Joe got his ass whooped by a girl.
I bet he enjoyed it.

This is pretty much the yield I've gotten out of the years of using them.
What can one hope to decipher from "GUETZITYVGG". Fucking illiterate ghosts.

If only matter exists then matter holds the universe together, the logical positivist stand (Of which I am most certainly not).

If something outside of the realms of matter exists then it at least suggests that matter is not the be all and end all. There is something existing outside the physical: The metaphysical.

Just as matter is governed by the laws of physics, things outside of matter must be governed by the laws of metaphysics.

Except for the huge gaping problem at the start (BOOM), the laws of physics are self-sustaining, you don't need to invoke any cosmic force to explain them. They just are.

What of the Metaphysical?
What laws govern ghosts?
Doesn't the existence of ghosts presuppose Cartesian Dualism?
What the hell did all this come from and where is it going?

Most definitely, I take a Wittgensteinian stance on these sorts of matters now; that it is through the use of things in their contexts and not through the origin and 'hidden' meaning of things that we find their purpose.

All this is basically what we've been saying. What I was trying to say is that being a part of something, if the metaphysical is indeed a part of the universe, doesn't suggest that this metaphysical actually holds the universe together, as you put it. Being a part of something is, I think, quite different from having power or even any sort of influence over it.

As for the first question, I see no problem with Cartesian Dualism except:
1. It separates awareness/consciousness from the physical self (if my understanding is incorrect, I apologise).
2. How can awareness exist without thought or sensation? If you are self-aware, so to speak, that is supposing that you are capable of thought and sensation.
3. Thought is generated by the brain and sensation by the physical self.
4. Both the brain and the physical self are material things.

As for the second question, I really have no idea. :P

-*Walks into thread looking for ghost stories*
-*Discussion about the nature of god and the universe*
-*Walks right the fuck back out*

Liar. You're not walking.

He's right, ontological discussions are slightly out of place here. My bad.

No, please proceed, I was just joking. It's good to have some deep thought in here.

Who says the things we attribute to be spirits, angels and demons didn't evolve on some other plane with the natural flow of the universe?

I sometimes have what scientist call "Sleep Paralasis". Where the body is asleep, the mind is fully aware, but your still dreaming. Its cool because if I think of something while in it, it comes to life to its fullest possibilty. I thought of flying over my local park. It was amazing.

I have a couple of strange occurances to share...

I myself have never had anything related to ghosts which is a shame since that field interests me, but I do have a few dream related things.

The most major "Deja Vu" dream I had was when I was about 6 years old. I had a dream that a building near a school field was set on fire (I found out years later that it was my secondary school field). For some reason I vividly remember the dream and have done since. About 10-11 years after the dream I pick up the newspaper to find that the drama mobile classroom (which was located next to the field) was burned down by teenagers.

Most of them though are just random points in time not related to anything (although I have predicted some Birthday/Christmas presents :p) they used to take place a couple of weeks after the dream but now it seems to be over a longer period and don't happen as often.

I have also had a few Lucid dreams but they don't happen very often at all.

I really need to get some kind of dream journal started up, i've been meaning to since one of those "Deja Vu" dreams a year ago.

A year ago my brother got married and so I met a bunch of his spiritualist friends. He was quite horrified to be told that, in several of their opinions, I was far more psychic than even him. Sadly, this seems to be localised specifically to episodes of The Simpsons; whenever I think of an scene or a quote, within two weeks it will air on tv. Then again, 100% of all psychics incorrectly predicted the gender of my sister's firstborn so make of that what you will.


And to respond to various previous posts:
The latter. When Deja Vu occurs, you see something, start storing it in memory but then your brain farts briefly. You look at it again and think you're seeing it for the first time, but you've still got the memory there from mere seconds ago, so you think you must have dreamed it.

I challenge any common Deja Vu-er to write down their 'predictions' as they come. You will find that they never ever happen except at the moment of 'Woah'.

