What are your paranormal beliefs?

[stray]

Let me try that again:

To answer Llava's question: Of course it's fair, man.

Sorry for snapping at you. You probably didn't deserve that. Your question just frustrated me at first. How I wish you knew me enough to not even think you need to ask a question like that.

Besides, the only reason why I said we should leave this thread to anecdotes is because there are two (two!) paranormal threads going on. And both of them were heading into unfun, un-story related territory. It had nothing to do with protecting the "poor ghost believers'" feelings. We should whip believers in the other one.

[WayAbvPar]

Stray, if I open this thread up again only to see no new posts, but ANOTHER EDIT, I am going beat you with the Festivus pole. Happy Holidays!

[stray]

It's the Dr. Pepper...

And the Internet sucks for communicating. 

I'm done though. Sorry.

[Roac]

Stray, if I open this thread up again only to see no new posts, but ANOTHER EDIT, I am going beat you with the Festivus pole. Happy Holidays!

You make Clippy sad.

[geldonyetich]

In retrospect, I've nothing to complain about with my edit button missing seeing how I escaped a beating.

[Merusk]

So telepathy and Aliens are the two things I believe most strongly in.

On the aliens I'm not certain we've been visited, but it's defiantly possible.  Earth has had a few "resets" what with global extinctions every few millions of years.  We also had that whole technology-reset known as the dark ages. Who knows where we'd be if such things hadn't happened. Somewhere in the universe such a place, or several places surely exist. 

Telepathy is merely the interpretation of mental energies.  We can already monitor brain waves with electronic devices, so we know they're there.  Eyesight & Hearing are just us using specialized organs to interpret other such energies known as "light" and "sound."  I find it feesable that somehow we'll develop (or perhaps colony insects HAVE developed) organs to interpret these energies as well.

Telekinesis?  Nah, too much energy required just to move something with wind, much less with mental vibrations.

Ghosts?  I've had plenty of creepy encounters, feelings and things dropping ON me from stable locations to disbelieve in them. As such, I think it's possible that certain people might have mutations that let them see or experience these ghostly energies more profoundly than others, so there's Mediums.

Bigfoot?  Too many instances of Man haughtily declaring somethings dead or impossible only to be proven wrong.  The Cecoleanth (sp) is the first that springs to mind.  There's still a LOT of wilderness in the pacific northwest.

Nessie? That one I question bigtime.  Loch Ness isn't exactly teeming with enough biomass to support a large animal, much less several.  I'd be more inclined to believe in some sort of paranormal event than a dinosaur descendant.

Demons? Depends on what you consider a demon, I suppose.  We talking Japanese Demons or Christian Demons?  I believe in that some ghosts can be maleficent forces who wish people ill. I guess that's a demon.

[Broughden]

Other- Tuatha de Danann

[Llava]

That's not one you hear too often.

The full on fair folk, seelie/unseelie, tir nan og stuff?  Or just other humans who had settled on Ireland after a war with the Fomorians and were eventually wiped out?

[WindupAtheist]

Every single person who doesn't belong in an asylum and can function on a reasonably normal level operates on a more or less skeptical worldview.  It's how they're able to go outside and get to work, without hiding under their car to escape the invisible monsters which they can't prove do not exist.  It's just that people typically make exceptions for one or two things that tickle their fancy on an emotional level.

[Fargull]

My world view holds the fact that our narrow range of senses keeps a lot of the world hidden beyond the pale ability of humanity.  I believe in an afterlife not born on the razored knife blade of how paramount man is next to the rest of the natural world.  Death is a journey, and perhaps is the same as the catapillar to the butterfly.  The only thing I am unsure of are UFO's and aliens.  I would like to think it is possible, but currently the one thread of thought was mentioned by an engineer from JPL.  No sentient life has yet gone past the point of self extinction.  That is my one point of cynical thought.

[Riggswolfe]

My world view holds the fact that our narrow range of senses keeps a lot of the world hidden beyond the pale ability of humanity.  I believe in an afterlife not born on the razored knife blade of how paramount man is next to the rest of the natural world.  Death is a journey, and perhaps is the same as the catapillar to the butterfly.  The only thing I am unsure of are UFO's and aliens.  I would like to think it is possible, but currently the one thread of thought was mentioned by an engineer from JPL.  No sentient life has yet gone past the point of self extinction.  That is my one point of cynical thought.

Interesting beleifs, especially the whole part about how narrow our senses are and how much we might miss because of it. I'm a bit curious on the "no sentient life has gone past self extinction yet" thing. Is this based on some model of probability or just a belief?

