I don't believe in ghosts, but my girlfriend, my director, and my best friend all do, not to mention lots of other people I've met. I wondered how many escapists do and why on earth they would. Here's my position on it:
I don't believe in ghosts for the same reason I don't believe in any Gods. There's little or no reliable evidence for most claims about them and it's hard to pin down what they are supposed to be in the first place. Definitions of ghosts usually revolve around vague concepts of "energy" and generally necessitate the existence of an equally vague concept of a "soul," all of which usually creates more questions than they answer. "Energy" is much better described as a measurement of work potential than a hovering ball of tangible light, but more has been said on this elsewhere [http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4002]. The concept of a soul requires vast quantities of information to be stored on some kind of intangible memory which has no apparent mechanism for recording it.
When these concepts start working together to produce specters, EVPs, and other "ghostly" phenomena, even more problems arise. For instance, how does this "energy" cause mysterious voices to show up on electronic recordings exactly? Furthermore, if the "energy" is directed by the "soul", how did the soul figure out how to do it? Actually, why is it that the message is always vague, short, and quiet or indistinct? Invariably, the answer is in the "energy," specifically how much of it there is to go around, in this case. But since we don't even seem to understand what this energy is, let alone where the ghosts get it, and therefore can't create an experiment to test the notion, the idea that there isn't enough of it is purely speculative. In fact, ghosts are notorious for doing all sorts of things that make no sense and are completely inconsistent with one another.
So if you believe in ghosts, I would like to first know how you define them. Then what makes you think they're real? If you have a non-anecdotal reason, I would be especially interested in that. On the other hand, I do love a good ghost story.
I don't believe in ghosts for the same reason I don't believe in any Gods. There's little or no reliable evidence for most claims about them and it's hard to pin down what they are supposed to be in the first place. Definitions of ghosts usually revolve around vague concepts of "energy" and generally necessitate the existence of an equally vague concept of a "soul," all of which usually creates more questions than they answer. "Energy" is much better described as a measurement of work potential than a hovering ball of tangible light, but more has been said on this elsewhere [http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4002]. The concept of a soul requires vast quantities of information to be stored on some kind of intangible memory which has no apparent mechanism for recording it.
When these concepts start working together to produce specters, EVPs, and other "ghostly" phenomena, even more problems arise. For instance, how does this "energy" cause mysterious voices to show up on electronic recordings exactly? Furthermore, if the "energy" is directed by the "soul", how did the soul figure out how to do it? Actually, why is it that the message is always vague, short, and quiet or indistinct? Invariably, the answer is in the "energy," specifically how much of it there is to go around, in this case. But since we don't even seem to understand what this energy is, let alone where the ghosts get it, and therefore can't create an experiment to test the notion, the idea that there isn't enough of it is purely speculative. In fact, ghosts are notorious for doing all sorts of things that make no sense and are completely inconsistent with one another.
So if you believe in ghosts, I would like to first know how you define them. Then what makes you think they're real? If you have a non-anecdotal reason, I would be especially interested in that. On the other hand, I do love a good ghost story.
EDIT: Please redirect yourself to the other thread about this mentioned in the first post...