In response to everyone who believes they have seen a ghost, particularly in an old house, read this Wikipedia article on Infrasound. Infrasound are sound waves that are too low pitched for humans to hear. However, they can be felt and often cause feelings of unease, discomfort and cold. What's more, sounds of approximately 18Hz are at the resonant frequencies of the human eye, which can cause blotches or shapes in your vision that can easily be interpreted as ghosts.

This is a short and interesting case study that you might like to read. Also, it should be pointed out that infrasound is often caused in old buildings by the wind blowing through the eaves.

kinda happens to me........

I believe that most of the advertised "psychics" are fake, they're just looking to make some money, the real ones usually keep to themselves/hide it or are spread around through word of mouth.

Although I don't have much confidence in my ability...

I accept your challenge :D

In fact I had a dream a couple of weeks ago that might yet happen it was a bit different then usual though.

In my dream I was at home and started watching the news. The news showed a man pacing backwards and forwards with a gun near the park where I live with a crowd watching him. I then woke up and fell asleep again and had a similar dream. However this time I was walking past the scene, the same thing was going on but I could see that the guy seemed to be depressed/suicidal. I just walked past the crowd not getting involved.

If this dream does come true since the first one shows it on the news I should be able to prove it. If it doesn't it's just a blow to my pride.

Maybe I should create a thread based on any dreams I have from now on. What do you guys think?

Yeah, I get that and my boring, rational explanation is that they always show it on TV in production order, so after a few goes round, you start remembering which episodes aired at a similar time last time round.
Sorry to kill the dream :p

I see the idea of a link between omnipotence and impotence (if you can do anything, what is there to do? The ultimate bored child phenomena) but don't think it applies to the God I believe in. God is inspired to act through love. Sometimes that means doing nothing and sometimes that means doing anything.
In terms of your metaphysical holding the universe together, the Bible says all creation is held together by God. He didn't just 'wind up and let go' but he is still actively keeping the world running.
The human race is so ignorant. Think of all the things that you think 'I don't understand that, but I'm sure there are scientists somewhere do'. I would love to see a book of 'Things you think the human race knows that we actually don't' - I wanna buy that; it'd be fascinating! We don't know why gravity works. Why does the spinning Earth mean things stick to it? We don't know. 97% of the universe is 'missing'; our understanding of the universe says it should exist but we can't see it and we don't know what it's made from.

There is so much that we don't know, and so much we completely fail to understand, and I wonder if in 50, 100, 200 years we'll still be looking for answers. Which makes me think that some things simply can't be explained without a faith in the supernatural.

I don't like the idea of throwing god into the gaps to explain them, Splat. It doesn't sit well with me.

I think God filled a lot of the gaps long before we knew the gaps were there.
Though I see where you're coming from. But maybe the gaps are there because people won't use a belief in God to fill them. I mean why are we so quick to separate God from science?

Because Science is about what we can see, hear, touch, smell, poke, prod, piss on, or affect in some way.

I've yet to see someone piss on god.

Unless god is everywhere in which case he must smell like a hell of a lot of urine???

However when it comes down to it the foundation of science is theory/guesswork which is basically the same as religion. Science just changes the way we live physically (such as objects) instead of mentally (such as choices/actions). Of course there are exceptions.

Psychology is a science.

so does that mean u believe in god splat? (i do BTW since ye all know i am a muslim)
and something i forgot to add , but it wasn't really that much of a sleep disorder , is that i talk and answer ppl in my sleep , i think it's genetic since it happens to a lot of ppl in my family , one of them actually walks while sleeping and it's hilarious he even got up one night and pulled his younger sister's cover off her...lol

an old relative of mine used to work as a Home Help, visiting the elderly in their homes so they wouldn't have to move to an old peoples home. she visited one bloke, who was verging on the edge of senility, and he decided to try and give her something he 'wanted to get rid of'. she didn't even look at what it was and declined anyway, as she had to visit another house.

set her motorbike up, grabbed her back bag and got onto the road. came up to traffic lights, which were green, and sped across, almost getting hit my a lorry that decided to run a red light across the road. she braked and slid, and was helped by motorists.

only having a few scratches and with the lorry speeding off anyway, she continued to the next job, shaken up. got there, opened her bag and there was a fucking Ouija board in there. the old man that had slipped it into her bag died the next day.

that's what i was told. make of it what you will. i just think its an interesting story.

