If I have seen Ghosts then I have evidence enough to know Ghosts are real. I have evidence for the existance of Ghost. Asking even for me to photograph the Ghosts is an unreasonable statement, given that it requires me to be in control of the Ghost appearance enough to be ready with a camera.
I saw a ghost once too. I was alone in the house and it startled the Hell out of me because there should have been nobody there to walk out of the hall into the living room. But then I was able to duplicate the appearance of the ghost again by moving my head in the same way as I had during its first appearance. It was a reflection on the inside of the right lens of my eyeglasses. My brain did something quite common and interpreted the brief image as something familiar.
Lots of people see "ghosts" for various reasons that have well understood psychological causes. In order to accept something as evidence of the actual existence of ghosts we have to be able to eliminate the other possible explanations.
And if you do manage to take a camera photo or even a film of a Ghost, then it is immediately cried that it is faked. So if you get the higher standard of evidence, then you turn around and demand an even higher standard of evidence, that you couldn't have faked it.
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Immediately cried that it is fake"? I've seen lots of "ghost photos" and all have turned out to be either deliberate fakes, accidental anomalies such as double exposures, or lens artifacts. But these fakes and errors have been exposed after careful examination. Do you have any examples of genuine ghost photos that can't be explained as fabrications or photographic errors?
Of course ironically given the ridiculously high standard of evidence required, they are setting themselves up to 'prove' their own original standard. Because the sheer probability of being able to collect that high standard of evidence, means that fakery dominates statistically, because fake evidence is always good evidence, faking murky evidence is pointless.
Well gee, how murky a standard of evidence are we to accept? Are we to see an amorphous shadow on the wall and proclaim it to be a famous ghost alleged to reside where the photo was taken? Should we interpret a dust mote on the camera lens as the photographer's long dead grandmother? Seriously, just how crappy a standard of evidence should we be inclined to affirm?
By increasing your evidential bar, you make it harder for anyone to find the evidence you need except by faking it. This in turn confirms your initial Skepticism. It's all self-reinforcing closemindedness really.
Really? The standard of scientific evidence has been met by many extraordinary claims throughout history. Electromagnetism, continental drift, evolution by natural selection, relativity, black holes, etcetera. Could it be that ghosts simply do not exist?
Even if you see Ghosts this doesn't mean Ghosts are real if accepted, means that ultimately you reject Scientific Evidence out of your excessive Paranoia. If you don't trust your own eyes not to lie to you then you ultimately cannot trust any Evidence whatsoever that has sensory basis.
See, that's just the problem:
You can't always trust your eyes. It is a well known fact of human physical psychology that our eyes can fool us. Especially when what we think we have just seen is, as you stated above, "murky". Are you aware that multiple eyewitnesses can report different accounts of the
same event? That is why the scientific method relies on being able to repeatedly demonstrate a phenomenon that is being claimed. Scientists from around the globe have to be able to conduct the same experiment, or view the same evidence, and agree that they see the same result.
You aren't Scientific, what you are really is a Dogmatist. You have decided that Ghosts don't exist. Therefore if even you see a Ghost, then your eyes must be lying to you. Dogma comes first and if evidence contradicts dogma then evidence is false.
You are incorrect. I have observed that there has never been any solid evidence for the existence of ghosts. Lacking said evidence I lack belief in ghosts just as I lack belief in leprechauns and unicorns. I would not that the evidence for the existence of leprechauns and unicorns is quite murky. Do you believe in leprechauns and/or unicorns?
Extraordinery claims require extraordinery evidence, but who decides what is extraordinery
This is one of the most quoted justifications for basically everything I just described. The problem is that what is extraordinery is not a valid standard, because what ordinery is entirely subjective, things that would seem highly extraordinery yesterday (like mobile phones) are quite pedestrian today.
So, if I claimed to have a dragon in my garage you should be inclined to accept me at my word because of the subjective nature of the definition of "extraordinary". Do you believe that I have a dragon in my garage?
Cell phones are pretty common today and the claim that I've used one is hardly extraordinary. But what if I told you that I have a crystal from a civilization millions of years in advance of ours and I use it to communicate with that civilization in real time, even thought they are 75 million light years away from us? Would you say "Big deal, I used my iPhone to call my mom this morning"?
Ultimately what is expressed is ultimately a power relationship. We the powerful one's shall dictate what is ordinery and what is extraordinery. The purpose of this is to defend the dominant worldview, because those doing the judging must fit everything into this worldview or stand to lose power.
