Ouija Board Experiences

[JDFP]

Any other folks here have any experiences with the Ouija board? I refuse to allow the things around, personally. The last one I had I ended up burning and burying (George Noory says it's really the only way to get rid of the things -- and George can't be wrong on the matter).

Here's my story...

Nothing tremendously spectacular, I'm afraid... but it's still something that scared the shit out of me and keeps me from allowing anyone (regardless of how drunk I am) to bring the Ouija boards into my apartment -- right up there with Tarot cards, minors, Natural Light beer, or generally people I just don't really know over to my place (with exception to highly attractive gals I would like to.. ahem, never mind).

So, many moons ago (I was around 17) I was at my grandparents old house (before they sold it and bought a condo) with some friends. I lived there at the time. We were goofing around and my friend Chris brought over a Ouija board. We were playing around with it and had candles going and we were basically saying: "Hey spirits! If you can hear us, prove you are there!" and all this nonsense that kids that age do. My grandparents were out of town for the weekend and so we had a run of the place.

Nothing happened that evening... the next day, I go into the bathroom at my grandparents house and the bathroom has one of those great big mirrors right above the sink where you can pretty much see your entire upper body. As I walk into the bathroom and look into the mirror I'll be damned if the thing doesn't crack into about a thousand pieces -- literally right in front of me. The cracks end up going all the way across the mirror as I'm looking at it. Naturally, I do what anyone at the age of 17 with that type of experience does. I freeze looking at it for a good ten minutes and then decide it's better not to be there (alone) and go over to my friend Chris's house (he had been there the night before with the Ouija board at my grandparents place).

When I get there I discover that he's working on his second or third 6-pack of beer (which I partake) and he's pretty shaken up -- without ever telling him what had happened. A few minutes later I finally pry from him that I should go into his bathroom and look at the mirror. I proceed to do so and see that his mirror has also been cracked into about a thousand different pieces. Coincidence? Sheer happenstance? I don't know. All I know is that Chris couldn't have done something to my mirror in my bathroom to make it crack into pieces right in front of me that morning when he wasn't there. I just don't see how this would be possible. On top of this, the same exact thing happening to his mirror as well. It was enough to bug the hell out of both of us.

We both burned and buried our Ouija boards that we had and neither one of us have really discussed the matter since then. Sorry to disappoint, there haven't been any other "paranormal" things to take place to either one of us. But, it was enough to scare the shit out of both of us. And has made me decide on a general banning of any "supernatural doorways" (Tarot cards, Ouija boards and the like) from my apartment. The jest of it is that I do believe in doorways -- and sometimes if you open up a door, you might not be able to close it again.

I guess I'm pretty down to earth and sane most of the time (eh, give or take the amount of alcohol I've had) but there are just some things that I believe you shouldn't mess with because nothing good can really come from it (Man, I wish I had felt that way about my ex-fiancee early on).

Anyway, that's my story... have any of you ever messed around with Ouija boards, Tarot Cards, or any other 'doorways' that you shouldn't have? Have you ever had strange events happen to you because of taking these actions? Any of you that have wised up and stopped screwing with this shit because of any events having happened to you or friends?

j.p.

[MikePizzoff]

I've never been a believer of Ouija Boards actually being able to communicate with spirits. However, lately there has been some weird shit going on in our house and one of my room mates wants to use a Ouija on me & my girlfriends floor of the house. I'm strongly against it, not because I believe it'll do something, but because I'm so superstitious and always think "but what if...?"

[acealive1]

some judge was off their rocker when they deicided this was to be deemed a game. it's just as much a game as voodoo. do NOT fuck with this stuff

[MikePizzoff]

some judge was off their rocker when they deicided this was to be deemed a game. it's just as much a game as voodoo. do NOT fuck with this stuff

Except, unlike voodoo, it's mass-produced pieces of plastic and cardboard, often built by HASBRO...

[JDFP]

Except, unlike voodoo, it's mass-produced pieces of plastic and cardboard, often built by HASBRO...

Indeed, and a gun is just metal, rubber and/or wood constructed together in a certain fashion.

It's not really a matter of what something is, but a matter of what it can potentially do. :)

j.p.

[Terran]

The first portion of this response is me being my typical science loving self. Second portion has a potential explanation.

First Portion
By the definition of natural forces within the universe I would say that there is no such thing as a supernatural event, simply by its definition.
"Natural" essentially covers anything dealing with Matter and Energy...Perhaps even more fundamentally anything that can be measured and duplicated because after this is accomplished Math joins the party...And Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, and change.

The unexplained or supernatural has simply not been explained or had its characteristics given a natural context.

Various Elements interact with each other in a set predictable way dictated by their differing atomic structures and characteristics.
Electrons have set predictable characteristics.
All of which are measurable and repeatable giving us the ability to harness electricity, chemicals, and manipulation of our own bodies and consciousness.

Typically it is easy for people to dismiss most "supernatural" stories as lies/manufacturings or individual and even group physiological/psychological hallucinations.
That gets discussion no where though...So all things taken as truth some natural physical events occurred....

Second Portion

1)At least two mirrors broke.
2)Group physiological/psychological uneasiness (admittedly this could easy be a situational response).

Ok step 1 For something to break, some force has to act on it.
Glass is notoriously brittle and highly susceptible to structural failure. Especially when subjected to Resonance! (Only came to mind because when taught in physics the examples given of this phenomenon in the real world is sound breaking a wine glass)

Here is a short Resonance Definition.(in bold is important parts.)


In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate at larger amplitude at some frequencies than at others. These are known as the system's resonant frequencies (or resonance frequencies). At these frequencies, even small periodic driving forces can produce large amplitude oscillations.
Resonance phenomena occur with all types of vibrations or waves: there is mechanical resonance, acoustic resonance, electromagnetic resonance, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electron spin resonance (ESR) and resonance of quantum wave functions.

Step 1 complete...Identified a phenomenon that could break the glass....


Step 2 Need a possible source of vibrations....

For some reason Infrasound immediately popped into my mind...and its descriptions are very compelling

Infrasound Info:

Infrasound is sound with a frequency too low to be detected by humans.
Infrasound is generated by natural processes such as avalanches, volcanoes, tornadoes, ocean waves, earthquakes, and meteors. It can be generated by large chemical or nuclear explosions and industrial equipment.
And here is the best part! At least from my perspective.

