seeing dead people

Capt Quirk said:
Look into Electronic Voice Phenomenon.
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People's ability to construct patterns out of static are well-documented. Once again, you don't need to invent a whole new field of physics, when there are perfectly functional explanations at hand, that work with already-observed and demonstrated phenomena. And, static being a random phenomenon, of course occasionally what appear to be recognizable signals will emerge.

Just out of curiosity, why do you suppose that EVP, etc are considered 'fringe?' Don't you think that any observations with the slightest degree of legitimacy, would have stampeded thousands of grant-seekers and Nobel Prize-chasers into EVP research, if there were really anything there that a properly trained and conscientious researcher could use for a starting point? To be able to *really* talk to the dead?

I understand the desire to live in a more colorful, more interesting world where there are ghosts and spirits and messages from the dead and - heck, why not - fairies leaving us money for lost teeth, leprechauns with pots of gold and jolly red-clad gents who distribute toys on a yearly basis. But that's the kind of thinking that held us back, for centuries. It's a pity that the kind of critical thinking that has granted us extended life-span, reduced disease, high-yield crops and every other benefit of modern life, has not yet caught up, in popularity.
 
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What came first: The Egg, or the Chicken?

Exactly.

That's the problem of discussing religion, or looking for the absolute, scientific truth- it all ends in that question.
 
Most parnormal stuff can be explained by normal science.
But there is lot´s of stuff left that can not be explained.

I think that only means, that lack of knowledge.
Every kind of "Ghost" must deal with the laws of physic.
Maybe a level of physic we have no gauges for, or we even dont´t have ani idea of. But still physic.

I worked out my own (and probably not very scientific) "Ghost" theorie:

Look, our ears can hear a small spectrum of sound, our eyes can see a small spectrum of light. That does not mean that those other frequeencies are something paranormal - we are just not equiped for that.

Now imagine mater that has a "freqency" out of our spectrum so we can not feel it, hear it, see it.

But at some times/areas/circumstances that freqency may build (harmonic) interference patterns with "our" freqency so we can see a bit of it.

Frank
 
Sad Max said:
I don't see any inconsistency.
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I'm rather surprised you can not see the logical inconsistency here, it is scientifically impossible to prove matter (What you consider the "reality").

and you still haven't proven why it is that one thought process should be sufficient and another deficient, therin lies the logical fallacy.
 
Max, I agree with a lot of what you say. EMF can cause several different effects, including paranoia and hallucinations. Even an amature "ghost hunter" will recognize this, which is why they always have an EMF meter. They will look at the baseline readings in an area, determine where it is high enough to cause said side effects, and note sudden inconsistencies. This is a basic scientific process, determining what is and is not an influencing factor. For instance, if a building is old, and has a rat's nest of unshielded wiring, EMF readings will go through the roof, hence you have a source and possible effect, right? In the absence of said source, EMF readings should have a low base reading which is a normal effect. A sudden high spike would be out of the norm.

There is a medical condition commonly called "floaters" (and I won't even attempt to give the proper medical name), which will cause you to see shadows out of the corner of your eye. If a person has a floater, the condition would cause this person to randomly believe they see these shadows from time to time. This would happen regardless of the persons location, whether they are at home in their lazy boy, going shopping, or at Mom's house at Christmas. That would be a normal expected result. If said person only experiences shadows while sitting in their lazy boy, it is time to look for influencing causes at the site, not the eye. Cause and effect.

When it comes to EVPs, I have heard a lot that are as you said, random static. It is funny sometimes, how some folks "clearly hear" something being said. Sometimes, there is no doubt that it is what you hear. Could be fake, could be real. What I have personally heard, I did not fake. I had no reason to fake a door slam, since I was the only one that got to listen to the recording before it crashed and corrupted the file. Why would I lie to myself, when there was no gain or reason?

And finally, you claim that if something can't be repeated, it isn't possible. I have seen hurricanes bury a straw in a tree. I would love to see that repeated in a lab. And the biggest improbability is life itself. I am a die hard evolutionist, because you can see life evolve and mutate, it is logical. But nobody has been able to explain how it was created in the first place. The primordial soup theory is cool, but nobody has been able to prove it or duplicate the effect. Therefore, you can't possibly exist, and I refuse to continue arguing with my imagination.
 
The Platypus is easy ... God had a slew of leftover parts, and just threw them all together.

"Let's see ... I've got a ducks bill, some hair, a beaver tail, some claws, a bit of venom (yep, they're venomous)..."
 
