[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by acousticrock87

Not to mention, from almost any theistic viewpoint, which I take, you have to make room for the possibility of divine cause. But that's a relatively restricted viewpoint.

God is Natural Law & all that entails.
God is Light. God is the Law of Conservation of Matter & Energy.
& to extrapolate: God is the Unconscious. God is Art.

Ivan Karamazov's Contra argument in The Brothers Karamazov is horseshit. Why?
God never interferes. It's all on our head. Life is our responsibility. It is up to us to use our blessed partially divine gift of the will to understand & respect Natural Law to get anything done. The only deux ex machina that exists emits from your own soul & must be cultivated...by YOU. One must have a proper relationship with Natural Law & not some God that religion defines. Religion, at best, is there only to apply the lash & hopefully (if uncorrupted...it always is though at least somewhat) teach us wisdom & edify us on how to live life as Art.

as Jim Morrison remarked:
you CANNOT petition the Lord with prayer.

As Jackson Pollock said, "Art & Life are One---Inseparable."

one can only influence natural law through buddhahood, shamanism & the like, by reaching a state where one is at One with the One. Most never realize anything until the moment that they die, & even then, probably not much.

read these Davies lyrics:
Big sky looked down on all the people looking up at the big sky.
Everybody pushing one another around
Big sky feels sad when he sees the children scream and cry
But the big sky's too big to let it get him down.

Big sky too big to cry
Big sky too high to see
People like you and me

One day well be free, we won't care, just you see
til that day can be, don't let it get you down
When I feel that the world is too much for me
I think of the big sky, and nothing matters much to me.

Big sky looked down on all the people who think they got problems
They get depressed and they hold their head in their hands and cry.
People lift up their hands and they look up to the big sky
But big sky is too big to sympathize

Big sky's too occupied
Though he would like to try
And he feels bad inside
Big sky's too big to cry

One day well be free, we wont care, just you wait and see
'til that day can be, don't let it get you down.
When I feel that the world is too much for me
I think of the big sky, and nothing matters much to me.

[acousticrock87]

Sorry, to clarify I meant monotheistic. I agree that pantheism could undermine it.

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

Originally Posted by acousticrock87

James Randi is one of my favorite sources on the topic. Brilliant man.

However, I don't disbelieve the paranormal because, by its nature, you cannot prove either way. It is in the hands of believers to prove it, but it is entirely possible for something unprovable to exist. I can't prove for $1,000,000 that I've experienced emotion in the past, but I have. I don't discount ghosts as lies because I don't know, and never will know. Granted, I do believe that 90% of the cases are highly explainable. But there are always those that aren't. I did select the "something, but not ghosts" choice for this reason.

Not to mention, from almost any theistic viewpoint, which I take, you have to make room for the possibility of divine cause. But that's a relatively restricted viewpoint.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to acousticrock87 again. Just because it can't be explained doesn't mean ghosts don't exist.

[alyasa]

atari 2600 has a point; God won't intervene and ressurect someone as a ghost, for whatever reason. There will be the return of Jesus Christ, which the Quran states and the Bible states is true. But otherwise, I sincerely doubt the validity of divine intervention as a reason to explain ghosts.

[acousticrock87]

Originally Posted by alyasa

atari 2600 has a point; God won't intervene and ressurect someone as a ghost, for whatever reason. There will be the return of Jesus Christ, which the Quran states and the Bible states is true. But otherwise, I sincerely doubt the validity of divine intervention as a reason to explain ghosts.

Oh no, I meant divine intervention in a form other than dead people. And not necessarily heavenly divine, either. As in the angel/demon theory. Demons are very conspicuous in the Bible, and I see nothing to dispute a continuance of this in the form of visions.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

I guess I don't see what difference it makes anyway. If there are ghosts, what purpose do they serve, and why should you are I care? They obviously aren't doing much in the way of anything.

They're pretty boring entities anyway, if they are living after death in one form or another, and using that to walk around houses and slam doors, and show up in pictures, what a waste.