Infrasound has been known to cause feelings of awe or fear in humans. Since it is not consciously perceived, it can make people feel vaguely that supernatural events are taking place.
It can even cause people to hallucinate grey figures if the resonant frequency of the eye is reach(18HZ according to NASA). At the right frequency, infrasound can make human organs vibrate, causing pain. Infrasound is at the right frequency to wreak havoc upon fragile objects like glass windows and household trinkets.


So Infrasound would account for both the mirrors breaking and both you and your friends uneasiness.

Not saying this is definitely what happened...but this is a rational and completely feasible explanation for the events stated.

:| I have no friends :|

[Danny]

nope, even growing up i knew there was no such thing as ghosts or spirits. A ouija board in particular, regardless of any pagan spiritualist ideas like religions its just a flat piece of wood the letters painted on it. Its no different than people going out and trying a crystal to a stick and being sure theyve made a magic wand. The only supernatural element is in your head with what you imbue it with.
If someone uses something like this they believe its possible in some fashion otherwise its just a literal waste of time. Therefore they are far more susceptible to suggestion, for example there own impulses twitch there hand and the believe it is a spirit and get all wierded out.
its all the basics of illusion acts, smoke and mirrors as they say, if someone wants to believe a piece of mdf they bought from hot topic will connect them to another realm there gonna be predisposed to be all "number 23" on there own spooked asses.

[EvilNed]

Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone specifically so that the 19th century could phone in and tell you that they want their bullshit back.

[SymphonicX]

not for me, I believe in it about as much as Micheal Jackson's innocence...

[Tricky]

Im not a believer in anything like that, but I still wouldnt do a Ouiji board "just in case" :shifty: things people have told me in the past have been pretty creepy but whether they're just stories or not I cant prove or disprove so I just remain sceptical but with a slightly open mind...

[Neil]

I've never been a believer of Ouija Boards actually being able to communicate with spirits. However, lately there has been some weird shit going on in our house and one of my room mates wants to use a Ouija on me & my girlfriends floor of the house. I'm strongly against it, not because I believe it'll do something, but because I'm so superstitious and always think "but what if...?"

My thoughts exactly. Logically I don't believe in any of it. But the illogical parts of my brain are scared $hitless about anything like this :)

[Danny]

ive got to point out that all the people, not just in his thread but in general, who say "i dont believe in them but-" need to stop trying to convince themselves. You DO believe in them. Theres no maybe about believing if a piece of wood is magic or not. You either think its just a piece of wood OR you think it is a magic piece of wood used to contact ghosts. Theres varying degrees of this belief, as with any belief, but if theres a niggling feeling in the back of your mind that using a ouija board in your house invokes bad juju then you do think it has some inherent magical power.

I assume these kinda people are feeling slightly foolish about said magic wood ideas and are trying to convince themselves with the above paraphrase before anyone else and that kinda shit aint healthy. If you think theres a chance i could come round your house with a piece of wooden board with numbers and letters on and a slate and proceed to conjure the spirits of the dead then you are conceding to yourself that you believe it is possible.

Like i said, its a wooden board or a magic wooden board, its kind of a simple distinction. yes or no, one or the other.


-of course my laptop has a set of numbers and letters how can that not summon the dead if the wood can? this is just superstition like the number 13 or walking under a ladder. The wood has no power other than what you imbue it with yourself. Most commonly through passed on folklore and notoriety but sometimes a spoon is just a spoon and the moon is just the moon.

[Andy]

I dunno hellsing, a couple of years ago i would of definitely been in the same camp as you guys 'its just a piece of wood, how can it do anything?' but if i may tell a true story..

I was working as a bar manager in a club in the town i live in, this particular club is a listed building (over 100 years old) and used to be a theater in the 1920s/30's and there was a fire there, killed a few people and the theater shut down and was abandoned until luminar bought it and turned it into a club in the 1990's.

Anyway, because its a old theater it had a upstairs balcony, one of the old fashioned types and because it was a listed building, we couldn't get planning permission to change it into another floor for our club (we tried) and one year. halloween is coming up so our GM (general manager) chris suggests that me, neil (the other deputy manager) and mike (the chef) go and do a ouija board on the balcony on halloween night, after the club has closed.

So halloween comes and its a good night, 3am rolls around and we get everyone out, 4am rolls around and the staff are leaving, after 4, its just us and we go upstairs to the old balcony and chris gets this ouiji board and we start messing with it having a laugh with each other and so on.

After a while, mike the chef gets up and goes to the toilet, he's gone for a few minutes and when he comes back, he is absolutely raging, demanding to know which one of us followed him and was banging on the door while he was using the toilet.. there was only us 4 in the building and us 3 stayed up on the balcony the whole time, mike swears someone was banging on the toilet door while he was down there and while he's having a strop at us all thinking we are playing tricks on him he stops, looks at a wall behind us and then runs, the fucking fastest ive ever seen anyone run in my life and he runs down 3 flights of stairs and straight out of the building and doesn't stop.


I saw him a couple of days later and he told me a old man chased him all the way out of the building.

Now at first, me and neil thought that chris had put him up to it to try and scare us, both of them deny it, but then thinking back, i saw his face before he ran, it was pure white, pure terrorfied.. i dont think it could be faked.

Thats my story, its all true i swear on my life, every word of that is true and i will never forget it, especially the look on his face.

[Wyldwraith]

Going to take an apparently unpopular stance,
I believe that what people call "the supernatural" exists. At the same time, I believe that any "supernatural" event has a root cause in an as-yet-undetermined principle which describes that specific aspect of reality, and all the unexplained events which can occur from such.

Why do I believe? I've witnessed two clearly "supernatural" entities, one of which was seen for 2-3 minutes by no less than five individuals total. None shared their individual accounts as to what they witnessed until we were all back in the van and hauling ass away. Here's what happened.

A girl I hung out with all through high school (she was a year ahead of me), had told us about the house in her neighborhood that had been in the papers a year or so earlier due to a grisly murder-suicide. Guy killed his wife and two teenage daughters in an unusually drawn-out and horrific manner, then ate a bowl of frosted flakes + ground up lightbulb glass.

Typical teens, we thought checking out the abandoned house would be a cool way to spend a Saturday morning/afternoon.

Long story short, a vaguely humanoid-from-the-waist-up figure of smoky non-light (NOT shadow or darkness. It was situated at the top of the stairs between two very large windows through which the sun was shining brightly. It just seemed to suck up the light), and vaguely misty/unformed from the waist down.

