Why Any Thinking Person Does Not Believe In Ghosts

Why Any Thinking Person Does Not Believe In Ghosts

So many questions, so little time. Whether it be the physical impossibilities, logical conundrums or the questionable underlying character of ghosts, the concept never ceases to anger me. Nor when somebody declares their unrelenting faith in the existence of such beings do I ever cease to drop my jaw open, let my tongue slop out on the floor and start rolling around fitting in a state of incredulousness.

Not a single piece of hard evidence has ever been put forth by these ghost hunting, fanny flapping double-douches which even remotely takes the intellectual or scientific world by the scruff of the neck, but still these snot nosed buffoons persist in their quest to ‘find ghosts’. What IS a ghost? It is so broadly defined that I wouldn’t know what to look for anyway. Are they shadowy figures? Are they invisible, annoying poltergeists? Are they spirits? Or are they just hostile, house bound shits? Supposed ‘Ghost hunters’ may well have the answers to these questions if 1) what they are looking for is actually a thing, and if 2) they if the hunters in question were mentally stable. A frequent endeavour of these numskulls is to use ‘scientific tools’ to measure the presence of ghosts. Hydrometers, thermal scanners, electromagnetic sensors and ion detectors are all available for a few hundred pounds a piece to detect the presence of the ghastly things, although sadly these people also often fail to detect any of their own brain activity with these pricey trinkets. The dubious presence of ghosts in the world becomes less dubious when you have any basic science under your belt. Around the time in your education when you stop believing that the stork could carry a huge basket across the sky is when you should have dismissed ghosts. In fact, the dismissal of ghosts as a real thing occurs so early on in an infant’s education, that there are reports of individuals ceasing to credit the idea whilst still developing in their mother’s uterus.

Now, let’s grant, for a moment, that there is some excellent evidence available for the existence of ghosts, and it is easily testable. I have a couple of queries I’d like to investigate with these ghouly sinister air-twats. Why are they making it so hard for us? And why do they only want to scare us? For example, there have been very few sightings of former partners coming back to visit their loved ones to have some raunchy love making, or deceased intellectuals providing the cognizant amongst us with some information about the parallel existence in which they live. ‘It’s a bit weird to keep falling through the floor when I forget to be on it’ would probably do. How can they simultaneously float through physical objects, not affecting them and also throw stuff around the room to scare people? Perhaps ghosts do exist, but every time they try and slam a door to scare the occupants of any given house, they realise that their hand goes straight through. What an odd, frequently bypassed contradiction!

Many ghosts, nincompoops believe, are amongst us only as a means of avenging their own death. Cool. Tell me who did it then. Or better yet, go straight to the police and appear in a courtroom. Nice, case solved. Eeer hold on, why are you only appearing to the mentally insane and uneducated? Weird. Why do ghosts wear clothes? Are there children about? I guess inanimate objects have souls too, then? Do people who are dissolved in acid appear to us? In what form; do they appear to us as rain?

The following answers are taking from Yahoo Answers to the question “If ghosts are real, why hasn’t everybody seen them?” I have offered my comments below them as a means of analysis.

“well not everyone can. they mostly like to bother sensitive people. sensitive people have more of a chance to feel their presence, see or hear them, easier to scare. i had two follow me from my haunted farm house and i was easy to scare. but they never bother my brother because he doesn’t take them seriously(makes jokes, but he knows they are real) they even said that to him haha. but just because some people haven’t seen spirits before, doesn’t mean that those other people are wrong.”

Yeah – it doesn’t mean they are wrong, it just means that they are almost definitely talking absolute tosh. The incoherent gobbledegook spluttered immediately before can confirm to us that it is indeed tosh.

This next one is posted by ‘GOD’, who as we all know frequently likes to communicate to his disciples through Yahoo! answers.

[i][u][b]Ghost, spirits, demons, daemons(WILD DIVINE SPIRITS), and cestial beings are real.

They are just on a HIGHER-VIBRATION, and are on different planes of existence.

Just you couldn’t see them, doesn’t mean anyone else can…

In other words, just cuz you can’t wipe your own azz, doesn’t mean everyone can’t wipe their own azz as well.