[Sky]

I agree we have a very narrow spectrum of inputs, but we widen that with science every year. However, it hasn't turned up any ghosts or afterlife yet. Once it does, I'll be the first in line to embrace it. Until then, it's just something someone made up within the confines of their cranium.

No sentient life has yet gone past the point of self extinction. 

What does that even mean?

[Fargull]

Interesting beleifs, especially the whole part about how narrow our senses are and how much we might miss because of it. I'm a bit curious on the "no sentient life has gone past self extinction yet" thing. Is this based on some model of probability or just a belief?

The engineer, scientist, whomever it was from JPL said that one of the reasons nothing has been found to indicate intelligent life out in space could be that no creature that has achieved self awareness and advancement in science has made it past the point at which it destroys itself.  Right now how many avenues have we created that can destroy not the planet, but our civilization.  Of course, if interstellar travel is possible, one can speculate that they also would have the technology to hide themselves.  Nature is a harsh mistress.

[Sky]

Beyond the huge distances covered, there is the fourth dimensional constraint. I think that's the most important guess. Our entire history from slime to human is only 'visible' within a finite sphere, and the sphere for our technological span is laughably small.

To flip that around, the closest galaxy is 25,000 light years away. If life began there right now, they could have colonized half of their galaxy by the time we noticed.

The distance is troublesome, but the time constraints are the real deal-killer. Not only do we have to look in the right place, we have to look in the right place at the right time.

I'm rather fond of the theory that there is extraterrestrial life, one of the few thus-far-unproven theories I cling to. I just think it's exceedingly unlikely we'll ever run into them.

edited to add: there is nothing paranormal about this particular subject

[bhodi]

The Zoo hypothesis of the Fermi paradox handles that quite nicely. You still have to consider the constraints of the drake equasion but it bypasses a lot of the other stuff. Hell, we could have been seeded. It's not an uncommon theory.

[Sky]

That really doesn't handle the fourth dimensional issues I raised, and is rather silly to boot.

"On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place."

[bhodi]

It didn't nail it exactly; I do like the seeded idea; it's not uncommon in sci-fi, the idea that we are either an offshoot or were deliberately engineered, not that it comes from some god entity, but that something helped us over that hump to organics not unlike a gigantic petri dish -- that handles the 4th dimension problem, since they started it, they'd obviously be around to observe the results.

[Sky]

Except that it's fabricated out of whole cloth, and depends on 'them' completely avoiding our sensors purposefully. Hey, maybe it's the Goa'uld.

[Riggswolfe]

It didn't nail it exactly; I do like the seeded idea; it's not uncommon in sci-fi, the idea that we are either an offshoot or were deliberately engineered, not that it comes from some god entity, but that something helped us over that hump to organics not unlike a gigantic petri dish -- that handles the 4th dimension problem, since they started it, they'd obviously be around to observe the results.

Noone told me we had a Scientologist on these boards!

[bhodi]

Don't tell anyone!

Sky: Yes, it has serious caveats to it. It's not at all likely. It might explain the anal probes, though.

[geldonyetich]

If something did jump in and give our genetics a boost, there should be some pretty clear paleontology evidence.   What that evidence does seem to indicate, though, is that it's been a pretty steady process of trial and error.  I could interpret that as either meaning that evolution did all the work or whoever was tweaking us did so on a microevolutionary (one small change at a time), trial-and-error scale.  In other words, if God exists he either isn't as perfect as we've been taught or perfection demands a lot of mistakes be made.  (Oy, the Vatican's going to bend me over the end of the popemobile and cap me gangland style if I bandied that one around too loudly.)  Of course, this leaves the alien intervention possibility on the table, but I doubt the Scientologist version of that scenario is anything more than a filtering mechanism for the gullible.  (It wouldn't surprise me if the carriers of Hubbard's legacy cap people gangland all the time.)

I've adopted the belief that the line between paranormal and normal can be bridged by paying adequate attention, and that even life after death or aliens may be nothing special in reality.   Not that this means I'd cherish a fatal response to my free-thinking.

[Riggswolfe]

I read this book called Angel Fire by Andrew Greely. It's an ok book, but in it, this biologist is about to win a Nobel prize because he managed to prove that evolution has what he calls punctuation points. (if memory serves.) Basically, things will evolve slowly, then make a dramatic leap in progress. From ape to caveman for instance. The whole idea behind the theory is that humanity is on the verge of another of those leaps and will become beings of energy and thought in a few centuries. (A short time evolution-wise)

Of course, people want to kill him and he is protected by a beautiful woman named Gabrielle, who literally appears out of the air and tells him he is right, and that some people don't want his knowledge getting out. She is of course an angel, who turn out to be aliens who have been watching humanity for centuries.