That was freaky enough, but what got to me was the INTENSE feeling of "something" that wanted something really bad to happen to us. The key being that the feeling clearly felt very external. NOT like something my own emotions generated. This was the unique thing everyone commented on experiencing.

Of course we got the hell out of there ASAP. This confirmed the existence of the supernatural (and the demonic) in a concrete way for me.

Anyways, yes, I believe that doorways to somewhere negative and dangerous can be opened, intentionally or otherwise. Things like Ouija/Spirit Boards fall into the category of objects that under certain unknown circumstances can open those doorways unintentionally. So are a definite no-no far as I'm concerned.

[Danny]

andy, wyldwraith cant you both follow your own logic backwards to see the problem there?

"halloween, early morning"?, "house where a grisly murder is supposed to have taken place"? You are predisposing yourself based on prior, but not concrete, information to prey on your own fears and make you more susceptible to scares.

Find me a single story like this that takes place in a wide open space with dozens of people on a sunny afternoon instead a dark and spooky night on a day, or in a location with grisly or supernatural connotations with few people at the scene. THEN i will be more inclined to hear you out and concede a possibility of it being more than a person working themselves up into a state and seeing what they expect to see.

[Neil]

I love stuff like this! I really just cannot believe in any of this supernatural stuff, but then you get clearly average/intelligent folk saying they've seemingly seen convincing stuff... So what's happening?!

[Kaos]

I played with one once and this guy came to live with me:
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/1544/howdysi7.jpg

He's always appearing in a flash and upto all kinds of mischief. At least he pays rent on time and cleans up after himself.

[bassman]

I think you have more of a chance to hear a short bald man telling you to go to jail while playing Monopoly....

[Terran]

*chants*
In*Fra*Sound
In*Fra*Sound
In*Fra*Sound


On a slightly related note.

Do you know how many times as a young child I tried to sell my soul for various "powers"?
The answer is lots of times. (Stopped sometime around 2nd-3rd grade)

For some reason Catholic School did not have the same effect on me as a kid as it did most other kids.
The eternal damnation and various scare tactics used on us kids if anything had the opposite desired effect on me.

I suppose though, I responded to this perceived threat of punishment and authority in much the same way I did to real threats of punishment and authority....with spiteful or vindictive actions....the more the punishment escalated the more spiteful and/or vindictive I became.....



Hmm this makes me want to start a new unrelated thread....:shifty:

[Neil]

Hmm this makes me want to start a new unrelated thread....:shifty:
Yeh!!! Start one about badgers! That's pretty unrelated!!

[mista_mo]

nope, even growing up i knew there was no such thing as ghosts or spirits.

No you didn't. You think that you know the answer, but in all honesty, you cannot be 100% certain of something like this. Can you not believe in Spirits and ghosts and devils and demons, and angels, and all of that supernatual stuff? Of course. But, can you absolutely know with 100% certainty that these things do not exist? Nope.

There is a big difference in believing in something, and knowing something as fact.

I personally believe in an afterlife of some kind, of ghosts and spirits, and angels and demons, but I really can't be 100% sure that what I believe in is completely factual, as ultimately, I can't outright prove or disprove of the existence of supernatural phenomena. As Terran pointed out, there are completely reasonable, scientific explanations that could be attributed to strange occurrences, but as he also said, he can't be 100% certain that Infrasound is the correct answer.

[Kaos]

No you didn't. N You think that you know the answer, but in all honesty, you cannot be 100% certain of something like this. Can you not believe in Spirits and ghosts and devils and demons, and angels, and all of that supernatual stuff? Of course. But, can you absolutely know with 100% certainty that these things do not exist?

I associate it with the same certainty that monkeys won't fly out of my butt and that my hand won't spontaneously fuse with my keyboard (there is actually a remote possibility but soooooooooo remote that I am pretty damn confident it won't happen). There are things so unlikely that to entertain them is an exercise for entertainment purposes at best and life wasting at worst.

[Terran]

Oh....I also have a pseudo scientific explanation for ghosts that is not Infrasound related....
It would be a usable explanation for every ghost story I have ever heard of. (Additionally if taken to further extremes it could be used to explain various life after death stories and ghosts helping people stories but this is another matter altogether)

This explanation is best suited to address "group visions" and, to coin a phrase, "Mug shot visions".
The explanation will follow how I am defining this visions.

Group Visions examples:
1)A bunch of people independently witness the same figure or entity and the descriptions match.
2)A bunch of people collectively witness the figure or entity


"Mug Shot Visions"
Visions of a particular recognizable entity.
Example (need a hypothetical story to demonstrate): This is a story that i just made up I put in quotes because its similar to many other stories.

You arrive at a woman acquaintance's house. As you approach the house you notice a man working on a car in the driveway. You try to greet the person, but they are either entirely unresponsive or cryptic in their responses (their responses are awkwardly if at all related to your comments/questions).
Feeling uncomfortable about this interaction you proceed to the front door and are invited in.
You see a picture of that same man on the mantle and ask "Oh is that your husband? I ran into him on the way in. He seemed preoccupied with his car."
The woman's face whitens and then bursts into tears crying "My husband has been dead for 5 years....He loved that damn car!"...Que on creepy music and unsettling feelings.
So I coined the term "Mug Shot Visions" because the vision, and the associated event/interaction was so realistic that afterthefact encounters with a picture/video generates the response "Hey, its that guy/girl. We just met a couple minutes ago". Kindof like a mugshot.

Caveats to my "rational" explanation of such visions:

1)This explanation is completely pseudo scientific.
2)This explanation holds no true scientific value.
3)Some of the scientific principles associated with this explanation are extrapolations of mathematical inventions created to connect certain natural phenomenon together.
4)There is no particularly compelling evidence connecting these natural phenomenons in question(At least currently):shifty:.
5)This explanation is only rational if the pseudo scientific assumptions are true.

Simply put I just like this explanation, because it removes the supernatural explanation, while reinforcing a scientific hypothesis that I would really like to be a true representation of the Universe (or Multiverse for that matter).


Okay here is the "nitty gritty" explanation in two sentences the rest will just be explanatory fluff.
(again remember the caveat)

There is no such thing as "ghosts" in terms of its historic and contemporary definition/understanding. These and other associated phenomenon are actually acute disruptions in space time where our universe temporarily merges or overlaps with another universe within the multiverse.