Don't forget, it is an egg layer that has nipples... so along with Shumaker's Batman and Robin makes two things with nipples that don't make sense.
 
A phenomenon analagous to Electronic Voice Phenomenon is the totally universal ability to see faces and familiar objects in clouds. We can all look at cloud formations and see what looks like a dog or a person's face. In fact, we can pretty much look at ANY cloud formation and see something. The human brain constantly struggles to make order out of disorder. It's how the organ works. We look for the familiar in random information. Just as we would do when listening to random static. Our brain will struggle to fill in the blanks to find something familiar. Until there is a clear voice from the other side with specific information that proves itself to be supernatural, I will only conclude the the EVP phenomenon is a "trick" of the human brain.
 
Anhar Miah said:
I'm rather surprised you can not see the logical inconsistency here, it is scientifically impossible to prove matter (What you consider the "reality").
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If you believe that there is no evidence for the existence of matter, I don't know what basis there is, for a conversation with you. What exactly are you made of, if there's no matter?

Anhar Miah said:
and you still haven't proven why it is that one thought process should be sufficient and another deficient, therin lies the logical fallacy.
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Sure I did. One 'thought-process' makes a statement, devises an experimental proof to support the validity of the statement, conducts the experiment, notes the results and invites others to try and duplicate those results, to demonstrate the validity of the statement.

The other 'thought-process' makes a statement without offering any experimental proof that can support it. Game, set, match, done.
 
Sad Max said:
If you believe that there is no evidence for the existence of matter, I don't know what basis there is, for a conversation with you. What exactly are you made of, if there's no matter?
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I did not say there is no evidence for matter, or that I myself am not made of matter, what I said is that it is impossible to prove matter itself, a very distintintly different subject.


Sad Max said:
Sure I did. One 'thought-process' makes a statement, devises an experimental proof to support the validity of the statement, conducts the experiment, notes the results and invites others to try and duplicate those results, to demonstrate the validity of the statement.

The other 'thought-process' makes a statement without offering any experimental proof that can support it. Game, set, match, done.
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I didn't ask about the validity of each statement, what I asked about is how can one deny the existence of one thought and claim it as deficient and yet at the same time another thought (produced by the same process) as sufficient, even the "reasoning" is subject to the same process that every other thought is produced by, under what rational can we accept that the very thought process that produced reasoning to be coherent?

Not Game, unset, unmatched, undone.
 
Capt Quirk said:
And finally, you claim that if something can't be repeated, it isn't possible.
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I did not make that claim. Although experimental repeatability is a very important component in demonstrating the truth of a theory. Anyway, the ghosty-types have yet to succeed in so much as defining a functional experiment to test their concepts, let alone achieving repeated results.

Capt Quirk said:
I have seen hurricanes bury a straw in a tree. I would love to see that repeated in a lab.
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#1 It *has* been done, in the lab.

#2 There are zero violations of known physical laws, in a hurricane burying a straw in a tree. It's an unlikely event because a number of factors have to coincide in order for it to happen (and that unlikeliness seems even greater to an uneducated observer, who thinks in terms of their own day-to-day experience with straw and wood). You don't have to create new physics in order to get straws through trees. You *do* need a new physics, in order to account for ghosts, etc.


Capt Quirk said:
And the biggest improbability is life itself.
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The universe is loaded with the basic atomic and molecular building blocks of life. The universe is loaded with the energy required to drive reactions between these building blocks. The universe has had about 13 billion years (that's about 185,714,286 consecutive human lifetimes) during which that energy could act on those molecular bases, to start the ball rolling, and drive future development.

The emergence of organic life in this universe is not improbable; it's closer to inevitable.


Capt Quirk said:
I am a die hard evolutionist,
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What an awful phrase. It reduces biology to the level of faith. And implies that science is about what you want to believe, rather than what you can demonstrate.

Capt Quirk said:
But nobody has been able to explain how it was created in the first place. The primordial soup theory is cool, but nobody has been able to prove it or duplicate the effect.
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Yes, they did. In the 1970s and 1980s. Starting with inorganic components, subjecting them to energy and producing organic molecules, which progressed to proteinoids (which would have been called proteins had they been found in nature) and to spheroids which absorbed nutrients, reproduced themselves, linked together into bacteria-style chains and clusters, and just happen to look precisely like primordial microfossils found in fossil strata.

It's true that these lab processes don't explain everything - for example, the development of RNA and DNA-type molecules. On the other hand, if you want to discuss events in the real world, they're light-years ahead of any creation-myths on offer, from traditionalists.
 
