The Unofficial Newcomer's Guide to Skeptics - for visiting non-theistic non-skeptics

Luminon
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The Unofficial Newcomer's Guide to Skeptics - for visiting non-theistic non-skeptics

The Unofficial Newcomer's Guide to Skeptics
(meant primarily for non-theist and non-skeptic visitors, written by such a visitor)

Who is a skeptic of today? It's a human being with many virtues of character, with sharp, relentless logic and a love for the truth, above all. Many new people on this forum didn't ever meet a skeptic. This new encounter is often a shock, filled with emotions mainly on the side of a newcomer, and often there is many misunderstandings. As one such a newcomer, I decided to write a guide for people like me, to help you to decide if the skeptic is a kind of person you want to meet. The reward for knowing a skeptic is a pleasure of intelligent conversation on many topics of great interest and importance for you and the
world. As a typical former newcomer, not being a typical skeptic myself, I think and repeatedly see, that it's necessary to know certain rules, to start communicating with a skeptic succesfully and peacefully. These are my experiences. While they are subjective to some degree, they are very authentic and are based on what the visitors very often stumble upon. They are also for the most part valid for a skeptic as such, not only on this forum. This text is not meant to be satiric or condescending.  It's not meant to be hilarious, unless you imagine a visitor, who doesn't know any of these rules. Its is what I personally would need to know at the time of my early visitorship, and I hope that some other visitors as well.

- It is possible to respect a person, and at the same time, to disrespect his/her belief. Skeptics often openly disrespects a belief, while leaving the person respected, or unadressed. This is why getting offended is basically a worthless reaction and will earn you no respect. Just as ignoring the "offense" so you can stay unoffended.

- Whatever you say or write is for a skeptic nothing more than letters or sounds, until you provide an evidence. Realize, that for a skeptic, all the meaning and merit of your words stays inside your brain, unless you prove them. Many of so-called self-evident things are not really self-evident under a skeptic's critical look.

- An evidence must be something universally valid for all people and must be possible to transfer via the internet or to verify immediately and easily.

- Anyone who makes a claim must provide an evidence. Also, anyone who challenges a skeptic in a discussion, and holds a stance contrary to an official skeptic stance, must provide an evidence or face a justified criticism.

- Metaphors doesn't work for people with a different position than yours.

- In discussion, all relevant arguments and points must be responded to. If your text is not worth of it, take it as a honor.

- If you make a mistake, admit it and apologize. This is inevitable, because the skeptics are often well versed in a wide spectrum of topics. Even the most educated and respected skeptic doesn't hesitate to admit a mistake and apologize. Admitting a mistake doesn't lower your status in eyes of others, not even the mistake itself. The blockmindness does.

- Skeptics doesn't recognize or react on a humor automatically, unless the whole topic is humorous. They're not humorless, they just doesn't usually mix it with a serious discussion. Humor doesn't make the persuasive value any higher.

- Whatever opinion you have, the skeptics already has a long history of debunking it and taking it apart completely. Including Jesus' existence, well, that in the first place. Before you start such a topic with a skeptic, search and confront yourself with the contrary evidence.

- You may come from a culture or family, in which a rationality and "cold logic" isn't emphasized, and a certain idealism and openness to new, bold ideas (UFO) is respected. Oppositely, skeptics very often comes from a highly irrational environment and so they hold rationality as a virtue. If they are radical, it's because their irrational neighbours are even more radical, and often tragically for everyone around.

- Learn the names and meanings of logical fallacies and learn to avoid them unconsciously in your text or speech. Any such fallacy will be immediately and relentlessly found. A presence of fallacy makes the point or argument worthless.

- The skeptics are characterized by a fact, that they never saw anything they couldn't explain scientifically or by a mundane explanation. Paranormal events are rare, and there's no sense in appealing discussion on what unexplainable things did they ever see, they didn't. Yet, they accept only an intelligent, scientific explanation, reflecting an inner understanding of the process. So they either have such an explanation, or they doesn't hesitate to admit honestly, that they doesn't know. Goddidit is not an explanation.