Explanatory fluff time:

The multiverse (or meta-universe, metaverse) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise everything that physically exists: the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter, energy and momentum, and the physical laws and constants that govern them. The various universes within the multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes.

Additional pseudo science explanatory stuff:

Under these assumptions there would be an infinite number of Universes. There would be an infinite number of Universes with you/I in them and an infinite number of Universes without you/I.
Even an infinite amount of Universes that possessed or suddenly acquired* completely different physical characteristics that we attribute to our natural world.
There could even be Universes that spontaneous come into existence at a particular moment in time with all the attributes our universe has, lifeforms and planetary bodies alike, last a few seconds and just as spontaneously unremarkablely cease to exist as it is absorbed into something else within the multiverse.
Perhaps less interestingly to some there could be an infinite number of universes in which the subatomic molecular forces are drastically different than those in our universe. The effect would be that Matter as we know it would not exist and this universe could be composed just entirely of non-interacting sub atomic particles or these sub atomic particles would interact to form a substances with "unimaginable" characteristics.

* Generally these infinite Universes would interact with each at the Subatomic level. However various disruptions of space time could cause overlapping of universes in a fashion that is perceivable to human sensory input.

The possibilities are literally endless.

So seeing a ghost or witnessing some "supernatural" event would actually be considered a natural event in the context of the Meta-Universe and its corollary infinite universes interacting.

The best part of this idea, at least from the perspective of its legitimacy, is that if its true we should essentially be able to measure these phenomenon.
If true it would quite literally be an explanation for EVERYTHING.
Additionally, by definition, if one can measure something one can manipulate or harness the phenomenon being measured. :hyper:



He-man and his friends are so primitive "Masters of the Universe" indeed.

As a species we will become "Masters of the Multiverse". :p:rockbrow:


So impress you friends and loved ones. The next time you have a "super natural" occurrence go to them and say with great enthusiasm.

"Holy crap! I just experienced an acute disruption in space time!"
:o

[JDFP]

Wait, wait...

I'm not saying that we summoned Captain Howdy on the ouija board and he got pissed off so he broke our mirrors. If anything, it could potentially be chalked up to coincidence -- or potentially "Infrasound" as Terran pointed out for the reason the events happened as they did. It's possible that it was sheer coincidence/happenstance. It's probably likely. However, there can be no good to playing around with an object that is primarily used for attempting to contact spirits.

What happened did happen (Ned -- thanks for sticking your head out from your writings by Marx long enough to think up some uber-witty retort to the events that took place :p). I don't say with 100% confidence that it was an unnatural (I hate the term 'supernatural') event, but it is a freaky event that did take place. I figured it would at least be worth a good story to share here regarding what I personally believe to be a doorway that shouldn't be touched. :cool:

As far as the whole issue of whether spirits/demons/angels really exist, I'm not getting into that pointless circular argument again. People either choose to believe or not to believe. I choose to believe just as some people choose not to believe.

j.p.

[Terran]

Above Post
Since you likely were typing as I posted see my response right before yours.

[acealive1]

not for me, I believe in it about as much as Micheal Jackson's innocence...



something about beating a dead horse.....

[darth los]

something about beating a dead horse.....

I would have went with innocent until proven guilty but that works too.

:cool:

[EvilNed]

However, there can be no good to playing around with an object that is primarily used for attempting to contact spirits.

Wait, wait, wait. How do you know that a Oujia board is mainly used for contacting spirits? For me, a Ouija board's main purpose is to bullshit people and make people believe if they want too. And while I agree that playing around with a Ouija board is bad news in the first place, I do believe it is for all the wrong reasons. It's bad because it makes people think that spirits are real, or that ghosts exist. Funny that they should only show themselves once you bring out the massproduced happy-fun-time board game...

What, are spirits deaf? Can't I just ask them out loud "Hey, dude, are you there?" and they answer "Yeah sure" or whatever. Or write it. On the wall. With blood. Or just on a post-it note and stick it in my face. The possibilites for spirits to actually hear and answer me are abundant. But, noooo. Spirits settle for nothing less than finest plastic boards from the Parker Brothers! Infact, it's a well known fact that the Parker Brothers struck a deal with ghosts, and cut them in on the revenue if they'll only answer to their board game.

Oh, come on people, it's the 21st century. Spiritualism was a hot topic 200 years ago, and even then people simply admitted to faking it.

Interesting how all this stuff always happens to friends of friends or stuff like that. Think about it, you people. Of all the stuff you heard, there's two different versions:

If it happened to you, or a close friend of yours, then it's kinda tame and somewhat reasonable. A broken mirror (or two) can be explained by infrasound, as Terran said. Still creepy, of course.

But an invisible old man (only visible to you) and the like that cannot be explained by any technology or science we know off... That's just batshit crazy. This is why this kind of stuff never ever happens to you personally. It's always a friend of a friend. Or someone else.


(Ned -- thanks for sticking your head out from your writings by Marx long enough to think up some uber-witty retort to the events that took place :p)

Oh, you give me too much credit. I was paraphrasing Lenin.

[AcesandEights]

Everyone who leans towards any given way of thought with any sense of surety looks for dogma, teachings, belief structures and--most importantly--company along their path to back them up. That's why scientists are so pointy-headed, converts are so full of hellfire and drunks on the wagon are so apt to point out everyone else has a drinking problem "too".

"There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion."

---------- Post added at 12:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:58 AM ----------

^ See what I did there?

[EvilNed]

I've heard that before, and it's a poor man's defence. Doesn't really work that way. If you can prove it or at least theorize it in a logical sense, then it can be accepted. If you cannot, then suit yourself but I'm just gonna use my civil liberties and go ahead and doubt ghosts. Yeah, I'm so crazy, I know, but hey.

[mista_mo]

No one is saying that you're crazy for believing in what you choose to Ned, but I am getting the distinct impression that you think that someone that believes in the supernatural, or holds certain religious beliefs is not of sound mind.

edit,

is it also possible for a thread that has a tangible connection to the otherwordly to not deviate into a huge penis measuring contest about which belief is right and which is incorrect?

[AcesandEights]

is it also possible for a thread that has a tangible connection to the otherwordly to not deviate into a huge penis measuring contest about which belief is right and which is incorrect?

