There Are No Ghosts

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Always extremes, with you… bipolar much.
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Implementing anything you propose would be tantamount to global suicide.

Actually I get manic sometimes.

I need it to post my content. If you even consider it content.

There’s a method to my madness.

I understand that people need to learn.

That’s what they asked of me

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I had edited my post, to add:

You might disagree with that…

You should listen to everyone.

But women want to be in charge.

Why not let them?

It’s a mistake that I’m male and know more than women.

Women here have been so oppressed that I’ll give them the reins

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Like I said…

:laughing:

By the way.

Being Muslim in private chat called me a lunatic.

I like the moon. Guilty as charged.

Project much?

I actually don’t think you’re crazy. You have ideations based on your culture.

Thing about me. I never lost my glial cells in my brain.

I still learn like a child.

You don’t

Actually, calling me a lunatic is.a favor… it means I get off on a technicality because I’m not competent to stand trial

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I could have told you that.

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…and which culture would that be?

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My brain mainly functions in ‘theta’ [theta brain waves are more pronounced in children or adolescents and less prominent in adults] so… you’re wrong! although I do function in the other states throughout the day, in varying amounts.

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Re. the Op… there are definitely deceased entities that roam the Earth, but not all can see/sense/experience the phenomena.

My two older sisters went to a Ouija board seance and came home visibly distressed and terrified :rofl:
Bad things happened that night, that they never want to relive or replicate ever again… the board moving, objects flying, objects smashing against them, curtains flying… :joy:

My brain is in theta too.

I walk in a dream.

I find it interesting that women get triggered by me.

This is arrogant to say…

But it’s actually true.

I’m the best partner they can have

Sorry, I started that post before Ecmandu and Meno posted, so I didn’t attached it to your post.

This sounds more like a parable than an eyewitness account: Islam smashes the pagans temple and something evil screams and runs away. It’s propaganda filtered through history.

We can always expand the hypothesis to explain any countervailing evidence – epicycles on epicycles. Eventually, the hypothesis should be rejected.

This sounds like an overinterpretation of something ordinary, giving great weight and significance to a normal occurrence. The non-magic explanation for why you saw a pigeon is that there was a pigeon. The non-magic explanation for why it seemed magical was that you are a person of deep faith, you interpret your world through the lens of your faith, and you had just experienced the existential shock of losing a loved one.

I did not interpret that as racist, in light of some of the other things you had said I had pictured a shadow/silhouette for the “black woman”, and some kind of white silhouette for the “white form”.

But now that you mention it, a culture that developed between Europe and Africa might have other reasons to develop legends of hostile black and white people (though even if that were the origin, it would be a mistake to describe an ancient culture in terms of modern concepts like ‘racism’).

To sum up my reaction to your position: I think you are treating folktales as faithful descriptions of the world. But we know that these stories and cultural concepts originated in pre-scientific societies where the environment imposed real threats, their original purpose was not necessarily to report the truth as opposed shape behavior. They were passed by word-of-mouth for generations, and their present versions are filtered through hundreds of years of history, incorporating religious, political, and social changes. They contain information about the past, but they shouldn’t be treated as eye-witness accounts.

When I read claims like this, they seem nearly indistinguishable from Ecmandu’s claims to have fought god or whatever. I can’t see dead people, and I can’t see the mirror realities.

Ghost stories, when they’re treated seriously, just sound likes socially acceptable forms of delusion.

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…that’s enough of talking to you for today @Ecmandu, because when your posts change to those of a sexual nature, I choose to disengage.

Go elsewhere for that.

Of course we all VIRTUALLY ghosts that we can’t see, ?

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@Carleas

I can’t see those things either or anything similar to phenomenon like that and I can’t see dead people, but I have experienced phenomena at the hands of the deceased, namely my relatives… an Aunt and an Uncle [both [paternal] siblings] and my own late son, put it this way… they made their presence felt… there was another person present at two of the three occurrences.

What did all three have in common? …they died at untimely times.

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Ghost stories, when they’re treated seriously, just sound likes socially acceptable forms of delusion.

Those that experience such things don’t care what others think… I’ve also experienced phenomena that isn’t ghost-related and those ones perplexe me.
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[Btw, this thread is now in slow mode :roll_eyes: ]

In short

Carleas is paying lots of attention to show you western culture can offer you something.

Best left there. The rest seems to me to be a mere pushback. It’d be simpler to say “says you!”. Earlier I say we need to look at correlation between other cultures. You reply about how other cultures have differing accounts how bow dat. Well, l did say we need to look at correlations. I show a unifying theorem that is not ad hoc, in fact it was always there in my faith.

