Ghosts and paranormal activity in ED & PR

[taper]

And this thread has passed to the other side. Let us hope it rests in peace.

Barbara, baaaarbara....

[fabfor]

Anyone genuinely open-minded and interested could do a search for the "Scole experiments" on YouTube.

I've never seen a ghost but I have seen enough to leave me in no doubt whatsoever that, in spite of the hysteria (on both sides), there are real (not imagined) intelligent forces that science is just starting to learn about.

The flat earth argument reigns at the moment but scientists like Rupert Sheldrake, by exploring the flat earth anomalies, are developing a new paradigm, based on fields rather than matter.

As a technologist, I find it so exciting to realise that our marvellous science of TVs, PCs and mobiles is still in its infancy. We've only just begun and I hope I'll still be around when we turn the corner.

[StraferJack]

Christ on a bike

Look. Cancer is a disease. Like so many in history. It is recognised and horrible. No one can compare someone with cancer (ie f@@@ing real and horrible symptoms) with someone with " a ghost"

If I get cancer I know there isn't much hope of a cure but I know what it is and I know science will get there. Because it's real and is being analysed. Like previous diseases

Words in steamy mirrors? Grow. Up

[Sue]

StraferJack Wrote:

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> Look. Cancer is a disease. Like so many in

> history. It is recognised and horrible. No one can

> compare someone with cancer (ie f@@@ing real and

> horrible symptoms) with someone with " a ghost"

xxxxxxx

Nobody was comparing someone with cancer with someone with "a ghost".

That was obviously not the point.

xxxxxx

> Words in steamy mirrors? Grow. Up

xxxxxxxx

You were there, were you, and saw that it didn't happen as the poster said?

If not, then Shut. Up.

[StraferJack]

3 mermaids took good care of me last night

When we were done a unicorn carried me away to a (warm ) cloud with a cracking view of the arsenal game

Were you there??? The don't dispute me

That said, if people were to suggest there is little to back my story up, they would have a point. Me yelling "shut up" would reflect badly on me, not them

[red devil]

I'll have pint of whatever SJ was drinking last night...

[StraferJack]

Nothing major rd. I may have been possessed tho. Who is to say I wasn't

[Louisa]

My great aunt was once possessed according to a dear close family friend. She apparently spoke fluent Japanese whilst in a trance. She was not the type of fancy-free storyteller to make things up, she worked in a cinema for nearly 40 years, she was not in any way insane.

Louisa.

[Jeremy]

The friend knew Japanese, did she?

Flat earth? Actually there are people out there that still believe in that, too. Along with witchcraft. And magic potions. And ghosts.

Listen, people can believe what they want... I'm not telling you not to believe something. I'm just saying that I don't, and never will...

[El Pibe]

It was a facile and crass point Sue in all fairness, rather undermined by the incredible leaps we have made in fighting the disease, such that SJ has a pretty good chance of surviving his hypothetical cancer.

It's good that science researches these things because science isn't close minded, unlike those projecting their narrowmindedness upon others ("Well I've seen and experienced things I don't care what anyone else says.").

But SJ is right, in a hundred years of paranormal research, in a world of six billion people and three billion phone cameras, where even homeopathy can have millions of false positives a year, we have zip, nada nothing. As the above cartoon says, no nessies, no bigfoots, no ghosts, no demons, nothing.

Read the research at that department. It makes for interesting pyschological research, but a dubious experiment, not taking into account all sorts of factors comes up with a woolly worded "it may be suggestive of". Certainly no conclusions that it exists.

Keep trying, but holding my breath for another hundred years could prove fatal (but at least I could let you know all about it from the other side....ooooooOOOOoooOOOooooo)

[Otta]

I do think that there are unexplained things and I don't dismiss "paranormal activity" out of hand. That is not to say I believe in ghosts, as in the spirits of dead people. But I believe we still know too little about the universe to dismiss unusual happenings as delusion.

I don't believe in ghostly messages in mirrors though.