I would disagree with such a spurious line of reasoning whilst laughing with my large penis spilling forth from my hand, but you posted it in the form of a question and not an opinion...so I can't :(

[EvilNed]

No one is saying that you're crazy for believing in what you choose to Ned, but I am getting the distinct impression that you think that someone that believes in the supernatural, or holds certain religious beliefs is not of sound mind.

My best friend is a devout christian. Or rather, he's a rastafari (even crazier!). And when I say best friend, I really do mean best friend. We talk everyday. We just don't talk about that - possibly for the reasons you stated... ;)



is it also possible for a thread that has a tangible connection to the otherwordly to not deviate into a huge penis measuring contest about which belief is right and which is incorrect?

Probably not. And I digress.

[JDFP]

No one is saying that you're crazy for believing in what you choose to Ned, but I am getting the distinct impression that you think that someone that believes in the supernatural, or holds certain religious beliefs is not of sound mind.

edit,

is it also possible for a thread that has a tangible connection to the otherwordly to not deviate into a huge penis measuring contest about which belief is right and which is incorrect?

Good point (first paragraph above), Mo. I find it beyond bittersweet irony that anyone could find religious ideology to be against someone with a 'sound mind' and yet prescribe to the insanity of Communist ideology, personally, but that's just me. From a strictly Atheistic stand-point (which I am certainly not) it's basically saying "Let's replace a religious fantasy by inserting a fantasy of a world in which all people will be equal and there will be no wealthy or poor." To quote Church lady, "Well, isn't that special". :D

Shit, I should have read your second paragraph before posting that above...

Really though, the whole argument on the matter of faith/spirituality is really a circular argument. It's like Kant said some 300 years ago, "The existence of God cannot be proved or disproved empirically." I'd say the same could be applied to any discussion on demons/angels/ghosts/spirits and the ilk... although I dig Terran's idea of "multiverses" as a potential theory. Ned is just as accurate from his perspective of calling spiritual ideology a sham on his own subjective level as I am in accepting it on my own subjective level. Anyway, it's a matter of preference and choice in what we choose to believe -- believing or disbelieving in a spiritual realm -- these are a matter of personal preferences.

j.p.

[EvilNed]

Personally, I do not believe that belief is a choice at all. I could not "choose" to believe in ghosts or god, even if I wanted too, anymore than I could choose to be turned on by men or start enjoying reggae music.

[Terran]

Personally, I do not believe that belief is a choice at all.

Is this statement designed to make a robots brain explode?
:shifty:
If so I take it as a future threat.

[EvilNed]

Let's just say I picked up a trick or two from a certain starship captain...

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Induced_self-destruction

[AcesandEights]

Is this statement designed to make a robots brain explode?
:shifty:
If so I take it as a future threat.

Terran, do you ever use contractions?

[EvilNed]

terran, do you ever use contractions?

dun dun dunnnn!!!

[Wyldwraith]

For the record,
I do not predispose towards fright, unless I myself am in danger. I do not believe in, nor have I reacted to irrational and/or substance-lacking fear triggers for well over two decades.

Having experienced a deranged parent who physically abused my mother, little brother, and myself for a protracted period of time, and having lived in fear during that time due to the practice of what was essentially small-scale psychological warfare, I have a very high break-point for fear and/or anxiety.

Examples of more common "games" played by my biological father to screw with us and cause an increase in our fear of him due to his violent and unpredictable behavior.

1) 2-3 hours after the house had settled down and everyone had gone to bed (or seemed to) some time ago, my biological father would quietly enter the bedroom I shared with my little brother and activate one of those obnoxiously piercing Air Horns to shock us awake from a dead sleep. In the moments of confusion/interval before either of us regained our wits, he would lean in over top of whichever one of us made a sound of distress first and roar insults and demeaning statements at the top of his lungs, with his face only a couple of inches from the face of whichever one of us he'd targeted that time.

This would be followed by a general boomingly loud rant towards both of us. Any attempt to leave the room while he was ranting would provoke an incident of outright physical abuse, or at the very least another personalized attempt to intimidate and scare the living shit out of us.

Most of these incidents concluded with our Mom attempting to intervene (to redirect his hostility towards her and away from us. The night's "festivities" would then conclude with an incident of physical or emotional abuse, with my mother as the target, before he inevitably stormed off to the master bedroom and ordered my Mom to accompany him.

2) "Father Dearest" would set one or both of us two impossibly contradictory edicts. A basic example would be a demand that I vacuum the house, except his second shouted demand would be "If I hear so much as the loose step creak once I've gone to bed for the day (Firefighter who often worked nights, and would thankfully be gone for 3-4 days at a time regularly) my belt buckle will go across your backside. Ditto if the vacuuming isn't done by the time I get up for work this evening.

Obviously a lose-lose scenario, with obvious, brutally painful consequences.

3) Countless sick pranks and psychological ploys meant to terrify me and my brother.

In any case, my point in all this is I have a CRYSTAL CLEAR understanding of my fear, the effect it has and has had on me at various times in my life. My personal experiences during my formative years, where the only portion of the nightmare I could mitigate was seeing through his sick pranks and fear-inducing ploys has a) Desensitized me to a large extent, and b) Created an automatically skeptical reflex that I've gone on to get quite a bit of mileage out of in my adult life.

So, when I say I saw something, you can trust that I've already considered as many potential "rational explanations" as I can attribute to the situation.

The quality that stands out in my mind isn't the history of the house, or even the totality of the malevolent apparition. It was the inexplicable way that direct sunlight was unreasonably warped/affected. If not for that, I would be the first one to dismiss what I saw as my mind playing tricks on me.

I have nothing but respect for those whose experience and/or belief has led them to conclude such phenomena are simply misunderstood incidents of a scientific principle at work. They are as entitled to their perspectives as those of us that could be termed "believers" are to our own.

All I ask is that the patronizing, contempt-laden manner be left out of the dialog. It serves no constructive purpose, and is grossly disrespectful to individuals as entrenched in their intellectual position as the skeptics are in theirs.

[Terran]

Terran, do you ever use contractions?
My programming may be inadequate to the task.
I study people carefully, in order to more closely approximate human behavior.

[Tricky]

Damn wyld thats harsh, you come across as a decent guy on here though so I hope it hasnt badly affected you as a person.

As for ghosts and spirits, whether you believe in them or not, they've made decent plot devices for hundreds of films!