[bhodi]

If something did jump in and give our genetics a boost, there should be some pretty clear paleontology evidence.

Actually, I was talking about the thing that we have the hardest time with -- evolution can handle everything all the way back until the first proteins assembled themselves -- but the start of life on this planet. Hence, seeded.

[Sky]

Apes didn't evolve into cavemen. Both have a common ancestor that was neither an ape nor a caveman. The more intelligent proto-cavemen learned to use tools and group tactics which solidified the social and intellectual traits, the dumbasses sat in trees and didn't develop the traits. Natural selection is such an amazing and beautiful thing it's kinda sad people reject it.

And bhodi, there have been some good hypothesis for the genesis of life out of the proto-soup. I'd hardly pull in an outside agent, Occam's razor and whatnot.

[stray]

I think natural selection would be accepted easier if it was just explained right. Most people understand the concept of family markers, and how children carry the legacy of their parents, as well as mating and survival advantages -- so they're pretty much halfway there. If you take the top down approach though, and speak of evolution on a cosmic scale right off the bat, then you lose them.

Of course, there are some who will not accept it no matter what --- But big deal. They're like those apes sitting in the tree. It's pointless to worry about them.

[bhodi]

And bhodi, there have been some good hypothesis for the genesis of life out of the proto-soup. I'd hardly pull in an outside agent, Occam's razor and whatnot.

Sure are. But I don't buy it until we can re-create it in a lab. Evolution fits for all the way back to square 1, and there's ample evidence of that. Unfortunately, the evidence pretty stops and then it moves into hypothesis land, so if there was going to be something 'unusual' -- perhaps I'd better say extremely unlikely -- it'd happen there.

[WindupAtheist]

Sky is the man.

Geldon thinks this is the 1600's and the Pope is going to beat him up for being a heretic.

Bhodi doesn't realize that "OMG aliens!" doesn't answer where life came from, just pushes the question to another planet.

Riggswolfe has read the dumbest book in history.  (Energy beings?  /vomit)

I am highly amused.

[bhodi]

Of course I realize it. I'm saying that it would be entertaining, in a sci-fi sort of way, to be the reason for this particular planet ;)

[geldonyetich]

WindupAtheist takes my popemobile gangland execution humor too seriously, but at least he's found a way to be amused regardless.

The seeding of life is an interesting consideration.  If indeed there was no external intervention involved, it's nonetheless pretty miraculous how dead matter developed the capacity to live.  Even if there were external intervention, you can follow it further back and then ask yourself, "Okay, who birthed the God/The Aliens?"

[Sky]

Zomg Geldon nailed it ;)

[Riggswolfe]

Apes didn't evolve into cavemen. Both have a common ancestor that was neither an ape nor a caveman. The more intelligent proto-cavemen learned to use tools and group tactics which solidified the social and intellectual traits, the dumbasses sat in trees and didn't develop the traits. Natural selection is such an amazing and beautiful thing it's kinda sad people reject it.

Jesus Christ on a tricycle, do you have to take everything so fucking literally? My words were a very high level summary of that small part of that book, not a god damn college thesis on evolution.

And by the way, the JC on a T reference is just a fucking expression, so don't give me a beat down about how I must obviously be a creationist or some shit since I brought that name into this post.

Oh, and WUA, you have no room to judge a book anyone reads, or frankly, anything a person does as a hobby outside of F13. Try reading a book someday before you comment on it.

*sigh* I'm sounding like whatshisdick who defended Richard Dawkins' book in that other thread.

[Llava]

*sigh* I'm sounding like whatshisdick who defended Richard Dawkins' book in that other thread.

The sane people?

[WindupAtheist]

The concept of beings "evolving into pure energy" is nothing but an easy way for an author to say "Hello, I have no fucking clue what evolution is or how it works!"

[Riggswolfe]

The concept of beings "evolving into pure energy" is nothing but an easy way for an author to say "Hello, I have no fucking clue what evolution is or how it works!"

You've heard of science fiction right? It's this entire genre out there. An the whole "beings evolving into pure energy" is actually a recurring theme in sci-fi. Hell, Star Trek TOS had the Organians in the '60s and I'm sure they weren't the first ones to come up with it.

[WindupAtheist]

It's one of the worst butcheries of a scientific principle to ever gain any sort of foothold in sci-fi.  It's not "evolution" at all, by any scientifically meaningful definition of the word.  Tell me, what change takes place in the genetic structure of a newly conceived organism which causes it to no longer have genes, or any other phyiscal structure at all?