Here is your response dissected:

Clearly l’m not trying to convince you of the event. You are trying too hard to strike out, discredit, undermine anything to do with ghosts.

As l’ve advised others: Honest argumentation = trying to see how the other person might be right. Then proceeding to demolish their statement. If you do not try to see how the other person may be correct, if you just rush into debunking right away, then you are merely a debunker. A debunker will debunk anything. That is what they do, debunk. There is no virtue in this.

So, l was showing (because you literally asked me about commonalities):

  1. The commonality across cultures of the Diva Scream (literally pointed out)
  2. The commonality of Jinn taking very dark or very pale forms (as l’ve copiously expanded on in the post you are answering).

I swear l have no idea why you are telling me about epicycles, this is needless introduction of technicalities and bit by bit argument is lost in a spray of words. My point is that were already have an established tradition of mimicry, and this answers your earlier counterargument that different cultures have different devil-beasts (you somehow seem to think it’s necessary to invent devil-beasts or else kids might try to play with a tiger and get killed? But a tiger is dangerous enough, your explanation is unnecessary), my reply is that we already believe they mimic stuff around them, and that answers your question and it is not an ad hoc explanatoin. No Copernicus, no epicycles. No epistemontologispongiformifcation gallileo gallileo figaro will you let him go (to anticipate your future reply). Please, don’t. Just read what l wrote in earnest and try to see that a reasonably intelligent person is trying to tell you something about commonalities and a pre-existing unified theory of jnns, whether it’s right or wrong (and l’ve already explained that it can only go as far as commonalities and a unified theorem, it won’t be proven as an empirical study across a cohort, to which you replied show me a cohort study - dude l literally had told you it can’t be done that way???). Altogether now 1, 2, 3 hup gallileo gallileo will you epicylcle deerpidedidoodah.

Your explanation damns the facts - Argument by Omission. I think l was maybe subconsciously baiting you into an intractable dismissive stance.

You seem to think l never saw a pigeon before or since? In fact l like them. There’s perhaps an outside chance you may be right that l wanted to be scared by a pigeon and thus l found one scary. But my mommy was genuinely a protective influence against evil, she would cast spells on me all the time to protect me (well, not spells really, we don’t deal in witchcraft, more like imprecatoins.

There were a lot of things about my mother e.g. we dreamt of each other on the same night and she phoned me the next morning and when l told her this she woudn’t let me complete the sentence and just said she knows, she knows. Your response? Gallileo gallileo figaro zippedydoodah ontolololgical wikipedetcetera . You’re gonna pow pow pow at anything l write, like a kitten. To be fair, my responses are also for anybody else with astral experiences.

The white ghosts are from European culture mostly. Our Prophet was considered “white” as l recall, as were many Arabs of the Hejaz. Moreover, during his farewell sermon, our Prophet said:

“All humans are descended from Adam and Eve,” said Muhammad in his [last known public speech]. “There is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, or of a non-Arab over an Arab, and no superiority of a white person over a black person or of a black person over a white person, except on the basis of personal piety and righteousness.”

You have not integrated my replies, as explained above.

My entire “shtick” here is that:

  1. Your assertion in the thread title is not valid
  2. A scientific study across a cohort cannot be devised as far as l know, so as to exonerate you (and for that matter myself)
  3. However there is a notable consistency in accountsn and Islam gives the best unified theorem, the best explanaton about them, if they do indeed exist. I’m not trying to prove they exist l’m trying to show that they likely do exist, based on cross cultural commonalities and Islam’s overarching explanation.

By the way, please MY GOOD MAN don’t call people that have experienced and believe in ghosts deluded, l have a university degree and hope to go into cancer research. I have technical competence, though my belief in my abilities to do a PhD may prove delusional, it is as yet unproven that l am delusional for believing in ghosts.

Of course I’m pushing back, just as you’re pushing back against my claims. We each believe the other is mistaken, and we are pushing back on each other’s mistakes. And I hope we will continue!

In response to your point on commonality, I pointed to contradictions: different cultures see different things. People in cultures different from your own would reject your claims about jinn as applied to their own culture’s version of demons/spirits/ghosts/gods/etc. I agree with you that the commonality is noteworthy, and I agree it demands explanation. But when taken together with the contradictions, the best explanation is that every one of these reports was observed through fallible human faculties, passed through cultural filters to serve similar purposes. The commonality is the human doing the observing, not the the things being observed.