[Terran]

All I ask is that the patronizing, contempt-laden manner be left out of the dialog. It serves no constructive purpose, and is grossly disrespectful to individuals as entrenched in their intellectual position as the skeptics are in theirs.
"I seem to have reached an odd functional impasse. I am, uh... stuck."
:D

The last time I was a common visitor/poster I think I was much more patronizing, this time around I am trying to be more 'polite'.


Perhaps this will change though....:|

[krakenslayer]

All I ask is that the patronizing, contempt-laden manner be left out of the dialog. It serves no constructive purpose, and is grossly disrespectful to individuals as entrenched in their intellectual position as the skeptics are in theirs.

This is a big misconception. People throw the word around without using it correctly. "Skeptic" (or "sceptic" as we say over here) does not mean "disbeliever", it means someone who weighs up, as evenly as possible, all the available evidence and arguments using logic and scientific method, without presupposing belief or disbelief. In other words, a true sceptic does not set out to specifically prove the existence of ghosts/aliens/fairies, nor does he set out to specifically disprove their existence; he just wants to know one way or the other without a pre-determined bias.

The word for someone who dismisses things outright would by "cynic".

[darth los]

No one is saying that you're crazy for believing in what you choose to Ned, but I am getting the distinct impression that you think that someone that believes in the supernatural, or holds certain religious beliefs is not of sound mind.


Exactly.

To believe what religious people do you have to suspend your reasoning power, which more than anything else distinguishes us from the "lower" forms of life on the planet.

And if people get offended, so be it. The truth often does that.

There's not a shred of proof that santa exists either. Anyone wanna make a case for that too?

:cool:

[JDFP]

Exactly.

To believe what religious people do you have to suspend your reasoning power, which more than anything else distinguishes us from the "lower" forms of life on the planet.

And if people get offended, so be it. The truth often does that.





Fascinating. I feel the same way about Atheists that you do towards we "religious people". Great argument though, the Third Reich and Soviet Russia used the same type of arguments to slaughter millions under the guise of people being less human for believing differently. It's a slippery slope.

"Only a fool says there is no God". Yes, the truth often offends.

Instead of attacking someone for being religious based on their own perceived subjective notions (and my doing the same towards those who feel opposite because of my perceived subjective notions) perhaps we could attempt to have a more reasonable discussion and get back to what the topic was originally about -- not an attack on people from differing perspectives.

Los, we generally have great discussions because you're someone who I can appreciate when it comes to your usually well-reasoned thoughts, but if you think I'm a less intelligent or reasoned person because of my views on faith than I'm sorry to hear that.

j.p.

[AcesandEights]

I still maintain that these are all personal truths, and while you can find a personal truth, maybe even share it, you shouldn't press it on others.

In the same vein, if people want to hold truths and expound on them, I don't think it's a bad thing for others to question them on it. Though I do feel it's a person's responsibility to question themselves first and foremost.

[Terran]

Great argument though, the Third Reich and Soviet Russia used the same type of arguments to slaughter millions under the guise of people being less human for believing differently. It's a slippery slope.
As it relates to the Third Reich/ Nazis that correlation is a bit unfair.

Paraphrasing here:

While the National Socialist leaders and dogmas were basically antireligious, Nazi Germany usually did not directly attack the Churches, the exceptions being clerics who refused accommodation with the Nazi régime.

Hitler extended his rationalizations into a religious doctrine supported by his criticism of traditional Roman Catholicism. In particular, and closely related to Positive Christianity, he objected to Catholicism because it was not the religion of an exclusive race and its culture.

Positive Christianity

Positive Christianity is a term adopted by Nazi leaders to refer to a model of Christianity consistent with Nazism.Adherents of Positive Christianity argued that traditional Christianity emphasized the passive rather than the active aspects of Christ's life, stressing his sacrifice on the cross and other-worldly redemption. They wanted to replace this with a "positive" emphasis on Christ as an active preacher, organizer and fighter who opposed the institutionalized Judaism of his day. At various points in the Nazi regime, attempts were made to replace conventional Christianity with its "positive" alternative.

Theological and doctrinal differences included:

* Rejection of Jewish written parts of the Bible (including the entire Old Testament)
* Positive Christianity's insistence on Christ's "Aryanhood" and non-Jewishness
* Positive Christianity's goal, in furtherance of the political objective of national unity, to overcome confessional differences and to do away with Catholicism and unite Protestantism into a single unitary Christian national socialist church

The Soviet Union issue is also more complex than that...

Regardless though....let us not turn this into an argument over ideology causing genocides....
All recorded genocides that I am aware of are more complex than being caused by an ideology...more often than not the ideology develops as a rationalization for the actions being taken.

[Wyldwraith]

Thanks Tricky,
Taken a long time to set down all that baggage, but all we can do is our best, right?

Anyways, I didn't bring up my personal history as some sort of pity-party, but rather as an explanation as to why I possess a certain...."expertise" in distinguishing genuine danger from the perception-tricks our minds are quite capable of playing on us.

Additionally, I'm not pushing some sort of opaque mysticism. I believe there ARE rational explanations for every single genuine occurrence of what is termed "supernatural" activity.

I simply believe that our current limited understanding of reality's true nature creates blind spots we have yet to develop the capability to pierce. The problem I have with most rationality/logic-based theories and/or suppositions by skeptics is a simple one.

Most skeptics, including the ones participating in this thread have so far gravitated towards explanations that all share a common Assumption of Exclusion.

In other words, our skeptical friends are saying that nothing beyond an application of misunderstood scientific principles are at work. I find this approach itself to be irrational and unscientific. Not to mention horribly limiting.

Example of what I'm talking about: A previous poster described the shattering of two mirrors a significant distance apart, for no READILY apparent reason. Peripheral to the incident(s) was some impromptu manipulation of a "Spirit Board".

In response, the possibility of ELF-waves being the culprit was put forward.

A reasonable enough premise, but there is an underlying flaw with this and related science-based explanations. What I call a Negative Assumption.

A Negative Assumption presumes two things about the alleged incident of supernatural activity its directed towards. One, that the application of the scientific principle alleged to be responsible is in essence a coincidence.

In the case of the two broken mirrors, let's assume for a moment that some sort of sonic resonance created by ELF (Extreme Low Frequency) waves broke the two mirrors. That's where the offered explanation ends. It doesn't concern itself with where these sound waves came from, or how they happened to affect these two mirrors specifically.