Oh, so you're not an Idealist. My bad, I assumed etc etc. But my point was that at the moment the universe is held together by matter, not any stuff and if there does exist other stuff then matter (apparently) can't act on it whilst the other stuff can act on matter. Like The Force in Star Wars I suppose,

I am very dissatisfied with psychology's answer to explain away Dualism, it doesn't make the arguments for Dualism any better but it just feels like something is missing.

Always a possibility, but...

A wizard/dragon/Big Bang/Mephistopheles/GN Particles did it.


I've just read my last post and I apologize, I was very tired and my argument meandered without really going anywhere.

ALSO on the original topic:

Thats true, I completly forgot about psychology (some how).

What I meant was that Religion has a conscious being controlling the universe while science believes the universe is run by automatic processes and coincidence (or something like that). Shove those aside and you have similar things; they're just using their own way to explain the universe.

I hope that came out right.

MA's story was interesting, that lorry driver seems completly immature. Ouija boards seem to be quite interesting objects.

what i know , is that , a human is made of 3 parts , the soul which keeps that body alive (and no it can't be turned into a ghost) , A self which is contains emotions we feel and also contains our conciousness (i know i misspelled) , and finally the physical body.
from an islamic point of view , when anything dies it's soul goes to god and waits until judgment day to be judged on (how time feels depends on karma and final destiny also depends on karma) , so basically , when someone has enough bad karma , devils can then hardly appear to them in the forms of ppl who are dead , so that they may hate god or disbelief in him even more.
oh come on , look around , can coincidence create such a beautiful universe with such detail? also , unlike most ppl think , religion (or at least my religion) encourages science and learning even if it means instead of worshipping , someone at the time of the prophet Mohamed , called Omar Ibn Al-Khatabb , saw a man sitting in a mosque everyday , he always finds him there , he then talked to him , saying that god loves the worker and the learner who worship more than just a worshiper.
knowledge is only bad for religion when in certain fields , like the weapons of mass destruction , instead normal weapons used by normal soldiers in good deeds is good for religion , as long as it's not used on innocent ppl.

I don't have much faith in Psychology to solve the more abstract problems about the universe, only to deal with 'good enough' statements for interpersonal situations and how our mind works in relation to them. Of course I'd love to be proved wrong. I do want to be a psychologist after all.
It's a fair bit more complex than that, especially with these 'coincidences'. If there is an infinite number of universes then the vast vast majority of them cannot support any kind of life, so it's not by coincidence that we're here, it's by necessity. Because we simply couldn't be anywhere else.

EDIT: Not all religions believe in a conscious being controlling the universe, some believe in avatars of nature, nature itself or the whole universe as God.

My opinion of Ouija boards is the same as my opinion about tarot cards, that is, that you see only what you want to see.

EDIT 2:
That's not exactly what I mean, what I mean is closer to how the character of Dr. Manhattan is realized in Watchmen, that is that he is rendered absolutely inert and powerless by his own power. The power to change anything and the knowledge that goes with it means that you cannot in fact change anything. God cannot act because he already has, he is not a free will, he cannot make choices, he is, in fact, a force of nature.

You can't explain something by believing in something. By doing that you just come up with your own little story for it, not an actual feasible explanation.

Just because we don't understand something doesn't mean we should try to make something up to cover the gap. We don't understand how the universe works. Sure we've identified a lot of things, theorized about the stuff we found but we have no clue how it all goes together.

Coming along and saying: "You don't understand that, so it must be god." is what they did 2000 years ago when the bible was first written. There was a sky, a sun, a moon, light, darkness, good and evil and people had no idea where all those things came from, how they worked or how they could be manipulated.

Today we know that the sky is not the limit and that there is a whole universe behind that sky. We know the sun isn't a magical source of light, it's a very bright star/planet just like our own. Darkness is the absence of light and good and evil are simply a person's nature, possibly in someone's genes.

I don't understand why you would want to patch up a gap in our knowledge with god. Is it not much better to say; "we do not understand this but we are going to find out."? At least that way we keep discovering new things. Placing god in every gap we don't understand will keep us stationary and dumb, because we assume we already have an explanation for everything. It's not the way to go.

The video actually makes some very good points in my opinion.

no , god is one and can infact do any and everything , he isn't limited by anything including physics which he created and the knowledge which he gave us and our bodies , our minds , all of those he created for us and he loves us, we aren't he is slaves , we worship him willingly , and the proof is that if we were really slaves , do u think that he would have gave us emotions or will or even senses?

I don't think this is the thread for that sort of statement, and I really don't want to get into an argument about that.

Who said anything about slaves in this topic? But if you insist.

You say you're not slaves? Well define a slave. A slave is someone who is forced into a particular activity in fear of what will happen to them if they don't follow the rules or do their job correctly.

Here's what the bible says in a nutshell: You will love god and follow his rules. If you turn your back on god, worship another god and/or break the rules set out by your god, that's your own choice (free will) but non the less you will burn and be tortured in hell for ever and ever, until the end of time.

If that's not slavery, I don't know what is.

EDIT: And I agree with WoF. This thread is not meant for another religious discussion so I'll just leave it at this.

Um, so what you're saying is God can't make choices because he already made choices? :fuzconf:

I'm a Christian :D

The Christian perspective is that we each have two parts, the body and the soul. The body is a part of the world; the soul is immortal and distinct from the world.
Christian view of the afterlife is that we are all inherently 'unclean'; from conception we're cut off from God, because of what mankind as a whole has done against him, and what we will do against him as soon as we're old enough to make our own decisions.
We can never make ourselves good enough for God. We can do good things, but we'll always mess up and we can never be good enough to win our way back to God.
Because we're rubbish, we'll have to face punishment, which will be total separation from God, cut off from him and from every good experience he gives (which is every good experience). We've got to be punished for what we've done; if someone robbed your house, you would want the thief to be punished.
God is our judge because it's his standards we have to live to. But he doesn't want to punish us because he loves us, so he sent Jesus and punished him instead. Jesus and God are the same being in a complicated way, so he effectively punished himself for what we do wrong. So if a person accepts that God is God, even though he's still going to do the things we're not supposed to do because we can't help it, he will take away our punishment and let us be with him forever (which is what Heaven basically is; being with God).


EDIT:
Havoc, I'm not saying that we shouldn't look for answers. I'm saying maybe God really is the answer to some of the questions.

So what the Bible says in a nutshell is:

You have messed up following God's rules and so deserve punishment.
God loves you so he doesn't want that, even though it's fair.
God let himself be punished instead of you.
If you accept that God is God, he will free you from the punishment you deserve.

Anyway, you're right. This isn't a topic of religion and those never end well here, so...

samething in qura'an except , there is no end of time and what u said , that is choice not slavery.

as a muslim , i don't believe in the original sin , cause it's not fair and it's not ideal , each of us get punished or reward depending on ourselves , EX:- if someone was a very good person and suddenly he got mental illness and became insane and he began killing ppl , he will be judged on due to the last time he was totally aware of what he was doing.

I am a slave to God, but not through fear. Because I'd rather be a slave in a palace than king of a wasteland. It's my choice, not one I was manipulated into. I know some Christians will try and use fear to manipulate people to convert but this couldn't be further from what God wants.

Kind of. If he can't make choices he has no choices to make.

All he can do is well... be. I've heard contemporary scientists (Richard Dawkins is a huge offender) refer to nature the same way that theologians and religious figures refer to God. I think that if God does exist these two things are one and the same and with our limited knowledge about the part of the universe not controlled by what we can see and percieve as matter I think it's more than sufficient to use the word 'God' as a catch-all term for all of it, until we can differentiate between what everything is.

