Why i am confident there are no ghosts.

bleachededen · Wed Apr 07, 2010 9:40 pm

I don't either. I can't even guess. I wonder what it could be that is so relevant Interbane used only an emoticon to respond to your post, which he also thanked.

Can't wait for the answer.

johnson1010 · Wed Apr 07, 2010 9:50 pm

Read
the
"fundamental"
manual

I think he thanked that post for the general lack of coherence or thought process, and the resultant entertainment value.

Taylor · Wed Apr 07, 2010 9:52 pm

I do try to entertain

Taylor · Wed Apr 07, 2010 9:54 pm

Where is the" fundamental " manual

bleachededen · Wed Apr 07, 2010 10:12 pm

Johnson, is your use of quotation marks around the word "fundamental" meant to stand in for a stronger and possibly more offensive one?

I didn't mean to call attention to any ridicule...I was honestly curious. Too many things are abbreviated these days and I can't keep up with them all. :slap:

Suzanne · Wed Apr 07, 2010 10:14 pm


	Taylor wrote: As we both entered a room ,I reached out to it and as my hand and arm past through It, I asked it a question.


	Taylor wrote: Where is the" fundamental " manual


	Taylor wrote: It did not answer.

Interbane · Wed Apr 07, 2010 10:38 pm

I was laughing too hard to type. Yeah, "fundamental" stands for something more offensive. The chain of logic is undeniable. Why don't we see more ghosts? They embark upon interstellar journeys!

It's like the cheeze-it commercial. This massively overcomplicated explanation a young child comes up with to explain why cheeze-its taste so cheezy.

A little bit of reading goes a long ways. Pick up a book on critical thinking and superstition. The Demon Haunted-World by Carl Sagan is a good place to start.

Taylor · Wed Apr 07, 2010 10:53 pm

Thanks for the book suggestion I will look it up.

Interbane · Wed Apr 07, 2010 10:58 pm

Excellent. We discussed the book back in 2002. Here is the link to the forum: Demon-Haunted World

Taylor · Wed Apr 07, 2010 11:06 pm

Interbane when you put it that way it does sound comical . The point I was driving is that the possibility
for what can happen with what ever remains of the human personality could be limitless.

bleachededen · Wed Apr 07, 2010 11:33 pm

But there is nothing left of the human personality...

By all scientific accounts, there is nothing. When we start to suggest that there could be left over energies from some extremely emotional death, or that the love we had for a departed loved one is strong enough to keep some form of them around, or any other idea that we come up with for why there are ghosts, we are only trying to comfort ourselves that there is something "beyond" death, or that the people we have loved are not truly "gone." People who hold on to these beliefs cling so desperately because they are afraid, and instead of facing the fear they create a way to cope with the loss or the inevitability of death by concocting the notion that "energies" or "personalities" or "souls" will continue to linger after death, because even the most scientific and rational of us cannot truly fathom the reality of nothingness, which is all that death is.

I have struggled with this problem for the past several years, but cannot be comforted by any explanation, because anyone with whom I have discussions give me ideas I cannot agree with. Religious people, even those who aren't dogmatic, believe in Heaven or at least some kind of "spirit world" where our "souls" will go when we die, but I don't believe in any of that, so that doesn't work. Some tell me our "souls" will be reincarnated into new physical bodies, so that our "true selves" never die, and that we, in fact, have already lived hundreds of different lives, but I'm not sold on this, either. Scientific or rational types tell me that the brain stops sending electrical signals to the rest of our bodies and once the heart stops and the brain stops and we obviously die, we begin to decay and the remains of our bodies, hundreds of years from now, will eventually help the grass to grow and the cycle of life continues, not because of some energy or ethereal quality left over in the body, but because of the physical integration of the body into the dirt it is buried in. This never left me feeling very well, either, but it's the one that makes the most sense, because it will happen whether I accept it or not, whether there are souls or not. It may not be comforting, but it is true.

