So After looking on these forums, I figured I would start quite an interesting debate. If this is the wrong forum I am sorry. I figured this would be an interesting place to put it.

So there has been a long debate for many years (not to an extreme extent) about the possibility of the paranormal existing. Ghosts. And while both sides (the ones who believe and the ones who don't believe) have interesting arguments, it brings up one question. Will we ever know for sure if they truly exist? The people who don't believe use science to disprove the notion altogether. But really, while we have the Laws of Gravity, do we actually know everything behind that? I mean Newton's Law makes the absolute most sense. Pertaining to Ghosts, his law stated that matter cannot be created or destroyed. A ghost, according to theory, manifests itself. Essentially creating an image if you will. That energy is basically matter being created.

But on the flip side, you hear horror stories of people pretty much scared of their houses, running from them because they are afraid a ghost means harm to them. Stories like the Amityville Horror, which according to few people, was an actual true story.

Do you think we'll ever know whether Ghosts exist for sure? Or are we just going to be a world split in half on this subject forever? What're your thoughts on this?

One day, the Shroud between the world of the living and the world of the dead shall be torn

I tend to think of Ghosts as a kind of Psychic residue. For the most part real ghosts can not communicate with the living. Many tend to repeat the same behavior every time they are seen. It is sort of like a recording that keeps replaying.

There is a lot to sentience and what we call a soul that is not understood well if at all.

I think of it this way. As we pass through time we all leave an impression through time (please do not get started on the whole "time is just a concept thing" for the sake of this argument please!). Generally speaking this impression dissipates or diffuses in a (ha ha)normal fashion. What a ghost is to me is an eddy where the current of time makes a kind of "tornado" that is like a repeating image. It is a psychic hologram to put it in the least technical and confusing term.

As far as relatives having visitations? I can argue that without proof of some kind it is "reality made manifest by belief." Now that is not to say that it is possible some people manage to truly transcend the flesh and can in a limited way interact with this this side. The thing is a ghost is a trace or remnant. The other flavor is a poltergeist which is a lot more than just a trace. Those are a flat out presence and those are a little tougher to explain. Psychokinetic (the ability to manipulate this environment (generally speaking) with the mind seems to be present (things flying through air, etc.) without a visible or physical presence. In a non-moonbeam sense it is possible that someone's actual consciousness can manifest (like a lightning ball for lack of a better example) and exist outside of normal (HA HA HA HA AGAIN) "rules." It could be called a mind out of body experience in a grand way. This is a lot more than a trace but it lacks physical existence. Poltergeists may actually have a limited life span like us because even Lightning balls fizzle out eventually.

this is all educated guessing!

I have to say there is something other worldly that exists, just from personal experience.

In my younger years I had a strong sixth sense and I could detect places where violent deaths had taken place.

The night my stepfather died in a car accident, I spent the night crying and praying that god would please not take one of my loved ones away from me. All this before I found out he was killed in the car accident at 11 pm.

I could go on and on but it does show that there is something more to things than just the surface.

Now, it is related to our brain activity because since the onset of my MS which altered my cognitive processes a bit, I don't have these "skills" anymore. My sensitivity seems to have gone away.

I think there is definitely something to the paranormal but I would not venture to guess what the truth of it is. I do expect one day science will have a way to quantify and measure it. We are just not there yet.

Well, to begin with, all religious people should believe in ghosts. But many don't.

Go figure.

This is especially weird with Christianity I think, because even the Bible has Jesus casting demons out of people. So it would seem to me that it would basically be impossible to believe in Jesus and not believe in ghosts.

Especially scince Jesus himself supposedly rose from the dead as a ghost. And the religion basically worships the Holy Ghost.

Not to mention believing in angels, etc.

So it really cracks me up when these people laugh at something like, say, Faery lore.

They think Faeries are silly, but they take angels seriously.

In any case, for me personally, I have never yet met a ghost. I'm trying hard, and I'm quite serious about it. I would love more than anything to meet a ghost. A good one or a bad one. I'm not afraid of the boogieman!