And SJ said "good luck to" the Edinbrugh department that is researching all this, he just said (rightly) that he wasn't expecting them to come back with much anytime soon. Comparing that to medical research just doesn't make any sense. There is no cure for HIV/AIDS, but I'd much rather have it now than in the 80s, because of research.

Obviously I'd rather not have it at all given the choice.

[red devil]

Otta Wrote:

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> I don't believe in ghostly messages in mirrors

> though.

Those that do...ever been in a car when it steams up?

[El Pibe]

"I do think that there are unexplained things and I don't dismiss "paranormal activity" out of hand."

Absolutely otta, there are tons of unexplained events, but most of them are explicable. People deciding it's the paranormal, unwilling to accept more mundane (and far more plausible) explanations are the ones with the closed minds.

I'd love there to be ghosts and ghoulies, a little bit of the child inside me is dead because the world apparently lacks these things.

If there are genuinely inexplicable phenomena (we'll leave stuff like photosynthesis and magnetism aside for the moment) then lets research them, for it can only further humanity (and is the staple of a million horror films).

Hell if I we really could contact the dead that would be frickin' amazing!

[Sue]

El Pibe Wrote:

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> It was a facile and crass point Sue in all

> fairness,

xxxxxx

What point, exactly, do you think that I was making?

Because if you thought it was facile and crass, then I don't think you are talking about the point that I was in fact making.

But please explain what you thought it was, just so I can check. In all fairness, as you say. Thanks.

[Sue]

El Pibe Wrote:

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there are tons of unexplained

> events, but most of them are explicable.

xxxxxxx

Eh? If they're "explicable", then they aren't "unexplained", are they? Duh!

xxxxxxx

People

> deciding it's the paranormal, unwilling to accept

> more mundane (and far more plausible) explanations

> are the ones with the closed minds.

xxxxxx

"...are the ones with the closed minds" ?!?!

Closed minds aren't limited to people believing one thing or its opposite.

Anybody who makes up their mind about something without actually having objectively looked at the available facts is closed minded. That includes people who prefer some sort of "supernatural" explanation where it has been clearly demonstrated that there is another explanation. Obviously.

[fabfor]

taper Wrote:

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> It is becoming the dinner party conversation from

> Storm

>

>

> ri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DHhGuXCuDb1U

A big, big thank you for this, taper. I don't share his viewpoint and this is my first "encounter" with Tim Minchin but what a marvellous, witty, talented man. It had me in stitches - Here's to open minds! Hip hip. ..

[Otta]

Sue, if something is unexplained, it doesn't mean it can't be explained.

[Otta]

Sue Wrote:

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> El Pibe Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> there are tons of unexplained

> > events, but most of them are explicable.

>

> xxxxxxx

>

> Eh? If they're "explicable", then they aren't

> "unexplained", are they? Duh!

That was just a response to that by the way.

[El Pibe]

No that's exactly might point. Sue, try a dictionary, unexplained simply means that it hasn't been explained, that doesn't mean it can't be; explicable means capable of being explained.

In the same way UFOs are unidentified but not necessarily unidentifiable, of course they just become FOs after that.

As for the cancer point you were trying to equate research into the paranormal with research for curing disease by dint that neither produce a quantifiable end (cancer cured, paranomral activity proved).

For starters one addresses real life or death issues, the other, well nothing really.

That aside you imply that cancer research hasn't achieved anything, which is obviously nonsense.

It was facile ie simplistic thinking, it was crass to bring something as devastating to millions as cancer and somehow trying to suggest paranormal research has an equivalent value.

I'm not sure what your getting it with your bold highlight and the weird bit about one thing or it's opposite (although any phenomenon is either governed by physical laws or beyond those, ie super-natural, so it's pretty black or white), but your final point, is just restating my point, so thanks for that.

But I'll let you have the last word, I believe that's one of the fundamental laws rewritten into the fabric of the universe.

[NewWave]

My final word on this subject is don't take the pee over something that you were not there to experience.

As I formerly mentioned I have experienced a fair few 'paranormal' things in my 53 years on this planet.