- The skeptics considers an official scientific research as a highest authority, and justifiedly. A personal experience, private investigation or unofficial group experiences doesn't have any authoritative value. Anything what is unreachable by the official contemporary science, is considered to be irrelevant, as good as non-existent.

- There is my personal hypothesis, that the typical skeptics holds an official creed of rationality, and so if they ever have any personal experiences contrary to the scientific, they don't speak about them officially, nor let it change their stance, because a personal experience can't be proven. People incapable of that are usually not recognized as skeptics.

- If you quote someone, who you consider to be a great authority of yours, make sure that this person is not jailed, not pursued by law and not controversial. Skeptics might express a worry if that person's problems in one area didn't affect his/her judgement in other area of knowledge, which you take the quote from. If you dare to oppose, provide an evidence.

- You may discuss a paranormal phenomena with other people, who has a similar experiences with them. A common personal experiences allows you to reach a mutual understanding, connects you like a net. But the skeptics has their own evidence, linking them together. It has no sense to tell them to get a contrary evidence by their own effort, because it will be personal, thus worthless for them. Also, it may take many years to build, while the skeptics works with already done, universal scientific evidence. According to their opinion, any other evidence than that is not worth of the effort. They are right in the sense, that their evidence is universally valid and portable on anyone, while yours may not be. Skeptics can not take such an imperfect evidence seriously, and nobody can blame them for that, so don't even try.

- The local atheistic skeptics fights the irrationality as such and a religion in particular. Why doesn't they let the poor believers be? Because an organized religion (Christianity, mainly) holds a certain very fundamental tenets, which are a danger to modern ideal of human rights, justice, freedom and equality. The theists doesn't hesitate to infiltrate governments and enforce these inhumane quasi-standards on whole states, and so the skeptics, and so the atheists (and their sub-set, the skeptics) finds themselves in a very real danger which they must face, and so they do by this website. This may be a surprising fact for people from an unspokenly atheistic states, where never was such a threat to citizens' freedom. You may find this activity harsh to people's feelings, but realize, that not nearly to the witch hunts and burning of heretics.

- Nobody is completely perfect, not even skeptics, though they are in many ways. Not all topics can be meaningfully discussed with a skeptic. For example, some of the succesful scientists were mystics, or a close friends of mystics, and yet this way of thinking is rare on the skeptic forum. Their main focus is to fight irrationality (often in form of religion), and so they focus mainly on it, because other issues aren't so dangerous and thus not so urgent. This is why in current time the skeptic movement is not characterized by being focused on such an otherworldly topics.

- You can say you're a witness of paranormal phenomena. There are things considered to be a pseudoscience by skeptics. But you may claim actually see them to work, on your own eyes and far above any possible coincidence or placebo effect. You could even be the one who claims to observe such things every day of your life. However, it's a sad fact, that no skeptic still knows about a succesful scientific study of such things, or any evidence for that. If they would know about any such a flawless study, they would immediately accept it, this is the nature of skepticism. But no such thing ever happened, and skeptics knows a long array of positive, but fallacious and biased, or honest and negative research studies.
This dichotomy is a great mystery to me, greater than the paranormal phenomena themselves. No wonder that people from both sides, in a rightful anger, often accuses each other of being corrupted, biased, dishonest, or fuckin' idiots. But this is not the way to a solution of this problem. The only way is in increasing a confidence and mutual understanding between skeptics and people. One side knows that it's honest in everything, but must acknowledge also the honesty of the other side, and then this mysterious and unfortunate dichotomy can be faced. This is what this writing is meant for. Realize, that we need the skeptics, we need their intelligence, knowledge and authority. Everything our civilization has, is their achievement. Whatever amazing thing you saw, only a skeptics' assistance can understand it and present it to the whole world. Build the bridge of understanding.

- There may be skeptics who significantly differs from these characteristics, in good and bad sense. Don't put them all in one sack.

- If the skeptics have any comments on this, please share them.

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I haven't gotten very far

I haven't gotten very far through it (have to leave for work in a second) but so far I'm quite impressed, Luminon.  Good work.

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I didn't have very high

I didn't have very high hopes going into it, but overall I have no problems at first glance.  Very well done Smiling


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Can someone help remove the

Can someone help remove the shock from my face?


