I guess I should have reworded it as paranormal instead of supernatural.
As someone once told me, you can't fully believe in something unless you experience it first hand. And if your someone who has an open mind, even as a skeptic, your able to rationalize something, but not outright dismiss it either.
I am skeptical of people, I believe there are more frauds in this world then truths to what they say. However, if theres something I myself experience, I know it to have truth to it, without being fabricated by another.
#boycottchina
This to me is how best to look at these things. Outright dismissing everything, even someone elses experience, seems to just be dismissing it for the sake of doing so, just because you haven't witnessed it. But on the other end of the scale saying everything that isn't explained has to have a paranormal element to it, is just as outlandished.
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your assuming its a trick of the mind, perhaps because in not having experienced anything of that nature, you have nothing to relate to it.
I don't expect people who haven't seen something unexplained to know what it all means, but there is a balance between what can be rationalized, and what can't.
Infact, in saying such a thing like there being energies left behind by people when they die, is as much a rationalization as much as saying its all in your head.
#boycottchina
I hate the term "supernatural", because it often seems to mean "I can't find an explanation for what is happening, so I'll just assume there isn't one."
Also, a certain kind of people who believe in the supernatural like to point out that there's plenty of things science can't explain, as if that's an excuse to stop trying.
This is how i see it, everyone says ghosts start out as being able to move through anything and it takes their will power to not be air. So how is it that there isn't some giant ball of ghosts floating around in outer space if they do exist? But from day one they are just able to not float through the earth yet can't pick up a cup. That's right im proposing that there's a giant ghost planet out there just spinning around somewhere made of ghosts.
Pretty much this. You can't rule out anything since for all we know a goat is God (south park parody)...but people claiming supernatural stuff is real are idiots.
Maybe he can teach me how to defend myself against my own brain so I stop seeing shadows when I'm home alone. :P Or how somehow I hear noises in bushes when driving alone on my bike on my way home at 3am.
Full control over my senses would be awesome.
Last edited by mmoc6f961e454e; 2013-09-08 at 04:41 PM.
There's no such thing as the "supernatural". A thing either is, or it is not. If it is, then it's natural. If it is not, then it is fiction. There's no room for something that's real but somehow not natural.
Same for "paranormal". No such thing. If you make the definition loose enough to apply it to actual phenomena, then there's a host of things like black holes and quantum mechanics that we don't fully understand and thus are "paranormal", which means the term is bollocks to begin with.
That doesn't mean we know everything. I'm certain there's stuff we don't know, and there are logical explanations that could explain certain phenomena. For instance; our brains create electromagnetic waves. That's what an EEG measures. They're also highly sophisticated engines for manipulating and working with those wave patterns; that's basically what "thinking" boils down to. Is it possible that a brain can "tap in" to someone else's brain waves, and try to decipher some sense out of those patterns? I'm open to that. I don't think it happens, and I think that everyone who claims they can do it is an obvious charlatan engaging in parlor tricks, but the long-term possibility of telepathy I leave open. That doesn't make it "paranormal"; it's about as paranormal or supernatural as radio or cell phones.
I'm religious and I believe there's more things here that we don't understand (let's say vampires and werewolves)
Believing is one thing, claiming those things exist is another thing. People are free to believe in ghosts, the moment they claim it as they in fact are sure to be out there is the moment I have issues with it. :P Well only if they try to convice me really, if they leave me alone they can do or think wathever they like.
Wait a minute here. OP is using Lorraine and Ed Warren as examples of "good helpful spiritualists"?
They were two sensationalists, who among other things have tried getting people of murder charges by claiming possesment by the devil. Fortunately being possesed by the devil is not an excuse for murder in US...
Apart from that, all their high profile "cases" have been shown to be huge tassels of lies and contradicting stories.
These people could NOT talk to the dead, they did not run into and banish a warewolf, and going to scared people's homes and telling them that "yes... yes indeed, your house is being haunted, and the spirits have raped you in your sleep for the last few years" is NOT FUCKING HELPING.
These people did anything for a good story, because that would give them more book and movie deals. They had no care for the people they may have scarred for life with their made up pseudo psychological paranormal bullshit, as long as they made a shitload of money out of it.
Humans are limited in every ways. Our physical abilities are limited, our senses are limited and so are our mental abilities. A blind species, even if it was sentient, could not understand concepts such as "light" and "colour", because they would lack the sense of sight. In the same way, I believe that there are things that completely escape us, because we lack the sense to perceive them. On the other hand, a dog would see his master work at his computer. However, he would be unable to understand precisely what he is doing and for what purpose. His mind is unable to do it. In the same way, I believe that there are some things our reason cannot grasp completely. Therefore, the only reasonable thing about "supernatural" phenomenons is to remain cautious, but open-minded.
"Je vous répondrai par la bouche de mes canons!"
This is the crux of the topic. The human organism as a sensory apparatus is highly imperfect. That our imagination is inextricably tied to processing those senses compounds the chances of seeing something-that-isn't to a guarantee.
It doesn't make you crazy. It's normal. You're only crazy when it happens so often that it impairs your ability to live normally.
"Experiences" are consistently overvalued; this explains why they're not terribly useful or reliable.
Occam's razor.
No evidence of anything paranormal, plenty of evidence of our mind being suspectible to tricks.
Actually, the definition of supernatural is something is not subject to the laws of physics, something that is "beyond" nature. It's not stuff we don't understand, it's stuff that is impossible.
Last edited by Tzalix; 2013-09-08 at 05:01 PM.
"In life, I was raised to hate the undead. Trained to destroy them. When I became Forsaken, I hated myself most of all. But now I see it is the Alliance that fosters this malice. The human kingdoms shun their former brothers and sisters because we remind them what's lurking beneath the facade of flesh. It's time to end their cycle of hatred. The Alliance deserves to fall." - Lilian Voss
Never experienced anything supernatural. Never seen any proof of the supernatural. So it's a bunch of codswallop. Good day.
There's a logical explanation to everything. However, we can't explain everything with our current knowledge/technology and we never will either. We usually describe unexplained events for being supernatural, which is the reason religion was created.