I now know such things exist end of..........

[El Pibe]

Imagine a scenario, you're in your tenth story flat. Whilst asleep you are awoken by sharp tapping on your window.

There's no way anyone could get there, there's no hail, no tree tall enough to reach.

Suddenly you remember it's the anniversary of your dad's death. He was an old salt who taught you morse code on his knee.

Maybe he was trying to get in touch, you feel it could be true.

You get a spiritualist in who is able to give you his name without you telling home anything "I sense a b, no a p, no maybe a t, tommy..."

"Well he was a sailor, that's a bit like a soldier, and his name was Pete...uncanny"

There you have an unexplained phenomenon, but you're satisfied that it was a supernatural event.

Of course the next day when Noreen from the block of flats opposite drags little bob over by his ear to apologise for shooting at your windows with his gat gun, it becomes explained, but in between the unexplained occurrence and the explanation it was always explicable.

I could carry on, you know, patronising you a bit more if you like...duh.

[Jeremy]

People are saying that we don't know everything about the universe... but surely the human mind is much more of an unknown quantity.

[El Pibe]

Well quite, plus psychology is pretty woolly as science goes, and neuropsychology is relatively speaking still in its infancy.

Parapsychology, study into telkenisis, telepathy etc, has come leaps and bounds. I saw a documentary where this chap moved an entire x-wing fighter out of a swamp using just the power of his mind.

[Otta]

Jeremy Wrote:

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> People are saying that we don't know everything

> about the universe... but surely the human mind is

> much more of an unknown quantity.

Absolutely. I used the term universe to basically mean we don't know a lot of stuff, and if/when we do, it may well explain a lot of things that people have been calling paranormal.

[Sue]

El Pibe Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Imagine a scenario, you're in your tenth story

> flat. Whilst asleep you are awoken by sharp

> tapping on your window.

> There's no way anyone could get there, there's no

> hail, no tree tall enough to reach.

> Suddenly you remember it's the anniversary of your

> dad's death. He was an old salt who taught you

> morse code on his knee.

> Maybe he was trying to get in touch, you feel it

> could be true.

> You get a spiritualist in who is able to give you

> his name without you telling home anything "I

> sense a b, no a p, no maybe a t, tommy..."

> "Well he was a sailor, that's a bit like a

> soldier, and his name was Pete...uncanny"

>

> There you have an unexplained phenomenon, but

> you're satisfied that it was a supernatural

> event.

>

> Of course the next day when Noreen from the block

> of flats opposite drags little bob over by his ear

> to apologise for shooting at your windows with his

> gat gun, it becomes explained, but in between the

> unexplained occurrence and the explanation it was

> always explicable.

>

> I could carry on, you know, patronising you a bit

> more if you like...duh.

xxxxxx

Yes, it is extremely patronising.

Some events which are apparently "inexplicable" at the time may be given by one or more people a "supernatural" explanation.

If those events are subsequently (even many years later) shown to have had a cause which was not "supernatural", that has no bearing whatsoever on any other unrelated event.

And what does "inexplicable" mean, anyway? Everything ultimately has some kind of "explanation".

Definition of explanation: "noun - a statement or account that makes something clear"

If you don't like the explanation because it involves things you don't want to think exist, then that's something else entirely.

And concerning the research - my point was in response to someone suggesting I post on here "when they (ie Edinburgh University) have found something" (or words to that effect), the implication being that they would never find anything, and that therefore there was no point continuing with the research.

My point was that all research finds nothing - until it does. But nobody embarks on (or indeed funds) research unless they have an expectation of being able to find something, surely. And that applies equally to research into so-called paranormal phenomena, research into cancer or research into anything else.

If you don't like my comparison with cancer research, then tough. I have had close relatives die of cancer, have had cancer scares myself, and have only recently donated to cancer research in memory of a friend's wife who died aged 51 on Christmas Eve.

Don't preach to me about making "facile comparisons", or whatever it was.

And learn some elementary logic, all you patronising people mocking things you clearly have no experience of.