I would prefer to meet a good ghost, but I'll take whatever I can get.

Of course, meeting a ghost doesn't even prove that they exist. It could be a figment of my own psyche. After all, we know for a fact that many people do become schizoprhenic and believe to be speaking to people they actually see, hear, and in some cases touch and interact with physically.

I've been trying to meet with any spirit that is willing to converse with me. I do make every attempt to reach out to 'good' spirits. I use various techniques of shamanism and witchcraft.

Thus far I have not had any luck making contact with a spirit.

However, I will say that I have had dreams in the past that were very real, and in those dreams I have met people who I have known but are now dead. I have also been in the spirit world where I have interacted with many spirits.

The problem was that as real as those dreams seemed at the time (and they seemed as real as though I had actually been there), they were still clearly dreams, and I could not remember them in great detail. Well, some more than others.

Do dreams count?

That's an intersting question.

According to the Bible they do. Many of the supposed contacts that were made in the Bible were visions within dreams. I believe that God supposedly spoke to Joseph in a dream. The entire book of revalations was suppose to be visions that John had in a dream.

So shamanism is all through the Bible. Having visions through dreams is the basis of all shamanic work.

The bottom line for me now is to try to make contact with a character in a dream. And to do it in a way that truly feels like the other person (or character) is actually doing their own thing.

I have had dreams like this in the past. But I have not yet been able to maintain consciousness within my dreams. These are techniques that I'm only just now learning to practice.

I actaully did have a strange dream last night. It wasn't even an intentional shamanic journey. It was just a normal dream. But it was very strange because there was indeed a 'seperate' person in the dream who came into my cottage. But he didn't speak to me. We made eye contact but not a word was spoken. Also, there was a sense that my cottage was a public Inn and he was a new patron.

He actually walked over to the wall and picked up the phone and called someone. In reality I don't have a phone on that wall, but in the dream there was a phone on the wall like you might find in a bar.

My mother was also in the dream. She's no longer living. I didn't speak to her either.

I wasn't fully conscious within this dream. These are more like just the memories of it after I woke up. My goal is to try to learn how to become conscious within these dream so I can actually converse with these people.

I'm trying hard to become a schizophrenic I guess.

I do believe in the power of visions within the psychic like this.

Whether they are actual contacts with other conscious beings, or whether they are entirely made-up fabrications of my own I don't know.

My goal is to be able to conciously carry on conversations with the characters in my dreams. If they seem to take on a life of their own, I'll just assume that they are indeed spirits attempting to communicate with me.

But so far, I haven't had any actual conversations.

Well I have had some dreams where I heard other people thinking/talking. And those were quite intersting as well. But again, I can't control them. They come as dreams when I'm sleeping, and I haven't yet been able to call them up via a purposeful shamanic journey.

They say this can take years of practice. So who knows. Maybe someday.

That's a bummer, but it could come back too.

There were times in my life when I used to have the most wonderful vidid dreams that were so real it was like I was there. The problem is that I knew they were dreams and at that time I never really thought about it much. I just accepted that we dream.

I also just assumed that I would always be able to dream like that.

But it's not true. There was a long period in my life after that were I just stopped dreaming altogether (or at least I stopped remembering the dreams or that I had even had them).

More recently they started coming back again. But far less frequent. (or I started remembering them more).

In fact, after my mother died I stated having a lot of dreams about my mother. She was in the dreams, but not actually communicating with me. The dreams were very typical. I was with my mother (who was a very fragile 90 year old lady), and I was in impossible situations. Like we are flying in a plane and the plane bursts open. My goal is to save us. I grab a parachute and strap it on me, but there is only one for me and none for her. So I jump out of the plane holding her in my arms. But the force of the wind rips her from my graps and she free falls whilst I float in the air with the parachute.

These dreams were repeated over and over again in all sorts of diffenent situations where I try to save her but she is ripped from my arms and I have no control.

