Poll
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Question: |
Which of the following (if any) do you believe in?
UFOs/Alien visitations |
38 (23.3%) |
Ghosts |
26 (16%) |
Telepathy/Telekinesis |
17 (10.4%) |
Bigfoot/Yeti |
10 (6.1%) |
Demons/Exorcisms |
12 (7.4%) |
Chupacabra/Nessie/other Cryptids |
9 (5.5%) |
Mediums/communications with the dead (including EVP) |
8 (4.9%) |
Other (explain) |
43 (26.4%) |
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Total Voters: 87 |
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Pages: 1 ... 7 8 [9]
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Author
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Topic: What are your paranormal beliefs? (Read 62044 times)
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Amarr HM
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3066
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Spirits of aborted babies? Thats the second time I read it in this thread...
Thought I'd add a bit of weight - in a lot of cases the abortions would, lead to the death of the mother. During the period they were said to being performed (1940-60) it was punishable by death. This would mean it's likely the dead were buried on-site as to not raise alarm. Un-wedded mothers were treated abysmally due to the Catholic stranglehold in Ireland, see Bon Secours and the Tuam mass graves.
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I'm going to escape, come back, wipe this place off the face of the Earth, obliterate it and you with it.
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bhodi
Moderator
Posts: 6817
No lie.
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8 year ago me: I have no faith and little belief. That's my explanation.
Old me? You're still right. People are dumb and believe what they want to believe. Human senses can't be trusted Everything I've read and experienced since has only solidified this fact.
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« Last Edit: March 18, 2015, 05:39:26 PM by bhodi »
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
Error 404: Title not found.
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I miss polls.
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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Cyrrex
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10603
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We should find some way of figuring out if the people around here would like to see polls make a comeback.
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
Error 404: Title not found.
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We should find some way of figuring out if the people around here would like to see polls make a comeback.
Yes what could we do to arrange some sort of voting around polls?
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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pxib
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4701
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I recommend telepathy.
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if at last you do succeed, never try again
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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He might be pranking us.
I only have myself to blame for this bias. Just for the record, I don't believe in ghosts per the popular description. The notion of spirits of dead people even existing is rather ludicrous. What I do think, however, is that there are things which cause us to perceive things which due to our programming can seem to fit into the description of a human... that is doing inhuman things. Similar to how people saw a face on Mars in a shitty photo. We have to rely on our senses and our interpretations of the patterns to create a working model of the world around us, and it's entirely possible that we are surrounded by lots of imperceptible things. Or maybe even inconceivable things, meaning we aren't able to see the pattern due to the limitations in our head-meat.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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pxib
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4701
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What I do think, however, is that there are things which cause us to perceive things which due to our programming can seem to fit into the description of a human... that is doing inhuman things.
Indeed, but we no longer have to depend on our senses and interpretations. We can do repeatable tests with strict standards and scientific instruments, and when we do we tend to discover that ghosts are caused by reflections, air currents, day/night temperature changes, and spooky old architectural traditions. It's only when we do depend on our sense and interpretations, letting our head-meat run wild, that explanations turn supernatural. If they're inconceivable, imperceptible, mysteriously immune to science, and almost completely harmless... why insist they exist? Why should anybody care?
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if at last you do succeed, never try again
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Cyrrex
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10603
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..... ghosts are caused by reflections, air currents, day/night temperature changes, and spooky old architectural traditions.
Or maybe it's because ghosts require these conditions in order to become manifest. Hah!
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Merusk
Terracotta Army
Posts: 27449
Badge Whore
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I recommend telepathy.
I remain disappointed that telepathy or the possibility of such was below ufos and ghosts. It's energy that travels through the air and is interpreted by a sensory organ. It's more possible than the rest, especially considering we can use our weak brain waves to control thing here and now. Granted I am also talking of the universal possibility. I do not believe in human telepathy as our meat currently exists.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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pxib
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4701
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We already have better superpowers than telepathy: Empathy and language. Why waste time on brain waves when you've got light and sound?
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if at last you do succeed, never try again
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Kail
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2858
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I remain disappointed that telepathy or the possibility of such was below ufos and ghosts. It's energy that travels through the air and is interpreted by a sensory organ. It's more possible than the rest, especially considering we can use our weak brain waves to control thing here and now.
I don't think that's how most people view telepathy. Energy which is interpreted by a sensory organ is how all of our known senses work, so unless there's another bullet point you want to tack on there I don't see much debate happening. Nobody is arguing that eyesight is a myth. Generally it's more about being able to sense specific emotions or thoughts or something, which is where the debate comes in since nobody has been able to reliably detect the existence of anything like that with any kind of instrument. In the same way that nobody has been able to reliably detect Bigfoot or UFOs or the other items on the list. So I'm not sure about it being more or less possible than anything else being discussed.