Don’t let your limitations be the limitations of others.[/b][/u][/i]

Jesus Christ. JESUS CHRIST. This cries ‘bat shit thick’ on a whole new level. The author of this profundity is probably on a lower vibration level to the rest of us though, to be entirely fair to GOD. Although if they are on different planes of existence, why can they enter our ‘plane’…a bit, but we can’t enter theirs? Ooooh, life’s big mysterious questions!

yes ghost are very real. if you dont believe it then they wont communicate with you. but the people that investigate it the ghost know and they will show them self of make movements.
ive been through many paranormic times myself.
go to the manly quarantine station of a night time, once youve been there your sure to poo your self.
me n my partner stayed. its a good experience. but never be nasty to the spirits as most of them mean no harm.

This one is almost entirely unreadable, but I get the point. If you don’t believe it they won’t communicate with you, the ‘paranormic’ beings won’t appear (the reasons for which are unexplained). Santa adopts the same childish stubbornness too, for some reason. As does the wheelbarrow carrying anal goblin. Although you probably won’t have heard of that one because nobody believes in it so it never appears to anyone ever.

I seen them when im small, i saw the duplicate of my mum, then i saw α hand coming out frm the wall. Then when i was riding α bike, i saw α lady jogging then i blink. She disapeared and once when i saw my maid laughing, my other maid could hear her too, then she DISAPEARED. ( Throught the thin air ?!)

I can’t dignify this with an actual critique, because it was ostensibly written by either a wild boar or a table.

I do kind of wonder why Cheegster is so concerned about belief in ghosts.
I mean, I haven’t read his post but I’m sure I agree with the majority of it.
But I just don’t see the relevance of the group of people who believe in ghosts.

They’re not ridiculously large in number.
They don’t seem to be affected politically by the belief.
They don’t tend to be very dickish about it, suggesting that other people deserve to suffer for believing differently.

So, like, I totally agree that believing in Ghosts is indicative of some epistemological failure, and in I do agree that correcting such failures can be worthwhile, but it just seems like the target here is too small to be very effective in the process of eliminating bad epistemology.

I could be wrong about this, but I’d think that if we’re going to fight bad epistemology, religion is a better target.

And, as a supplementary note, ironic as this may be given my rudeness on the forums (which I do want to remedy, and I try sometimes, sometimes I forget and say mean things), I think it’s worth pointing out that you’re not going to help someone realize their epistemology is bad by suggesting that they don’t think.

cheeg, Why do you even think about it? why let people’s beliefs get under your skin. People believe in things. Unless they put a real gun to your head, smile and say Okey Dokey. Beliefs fulfill needs. I have some odd experiences myself. I should have died quite a few times. Something did not let me die under some very deadly circumstances… Ghosts? No I just ain’t that special. All I can say is something needed me to live despite genetics and general stupidity.
I did hear my nephew and grandmother die while I slept. Never figured those two unrelated things out. I figure maybe lucky guess in a dream That an infant and a healthy lady die within 24 hours of a dream about their deaths. It all just mumbo jumbo crap, no possible scientific reason at all. Energy is bogus knowledge.

Hahaha, classic.

Flannel Jesus and Kriswest, your posts both seem to have a similar queston attached so I’ll attempt to answer both of you simultaneously.

To be honest I thought I posted this in the Rant House, and it turns out I accidentally posted it in both sub forums. Anyway…

Why do I bother? Well, the same reason I would bother falsifying any other paranormal fraudery. Not because I have any personal score to settle, as it is as you quite rightly point out pretty harmless (besides the odd person who tries to make some cash out of it). But because it gets the ball rolling on people thinking skeptically (or people actually thnking in general) about things which are more harmful, like the Abrahamic religions in particular and Psychics and such.

So yeah, it’s an easy target, which is why I so confidently applied humour to it, and why it took such a short time to write. But people laugh off concepts like Santa and fairies but on the other end of the spectrum take things like scripture and astrology very very seriously. Ghosts is a sort of middle ground, a starting point.

Also, the rant came initially from a debate with my housemate, and I reprinted it here. Hope that answers some stuff!