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Luminon wrote:The skeptics

Luminon wrote:
The skeptics are characterized by a fact, that they never saw anything they couldn't explain scientifically or by a mundane explanation.

Not a fact at all.

Skeptics see plenty of things they have no explanation for. The difference with 'non-skeptics' is that they don't just accept any explanation offered, unless it meets a minum level of evidence, consistency, etc., and if there is none currently they find acceptable, they just note that fact, and await further investigation.

Actually, Luminon, much of this list is quite good, but explicitly incorrect sataements like the above simply aren't acceptable.

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

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Thomathy wrote:Can someone

Thomathy wrote:

Can someone help remove the shock from my face?

 

Sorted:


 

 

 


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thingy wrote:I haven't

thingy wrote:

I haven't gotten very far through it (have to leave for work in a second) but so far I'm quite impressed, Luminon.  Good work.

Thanks! If I could only hold with all these points all the time. One can always aspire for perfection But the main impulse was Arj's quest for rationality. I looked at her, and she's like my earlier alter-ego, seeing a similar amount of paranormal phenomena, doing the same mistakes in telling the world about it, etc... Someone should introduce the skeptics to the world properly, so we can be spared of such a clash of the worlds, every time such a newcomer appears. It will be also interesting what will they do, when they stop wasting a time and effort for the 'clash of the worlds' phase. Yeah, I've got my clear moments Don't be too hopeful though, when writing this I listen to songs named like '10th Planet', 'The Divine Unity', or 'Nepalese Sun' Smiling

I believe that the principles of politics, charity, business, art, science, religion and occultism are the basic principles of humanity. This is why I promote resolving a conflicts and eventually a peace between them. (If I'd only get paid for that! ) None of them can be erradicated, and they must be kept in harmony and equilibrium. This will be done by official recognition where it's not present, clarification of their tenets where it's unclear, radical reforms where it threatens the others, a support where it lacks, and so on. But these are details. This process will take care of itself, when a certain things will be set right, like the idea of worldwide sharing of capitalistic excessive resources.
Arj probably feels a similar things, that there is something lacking in the scientific worldview, and you are sure that something is lacking in religional worldview, and we all are sure that we need more financed charity, more ethical business and politics, more art instead of ugly cubic buildings we live and work in, and so on. You, see, these basic pillars of humanity needs to support each other.
It's a shared vision of world as perfect as we need, and a vision being manifested in a physical form is said to be what
'magic' really is, regardless if the result is a piece of art, a corporation, or a cultural movement. You see, I'm surely a member of the seventh group, this kind of seeing the world as a garden of universal tendencies (and their multiple combinations) is occult. It helps with making order and organizing things.

 

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 Wow, I love it.I was

 Wow, I love it.

I was rather rough on Arj too, but, unfortunately, calling us the KKK for investigating her beliefs really isn't a valid debate tactic.

Quote:
There is my personal hypothesis, that the typical skeptics holds an official creed of rationality, and so if they ever have any personal experiences contrary to the scientific, they don't speak about them officially, nor let it change their stance, because a personal experience can't be proven. People incapable of that are usually not recognized as skeptics.

I don't think I would simply ignore powerful personal experiences. I cannot show my subjective evidence to others, but this doesn't lead to the conclusion that my personal experiences are automatically false. If I continued declaring that ghosts don't exist even though I repeatedly see one in my closet, then I'm just being dishonest with myself. 

Obviously, the first thing I would try to do is to investigate my experiences and the scientific evidence. If that doesn't work, then I'll most likely hold a neutral position for the rest of my life or until I discover the truth. I'm an expert at being unsure.    

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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butterbattle wrote:I don't

butterbattle wrote:

I don't think I would simply ignore powerful personal experiences. I cannot show my subjective evidence to others, but this doesn't lead to the conclusion that my personal experiences are automatically false. If I continued declaring that ghosts don't exist even though I repeatedly see one in my closet, then I'm just being dishonest with myself. 