I believe that subconsciously I was trying to convince myself that it's just not my fault that people grow old and die. The dreams were trying to tell me that there was just nothing I could have done to save her from old age and heart failure.

None the less, those dream were very real. I could feel the air, or water, or rain, or whatever the forces where that made the situation impossible.

My mother was basically 'inert' in those dreams. She neither spoke to me, nor indicated in any way that she wanted to communicate with me.

More recently thought I did have a vivid dream of her where she spoke to me. She asked me to get her a glass of water and I did. I went to the kitchen I filled up the glass and took it to her and she drank from the glass. It was as real as it had actually happened. But of course, I had done that very act countless times in reality when she was alive, so it could have easily just been a memory manifest as a dream.

The point is that the dream was extremely vivid and real, like it was actually happening live. I wanted to sit down next to her and visit for a while, but the dream faded away and I woke up.

I want to learn how to keep these dreams going so I don't need to wake up!

I don't believe in ghosts; I have never seen any compelling evidence to suggest their existence. When we die our energy returns to the earth and/or is consumed by other life forms. There has yet to be any claim of a ghost that holds up to scientific examination.

I'm not sure if science can ever prove the lack of ghosts to point that people will stop believing in them.

I see some of your dreams are the struggle you have letting her go.

I had an experience close to that but I don't think it was a dream.
When my stepdad died, we had been years without speaking and it anguished me greatly over not speaking to him for so long and suddenly to never have the chance to speak again. I felt him sit on the side of my bed one night and place his hand on me and the message I got is that he is not upset and I need to let it go so he can be at peace. It scared the living daylights out of me so that is what makes me for sure I was not dreaming. I think I was so upset and he felt the need to comfort me. I felt better after it happened and have not felt concern over our lack of communication since then.

To me, using the words science and ghost in the same sentence is meaningless. At least at today's level of knowledge of science.

If there's anything we know about science it's that science knows virtually nothing of reality.

That may seem like a profound statement coming from a scientist, but it's merely based on the facts.

Modern science as we know it openly confesses to almost complete ignorance on so many levels.

1. Modern science can't even explain Quantum Mechanics.

We have a mathematical model based on probablities that explain the nature of the quantum world. But we can't even begin to explain how it can be like that.

Here is what a Nobel Prize winner in Quantum Mechancs had to say:

"I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will go down the drain into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that." - Dr. Richard P. Feynman

And Feynman was one of the greatest contributors to Quantum Electrodynamics. The most successful quantum theory we have to date.

Even Feynman confesses that's it's nothing more than a trick of mathematical probabilities that defy logic, common sense, and no one understands how it can be like that.

So in a very real sense, science has already accepted that there are ghosts in the atom. In fact, John Stewart Bell (another famous quantum phsyicist) even wrote a book entitled "The Ghost in the Atom".

2. Modern science has discovered Dark Energy and Dark Matter.

Modern scientists have realized that all of the atoms and energy that they have thus accounted for (included in their theory of quantum mechanics which even they do not understand) is only about 5% of what actually constitutes the mass/energy of the universe.

So here, even scietists are confessing that they know LESS than 5% of what's going on, and they don't even understand how that 5% works!

Clearly there are things they do know. I don't deny that. I believe that the earth goes around the sun, and that we evolved from lesser animals. I think those things have been well established. But at the same time we don't truly understand biology nearly as well as we would like to believe. And we're even still learning a great deal about our solar system.

3. Modern science is proposing new dimensions and quantum fields.

Even modern scientists are proposing new dimensions, and quantum fields to help explain things. These are dimensions and quanutm field that have as yet been totally undetected by the measuring instruments of science. Yet scientists still have faith that they must exist.

The vast majority of scientists today believe that we will discover the "Higgs Field" or "Higgs Particle" even though we have never been able to detect it yet.

The vast majority of scientists today are giving String Theory very much credence even though it requires at least 6 more dimensions of existence than we have every been able to detect!

That's a lot of undetected dimensions. Couple this with the Dark Energy and Dark Matter they believe exists and you could build a whole civilization of undetected ghosts.

