You make a rather interesting argument here, that would be hard to ever dismiss completely. A Boy who Cried Wolf sort of thing.
It is pretty simple, in my mind, to explain most of this with the idea that humans evolved to give far more credence to false positives than false negatives. While we know it isn't a jaguar out there, it must be something dangerous. So spirits, ghosts and goblins, things that can disappear when we look for them and they are not there. But the feeling was real! So something must have been there. I feel these feelings, we all do if we are honest with ourselves. But I am 99.99% sure that there are no such things as ghosts, demons, and goblins.
Agreed, Norris. People who have "false positive" scares live longer and produce more descendants than those with "false negatives."
Perhaps. I'll trust that you know me / my approaches well enough to be sure that I'm being sincere, and that I am not in any way attempting to pose any argument / advance any position. I do find it curious that there seems to be such a stark contrast of acceptability between one person who believes in extra-terrestrial life and another, who believes in the paranormal (in this sense, meaning, "ghosts", "spirits", etc.). The chances of proving the existence of extra-terrestrial life may be greater, even infinitely, than the paranormal, but as of right now, they seem to be equally deficient insofar as providing irrefutable evidences.
Sure. It may be tomorrow before I can get the wife to retrieve them, so as to scan and upload them here, but I'm happy to.
There is a big difference between an organism not from Earth and a being/occurrence outside the bounds of all known natural laws. IMO. That being said, you know how I view Bigfoot stuff. I don't see flying saucer sightings and little green men any differently. If a culture were so advanced as to arrive at our tiny blue planet, I have no doubt they would be able to completely conceal themselves or completely reveal themselves, as they saw fit. I think I am pretty consistent when it comes to supernatural/paranormal stuff. It is "show me the money." Evidence. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I believe that there are other life forms in this gigantic universe, but I put UFO sightings and alien abductions in the same exact boat as ghosts, goblins, etc. If we have been visited (and I find it doubtful that we have), we wouldn't know it or don't know it. In fact, UFO sightings feed the same need in humans that religion does. Some powerful being that is interested in US. It makes us special. But that is another topic.
Good points. But what the many, many instances where ghosts, goblins, etc. are seen as being anything other than "dangerous" or menacing in any way? While they scare a great many people, some find them to be a neutral force, at worse, and even a source of particularly welcomed comfort, at best. And, this will come as no surprise to you, NA, but the issue of of ghosts / goblins / haunts / etc., is distinctly different and wholly separate from my thoughts, opinions and beliefs on the existence of angels and demons. We don't need to get into those particulars, and not saying any of this to poke you, at all. Just trying to point out that some believe, rightly or wrong, that these groups are often seen as being entirely separate from one another.
Not a challenge at all, IP, but a sincere question: If you had to bet on it, knowing all that you know right now, would you wager that alien life does exist, somewhere, in some form, or not?
NASA's recent comments, that they were "likely" to find alien life form in the next 20 years, seemed rather audacious to me, on its face. Hence, my interest in what someone like, a a known and trusted person of the sciences, and the question it spawned.
I am not IP, but I will state my feelings on it: yes, I would make that bet. Of course, I can make it without fear because you can never collect on this bet, only I could. Much like other arguments, you cannot prove a negative, so you could never prove there is NOT other life in the universe. That said, based on how prolific life is on Earth and how soon life formed on the Earth after it was formed leads me to believe that life will happen more than it won't. I would not be surprised if we find some microbial-type life on one of the moons of Jupiter.
I have had several weird occurrences with what I would call paranormal events. The one that really gets me to this day and one that I absolutely cannot explain away I will detail below: Back in high school I got a Ouija board to mess around with. A few friends and I would play with it from time to time and mostly we thought it was BS. One night we got in touch with someone named Harold. He says that he died in the 1930's and had killed several people. There were some pretty nasty things coming out during that session but we attributed it to one of us messing with the pointer although all of us swore that we weren't moving it. The pointer kept going to goodbye but we kept on and on trying to get it to answer more questions. It got agitated and said that it would bring harm to us. One of the girls got up and left and said it was freaking her out. We all let go of the pointer and it went to goodbye by itself. Could a vibration in the floor or a phantom gust of wind have done that? Possibly. But after that incident I was having uneasy feelings in my house and kept feeling like something was just over my shoulder all the time. Of course I was a kid and maybe the mind is more powerful than we know and I was just freaking myself out and making myself hear/feel/see things that weren't there. So, after a few weeks of those uneasy feelings I got the Ouija board box and put it in the trash. I physically hauled the trash off to the dump that afternoon. I still had the uneasy feelings after that until we moved from that house. We moved to the other end of the county in 98 - a year after this incident happened. I moved in 2003 when I got married. My parents had bought one of those storage buildings for excess junk when we moved from the old house. When we were going through things that I would be taking with me my dad handed me an old TV box that had a bunch of junk in it. At the bottom of the box was the Ouija board in it's box. It was the same board I threw away in 97. Now, could someone have pulled an elaborate prank on me and took the time to go to the dump behind me and get the Ouija box out of the trash bag and take it back to my old house and put it in a box to be unpacked at a later time? If so they were really going for a joke that was set up over a period of time. Instead of throwing the board away again I burned it in a burn pile behind my dad's house. If I saw the friggin thing again I would probably go ahead and commit myself to a mental institution. But ever since I screwed around with the Ouija board in the first place way back in 97 I've continued to have weird happenings throughout the years. My mind could just be playing tricks on me and it's made me a bit more paranoid but I always have this thing in the back of my mind what if I brought something in through the board that has followed me around ever since.
And I'll go all in that we know that life exists or existed to a reasonable degree of certainty, likely elsewhere within this solar system, in the next 50 years.
Maybe someone in your house had bought another board, before or after you event, and had just put it away and forgotten about it. Meaning, maybe it wasn't the same board at all. They all look similar and are fairly common. Or maybe someone found the soon-to-be-discarded box (between when you out in trash, and when you hauled it away later that afternoon), retrieved it and put it away? Not doubting what you feel / believe, just thinking of the most plausible alternatives, off of the top of my head.
I would probably have some rapturous event if this were to happen. Nothing tingles my imagination and scientific mind more than the idea of finding other life forms out there.
Currently watching the second episode of Ghost Asylum. The crew in their initial walk through is throwing around feeling negative energy. I guess some people also call it bad vibes or spidey sense. When I think of negative energy I think of the battlefield at Fredericksburg.