Obviously, the first thing I would try to do is to investigate my experiences and the scientific evidence. If that doesn't work, then I'll most likely hold a neutral position for the rest of my life or until I discover the truth. I'm an expert at being unsure.    

Well, you see, that's exactly my case, I just don't have the strength to stay neutral. Did you ever do or don't do something alone, and nobody believed you that you really did? Did you stay unsure or neutral, then? Smiling
What I find puzzling about that, people seems to primarily question the existence of my experiences, rather than their nature, and this doesn't get us far. Maybe it would be good to invent a hypothetical mode of discussion. A skeptics would express a bit of good will, to temporarily formally "accept" one premise, and then they would be able to discuss the strange phenomenon (without immediately rejecting it) and maybe we'll find an inconsistencies there. Of course it must be obvious all the time to both sides, that the 'acceptance' is only hypothetical.
People usually speaks the truth, in the sense that they see or touch something, which seems to transgress a borders of subjectivity, thus aspiring to become objective. What it is, I can say as for esoteric theory, but we all need a scientific interpretation. There is some 95% of the scientific material world missing, it's called dark matter and energy. Similar situation is in the esoteric theory, where only 3/49 (6%) of the known universe are solid enough for most of the people to see or touch. 
Furthermore, there is a mechanism of finding the truth. Various schools of knowledge often comes to completely different worldviews. And those worldviews are correct, though seemingly contradictory, as were the findings of three blind men who examined an elephant. The most precise truth is found by synthesis of these findings together.
If I should trust my prophet...I mean..futurologist, then our science will really understand what esoterics only vaguely described so far (without being weighed down by a need to prove everything Smiling ), and this will bring a great technologic progress, capable of some mind-boggling projects. If it's so, then scientists has a clues hidden in the area of paranormal events, teachings and people. All this is, in my experience, observable enough to investigate it personally, draw a certain conclusions, and try to get some scientists involved in the process. I mean, if it's a lunacy, it's a scientifically interesting kind of lunacy. Any kind of attention will do the job.

If I'll ever do a bachelor work on psychology, it will be probably a nation-wide anonymous public inquiry on "Do you think you've got a paranormal abilities or perception?" Of course there would be also statistics a about region, age, gender, etc so hopefully people will answer seriously and truthfully. Also, people above 18 should be mainly involved, because I can very well imagine whole classes of High School 'psychics' screwing up the statistics for fun.

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I am pretty sure most of us

I am pretty sure most of us 'skeptics' do not question that you genuinely had all these experiences, it is precisely your interpretation of the source, the ultimate 'cause' of those experiences which we question.

Science is precisely about integrating the observations of different researchers, and neither immediately accepting nor rejecting data, but accumulating it all, matching it all together, and against already well-established theories. It is about consistent , repeatable observations , and about formulating some idea about what may be behind the observations, devising some sort of test, something we haven't yet observed but would only be true if our speculation was closer ot the 'truth', then seeing what we find when we look for that aspect, or run the experiment.

Now, Luminon, do you have any problem wuth that approach? If not, is your problem that you think actual science doesn't really get done that way?

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology


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Quote:An evidence must be

Quote:

An evidence must be something universally valid for all people and must be possible to transfer via the internet or to verify immediately and easily.

In general I would say no. If you could direct us to evidence that is not anecdotal (such as your claim that you could cause vertigo in someone using some sort of a mental ability), we would look into it. Though, since we are on an internet forum, I suppose that links to webpages are a great way of providing references.

Besides that one point, I think this is well written. I love the emphasis on the need for objective evidence. Perhaps theists should also keep in mind a need for objective evidence to back up their claims. If only we could get them to agree that feeling the holy spirit, receiving a vision or having god talk to them simply does not count as evidence of their religion being correct.

For an example as to why we discount eye witness testimonies of the supernatural: have you ever seen ghost hunter television shows? In every show the ghost hunters find nothing that indicates the supernatural, and then swear that they have seen ghosts and spirits. Their bias towards finding ghosts is so powerful that even equipment malfunctions are viewed as undeniable proof that spirits are near them. I am just saying that as an example of why I can not bring myself to take people's claims of viewing the supernatural seriously. I have even had friends in the past swear that they have seen ghosts. Yet, every time they try and show me, nothing is there. Maybe ghosts are just scared of skeptics.

