This has me very confused. If someone is agnostic or leaning strongly that way, how can the fact that people claim to be haunted by ghosts, spirits, say they can talk to the dead, are possessed by evil spirits, etc be reconciled to make sense?
Strange Phenomenom's? How do we explain them if one is agnostic?
by QuestioningEverything 21 Replies latest jw friends
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leavingwt
Hallucinations? Drugs? Mental disorders?
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Satanus
Agnostic? Simple. An agnostic is one who leans to not knowing.
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Seeker4
Most of these are mental disorders and self-induced hallucinations. The lack of proof for these "strange phenomenons" is one of the reasons I'm an atheist.
Take some time and actually look into this stuff. A lot of people are just scaring themselves.
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funkyderek
QuestioningEverything:
This has me very confused. If someone is agnostic or leaning strongly that way, how can the fact that people claim to be haunted by ghosts, spirits, say they can talk to the dead, are possessed by evil spirits, etc be reconciled to make sense?
What I think you mean - or what you should mean - is how can someone remain agnostic after hearing these claims. And the answer is that there is not sufficient evidence for these events to prove that they happened or that the supernatural explanation is correct.
Most claims of supernatural contact are of course hallucinations or hoaxes. The rest are unexplained but the smart money would put them in the same category.
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Gopher
QE -- What is the meaning of "agnostic"? The root words behind "agnostic" are "without knowledge".
Who living on earth can prove for sure there is or isn't a deity? At best, all we can do is educate ourselves and then make our own assessment.
However, nobody really knows for sure -- not even people who claim that a god has spoken to them. So -- technically, all humans are "agnostic".
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undercover
how can the fact that people claim to be haunted by ghosts, spirits, say they can talk to the dead, are possessed by evil spirits, etc be reconciled to make sense?
Yes, it's a fact that people claim these things or say they can do these things, but its not fact that they actually experienced or did them.
An agnostic is skeptical about the existence of a God, based on the lack of evidence of such a being. Therefore an agnostic would also be skeptical about the existence of other supernatural beings since the evidence for them is just as lacking as is the evidence of a god.
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megs
In 1964, James Randi offered $1000.00 of his own money to anyone who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event under test conditions agreed to by both parties. The pot has now grown to over a million dollars and still no one has claimed it... If there really were such events, don't you think, even once, that someone would be able to prove it?
I consider myself to be an agnostic... I believe that the existence of God is unknowable... That's not saying I disbelieve, it is just accepting that I am not convinced one way or the other...
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hamsterbait
A agnostic claims "not to know"
I think we have a LOT to learn. These kinds of experiences happen to people - they are saying what they heard or saw , whatever.
I am sure that some of these things will be explained by science one day.
After all science dismissed the concept of forces acting at a distance (gravity, magnetism) the germ theory of disease. Once the science advanced no one dismissed it any more.
Science still cannot detect the predicted gravity waves - but don't tell me to jump off a building just because nobody can detect gravity waves!!
I prefer to acknowledge my lack of knowledge in these areas, rather than resorting to ancient religious "explanations" made up by peoples who knew even less about the natural world than a kid in grade school.
HB
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Octarine Prince
I admire Randi, in general, but have learned recently that he has not been 100% honest with his challenge. He doesn't make the rules as scientific and transparent as you would think.