Thoughts on the Afterlife, ghosts, and spirits.

[Zombie]

^^^^^

Well, see, I can get behind that. And I didn't think the thread was getting controversial or preachy, so I'm sorry if I made you feel that way.

Also, I admire your chutzpah (and your boots, if that's you in your sig pic).

I have experienced "odd" things before. One of my friends is someone that does believe in ghosts, spirits, the supernatural, etc, though her beliefs as regards deities, I've never been able to nail down exactly - and we've been together when some of those "odd" things happened.

The difference, though, I think, is in how we're wired. While she may experience the "odd" thing and automatically deduce it was somehow supernatural or spiritual or ghost-y or whatever, I'm busy trying to rule out every possible natural explanation I can before I go, "Well, huh."

And I have run into a few "Well, huh" moments where I cannot find a natural explanation to explain what happened. But to me, that doesn't mean there's no natural explanation at all - it just means maybe I'm not looking at it right or I can't see it yet. Maybe I will figure it out later, and maybe I won't. Either is fine with me.

I have long thought that perhaps some of us are wired to have the ability to believe in these things and some of us are not. I went through many years of my life thinking I was somehow broken or defective, because try as I might when I was at Mass or in CCD or youth group, I just didn't "get it." I thought everyone around me was somehow hearing that "small, still voice" and I was broken because I couldn't hear it, too. I thought God was mad at me. I couldn't figure out why everyone else could do this, but I couldn't - after all, I'm smart, I understand what they're telling me I need to do, I'm doing it...but it's not working. And I tried. Oh man, did I try. I tried everything I knew how. Heck, I can still recite the entire Mass in Latin off the top of my head. I was freakin' determined.

But no matter what I did, it didn't work. So I gave up on being Catholic and tried other things. I visited various Protestant churches, I hurt my head trying to talk to the Mormons that came to the door (apologies to any Mormons on the board, but the guys y'all sent to my neck of the woods had a hard time stringing a full sentence together ), I questioned the Jehovah's Witnesses relentlessly, I spent a summer living with pagans of various stripes, I pestered the Jewish folk I knew as much as they would tolerate (which wasn't much, fair enough, I don't blame 'em). I read everything I could get my hands on, and talked to everyone I could. And by the end of it all, I just realized that none of it was going to work for me. The only things I was truly able to examine and say, "Yes! I see that! I understand!" were things based on empirical evidence, things based in science.

So that's why, when someone says, "This person is psychic, see?" I say, "Well...why? They also said this and this and they were wrong, so couldn't it be this or this?" It's not because I want to pick a fight or rain on anyone's parade, it's because when I hear something like that, I want to hear everything about that - I want to know as much about it as I can. Perhaps, if I knew everything you know, I would also think it is so, but even if what you have to say is not enough to sway my opinion, I will at least know I did what I could to develop an informed opinion on the subject.