Since we are on the topic of evidence: perhaps someone here who believes in the supernatural should start a thread in which they post evidence for their claims. Then this kind of "yes, i'm right," "no, you're wrong" bickering would not have to happen, as the evidence could speak for itself.

"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India


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Thanks, phooney. 

Thanks, phooney.  Laughing out loud


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 Jormungander wrote:have

 

Jormungander wrote:
have you ever seen ghost hunter television shows?
 

You reminded me of a specific show on the sci-fi channel called "Ghost Hunters," which followed a paranormal group called TAPS. I watched this show quite a lot and really enjoyed it. What really intrigued me about it was that the investigators seemed sincere and approached every case extremely logically and methodically. Their main goal upon entering a site was always to debunk claims of the paranormal, and they frequently succeeded in doing so. In one investigation on a cruise ship, they caught a video where it appeared that a blanket was moving by itself. However, upon further review, they discovered that some unknown troublemaker had tampered with the camera and then hidden behind the bed to pull the sheets down.  

In fact, in about half of their episodes, TAPS caught absolutely nothing. This is the polar opposite of a bullshit show on the travel channel called, "Most Haunted," where most episodes featured people being possessed by demons and flying objects. However, "Ghost Hunters" did also occasionally catch very puzzling video or audio footage, and I still don't think they have been explained. 

Jormungander wrote:
In every show the ghost hunters find nothing that indicates the supernatural, and then swear that they have seen ghosts and spirits. Their bias towards finding ghosts is so powerful that even equipment malfunctions are viewed as undeniable proof that spirits are near them.

Yes, this seems to be the norm. Yet, the show I am referring to seems to be an exception to this. They always carried equipment with them, so their personal experiences were usually accompanied by some footage of what took place. Also, on the equipment malfunctions, there is a guess in the supernatural investigation world that spirits might draw the energy out of electronic equipment to manifest itself. The equipment malfunctions were analyzed based on the circumstances, and the people in TAPS never viewed them as undeniable proof that ghosts are nearby. One event that always made them suspicious is when a camera or something suddenly ran out of batteries. They'll swear that it was fresh and went dead five minutes late. Curiously, this usually happened at sites where other strange footage presented itself. 

Finally, although the two co-founders, Jason and Grant, believed in ghosts, some of the people on the team were actually skeptics; they hadn't experienced as much.

 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare


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BobSpence1 wrote:I am pretty

BobSpence1 wrote:

I am pretty sure most of us 'skeptics' do not question that you genuinely had all these experiences, it is precisely your interpretation of the source, the ultimate 'cause' of those experiences which we question.

Science is precisely about integrating the observations of different researchers, and neither immediately accepting nor rejecting data, but accumulating it all, matching it all together, and against already well-established theories. It is about consistent , repeatable observations , and about formulating some idea about what may be behind the observations, devising some sort of test, something we haven't yet observed but would only be true if our speculation was closer ot the 'truth', then seeing what we find when we look for that aspect, or run the experiment.

Now, Luminon, do you have any problem wuth that approach? If not, is your problem that you think actual science doesn't really get done that way?

Actually, the scientific methods are universal, and if there should be any meaningful work, then they must be at least minimally employed in the process. This happens even in the esoteric work, just very informally, for a few good reasons.
The rational research in esoteric work is best expressed in esoteric theory. Things like a hallucination, self-delusion or wishful thinking may be scientific terms, but they're simplistic, they doesn't give any real insight into the problem. Esoteric theory provides a logical explanation for all genuine paranormal phenomena, more than that, it provides an inner understanding and unfolds more possibilities. This is why I'll more likely choose an esoteric explanation, than official scientific.
A scientific explanations requires many things to be imaginary, non-existent, while they're often actually seen and felt objectively, by the people involved, as I know because I'm often one of them. We see that all the time, whenever a group of esoterically oriented people gets together, like on a group meditation. (I was just gone meditating for almost 3 hours) Considering everything to be an illusion just doesn't work here for us. We have independent, mature, educated members who wouldn't allow any brainwashing in our group. We themselves debunk a lot of other people's illusions, because their notion of esoterics and life as such is delusional, and they suffer because of that, and people around them as well.