See what I'm saying? For at least a century, skeptics have worked to debunk supposed supernatural occurrences. In many cases they performed the valuable service of unmasking charlatans/frauds, who ceaselessly preyed on vulnerable, often grieving individuals. Particularly during the height of the Spiritualist craze. Harry Houdini is probably the most well-known of these "Debunkers".

Unfortunately, it's often only a short slide from skepticism to cynicism. In the rush to prove a supernatural event nothing of the kind, it becomes enough for the skeptic to simply craft an alternate potential theory as to the source of the event. Satisfied they've chased off belief in the supernatural, the skeptic sees no need to establish just why the scientific principle in action affected a particular person or place, or even to confirm that their theory is in fact correct.

Look at the vast majority of investigations related to the Amityville Horror AFTER the conclusion of the Warrens' investigation. Nearly all were simply hunting for a *possible* scientific cause of the reported incidents. There's next to no material giving these scientific theories any context.

For instance, Mass Hysteria is a stock conclusion for many a skeptic. Using it, they can dismiss anything by blanketing any witness to the goings-on as just one more individual affected by Mass Hysteria.

Where are the experts brought in to confirm the possibility of Mass Hysteria? Where is the investigation related as to why this particular household & associates are suffering from this Hysteria, but not their neighbors?

It isn't enough to simply fashion a reasonable theory and draw a conclusion on the strength that their theory hasn't been disproved. It doesn't do science justice, and it certainly doesn't do the individuals involved justice.

It's just the sketched outlines of my point, but I hope I've made it. Apologies for being so long-winded.

[Terran]

In regards to various genocides after WWII I recommend seeing the documentary The World at War.

The World at War is a 26-episode British television documentary series on World War II and the events immediately before and after it

[Mike70]

I still maintain that these are all personal truths,

i don't hold with the idea of "personal truth." personal truth is nothing more than an opinion. it need not have any basis in fact or reality.

a true statement is one that is valid for everybody, everywhere, all the time. truth does not depend on one's viewpoint nor does truth depend on concepts like "belief" or "faith." 2+2=4 no matter who or what you are.

[AcesandEights]

i don't hold with the idea of "personal truth." personal truth is nothing more than an opinion. it need not have any basis in fact or reality.

Mike, not sure I understand how or why the two are mutually exclusive for the purpose of this conversation. If a man wants to believe in a god of some sort I'm fine with it, regardless of how unlikely I think it is. I can't disprove what he believes and i don't know that he's wrong. When that dude starts telling me a god exists then he should be prepared to be questioned. When he tells me I should believe, there's a real problem.

[EvilNed]

i don't hold with the idea of "personal truth." personal truth is nothing more than an opinion. it need not have any basis in fact or reality.

a true statement is one that is valid for everybody, everywhere, all the time. truth does not depend on one's viewpoint nor does truth depend on concepts like "belief" or "faith." 2+2=4 no matter who or what you are.

I'm with you on this one. I've always found that fascinating when some people bring that up that you can't prove anything. Wrong. I can prove that 1 + 1 = 2.

I also don't think the "Personal Truth" really holds water anymore than being used as a synonym for opinion. And opinions are personal. Facts are not. We can prove certain things.

This evidence points towards one thing, whereas the lack of any evidence points towards something else. And that is why I don't believe in spirits. If they exist, they've been around for 50,000 years. Plenty of time to leave something behind... Yet nothing? Sorry, not buying it.

The one human characteristic I admire the most is that of analyzation. To come to a conclusion through logical means, taking all the information into effect. We don't see alot of that, unfortunately, but I'm with H.G. Wells when I say I'd like to see more of it.

[Tricky]

Anyways, back on track guys, anyone else ever messed about with a Ouiji board? including the sceptics, have you ever done one & absolutely nothing happened? interested in both sides!

[Mike70]

Mike, not sure I understand how or why the two are mutually exclusive for the purpose of this conversation. If a man wants to believe in a god of some sort I'm fine with it, regardless of how unlikely I think it is. I can't disprove what he believes and i don't know that he's wrong. When that dude starts telling me a god exists then he should be prepared to be questioned. When he tells me I should believe, there's a real problem.

it is the use of the word "truth" in this context. what someone wants to believe is up to them. to pass that opinion off as some of true statement is the problem. again, a true statement has to be valid for everyone, everywhere, all the time or it simply isn't truth.

[AcesandEights]

Anyways, back on track guys...

Damn, just when I was about to argue that 2+2=4 is nothing more than a simian abstraction of a fundamental truth and that nothing can be proven to anyone else. :)

[Mike70]

Anyways, back on track guys, anyone else ever messed about with a Ouiji board? including the sceptics, have you ever done one & absolutely nothing happened? interested in both sides!

no, man i haven't. i think all that stuff is about as silly as putting training wheels on a harley.

[bassman]

I'm still trying to figure out how the fuck "Ouija" is pronounced weejee....

:lol:

[AcesandEights]

I haven't either. I was given a Ouija board as a Christmas present by a GF about...Christ...16 years ago and it's still in storage somewhere.

I find the idea and customs/window dressing and origin of the practice more interesting than the actual practice / use of it.

[Tricky]

no, man i haven't. i think all that stuff is about as silly as putting training wheels on a harley.

Chances are your right, but maybe trying it to disprove the whole thing is the only way to be sure! ;)

[Terran]

In response, the possibility of ELF-waves being the culprit was put forward.

A reasonable enough premise, but there is an underlying flaw with this and related science-based explanations. What I call a Negative Assumption.

A Negative Assumption presumes two things about the alleged incident of supernatural activity its directed towards. One, that the application of the scientific principle alleged to be responsible is in essence a coincidence.

In the case of the two broken mirrors, let's assume for a moment that some sort of sonic resonance created by ELF (Extreme Low Frequency) waves broke the two mirrors. That's where the offered explanation ends. It doesn't concern itself with where these sound waves came from, or how they happened to affect these two mirrors specifically.
I did too offer an explanation where the sound wave came from.

Infrasound is generated by natural processes such as avalanches, volcanoes, tornadoes, ocean waves, earthquakes, and meteors. It can be generated by large chemical or nuclear explosions and industrial equipment.
So without a huge amount of information of the exact circumstances of the mirrors breaking, further 'explanation' would be impossible.

As to an explanation on how only those two mirrors were effected by this phenomenon is actually simple.

