Bob is a Theist.
Bob is convinced there's a ghost in his house because he has heard unexplained noises.
Don is an agnostic. He tells Bob there's no way to know for sure because ghosts are invisible, and you can't prove a negative anyway, so we'll never know.
Jack is an atheist. He says ghosts are a scientifically untenable idea for which absolutely no evidence has ever been found, so Bob is just imagining things, and should be mercilessly ridiculed until he is silenced.
Dave is an actual scientist. He goes into Bob's attic, sees scattered acorn hulls near the vent screen, sets a trap, removes the squirrel, repairs the hole in the screen, and goes home to avoid having to listen to Bob, Don, and Jack argue about whether ghosts exist... which they are still doing even though the noises have stopped.
When every human civilization that has ever existed anywhere on this planet for the last three hundred thousand years has consistently reported hearing something, arguing that ghosts don't exist is exactly as useful as arguing that they do. Telling every religious person (80% of the human population) that they're crazy is not realistic, productive, humane, or scientific. Those noises exist. Something very ordinary and mundane is causing them.
Scientific thinking does not lead a rational person to believe that every isolated human population that has ever existed somehow managed to come up with the same totally unfounded idea. It also doesn't lead to taking mythology literally, whether you then accept or reject that literal interpretation.
Let's forget about "isms" and find this squirrel, y'all.
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9 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Just as there are gods of the gaps, there are ghosts of the gaps. That which we cannot explain is attributed to the gods, or to ghosts. Plus, some people find it more fun to believe in ghosts, than to believe in a squirrel.
Heraclitus
Level 8
Jan 23, 2019
2
"Something very ordinary and mundane is causing them." Maybe, and maybe not.
Read Dr Jim B Tucker's books and tell me what is causing all those little children to remember past lives. It is not proof that any God exists, but neither is it ordinary and mundane.
doug6352
Level 7
Jan 23, 2019
2
We can't say what it's not until we know what it is, and we don't know yet.
@doug6352
Fascinating stuff alright, but the article backs up my claim that we still don’t know the mechanism by which this could happen.
“But Dr. Stevenson himself recognized one glaring flaw in his case for reincarnation: the absence of any evidence of a physical process by which a personality could survive death and transfer to another body.”
If we don’t know what the mechanism is, we have no way to assert that it is anything other than mundane.
@skado No, in science evidence takes precedence over any theory attempting to explain it. Dr Stevenson's successor Dr Tucker has suggested a mechanism, that consciousness is separate from the material world, which is also known as the von Neumann-Wigner interpretation of quantum mechanics. [en.wikipedia.org]
"Although critics have argued there is no material explanation for the survival of self, Tucker suggests that quantum mechanics may offer a mechanism by which memories and emotions could carry over from one life to another. He argues that since the act of observation collapses wave equations, the self may not be merely a by-product of the brain, but rather a separate entity that impinges on matter. Tucker argues that viewing the self as a fundamental, nonmaterial part of the universe makes it possible to conceive of it continuing to exist after the death of the brain. He provides the analogy of a television and the television transmission; the television is required to decode the signal, but it does not create the signal. In a similar way, the brain may be required for awareness to express itself, but may not be the source of awareness." [en.wikipedia.org]
Materialists insist that every observable phenomenon can be explained as an artifact of the material world. But the actual evidence doesn't seem to support their very popular theory.
I love this post! However, because I am a great big nerd...that squirrel is not an albino. It is an Eastern Gray Squirrel with leucism. It's still cute as hell!
pasha-one-nine
Level 7
Jan 23, 2019
4
Thank you. I could tell it wasn't albino but I didn't know the name of its condition.
Science for the win!! Brilliant!!
There might be ghosts but if so they are one hundred percent natural phenomena. By all means, let’s approach these eerie questions with open minds and with mutual respect.
WilliamFleming
Level 8
Jan 23, 2019
2
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