The bottom line is that Science hasn't ruled anything out. We know some things pretty well, but there is far more than we have absolutely no clue about.

Ghosts (or spirits) may very well exist in any of these unknown areas of science.

Science simply isn't on any kind of footing to be claiming that ghosts or spirits can't exist.

And we can't go by bogus claims of people who claim to be clairvoyant. Just because some people lie to make money performing circus tricks doesn't mean that no one has ever communicated with spirits.

I'm personally attempting to make contact with spirits myself. I haven't yet been able to do it with any kind of consistency. However, an important truth is that if I did make contact with spirits I wouldn't go running off to try to prove it scientifically anyway. In fact, I might not even share the information about the experiences with anyone. Although, I probably would, but I would share it in a similar way that I shared my dreams. I'd just say that I talk to people in my dreams and they seem real to me.

Would I need to prove that to anyone? Nope.

Let them figure out how to do it on their own. If the spirits want to communicate with them they will. If not, then so be it.

From my understanding of the spirit world science would never be able to prove they exist unless the spirits cooperated in the experiment.

It would be like science trying to prove that someone who refuses to speak actually could speak if they would simply open their mouth and talk. The bottom line is that if they couldn't get the person to actually talk all they would have is an empty hypothesis.

In fact when you THINK about how science works this should become clear to you. Science ASSUMES repeatability. In fact, it DEMANDS it. Science is based on repeatabilty. Science is based on the idea that if you set up an experiment you will always get predicted results (or in the case of Quantum Mechanics, you will always get the predicted probabilities).

But if science is attempting to prove communication with a spirit that has FREE WILL, repeatablity is lost.

We can even do it with a human being.

I set up an experiment using a telephone to prove that someone is on the other end. The person on the other end also has a monitor that shows them who is holding the phone at our end.

I pick up the phone and talk to the person, and the person answers. I'm satistied that someone is on the other end of the phone.

I hand the phone to you and you try to talk to the person at the other end. But the person at the other end sees that you are holding the phone and refuses to speak to you.

You hand the phone back to me and say, "There's no one on the other end of this phone! You're either lying or crazy!"

The Free Will of spirits screws up the scientific assumption that experiments can aways be repeated and they have no free will of their own to do anything differently.

Spirits have free will, and that screws up the Scientific Method.

If atoms behaved differently for every scientist that measured them then science wouldn't even WORK.

In fact, in a way it already breaks down with Quantum Mechanics. We have consistent probabilities (not total chaotic randomness or free will), but (controlled randomness), enough randomness to make a precise explantion impossible, but enough consistency of probability to imply that there is some foundational principles going on.

Semi-ghost-like.

So what you're saying Abra is that it is a matter of faith and one must just blindly believe?

Blah blah blah.

Fact: we all hallucinate for more often then we realize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
http://www.sleepassociation.org/index.php?p=hallucinationsduringsleep
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1804

Fiction: there is evidence for paranormal entities.

Fact: Science has lead us to ALL of our current understanding of reality, religion and psychics, and magic has led to 0 knowledge about reality.

No, I'm not saying anything close to that.

First off, I don't think anyone should believe anything on pure blind faith.

Why even bother?

I'm an extremely pragmatic person. I see no value or power in faith. (not to be confused with having an attitude of confidence which is a totally different concept)

I don't necessarily "believe" in spirits. In fact, I personally have absolutely no evidence or reason to believe in them yet.

However, I do "believe" that science has not yet ruled out the idea that spirit can exist. That belief is not blind at all. On the contrary it's based on the CLEAR AND OBVIOUS FACT that scientific knowledge is truly in it's infancy. We truly know very little about the true nature of reality.

That's just a FACT.

I also don't denounce things that science has discovered. For example, we are not physically located at the center of anything. And every shred of phsyical evidences supports the conclusion that we evolved from lower life forms.

Even if life is a dream, these traits are certainly a part of that dream.

I accept what science has discovered.