Your response to the contradictions is that jinn are mimics (set aside that not all cultures would endorse that claim for their local haunt). That strikes me as an epicycle – from “jinn exist” to “jinn exist and are mimics”. I’ll concede that the accusation is premature, and that your explanation only felt ad-hoc to me because I don’t know the folklore of jinn. But I don’t think I’m wrong to anticipate similar explanations if I keep offering contradictions: European ghosts respond to Christian symbols and prayers, Asian ghosts have Buddhist and Hindu responses, and jinn fear the Prophet. Do they also mimic local religious custom? Each elaboration on the hypothesis necessary to explain a way how the hypothesis doesn’t fit the evidence is what I mean by an ‘epicycle’.

A simpler hypothesis is that humans are fallible, our senses are fallible, our pattern-matching is fallible. And importantly, we’re fallible in regular, predictable ways, ways we’d expect given the selection pressures we face. When we test the hypothesis that demons/spirits/ghosts/gods/etc. exist, when we examine the evidence, we are required to expand the hypothesis to account for our failure to detect anything we’d expect from a simpler hypothesis. By contrast, when we test the hypothesis that it’s human fallibility, we find that we can induce the experiences.

I was confused by this, but looking back through the thread I think this was just a miscommunication. Retracing, I see this:

I took your claim that we can’t measure/log/compare/analyse ghost examples to be at odds with the idea of looking for correlations/commonalities across cultures. I’m not asking for a study (though I’m sure there have been many studies comparing folklore across cultures), I’m pointing out that what you’re trying to do with commonalities opens the possibility. These stories have objective elements, and they can be investigated objectively.

This is similar to a point I started to make but didn’t fully express regarding poltergeists: if these things have objectively observable effects in the world – whether the physical effect of throwing something across a room (or doing King Solomon’s work), or the stories told by people who believe they’ve experience them – if their effects can be objectively observed, they can be the subjects of objective inquiry.

Sure, Islam is an ecumenical religion and welcomes all comers. But that’s a departure from most earlier traditions, and folk descriptions of jinn pre-date Isalm.

You say: Of course I’m pushing back, just as you’re pushing back
I say: I said “mere pushback” as in, cavilling.

You say: In response to your point on commonality, I pointed to contradictions: different cultures see different things. People in cultures different from your own would reject your claims about jinn as applied to their own culture’s version of demons/spirits/ghosts/gods/etc. I agree with you that the commonality is noteworthy, and I agree it demands explanation.

I say: and that counters what you wre saying about disparity between cultures. Shapeshifting jinn biomimicking. I agree that the Founders in Star Treek Deep Space 9 do this also. I don’t believe in them, l got concrete evidence it was just a work of fiction. Moreover, my argument ends on the commonality between multiple narratives around the world. That is enough to shrug off the title of your thread - never disprove it, but just enough to contradict the positive assertion that there ARE (positive assertion) + ZERO (positive assertion) ghosts.

You said: But when taken together with the contradictions, the best explanation is that every one of these reports was observed through fallible human faculties, passed through cultural filters to serve similar purposes. The commonality is the human doing the observing, not the the things being observed.

I say: The basis of your saying that is that it must be so. These are ad hoc explanations, whereas my narrative is consistent. I’ll admit It is a logical fallacy to say the most consistent narrative has to be true, for example one day your workmates may play a colossal prank on you e.g. you receive a lotto cheque for $10million, then Darth Vader steals it from you, then a Colombian kingpin, l don’t know what he does, but you get the picture. The elegant narrative would be that you’ve lost your mind, whereas your narrative would be that all these things really did happen in a disjointed manner - this would be more true.

You say: Your response to the contradictions is that jinn are mimics (set aside that not all cultures would endorse that claim for their local haunt). That strikes me as an epicycle – from “jinn exist” to “jinn exist and are mimics”. I’ll concede that the accusation is premature, and that your explanation only felt ad-hoc to me because I don’t know the folklore of jinn. But I don’t think I’m wrong to anticipate similar explanations if I keep offering contradictions: European ghosts respond to Christian symbols and prayers, Asian ghosts have Buddhist and Hindu responses, and jinn fear the Prophet. Do they also mimic local religious custom? Each elaboration on the hypothesis necessary to explain a way how the hypothesis doesn’t fit the evidence is what I mean by an ‘epicycle’.

I say: my narrative has always been there. There are Jinn of different religions (l probably didn’t explain that, but at the time of King Solomon, some converted to Judaism, but most probably faked it, the so-called “Solomonic Magick” of today descends from what those Jinns gave out falsely in Solomon’s name, as the Qur’an tells us they gave out.

Also maybe God helps people in different ways, our religoin teaches that he loves to hear excuses, and so he may help people who are attacked by Jinn but who never heard of Islam or who only heard unfair things.