For a very long time, like I said, this was a huge problem for me. Knowing the truth about death doesn't make it easier to deal with, but I have, over time, learned, instead of seeking an answer to comfort me and allow me to live with the looming idea of death, to not dwell on the fact and live while I am still alive, because this is all the time I will have, and worrying about death until I die is a pretty poor way to spend the life I have now. So although I am still scared of death and the nothing that comes with it, and I am also scared that what I do with my life will not be "good enough," I do my best to force those thoughts away and not hinder me in my quest to live. It isn't always easy, but it's the only way, for me.

There's no shame in being scared of death, but I think you (in general) should at least be "man" enough to face the fear and not try to lie to yourself. I don't judge anyone for their belief in an afterlife, and sometimes I envy the blind faith with which they believe it, because I would love to be comforted as they are, but I can't close my eyes when it is in my nature for them to be open.

That being said, I do love a good ghost story.

johnson1010 · Thu Apr 08, 2010 10:36 am

As i said before. having just this life is a call to action.

Be the best person you can be, impact others so you will be remembered, and help them to do the same.

Interbane · Thu Apr 08, 2010 10:40 am


	Quote: Interbane when you put it that way it does sound comical . The point I was driving is that the possibility for what can happen with what ever remains of the human personality could be limitless.

The possibilities are indeed limitless. But, all you have to do is continue with that line of reasoning to see where it leads. It is possible that there is energy which makes us ghosts. Undetectable. It is possible our ghosts remain on Earth for all time, but most are invisible. It's possible instead that all ghosts get sucked away to purgatory, but a few remain. It's possible that the energy the ghosts are made of is tied to quantum physics. On the other hand, it's possible it's not tied to quantum physics but is purely supernatural.

As you said, the possibilities are limitless. As you can see from my short list, "limitless" is not quite the right word. Since, most of the explanations we imagine contradict other explanations. So within the set of explanations, some are cancelled out. This applies not only to ghosts, but to everything that is born from the human imagination. UFO's, zombies, prophecies, big foot, pixies, etc. And it applies not only to superstitious ideas, but also natural ideas. Cold fusion, perpetual motion machines, flat earth theory, young earth creationism. There are so many superstitious ideas that are ruled out by natural ideas, and natural ideas ruled out by evidence. In the end, the possibilities that remain are slimmed way way down.

By this exercise alone, you can see that it is the process of slimming down possible ideas that has virtue. The reason is that the vast majority of ideas out there are false. How can we possibly filter out the miniscule true minority from the vast false majority? The short answer is critical thinking. Critical thinking is about being aware of bias, and looking for evidence. Why evidence? Because of such things as Russel's Teapot Other similar conceptions are the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the invisible Dragon in Times Square.

johnson1010 · Thu Apr 08, 2010 12:43 pm

Very true.

We can dream up any number of wild and baseless speculations on what happens after a person dies without ever getting anywhere near what really happens.

How do we determine what really happens? Observation of empirical phenomena.
We know that brains are fundamental to the condition of consciousness. Anything without a brain cannot be said to be conscious. If a person with a brain suddenly had that brain removed, the body would no longer be conscious.

If we also agree that a person's personality, or all that makes up who a person is, is intimately tied to consciousness, and therefore brains, we can conclude that when a brain ceases to function the consciousness and personality associated with that brain ceases to function as well.

During the innumerable opportunities that have come for us to study people's vital signs when they die, no observable evidence has ever surfaced to indicate that there is any associated energy that could be construed as a soul, or spirit tied to the body. Either we could detect this energy directly, as we can the loss of body heat, or we could infer this energy's presence through the impact it has on other data which we can detect directly.

No such animal has shown itself.

The conclusion that this logically leads us to is that people are their nervous sytems. When those systems cease to function, so do the people. They end. Not a comforting thought. Not a pleasant thought. But almost certainly the truth.

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