[alyasa]

Ah yes, the Christian demon or the muslim djinn. From a monotheistic point of view, the most likely explanation of supernatural occurences. It is actually prerequisite in the Islamic religion to believe in the supernatural, as this is related to the fact that we have to believe in the devils and the angels. A more likely explanation for the common ghost sightings are actually residue emotions and thoughts that are overwhelming regarding a certain event or person or place or time. Have you ever walked through a garden you've walked with a loved one before and become completely overwhelmed by emotions? Psychic pollution.

[acousticrock87]

Originally Posted by Пятхъдесят Шест

I guess I don't see what difference it makes anyway. If there are ghosts, what purpose do they serve, and why should you are I care? They obviously aren't doing much in the way of anything.

They're pretty boring entities anyway, if they are living after death in one form or another, and using that to walk around houses and slam doors, and show up in pictures, what a waste.

I agree that it's a completely useless and unimportant issue; I really care very little about it. But I think it's interesting. It captivates a lot of people and still no one can come up with a satifactory answer. Kind of like a branch of philosophy.

Originally Posted by alyasa

Ah yes, the Christian demon or the muslim djinn. From a monotheistic point of view, the most likely explanation of supernatural occurences. It is actually prerequisite in the Islamic religion to believe in the supernatural, as this is related to the fact that we have to believe in the devils and the angels. A more likely explanation for the common ghost sightings are actually residue emotions and thoughts that are overwhelming regarding a certain event or person or place or time. Have you ever walked through a garden you've walked with a loved one before and become completely overwhelmed by emotions? Psychic pollution.

I've even heard that theory go so far as to claim atmospheric oxidation is the cause, and that occasionally, with the right emotional output, the air can replay certain oxidized recordings. I'm not sure how much I buy into that theory - I think that certain places can evoke sensory illusions, but not necessarily because of past events there. It seems a bit romanticized to me. But it's much better than many explanations.

[alyasa]

Atmospheric oxidation? Haha, the mind is a complex and wondrous thing. Diesel, IIRC, sees things every night before he goes to sleep. Emotions, psychological issues, all these things are a major influence on the mind, which is increasingly being misused anyway, and add external psychological factors, I'd say very much that it's all in the mind.

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

Originally Posted by alyasa

atari 2600 has a point; God won't intervene and ressurect someone as a ghost, for whatever reason. There will be the return of Jesus Christ, which the Quran states and the Bible states is true. But otherwise, I sincerely doubt the validity of divine intervention as a reason to explain ghosts.

Well, you can allow divine intervention in the event that the "ghost" has a purpose, completes it, and is not seen again.

For example, during the transfiguration, Christ spoke to Moses and Elijah.
Moses and Elijah are not lost souls. They arrived at the mountain with a purpose and they completed it.

Christ's resurrection was of the flesh, he wasn't a ghost.

Now, if a ghost legend surrounds a specific location and isn't a hoax or an illusion, I don't think that it would be God's doing. It would either be a demon or a reoccuring supernatural phenomena that shadows a highly emotional event in human history.

Atari, I wouldn't say that God doesn't intervene. We have free will but I think God helps everyone wanting to accept help in small ways.

[alyasa]

I think God has little to do with most purported 'spiritual' events that occur in the world now.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

Which purported 'spiritual' events do you speak of?

[alyasa]

Any one of them. At the risk of sounding cynical, ignorance is a more common thread in religion than spirituality.

[atari 2600]

As I wrote the other day, we live in time but all time exists within eternity. This shows how the question of "Who created God then?" simply only defines the limit of our perception, which will always see a paradox.

Einstein understood this & that's the reason why he was able to solve many enigmas, & chief amongst those, is that he proved that light was both a wave & a particle at the same time.

It was Einstein's work with relativity that solved the mysteries of the orbits of the planets. In Cartesian times under Newton, there was an imagined order that described the orbits of the planets as perfectly circular & the earth was conceived of as a perfect sphere. Einstein showed how space-time was curved due the attraction of mass to other masses & corrected all the orbits to what they actually are.
Gravitational attraction is what orders the whole universe right down to the subatomic level even. When the energy from the big bang reaches its apex of expansion, the whole universe will collapse right back into eternity once again. And just as the universe expanded more in the nanoseconds in which it began than it has ever since, the big crunch will happen "in a twinkling of an eye."