But it's also a FACT, that science has not, and cannot rule out the possiblity that spirits exist. In fact, it can't even rule out the possiblity that we are spirits ourselves interfacing in some way with this apparently physical world.

Science can't rule that out. And moreover, it can't even explain a lot of things that would be required to rule this out.

Does that mean that spirits exist?

Of course not. It simply means that science hasn't yet ruled out the possiblity.

Getting back to 'blind faith'.

I would never suggest to anyone that they should believe in spirit.

But at the very same time I would never suggest to anyone that they shouldn't believe in spirit.

I'm simply confessing that fact that we don't know (and that includes science).

Where's the blind faith in that?

Aren't scientists having blind faith to think that there are more dimensions to reality than what we have already been able to percieve?

Aren't scientists having blind faith to believe that some Higgs Field or Particle might exist?

After all, the whole idea is based on theories that stand on unproven premises.

Even mathematics itself stands on unproven premises. In fact, I personally argue quite passionately that some of the premises that mathmatics is based on are already obviously false.

I don't claim that spirits exist.

All I truly claim is that I personally cannot rule them out. And that includes via the use of science which I feel I understand as well as it can be understood today.

Not to imply that I know every detail of every little theory, but I understand the macro structure of the scientific philosophy and I understand its current limitations.

Do spirits exist?

I just don't know.

The only thing I do know is that I can't say for SURE one way or the other.

I confess to having deeply mixed feelings on this subject.

Sometimes atheism seems so blatantly OBVIOUS.

Other times I realize that there are questions I have that atheism just totally doesn't satisfy at all.

In fact, if we want to reduce eveyrthing to pure logic the universe shouldn't even exist at all!

The very FACT that anything at all exists, is already PROOF of a miracle!

A miracle simply being anything that cannot be explained rationally (using comprehnsible logic).

I can't explain how the universe can exist without restoring to MAGICK.

And I'm even completely familiar with Alan Guth's Inflation Theory and how the universe can be EXPLAINED using the LAWS OF PHYSICS and QUANTUM MECHANICS to show how this entire universe could have come into existence from a random quantum fluctuation WITHOUT VIOLATING the principle of conservation of energy!

Fine. That's GREAT WORK! I bow to Alan Guth's GENIUS! He is an absolute BRILLIANT MAN!

However, this doesn't change a thing truly.

Even Alan Guth started with the ASSUMPTION that there exists such a thing as a quantum field that can fluctuate!

He ASSUMES as a premise that the laws of Quantum Mechanics already PRE-EXIST the birth of this physical universe.

So he doesn't really succeed in pulling a rabbit out of nothing. He actually pulled the rabbit out of the HAT called Quantum Fields.

So even he needs to presume a preexisting structure.

But how did that structure come to be?

Perhaps the quantum field is the spirit?

Many people have suggested as much.

In so, then science has actually discovered SPIRIT and doens't even KNOW IT!

They just call it the mysterious Quantum Field, and openly CONFESS that it's sure does indeed behave in ways that can only be deemed by modern physicists as magickal.

So in a very real sense even science points to magick ultimately.

If what I say is false, I'm more than open to being corrected.

In fact, I would welcome and cherish the knowledge.

If someone can explain to me how quantum fields came to be and why they have properties that are so weird even our greatest Nobel Prize winners that work on these topics say, "I think it's safe to say that nobody understand Quantum Mechanics", and to even go further to claim that anyone who attempts to try to understand it will "Go down the drain".

Sounds like magick to me.

How can you say there isn't evidence of ghosts. We may never know. There will be people out there who will always be skeptical. Yeah some of the photos on the internet we see are fake. But that's not evidence enough to rule out spirits.

Who's to say every single person who has claimed to have seen a ghosts, is hallucinating? How can you prove that?