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Merusk
Terracotta Army
Posts: 27449
Badge Whore
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We already have better superpowers than telepathy: Empathy and language. Why waste time on brain waves when you've got light and sound?
You wouldn't. It makes no sense in our evolutionary sphere. However, it's more a possibility than anything else on that list so it never belonged there. Caveat being that "alien visition/ UFOs" is referring to "anal probing" not "well shit, there's life out there SOMEWHERE" Yeah it's a bit of goalpost shifting, but still bothers me. Quirks.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Malakili
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10596
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The thing is, paranormal and supernatural have a lot of overlap. But anything that exists is by definition natural, so it gets mucked up. If you imagine actual telepathic ability explained by biology, I bet a lot of the people who believe in it would reject it as "not real telepathy" because it wouldn't have any "woo" attached to it.
It's a bit like magic. So Penn and Teller can saw a lady in half and put her back together, only not really. So it's not "real magic" - but ironically, it IS real magic in the sense that it is the type of magic that can actually be performed. When people say "real magic" they mean, precisely, the kind of magic that doesn't actually exist, or "not real magic."
That's why a lot of these discussions just don't interest me too much. Either ghosts are a thing that exist in the universe or they aren't. If they did exist, it would be an amazing discovery for humanity. But so far the evidence is pretty much nil. Again this falls back into the "everyone has video cameras with them all the time now" thing for me. If most of this stuff exists, we should be seeing it all over the place.
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15163
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Ghosts I can at least imagine there would be reasons why they can't be photographed. You can't photograph dark matter (whatever it turns out to be) even if it was right in front of you, for example. There might be properties of minds that allow them to imagine they are perceiving photons-on-retinas in the presence of a ghost (e.g., seeing something) when in fact there's nothing to see, since there are other circumstances where minds can 'see' things that can't be photographed (minds can hallucinate, minds can dream and 'see').
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Lantyssa
Terracotta Army
Posts: 20848
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Dark matters turns out to be matter too dark to take photos of.
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Hahahaha! I'm really good at this!
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Malakili
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10596
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Ghosts I can at least imagine there would be reasons why they can't be photographed. You can't photograph dark matter (whatever it turns out to be) even if it was right in front of you, for example. There might be properties of minds that allow them to imagine they are perceiving photons-on-retinas in the presence of a ghost (e.g., seeing something) when in fact there's nothing to see, since there are other circumstances where minds can 'see' things that can't be photographed (minds can hallucinate, minds can dream and 'see').
Yes, you've just done a pretty good job explaining ghost sightings. But for some reason you include some vague possible "property of a mind" that just happens to exactly replicate hallucination in the presence of ghosts.
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Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15163
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Eh, not arguing it for myself at all. Just saying that I could see how a true believer could reconcile "rarely photographed" with the requirements of naturalism in some of these cases. Not with Bigfoot, Loch Ness, etc. or even with UFOs if UFOs are assumed to be alien spacecraft.
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Lantyssa
Terracotta Army
Posts: 20848
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They have special light-shielding which lets them be seen by the human eye, but gives cameras trouble. Kind of like the flicker you get from trying to take video of a monitor or TV screen, but more advanced.
I bet Big Foot and Nessie have fur and scales that do that, too. Isn't Nature amazing?
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Hahahaha! I'm really good at this!
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Kail
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2858
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Eh, not arguing it for myself at all. Just saying that I could see how a true believer could reconcile "rarely photographed" with the requirements of naturalism in some of these cases. Not with Bigfoot, Loch Ness, etc. or even with UFOs if UFOs are assumed to be alien spacecraft.
I don't know if that's usually a problem. You can come up with unproven sci-fi justification for just about anything paranormal. The question is "is it real" not "is it theoretically possible if we assume X Y and Z are true". And even if it were, photography is the least of a ghost's worries. They can pass unaffected through solid matter sometimes, but other times they can physically impact the world. They can walk through walls but don't sink through the floor. The idea that they're the spirits of the dead is a whole book of problems by itself.
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Amarr HM
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3066
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Perhaps tears in the time fabric can allow objects to periodically manifest in two time locations at once. So a person at different time can close a door and the event can be seen at a future or past location. The likelihood of this is increased if the object has been relatively static for a long period of time, like very old buildings.
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I'm going to escape, come back, wipe this place off the face of the Earth, obliterate it and you with it.
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Engels
Terracotta Army
Posts: 9029
inflicts shingles.
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I should get back to nature, too. You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer. Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached. Buy a car with only two cup holders or something. -Signe
I LIKE being bounced around by Tonkors. - Lantyssa
Babies shooting themselves in the head is the state bird of West Virginia. - schild
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WayAbvPar
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The artist's rendition of Fertility Rock was
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When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM
Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood
Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
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