There's been many a time when the subject of God came up in conversation & what I do, in many cases, is announce, "This is God," & proceed to drop something onto the floor or ground.

[stirling]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

That makes the ghost real in that sense, because it is a manifestation of unconscious contents that we do not experience in our normal conscious waking state.

Please tell us of your scientific research into the manifestations of unconscious contents. Be sure to provide enough proof to satisfy The Insatiable Randi as well as why your explanation is less hokey than that of 'ghosts are souls that refuse to move on because they have an axe to grind'

Originally Posted by atari 2600

ever heard of a double exposure or overexposure to create an orb or blob of white? Then there's dust & pollen too.

people that think blurrs & orbs in photos are ghosts are downright lunatics.

Atari the scientist doesn't even need to know anything about a picture in order to discredit it!

Originally Posted by atari 2600

Seriously, go live with some apes where you can contribute something to their society. You're only fucking up human society.

And then editing a post to add an insult?
Science, logic, facts, ad hom...whatever it takes

Generally, I've been agreeing with you lately, but your arrogance and hostility on this issue is ridiculous. You don't have all the answers, no matter how much you need to believe that you do.

[atari 2600]

Sorry, disgruntled one, but it's not my theory. It's the accepted truth among most highly intelligent people. You are the arrogant one that thinks your half-truth has any creedence. I'm trying to offer you a free education. If you sit back & absorb the information, then you might just learn something; that's how I arrived at whatever knowledge I have: by realizing I know nothing & weighing everything. It's a perpetual process.

Ghosts are an abscribing of the unconscious to anthropomorphic forms. Spirits & ghosts & the like crop up as symbols throughout all cultures, just as you wrote. They are archetypes of the human imagination. But, there is nothing under the Sun that is supernatural, however. Absolutely nothing...& there is no "Other". The world is a living organism composed of many systems of interdependent processes. The world is not a man-made machine. Buddhism, for instance, while getting the bulk of their worldview right, ascribes many insightful spiritual truths to physical forms in its principles of reincarnation & it's a misstep & an error. The problem is that people get caught up in the literal which is the hallmark trait of an Old World mentality before modern civilization; sadly, despite all of our progress, most of the world is still in the grip of this damaging entropy. It's a mindset that only has brought fear & injustice into this world & will eventually end this world.

So, hopefully, that helps shed some light upon why this sort of topic subject, in particular, causes me to go on like I do.

stirling, before you ever try to discredit me, you should really sacrifice your time & your ego to want to put in the years to assimilate more information & to determine what is true & what is half-truth. It's a tough road, fellow. Maybe you're not up to it. Alyasa seems to be the only person in this thread that has an understanding.
I don't really mean this, & the insult before was indeed harsh, that I will admit, but sometimes I can't help but feel this way:
the Bush-can-do-no-wrongers, hatemongers, terrorists, paranormal believers, the superstitious in general...all those people should go live with the fucking apes & that way they can actually contribute to some society. They are a lot closer to those simian counterparts than I am evolutionarily. Barring that, they should be sterilized as to not pass along their narrow-minded, thick-headed presumptious genes to future generations & indocrinate their offspring with their same mental ineptitude that shirks their responsibilities as a human being.

Congratulations, someone here managed to bring me down to their level, once again.

To all of the Fucking Territorially Pissing Piss-Ants,

I bid you a good night.

[stirling]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

You are the arrogant one that thinks your half-truth has any creedence.

What half-truth are you talking about?
Where did I claim to know what ghosts are?
How does anything I wrote conflict with the theory you've adopted?

Originally Posted by atari 2600

you should really learn to write & think as well as I can before you try to discredit me.

If you could think as well as I can, you wouldn't need to use the ad hominems or edit your post (twice) to add one. Of course, you seem to just be trolling now, so I won't even respond to your second edit.

[umjammer atomsk]

You like the NFL, atari? Hmm.

[krastian]

The NFL rules dude.

[umjammer atomsk]

I did not comment I just observed.