If ghosts exist there should be some kind of tangible evidence for them. We have instruments that allows us see in every possible range on light scale, no evidence. No one has seen a dinosaur, but there is evidence of their existence. Every living human since the man came to be has witnessed the stars and speculated about them they didn't understand them the way we do now, but there is evidence for them. I can't see the wind but there is evidence of it. The only so called evidence we have for them is gimmicky pseudo science and blurry out focus photos that could be almost anything at all. Even if a few people saw something that science can't presently explain that doesn't prove ghost exists. The only fact we have is that there is absolutely no tangible evidence for ghosts.

Truly.

Just because there are fraudlent people doesn't negate the whole possibility.

I think a lot of people think that way. Especially atheists who were raised around the Abrahamic religions. Once they recognize the fallacy of those religions they just shrug their shoulders and say, "Well the whole God concept is clearly a farce".

Well, yes, in a dogmatic sense perhaps it was. But to rule out all possiblity of spirituality just because some religions are bogus is a bit of a stretch.

I can even see why many atheists have a phobia for spirit.

They saw religions that have turned God into a monster who's chomping at the bit to cast anyone into eternal damanation who refuses to believe in him and become a bigot in his name!

It's NO WONDER they never want to hear the word "spirit" ever again!

That whole monster-God concept could turn anyone off to spirituality for the rest of eternity.

And a lot of the other spirit-based religions also often end up demanding weird things about "God" etc.

I can fully understand why a lot of atheists are just saying, "COME ON! Let's get OVER this CRAP!"

I can't blame them one iota for that to be perfectly honest about it.

And all a person needs to do is look around at the seemingly heartless things that are going on in this world and think, "Oh come on, if there was a spirit world that even had the slightest bit of compassion they'd do something about this!"

That's certainly a valid philosophy as well.

But once again it's not proof of anything.

I wouldn't assume that spirit does exist.

All I'm saying is that I can't rule it out.

And I would even go further to say that I do feel that I have reasons why ruling it IN isn't utterly absurd.

I can indeed imagine reasons why things could be the way they are and a spirit world could still exist.

So I guess all I'm truly saying is that I refuse to take a stance one way or the other until I have proof one way or the other.

I'm a diehard agnostic when it comes to 'spirit'.

Maybe no one had ever seen a ghost with their eyes. Maybe they are ulimately seeing them with thier 'mind's eye'.

Then what they see is still real for them, but there is no light radition external to their mind for science to detect.

I CONFESS, that this could potentially open up a whole can of worms concerning the technical definition of what constitutes a 'ghost' or 'spirit'.

But I'm taking the stance that if the person percieves something then they have experienced it. If they percieved it within their mind's eye, I still hold that it is possible that the origin of that experience may have come from some (other dimension, or quantum field). These are concepts that even modern scientists are considering may actually EXIST.




I'm in complete agreement with you on this. I don't believe anything until I experience it myself. And even if I should experience something I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about whether it has it's own existence, or whether it's just a figment of my imagination.

I think it would take quite a bit to convince me that it's more than just a figment of my imagination. But I'm open to the possibility. If I get into a conversation with a character in one of my dreams that truly has me coming away thinking that it was real. I'm certainly not going to rule that possiblity OUT.



So?

We don't have any tangible evidence that the Higgs Field exists either, yet scientists are working very hard to 'discover it'.

We didn't have any tangible evidence for Dark Energy or Dark Matter either untill recently. And even the evidence we have right now is based entirely on General Relativity being PERFECTLY CORRECT.

We also don't have any tangible evidence for dimensions higher than 4 (3 space, and 1 time), yet scientists have no problem imagining that there may be as many as 10, 11 or even 26 dimensions!

Science hasn't ruled out anything just because they don't yet have tangible evidence for it yet.

Why should they do this with spirits?

If they can't rule them out, then why consider them to be ruled out?

I mean, it's not like anyone is asking for taxpayer dollars to be used to fund scientific experiments that search for 'spirit fields'.



Just let them keep looking for the Higgs Field and the extra dimensions of String Theory.

Maybe they'll just bump into the spirits along the way.

I had sex with Kim Basiger and Alicia Silverstone last night. So what if was in my minds eye. I perceived it therefor I experienced it.

Hey, if it was good, more power to ya!