Jormungander wrote:
For an example as to why we discount eye witness testimonies of the supernatural: have you ever seen ghost hunter television shows? In every show the ghost hunters find nothing that indicates the supernatural, and then swear that they have seen ghosts and spirits. Their bias towards finding ghosts is so powerful that even equipment malfunctions are viewed as undeniable proof that spirits are near them. I am just saying that as an example of why I can not bring myself to take people's claims of viewing the supernatural seriously. I have even had friends in the past swear that they have seen ghosts. Yet, every time they try and show me, nothing is there. Maybe ghosts are just scared of skeptics.
I'm sorry but I'll have to mention a bit of esoteric theory now, to explain my stance. I haven't ever seen a ghost and I don't even want to. Ghosts are astral beings, and astral vision or clairvoyance is a primitive, archaic feature of undeveloped tribesmen, which survived in some individuals till this day. People who sees no ghosts are usually more developed than mediums. The only right relationship with astral realm is based on a rational and technologic approach under control, the uncontrollable mediumship is letting ourselves to be abused. My aspirations, as for seeing something, are mainly etheric. I want to develop the etheric vision, which is of much more substantial nature than astral. It's practically physical and would make a nice counterpart to my already present etheric touch sense.
The reasons why there are never any ghosts around when you want them to, may be, because
- the nature of astral realm and beings is extremely unreliable, deceitful, clouded, and deluded, in the most of it's areas. Being failed by anything astral is a natural thing.
- it is very natural for a ghost to be afraid of a skeptic. A ghost seems to be a remnant, a dead person's left behind (temporarily, I believe) astral body with poor remains of autonomity. Astral = emotional. When communicating with a true ghost, you must talk with it like with a retarded child, use no logical arguments, nothing what would require thinking, because it's only an emotional wreck. In esoteric theory, the mental, rational thinking is hundred times more powerful force than anything emotional (astral).
Seriously, ghosts aren't a good thing to begin with as a paranormal research. It's skipping a steps in development. First there must be discovered things like the etheric matter. This will be a pretty convincing feat, because it's such a seemingly invisible thing to most of people, and when they will see that scientists discovered one invisible, so why couldn't they discover another? And another?

By the way, if you ever encounter any people seeing the ghosts, there is always at least one around - you. You're technically a living ghost and you might ask them to look at your own astral body, currently a part of aura.

Jormungander wrote:
Since we are on the topic of evidence: perhaps someone here who believes in the supernatural should start a thread in which they post evidence for their claims. Then this kind of "yes, i'm right," "no, you're wrong" bickering would not have to happen, as the evidence could speak for itself.
Unless I somehow missed a discovery of a box for storing the ghosts, then no evidence can be provided like that. I actually started a thread recently where I demonstrated that until such a discovery will come, people must get up off the chair and go investigate for themselves. When they will, they may see that on certain ritual meetings their cameras stopped working with batteries empty, their sound recorder records are muffled or with a strange noise, and their photographs are full of glowing streaks, aureola around people, or translucent balls above people's heads. This is a very common stuff. Nothing very convincing for you probably, but interesting nonetheless.
 

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Luminon wrote:If you quote

Luminon wrote:

If you quote someone, who you consider to be a great authority of yours, make sure that this person is not jailed, not pursued by law and not controversial. Skeptics might express a worry if that person's problems in one area didn't affect his/her judgement in other area of knowledge, which you take the quote from. If you dare to oppose, provide an evidence.

I clicked on the link in Luminon's signature. Upon coming back to this thread, I noticed this paragraph. I'll just emphasize that while a person's credentials or problems in another area etc. do cause me to worry about the authority of their statements, it is not evidence against their statements. For example, while Kent Hovind's tax fraud leads me to be suspicious of his honesty in general, I cannot actually use that against his idea for the flood, for that would be an ad hominem. Instead, I reject his "giant ice meteor 'theory'" because it is absolutely ridiculous.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare