Quote:
Originally Posted by steffan
I was just wondering about what defines an athiest
|
Of course atheists can believe in ghosts. I do. When I was assigned to TRADOC Headquarters I saw a lot of ghosts and ghostly things. I was working with a CSM one night preparing for a financial audit and in his office a light came on the phone. It was the old black rotary dial phones that had the push-buttons for different lines. That was an internal line that originates from a sole office. You can't call in or out of the building on that line. Since it was about 10:30 pm and we were the only two people in the building, no one should be on that line. He picked up the receiver and we could hear voices talking. They ignored him as he tried to interrupt their conversation. He went ahead to walk down to that office while I called the MPs, and when I got there, he was white as a sheet, shaking, sweating. He's a Korean War POW and did 2 tours in Vietnam. There was no one in the room, but it was cold and had a staticky feel to it. I picked up the receiver and could voices and threw it down.
We had to unlock the doors to let the MPs in. There's a few million in cash and lots of classified documents in the building. We all searched the whole building and didn't find anything, except the vault door open, but the gate to the vault area locked. We went back to the the keys to the vault-area gate because they're kept in a special key control box, and when we returned, the vault door was closed and locked. That door weighed 25 tons. Can't blame air, because the basement and sub-basement didn't have a HVAC system. Even if you could claim air blew a 25 ton vault door shut, you can't explain how the lever was pulled down to lock the vault.
Anyway, I saw a lot of wierd stuff like that. A general officer who later became the Army Chief of Staff, and then later was appointed as Joint Chief of Staff told me once that he was walking with another general officer across the parade field accompanied by their wives, and they all four saw what they thought was Edgar Allen Poe sitting on a wooden bench talking to a woman. As they approached the bench, Poe and the woman disappeared (Poe was a lieutenant in the Engineer Corps and stationed their for some time).
I had no reason to doubt him, and I later spoke separately with the other general officer out of curiosity about it and he related the same story.
The phenomenon could probably be explained if someone were to undertake a serious scientific study. There are many things we don't understand. Ghostly things may be the result of electromagnetic activity, or perhaps time warps or bends or interfaces with other time periods and the cause may be related to electromagnetism or something else entirely, and we know very little about electromagnetism or time (or space or space-time).
If ghosts were proven to exist, it would not be proof of a god-thing, or proof of an after-life. In fact, it would actually discredit both.