That's not to say we can ascribe any attibutes at all to this, just that it exists and it's the 'God' in everything.

THIS IS OF COURSE ONLY APPLICABLE IF THE METAPHYSICAL EXISTS WHICH I CANNOT SAY WITH ANY CERTAINTY AT ALL IF IT DOES OR NOT SO I WILL REMAIN SKEPTICAL OF IT.

The difference between God and a force of nature is that nature would be impersonal. God actually cares to people. He loves us, wants to be with us. And he is active in the universe. The Bible constantly shows him as active before Jesus came, and Jesus coming itself as an act of God.
The point I'm trying to make is God doesn't just observe, but he gets involved. He does talk to people, and listens.

Again, an argument I don't want to get into. You keep your belief in your heart and I'll ruthlessly challenge mine in mine. The end result in our conduct to others and the world is largely the same regardless.

The main problem I have with life theories is infinity.
Infinity has the annoying habit of destroying itself for example: "Can god create a stone he cannot lift?" if the answer is yes he doesn't have infinite power, if the answer is no he doesn't have infinite power.

But a lot of man made concepts are exactly the same.
I think religion itself is a man made concept born from curiosity and so will stay with us until that curiosity is filled which given the thousands of years it's taken us to get this far I won't hold my breath.

I myself do not believe in God or anything else of that kind, I believe in finding things out for myself and when I die i'll see if there's a God or not. I much prefer to find out for myself then go by what someone else tells me (that includes science, not just religion). This view is within reason of course, i'm not going to run into a giant rotating saw to see if it kills me.

My personal Philosophy is:
"if I spend my life wondering about death, i'll spend my death wondering about life"

You fuckers have the conversations that I may actually be interested when I'm away. Stupid fuckers, all of you.

Anyway, when I was a child I used to see a man walk in my bedroom door, stand in the corner, and stare at me. Sometimes there would be more than one, and some of them would do more than just stand there. There was one in particular who would all of a sudden start walking towards my bed. If I shut my eyes, and then opened them again it would be back where it started, but it would always start walking towards me again. I saw these things every night. Every single fucking night for years. If I went into my parents bedroom they would follow me in there. I did not sleep much as a child.

Of course, it's all bullshit. It was the product of the over-active imagination of a very lonely and terrified little boy. This is the gift that the church gave to me. In the process of stealing my childhood by convincing my mother that I should be shut away from the world to keep me from it's evils and temptations, it also convinced my young mind that supernatural forces wanted to destroy me. I will never forgive these people for their irresponsible behavior, and I intend to dance on their fucking graves some day.

Edit: It's nice that some of you are able to have faith. I get that it makes life easier to believe that there is a loving god waiting for you after death. But none of you live in the world that you believe in, not even you Splat. You like the stories, and you like the benefits, but you have never had to live the super-fundamentalist lifestyle, and I'm going to say something that most you will no doubt disagree with: If you aren't a fundamentalist, you aren't a Christian. You don't get to temper ancient texts with modern wisdom. IF MODERN WISDOM CHANGES YOUR FAITH THEN YOUR FAITH WAS INHERENTLY WRONG TO BEGIN WITH. Also, it isn't fair. It isn't fair that I had to live through what I did, and you don't. I know that's a stupid and shit argument, but I don't care. It isn't fucking fair.

You all look at Westboro Baptist Church and have a good laugh. But I lived that shit. It isn't funny to me. There is very little difference between the church that I spent every day of my childhood in and those people. I can be quite callous, but my heart fucking breaks for those children.

dancing isn't enough , urinate on their graves and put dildos all over them!!!:fuzmad:

Good thinking.

I saw a "Shadow figure" Outside my window before. My Dad was with me and he could see it too. At first we decided it was some joker in the front garden, but upon searching we found nothing; the road was empty, no people, no cars (This was very late at night mind you) and nobody was in the garden. I went back in, and the figure was still there.

Consider this thread re - railed.