This is pure rationalization. The scientific method has done more in the last ten years alone that the entire history of superstitious belief. Science is a powerful tool because it works.
A perfect example of this would be Anti-Astrology. Astrology must be false, because there are only 4 general forces in the universe (I think it was 4) was once quoted on a Skeptical website against Astrology.
Actually, astrology has proved false because it has never been demonstrated to be able to predict any event with any greater accuracy than pure chance.
The utter idiocy of this statement is based upon the fact that if something cannot fix inside the box, rational people make the box a lot better. If people cannot explain Astrology using the established forces, then why not add however many new forces are needed to explain Astrology.
What is there to explain? Astrology doesn't work.
It is of no consequence or significance to whether Astrology is bunk or not, as to whether it could be explained using the Scientific Laws. But it is of great consequence to the established Scientists that their Scientific Laws are taken as final and absolute. Power is at stake here.
You are showing your ignorance of science and building a straw man. Please demonstrate that there is any scientific consensus that there will never be forces discovered beyond the currently known physical forces.
Much the same situations arise internally within Astrology amusingly enough. Astrology has it's own Scientific Laws and all evidence must be made to fit the Laws.
I hear that garden fairies have their own laws as well.
This comes to the very heart of the matter. The problem is that people accept 'Science' or rather a philosophical worldview that must to secure it's position claim to be Scientific, one they accept in much the same way that Fundermentalists accept a Religion.
Remember those boring old cell phones? Brought to you by science. Really, communicating in real time with someone on the other side of the world is now considered pretty ordinary. But you're right, there's really no more reason to accept the validity of science as a tool for figuring out how things work than there is to accept that the guys who flew the planes into the World Trade Center are now humping their way through seventy virgins.
Just because you can't catch something doesn't mean it isn't real
But is you can't catch it, see it, smell it, feel it, hear it, or build an instrument that can detect it via effects beyond our senses such a infra red or ultra violet radiation, gravitational distortion etcetera, then what reason is there to accept that it exists outside of human imagination? We may as well believe the 'seventy virgins' sales pitch.
However Skepticism is larger than any particular single Philosophy. That is to say, it can like Religion/Superstition be seen as representing particular human drives and fears that are ancient.
You seem to be conflating skepticism with cynicism.
The basic unifying principle between all the Paranormal phenonoma is that they are somewhat ellusive. They can't be prodded with a stick unto the satisfaction of the researcher.
It's the same way with the dragon in my garage.
Ghosts for instance don't stick around, they appear and then disappear usually rather rapidly. This corresponds with the general properties of the object as already established. Nobody ever claimed otherwise. One cannot logically conclude the non-existance of something for not violating it's own identified properties.
So we should believe you because you
can't provide evidence? Seriously?
Neutrinos are rather elusive too, yet we have evidence that they exist. So far, no evidence of ghosts though. I mean, what scientist wouldn't love to be the first to discover a new field of research? He or she would be among the greatest scientist in history.
What as at stake is power and control. People live in a world that they have little control over. This world must be made predictable and controllable in order to make people feel secure. Essentially both sides of the Skeptic/Occultist coin are really differential paths taken by the same basic drive/fear.
No, they aren't. Occultists are like kids who still believe in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. Skeptics are people who have matured beyond the belief in things for which there is no evidence.
Some people seek to control what they do not understand by eliminating it from their consciousness while others seek to control what they do not understand by understanding.
The man who doesn't believe in ghosts and the man that attempts to understand the rules that govern ghosts is ultimately governed by the same basic fear of ghosts.
The real question is therefore why are the ghosts scary?.
More straw men. Skeptics don't lack belief in ghosts because they are afraid of ghosts. There are plenty of things far more frightening than ghosts that have been revealed to us through the use of the scientific method. By your reasoning skeptics should be dead set against the idea of near-Earth asteroids and long period comets. Skeptics should have an irrational disbelief in gamma ray bursts and epidemiology.
It is quite simple: There is no evidence that ghosts (or dragons, or harpies, or pixies, or leprechauns, or demons) outside of the human imagination. There is no evidence that astrology is able to predict future events with any greater accuracy than random guessing. These things are interesting to study as they relate to fields of inquiry such as history and psychology, but they are no different than the belief that Apollo drove the chariot of the sun across the sky or that Thor caused lightning.
