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What I mean is: Why would you think after centuries of stories - that they absolutely do not exist
not even a maybe ? You could stop here or read on.
Why I have a hard time understanding is: because in this entire Universe our little peanut brain
is like the size of a molecule in a grain of sand.
To think our logic, our intellect could know something absolutely could not exist is
the height of folly or arrogance....ie, thinking our pea brain knows
much at all, thus, limiting possibilities.
(That's why i respect agnostics more than atheists...because there is an openness....that's all,
a humility that
'Hey, maybe there is a Creator of some sort. But, I want to see It myself.')
I do believe seeing is believing.
Why not say, "Hey, I've never seen one, but maybe there are spirits that come around..."?
Is it because you hold your personal logic in such high esteem?
Is it because a spirit can't be seen under a microscope? So that is your criteria,
that, 'The unseen must be seen, darnnit? Nothing not seen does not exist. Period.'?
Thanks for answering or explaining your reasons- hopefully without insults.
Most people who disbelieve are scared of things they dont understand so they deny them.....
Anyone saying for sure there are no spirits is bring very ignorant..... All they can really say is they are not sure.. If they say FOR SURE THERE ARE NOT they are basically saying they can explain things and they really cant!! (I dont think any of us can)
Because those that do believe aren't saying, "I'm humble enough to know I can't know everything so I'll at least allow for the possibility that they (or XXXXX) exist."
They are affirming that they exist and making decisions accordingly.
I won't rule out aliens existing but that doesn't translate into making life choices that assume their existence.
I think you have a misunderstanding of what an atheist is. An atheist is someone that lacks a belief in a deity, it's a statement about "belief." An agnostic is someone who says we can have no possible knowledge about something supernatural, it's a statement about "knowledge", not belief.
I am an atheist because I lack belief in any deity. I don't know if we could possibly know something about the supernatural. I haven't seen a way we could know something about the supernatural, but I stop short of saying we could never know something about the supernatural, so I don't call myself an agnostic. The length of time something is believed has no impact on whether it is correct or not. Just because Aesop's Fables are older doesn't make them any more true than Grimms' Fairy Tales.
Seeing something is not the basis for believing that something exists, otherwise I wouldn't believe in the wind since I can't "see" it. I don't believe in dragons or unicorns because of the lack of credible evidence. However, I can't say that I know for certain that dragons never existed. Maybe dragons came from outer space and went back to their home planet when they died, thereby leaving no evidence of their existence. I guess that's possible. I'm not convinced that it's true, but I'm not in any position to demonstrate that it's false.
With all knowledge, there is a sliding scale of proof/credibility. The bigger the claim, the more proof is generally needed. If you told me you owned a dog, I wouldn't need much proof, maybe a picture of you with the dog. From my experience in the world, it's not uncommon for people to own dogs. If you told me you knew how to fly like superman and showed me a picture of you with a cape on, I might need more proof to believe it. I wouldn't be able to prove that you didn't know how to fly like superman based on your picture.
The claim that spirits exist would need sufficient evidence to warrant such a belief. So far there seems to be a significant lack of that evidence.
What I mean is: Why would you think after centuries of stories - that they absolutely do not exist
not even a maybe ? You could stop here or read on.
Why I have a hard time understanding is: because in this entire Universe our little peanut brain
is like the size of a molecule in a grain of sand.
To think our logic, our intellect could know something absolutely could not exist is
the height of folly or arrogance....ie, thinking our pea brain knows
much at all, thus, limiting possibilities.
(That's why i respect agnostics more than atheists...because there is an openness....that's all,
a humility that
'Hey, maybe there is a Creator of some sort. But, I want to see It myself.')
I do believe seeing is believing.
Why not say, "Hey, I've never seen one, but maybe there are spirits that come around..."?
Is it because you hold your personal logic in such high esteem?
Is it because a spirit can't be seen under a microscope? So that is your criteria,
that, 'The unseen must be seen, darnnit? Nothing not seen does not exist. Period.'?
Thanks for answering or explaining your reasons- hopefully without insults.
I was my father’s favorite child. After his death, nothing. One dream a few years later, like a horror movie. My father wouldn’t scare the hell out of me. My mother died in 2010. Once again nothing. No feeling of a presence, no signs, nothing.
My husband died last year, nothing. He loved me more than life itself, with his diagnosis he didn’t care about himself, he only worried about me. If he could he come back, he would. Nothing.
I spent a great deal of time looking up my ancestry, including going to the cemeteries where my ancestors were buried to see their graves. And to leave a token for them. A flower, a stone, something. Nobody’s ever come back to say thanks, or answer my questions that I got, because I got a lot of them.
And I love ghosts. Out of all the paranormal phenomena you can think of, ghosts seem to me as if they would be real. They make sense to me. It makes sense when you hear the story of Catherine Howard running down that hallway to get to the king to beg for her life. It’s an imprint — something so traumatic that it stuck there like a film. And it makes sense that sometimes when something awful happens or something really good happens the spirit wants to stay in that area for whatever reason.
But I don’t think it’s real. I just want to believe. It’s comforting to think when I get emotional my husband is there with his arms around me telling to get over myself. That would be so him.
It could be an ability that I don’t have. I have a very intelligent street-smart kind of brother-in-law who can’t go some places because of what he feels. He’s very uncomfortable — someone is there. I don’t doubt him. But my sister who’s with him doesn’t feel this. It’s just a restaurant, or a comedy club, or a theater. And they live in an area that was both heavily impacted by the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.
Do you believe in unicorns, too? Lots of stories about them.
Thing is, stories are often either completely or substantially wrong.
I used to have a book about fantastic animals. One of my favorites was the Vegetable Lamb. This little creature grew on a plant, and its wool was harvested and spun into cloth. We call it cotton now, and know it's not an animal.
Somebody started with a fact (cotton plants), and imagined it into a myth. That could be true with many "unproven" concepts like ghosts and vampires.
You say
" i respect agnostics more than atheists...because there is an openness....that's all,
a humility that
'Hey, maybe there is a Creator of some sort. But, I want to see It myself.')
I do believe seeing is believing."
Do you respect agnostics more than, for instance, fundamentalists, who have no openess?
If you believe seeing is believing, have you seen spirits? Or god?
What I mean is: Why would you think after centuries of stories - that they absolutely do not exist
not even a maybe ? You could stop here or read on.
Why I have a hard time understanding is: because in this entire Universe our little peanut brain
is like the size of a molecule in a grain of sand.
To think our logic, our intellect could know something absolutely could not exist is
the height of folly or arrogance....ie, thinking our pea brain knows
much at all, thus, limiting possibilities.
(That's why i respect agnostics more than atheists...because there is an openness....that's all,
a humility that
'Hey, maybe there is a Creator of some sort. But, I want to see It myself.')
I do believe seeing is believing.
Why not say, "Hey, I've never seen one, but maybe there are spirits that come around..."?
Is it because you hold your personal logic in such high esteem?
Is it because a spirit can't be seen under a microscope? So that is your criteria,
that, 'The unseen must be seen, darnnit? Nothing not seen does not exist. Period.'?
Thanks for answering or explaining your reasons- hopefully without insults.
You insult atheists, and then ask for no insults.
Part I
People once believed the earth was flat because, from their limited perspective, they couldn't see the curvature of the earth. Centuries of belief don't make a thing true.
Part II
You're asking others to disprove your unfalsifiable claim instead of giving proof for your claim. Carl Sagan came up with an analogy that explains why the burden of proof is up to the person making the claim, called "The Dragon in My Garage". This is the final part:
Quote:
... Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.
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Solly says — Be nice!