Anhar Miah said:
I did not say there is no evidence for matter, or that I myself am not made of matter, what I said is that it is impossible to prove matter itself, a very distintintly different subject.
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So you agree that there is evidence for "matter," and you go so far as to allow that you are even made of matter - but that the existence of matter is unproven.

Oh-kay, then.

After a few runs at CERN's new lab, and the time it takes to interpret them, we'll know more about the basic nature of matter, than we did before - and all with zero help from the parapsychologists, ghost-hunters, table-tappers, etc, nada, none.

As for 'proving matter itself,' that's a meaningless phrase. "Matter" (mass) is a manifestation of forces acting down at the quark level; this has been experimentally demonstrated and then repeated again and again, for precision. Do you particularly follow high-energy physics research? This has been known since the 1980s.

Anhar Miah said:
I didn't ask about the validity of each statement, what I asked about is how can one deny the existence of one thought and claim it as deficient and yet at the same time another thought (produced by the same process) as sufficient, even the "reasoning" is subject to the same process that every other thought is produced by, under what rational can we accept that the very thought process that produced reasoning to be coherent?

Not Game, unset, unmatched, undone.
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Oh, I think I see where you're going.

Sure, all thoughts within-your-braincase-while-you're-having-them have a certain commonality and could be dropped into one category.

So what? We're talking about the degree to which those thoughts can be proven to comport with the reality outside your braincase.

If you're partial to the idea that there is no such thing as a reality outside one's own skull, that's fine. It also means that at a basic level protons, the Easter Bunny, sandwiches, Hamlet, galaxies, Baal, paper clips and Uruk-Hai are all equally extant since the only definition or reality is what you want reality to be, for you personally.
 
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Anhar Miah said:
That is factually inaccurate, there simply is not enough time in this universe for life to arise by random chance.
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I think this is where you demonstrate that your assertion of "not enough time" is factually accurate. Since unlike all the experimental data gathered so far, I don't believe there are any "facts" to prove that negative. And, you left out a critical component: the universe is not just "random chance;" the universe functions according to physical laws. Chance provides different starting conditions for events to occur; laws determine the outcomes possible from those starting conditions. "Random chance" alone is a canard used by theists when they want to forget that chance alone is not what anyone is proposing.

It's wishful thinking: if you want and need there to be some supernatural agency, sure, blow off over one hundred billion years' time in which naturally-occurring atoms and molecules can act according to their observed nature and form more complex compounds under the action of energies provided by the universe itself in perfect adherence to observed physical laws. Whoops, and the processes have been observed in nature and replicated in the lab, too, with regularity!

I mean, heck, if the cosmologists came out tomorrow and offered evidence that the universe as five hundred trillion years old, it would be the same silliness: not enough time, not enough time. Because this isn't really about making definitive declarations about what can happen over frankly-unimaginable periods of time; this is about defending the existence of a creator by dismissing any evidence that could undermine the need for one.

And, to skip up a step to evolutionary theory, do you really want to play the 'intelligent design' game? Do you really want to address every last strange, semi-functional, drawback-laden design kluge in, say, the human organism, that comports with evolutionary development but does not even resemble the work of a conscious designer?
 
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Sad Max said:
Since unlike all the experimental data gathered so far, I don't believe there are any "facts" to prove that negative.
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Spontaneous generation of a self reproducing proto cell has never been produced in any lab ever*,further there is NO KNOWN natural mechanism or physical/biological law that produces that kind of speficied complex information inherent even in the simplest cell.

the mathemical models calculated on computers have totally destroyed any hope of any real meaningful wishful thinking that it could be otherwise.

*please I challenge you or any scientest to produce this evidence. bring the data forward.
 
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Sad Max said:
And, to skip up a step to evolutionary theory, do you really want to play the 'intelligent design' game? Do you really want to address every last strange, semi-functional, drawback-laden design kluge in, say, the human organism, that comports with evolutionary development but does not even resemble the work of a conscious designer?
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Ah yes the classical "Bad design" argument that’s very easy to answer:

Darwinist calls it "Adapted", ID’ers call it "Designed"

Adapted = Design (because they refer to the same thing)

If you say "Bad Design" by that logic it has to also be concluded: "Bad Adaptation"

i.e.:

Bad Adaptation = Bad Design

However "Bad Adaptation" is an oxymoron, its a contradiction, if something is badly adapted it will fail, it will be filtered out by natural selection.

But for the same "Bad Design" Darwinist say, "look at that excellent adaptation" (it has to be for it to allegedly "evolve" that way)

Thus:

Excellent adaptation = Excellent Design
 
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