More literally in response to you though: Jinn may respond to any people that call them in the name of any religion. Sure. But as l explained: Any Jinn that approaches a human, is a Shaytaan, a Devil. The true believing jInn, aka the Moomins, keep out of our way. They are chaste and hide from us. So, a Jinn that responds to your call is a Shaytaan messing wih you, and so it doesn’t matter what your religion is - they’ll onboard you easy-peasy.

You say: A simpler hypothesis is that humans are fallible, our senses are fallible, our pattern-matching is fallible. And importantly, we’re fallible in regular, predictable ways, ways we’d expect given the selection pressures we face. When we test the hypothesis that demons/spirits/ghosts/gods/etc. exist, when we examine the evidence, we are required to expand the hypothesis to account for our failure to detect anything we’d expect from a simpler hypothesis. By contrast, when we test the hypothesis that it’s human fallibility, we find that we can induce the experiences.

I say: yet we seem to be fallible in common ways when it comes to Jinn and there’s a common narrative in my faith explaining it. Key to your theory is this: that you can induce the experience. I’d like to see that.

That’s partly why l mentioned some of my own experiences. Eg. the following:

  1. A handprint appearing on your neck - maybe it was sunburn but l’ve never had that before or since and it was localised and l don’t tan easily, as l already have a tan
  2. A fine meandering scratch - not an arc as if from brushing against something - on my back, above my right kidney, that caused my peritoneum to become inflamed over the next 48 hours, making me feel extremely unwell - happening in the same room (my former bedroom) as a slew of other unpleasant phenomena
  3. Me and my mother dreaming of each other on the same night, and when l woke up the next day, she phoned me a couple of hours later and l began to tell her about it and she stopped me speaking and just said “i know, i know”
  4. I dreamt of my mother again a few years later when l moved back home. I was in my own bedroom of course/ I saw her and felt love for her and l wept. The first thing she said when she saw me the next morning was “Do you ever dream about your mother? Because if you do it means you love her”
  5. etc. etc. it gets tiresome for you to read these examples no doubt but please: reproduce one.

You say: egarding poltergeists: if these things have objectively observable effects in the world – whether the physical effect of throwing something across a room (or doing King Solomon’s work), or the stories told by people who believe they’ve experience them – if their effects can be objectively observed, they can be the subjects of objective inquiry.

I say: Good point

You say: Sure, Islam is an ecumenical religion and welcomes all comers. But that’s a departure from most earlier traditions, and folk descriptions of jinn pre-date Isalm.

I say: the point was, we don’t see black and white skin and make Jinn stories about that, in fact we are taught to reject that prejudice.

So l think it turns on this:

  1. YOUR GOOD ARGUMENT: Poltergeists can get physical. So Jinn can get physical. In fact, biomimicry makes them physical. So we SHOULD be able to grab hold of one. Show me.
  2. MY ARGUMENT: The world’s narrratives have a core theme (from the POV of my faith’s teachings). Also: You cannot reproduce the Jinn experience yourself though, at will.

@Carleas I will leave the thread to you now as it’s too long for anybody to read and l can’t add anything and it’s your thread, l just wanted to bolster the arguments with a unified theory + my personal experiences.

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…and then there’s also ‘ghosting’, that modern mode of blanking others. :smile:

…some of us prefer to be ghosted. :smirk:

But Ec, really, to be haunted without being to explain by nothing but some kind of intelligently designed entity, where they know, of Meno’s knowledge and admittedly he knows it’s limits without and with in, that.

Where the heck it comes from

It’s a game , yes, for fun yes, a mind game thought up by a resourceful Mind, you,

That has been in and out of garbage cans where always strawberries field for ever and just on day today found out that it auto processes, it feeds back , the ghostly appearance of it ever so timidly hides away a jubilant world going about it’s business like there was no tomorrow?

Yes but we have no tomatoes and course, it processes IT as it were solid, participating mystically from whence? And that is hunting. The Haunted.

But philosophy is an enigmatic limitless shell, and if listened to, the see can be heard as if being there kozinski can, actually.

That’s how powerfully magnified can the little artist wannabe can draw those still.

Here.

Mon earth, then twofelt convention requires.

Sure some us prefer not to admit that their invisibility is not self contrived. ? but processed from far away a long time hence, perhaps a link to another star, that connects to a myriad of constellations…

And then why don’t I just feel that I can’t the reason I can’t be just thrown outa here like a piece of garbage?

It’s cause I really can not without herding the whole projectively enumerated project, that contests revisionary delusion by an imperceptible but tangible bit, and if I had thought of predetermining effects I wouldn’t have considered it if it was not the mystically participated resemblance of evolving families, toward the light

In absence or denial of which is tantamount of at least ridicule, but more than that much more
Much much much more.