Thoughts on the Afterlife, ghosts, and spirits.

[jaycee]

Originally Posted by fringed n fab

To me I feel she's proven herself to too many others that she's for real. And I don't say that to many "psychics". I don't think she needs to "prove" herself to anyone or accept someone elses money to take their "test". To me, believing in man and science is a BAD thing because man will lead you to believe many things (his way) if you're not careful. That goes for a lot of churches too. I appreciate everyone's viewpoints on this and this issue always leads one way or the other and is to be expected. No one's ever "right" or "wrong" about it. It's our personal beliefs and views and what we feel about this whole thing. And that's ok

Well, there is an objective reality out there, that we're a (tiny) part of, so theres always a right or wrong answer. The question is, how do we know we're right? Of course, it's a philosophical fallacy to say with certainty that you know you're right - e.g. the chair on which I'm sitting may not exist at all, because all my brain is doing is interpreting sense data like sight and feeling, which are fallible. If you're certain you can see your computer screen at the moment and know it exists, just (very!) briefly glance directly at the sun. You should see a colour patch for a while if you look at a white wall or close your eyes, that (almost certainly) doesn't really exist. So how do you know your monitor isn't in fact a very elaborate light trick? Of course, it could also be a hallucination, perhaps because your brain isn't getting all the sugar it needs (at least I think that's how hallucinations work). So, as confident as you are, you can't be certain!
So, how's that relevant here? Well, I'm a skeptic, and when I say I know there's not an afterlife, no ghosts and no spirits, I am actually saying that, given available evidence and our (i.e. scientists) current understanding of how the universe works, I find these phenomena both highly unlikely and contradictory to expectation, because of the nature of the current hallmarks of physics, Einstein's Gereral Relativity and Quantum Field Theory. I also subscribe to scientific naturalism, which is a pretty minimalistic philosophy - basically, the only things that exist are what the natural sciences say exist - which rules out paranormalism and supernatural causes. (Actually, what does it mean to have supernatural causes? If they're causes that physically exist, wouldn't that make them natural? And if not, then wouldn't they be non-existent?)
And another thing - science, like James Randi, demands a very high amount of evidence for a theory. Even when scientists have accepted that theory, they continue to put it under severe strain. How else would there be progress? After all, QED is so accurate that it's correct to one part in 10^12, a million million! It's like knowing the size of North America from coast to coast to the width of a human hair! And even then we're not satisfied - such is why the LHC was constructed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
I'll finish (I waffle a lot, don't I? ) with two quotes from Richard Dawkins:
"There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality."
"We should be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brain falls out. "
Both from "The Enemies of Reason - Slaves to Superstition"