible set of allergies. My allergies were so bad and so constant that I would carry boxes of tissues in my backpack to school with me, and I blew my nose so much in any given period that the interior of the desk was stuffed with used tissues. My nose was perpetually clogged so that I had to breath through my mouth all the time and I could not sleep on my back. I was in middle school and because of my extreme and constant allergies I had to endure continual ridicule and frequent violence. Of course, looking back on those hardships I am actually grateful for them because they made me stronger, but the point is, the pollution was the catalyst that set off those allergies. Eventually I had successful treatments which got rid of most of my allergies. I do not believe that many people enjoy pollution. Drinking polluted water can be like swallowing grit, and aside from being foul smelling polluted air also feels like breathing in ashes from a campfire (which I also experienced directly when living in Columbus). Pollution can also have carcinogenic affects.
While tropical rainforests are fascinating, and full of diversity and maybe even a few dinosaurs (according to the locals in some parts and certain hunters), they are not the most important environment(s) on the earth. The ocean is actually where most of the oxygen which we breath comes from, and the ocean is also what absorbs most of the pollution which is not contained. Mercury poisoning is a serious issue, and a lot of the world’s sea food is already contaminated with it.
I also believe in recycling and reusing. My dad is one of those types of people who believes strongly in throwing things away. When he cleans, he throws away. If everyone did that then we would probably end up like that Wall-E movie pretty quick (or whatever it’s called). The fact of the matter is land fills are a hazard. They are unsafe to build over, and when it rains water often flows through the landfill bringing contaminants into the water table in the process.
What can be done? This is where I am going to have to break with liberals… It seems that the bulk of the environmentalist movement focuses on 2 key issues, global warming, and the deforestation of tropical rainforests. Global warming is a hoax, the earth is not getting warmer, and even if it was, the earth goes through natural cycles of temperature fluctuation. Concerning tropical rainforests, unfortunately the deforestation occurs in developing nations, which in spite of their backwardness, are still sovereign nations and I do not feel that an invasion would be justified, especially since they are mainly just hurting themselves. Pollution of the oceans is a serious issue however. When I was in high school I had a friend from Egypt. He said that Egypt dumped all of it’s raw sewage into the Mediterannean. I was greatly disturbed by that but he said, “Why? Egypt is just a small country.” I don’t know whether or not he knew what he was talking about but assuming it is or was true. The question would be how much pollution is actually being dumped? And who is being harmed by it? If a country is deliberately causing a great deal of harm to it’s neighbors then that might constitute viable grounds for an invasion, as would the detonation of nuclear weapons on the border or the deliberate harboring of terrorists.
While there are reasons to be concerned about the environment, my concern is that a lot of the liberal and atheistic environmentalists place the environment above human welfare. They are concerned about harming “nature” for it’s own sake as if “nature” were some type of entity capable of retaliation or possessing it’s own intrinsic objective value. This is probably because they view themselves as being products of nature rather than the Christian view which teaches that the world was created for us. Another concern I have with the liberal environmentalist movement is that it relies heavily on government actions. Each action a government takes, and each regulation they make, results in a loss of personal freedom. I believe that governments use environmentalism as a smoke screen to hide the fact that they are trying to consolidate power. The most disturbing aspect of it all, is that it provides impetus for the growing movement to establish a system of extra-national authority to regulate actual nations. I do not believe that anything is worth the price of freedom, and nothing could be less free than a one world government. If I were faced with the choice of getting sick and maybe dying from pollution vs. being experimented on or tortured in a prison camp, I would chose the pollution. All the same, I do not believe it is that serious, yet.
My solution does not involve population control or additional government action. I believe that the answer lies beyond the earth. The earth is a relatively small speck when compared with the universe as a whole. Even in our solar system, there are abundant resources which greatly outnumber what we find on earth. The moons of Jupiter and Saturn are rich in water ice and organic compounds. Other planets, such as Mercury and Mars are rich in ore. Possibly the moon is as well. At any rate, it would be beneficial to move centers of production elsewhere. On the moon or in space it would not matter what byproducts were generated, and energy and resources could be harnessed more directly. It might also help relieve population pressures for some countries.
Now, concerning this person, she also wrote an entry on her page: http://weblog.xanga.com/Nieblung/669104741/religion-global-security-issue.html
This is what we call a hasty generalization. First of all, it’s not true, but I would like to point out that predominantly atheist society is not necessarily an environmentally friendly society. In Communist China atheism is the religion of state, and they generate more pollution than anyone else. In addition to that, they also denuded Tibet, and I believe they have also cut off some of the headwaters which supply India. Aside from that, their human rights record is rather… sloppy. Also, if atheism were true, why should pollution and environmental destruction be a bad thing? There would be no afterlife and there is no natural mechanism to prevent a natural heat death, so whether it happens now, or billions of years in the future, it ultimately would make no difference since everything is going to die out and it will be as if you and your progeny never were. Also, within the atheistic paradigm what is there to lend objective value to anything? Be it plants, animals, or people? Finally, if evolution were true, pollution and environmental destruction would be a good thing, because based on the predictions made by evolutionism such a thing should accelerate the process of evolution. Hardship coupled with an increase in mutagens ought to cause leaps and bounds, just like it does in X-men.
I believe I covered everything.