Do you beleive in ghosts??

by quellycatface 142 Replies latest jw friends

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  Jeffro

  Seraphim23:

  If you doubt my 5 year old self that’s fine with me. People often dismiss what children say as true. The WT also does similar when it comes to sexual abuse allegations without the required amount of witnesses.

  Ooh... nice bait and switch (not). Your 'imaginary magician' is not at all comparable to child abuse.

  My honesty along with my intellectual integrity is unknown to you

  Your 'honesty' is not particularly relevant to the imagination of a five year old child. No one doubts that you believe you saw what you think you saw.
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  Seraphim23

  Jeffro, it wasn’t a comparison with child abuse but an observation on how people treat the reliability of children’s eye witness testimony. In the case of a ghost it’s not very important, although it is to the child, and even more so if it is child abuse. So child abuse is far more serious of course but the act of disbelief is very similar indeed which my point is. Sorry if this offends you.

  Witness My Fury, pray tell me what you have deduced about my personality as regards my honesty and intellectual integrity?
• 

  Jeffro

  Seraphim23:

  So child abuse is far more serious of course

  In other news, it's darker at night time.

  As a young child, you imagined seeing a magician outside while watching a magician on TV. If that traumatised you, you probably have bigger issues to deal with.
• 

  Seraphim23

  You entitled to your views of course Jeffro.
• 

  Witness My Fury

  Honesty and personal integrity play a small part in weighing anecdotes like these.

  You (and all of us) are almost completly different people than we were as children, so the fact that you think you have now turned out a model citizen means didly squat as to what you were like aged 5, 6, 7 etc.

  Nor does the idea of an angelic honest 5, 6, 7 year old mean didly squat as to how someone turns out as an adult.

  Get over yourself. You thought you saw something and have repeated the story ad nauseum into adulthood as if it was fact. I did the same with my own experience aged 6. It wasnt until I researched into stuff I read on this very forum that I went off and took a real interest in the brain, psychology and sleep disorders and found almost all the supernatural stuff is easily explained that way including my own experience.

  No one likes being wrong, or being duped, or making a mistake, especially if that error is repeated as fact to others and in the retelling it is embellished with false memories so that you no longer are exactly sure what you really and exactly do remember about it and what is now the edited directors cut extended version of it.

  Remembering memories accurately is not straightforward, especially if time has passed, the recall can be faulty and gaps in memory filled, this then becomes the true version, especially if it is repeated regularly. I personally have a very good memory for a lot of things, I can remember almost every conversation i have ever had in my life, but perfect recall, no. We all make mistakes when it comes to recall.

  Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable and for very good reasons.
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  Seraphim23

  Which is precisely why I acknowledge that my experience is in no way good for proof. I even acknowledged the possibility that illusion or illness could be an explanation for what I saw. I didn’t post my experience for the purpose of proof though. However triangulating the experiences or two or more witnesses independently of each other as it pertains to a common event is better evidence of these matters, which is why I point to those for the purposes of evidence of ghosts. This however gets lost in all the rhetoric.
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  Witness My Fury

  Yes groups of eyewitnesses are better, but even then they can be mistaken and wrong, especially if observing from the same place.

  Illusions only work from certain angles....
• 

  Witness My Fury

  Discussion with Oliver Sacks about hallucinations:

  http://worldsciencefestival.com/webcasts/sacks
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  Seraphim23

  I acknowledge your logic there. However with `more than one independent witness` scenarios, the idea of illness can be dismissed with far more confidence, leaving as you say the possibility of optical illusions. Here also with a point you will appreciate, psychological illusions of different types, for want of a better word, also has to be taken into account as a possibility. With the optical illusions, factors such as any movement of the perceived ghost and other details would potential mitigate this form of illusion as being the explanation.

  All perceptions that humans have are electrical signals being interpreted by the brain, which raises valid question about reality. Apparently different cultures actually perceive the same colours a bit differently and some optical illusions work for some cultures and not others because of the way the brain has been trained to perceive but why does a specific wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum create a perception of colour at all? Without knowing the answers to this question it’s perhaps not wise to be dogmatic about perceptual concerns and the nature of what is real.

  When one does science one has to trust that perception is common to all for pragmatic purposes and the fact science works vindicates this approach to a degree, but it also presupposes that truth is real and not a concept of the human mind. This fact raises other questions about the difference between a concept and reality. What is the relationship between the two where one doesn’t seem to be real and the other an ideal deemed to be real? I.e the concept of truth which no one has attained and truth the reality, whatever that is!

  What if science, its results and perceived successes are only really electrical impulses subject to interpretation by a brain? What if electrical impulses themselves are perceived interpretations along with the brain itself? It is hard to argue that it’s not the case! This is why I don’t understand why the concept of the supernatural is deemed to threaten scientific truth if we agree truth is real? Can there be more than one truth is a very interesting question?
• 

  snare&racket

  When people question their beliefs as a JW they always reach a point where they ask "what about spirits, the bible/god/ spirit realm must be true!"

  Some people can be stuck on that issue for some time... What about mediums, magic, spirit attacks, demons??? etc etc. I thought of all the cases I knew of, a pattern emerged... I wasn't in any of them. I hadn't seen a single one. It was as simple as that for me.... OR WAS IT...

  A couple of months ago, maybe 2 or 3. I was working late in the hospital I was at. It was early winter, cold and dark. The hospital was old and ugly. The corridors are lit by automatic lights to save money. They detect someone walking beneath and turn on. It was gone midnight, I was the last person on this floor and I closed the library door behind me. I began walking down the corridor alone in a quiet part of the hospital, above the A+E and trauma departments. I had been working in the library preparing for exams and my mind was busy with thoughts of exams and planning. Tiredness had once again overcome me, we work shifts all day as everyone else, then evenings are our time to study. It had been this way for over 2 years now, it makes the soul permenantly wearisome and fatigued.

  As I walked into perpetual darkness, the lights came on some seconds behind me, the delay was slower than my pace, so I seemed to be pursuing darkness, not light. They clicked on far too long after I passed them. I had not even noticed, before long I was alone, mid corridor, in darkness. Nothing but the distant lit corridor junction ahead of me. A feeling came over me, so strange and potent it took my whole concentration. I had my stylish but far too large headphones on, they were releasing a spirit disturbing sound, some electronic dance music, far too loud for my tympanic membrane and I knew it. My mind had been on my month ahead, the revision, the hours needed, the deficit of hours I had. But all that ended abruptly..... half way down the corridor of perpetual night ....and my delayed back lighting.

  I suddenly became aware of the sensations on the skin, the itching of my nerves, my hyper acuity of sound and vision ...... I heard my heartbeating.

  As I looked left, I passed a row of windows, the winter clouds were moving fast and high, occasionally obscuring a bright but smaller winter moon. I felt enclosed, there was nowhere to go... my subconscious did the math for me, my brain was still on exam revision..... The answer to the calculation was... DEMONS.

  but hold your horses a moment, you jittery yellow bellies....

  My brain had realised that I was walking down the hallway of an old hospital, in darkness, making lots of noise and something was not right, I for some reason was not scared or bothered about possible .....demons or ghosts.... The old me would have been, and my body found this weird. My indoctrinated senses were asking me why I wasn't scared.... It was just a corridor, just dance music, just some darkness.... and just me....

  or was it....

  SNARE X

  no really it was , just me..