I mentioned Resonance

In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate at larger amplitude. Even small periodic driving forces can produce large amplitude oscillations.
Resonance phenomena occur with all types of vibrations or waves.
If these two mirrors were manufactured by the same company. Or manufactured by some set parameters they very likely would have the same Resonant frequency.
This would mean after a period of time this constant vibration of that Resonant frequency would break only those mirrors.
Humans wouldn't necessarily perceive these vibrations at all.

Hell, the resonant frequency could have originated from a rhythmic power surges that transfer from the light fixtures to the mirrors.
Or a rhythmic vibration from the plumbing system....There is literally oodles of sources for this vibration.


One, that the application of the scientific principle alleged to be responsible is in essence a coincidence.


So given any of these scenarios there is nothing "coincidental" about it besides these people sharing the same electricity provider.





Unfortunately, it's often only a short slide from skepticism to cynicism. In the rush to prove a supernatural event nothing of the kind, it becomes enough for the skeptic to simply craft an alternate potential theory as to the source of the event. Satisfied they've chased off belief in the supernatural, the skeptic sees no need to establish just why the scientific principle in action affected a particular person or place, or even to confirm that their theory is in fact correct.

Look at the vast majority of investigations related to the Amityville Horror AFTER the conclusion of the Warrens' investigation. Nearly all were simply hunting for a *possible* scientific cause of the reported incidents. There's next to no material giving these scientific theories any context.

For instance, Mass Hysteria is a stock conclusion for many a skeptic. Using it, they can dismiss anything by blanketing any witness to the goings-on as just one more individual affected by Mass Hysteria.

Where are the experts brought in to confirm the possibility of Mass Hysteria? Where is the investigation related as to why this particular household & associates are suffering from this Hysteria, but not their neighbors?

It isn't enough to simply fashion a reasonable theory and draw a conclusion on the strength that their theory hasn't been disproved. It doesn't do science justice, and it certainly doesn't do the individuals involved justice.

It's just the sketched outlines of my point, but I hope I've made it. Apologies for being so long-winded.
What I don't understand is how a "super natural explanation" makes any sense for anything if simple principals are understood.

For someone to have the perception that they "saw something", natural things literally HAVE to occur otherwise they literally did not occur.

When the human body is working properly, a photon enters the eye and excites either a rod or a cone. Simply put these rods and cones translate this photon into an electrochemical signal. Which then through series of very complex "programming" the brain translates this into an image. Which then other areas of the brain react to.
So for person/people to 'see' a figure. Light from the sun has to come all the way to earth and bounce off of whatever it is they are 'seeing' for that photon to then make its way to their eye.
What did it bounce off of?...
if Light can bounce of this figure or image this means that WHATEVER the image it must have 'physical'/'natural' properties.


The only other way the brain can think its 'seeing' something in the absence of a photon exciting rods/cones is for a vibration to stimulate them or for some part in the neurological pathway to and within the brain to malfunction.

Infrasound can even cause people to hallucinate grey figures if the resonant frequency of the eye is reach(18HZ according to NASA).
But regardless of it being a photon, vibrations, or the brain messing up...If the stimulus can effect the natural universe than it is part of the natural universe. Measurable, Predictable, and Understandable.

[darth los]

Fascinating. I feel the same way about Atheists that you do towards we "religious people". Great argument though, the Third Reich and Soviet Russia used the same type of arguments to slaughter millions under the guise of people being less human for believing differently. It's a slippery slope.

"Only a fool says there is no God". Yes, the truth often offends.

Instead of attacking someone for being religious based on their own perceived subjective notions (and my doing the same towards those who feel opposite because of my perceived subjective notions) perhaps we could attempt to have a more reasonable discussion and get back to what the topic was originally about -- not an attack on people from differing perspectives.

Los, we generally have great discussions because you're someone who I can appreciate when it comes to your usually well-reasoned thoughts, but if you think I'm a less intelligent or reasoned person because of my views on faith than I'm sorry to hear that.

j.p.


Well, that wasn't my intent. :o

Let me attempt to clarify. It just boggles the mind how a totally rational, intelligent person can believe that without allowing for the possibility that it might not be true.

And that's really my thing. For example: I don't believe in that stuff however, my reasoning power allows for the fact that i might be wrong.

Now let's look at the opposite viewpoint. Religious people will simply not allow for the possibility, no matter how remote, that their belief system might be a sham, without a shred of proof to support them.

So if an intellectually honest debate is to be had both sides must conceed that because without that there's really nothing more to talk about. Cause the truth is that they might be dead wrong just as i might be.

Where, else could you point out inconsistency after inconsinstency contained within the religious texts they read (Outside of a GAr film that is! ZINGER ! :lol:) and have them respond to you in this manner?:

http://janeqrepublican.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/see-no-evil.jpg

:cool:

[Terran]

Anyways, back on track guys, anyone else ever messed about with a Ouiji board? including the sceptics, have you ever done one & absolutely nothing happened? interested in both sides!


When I was little tyke ...I alluded to earlier

Essentially I tried to summon the devil cause I wanted to sell my soul for powers....

Im not being facetious ...I had a friend over and 'forced' him to help...
What a let down....

Perhaps its part of the devil's moral code not to accept the souls of children....:shifty:

[EvilNed]

Damn, just when I was about to argue that 2+2=4 is nothing more than a simian abstraction of a fundamental truth and that nothing can be proven to anyone else. :)

Mathematics can. You said it yourself, they're a fundamental truth.

I put a rock infront of you. Whatever language or thought pattern you follow, what it boils down too is that there is a rock infront of you. Don't go into the "But there's like billions of atoms in there!" because you can replace the rock with anything. Anything. Now put another rock besides the first one. You now have two rocks. Or dos. Or deux. Or zwei. Or två. Or just simply 2. There's two of them infront of you now, and an instant ago there were one.

There's simply noway of getting around that. Put it on paper, put it in your mind, put it anywhere else. 1 + 1 = 2.

On the subject of Ouija boards, did anyone see the Bullshit! episode? Thought it was kinda funny when they turned it over and the guys were blindfolded.

[AcesandEights]

1 + 1 = 2.

Dude, I was so talking about 2+2=4. Stop obfuscating the issue with your 1+1 doctrine. :)

[EvilNed]

Dude, I was so talking about 2+2=4.

That would indicate an increase of 100%! What are you crazy, it's gonna blow!!!

[JDFP]

So if an intellectually honest debate is to be had both sides must conceed that because without that there's really nothing more to talk about. Cause the truth is that they might be dead wrong just as i might be.

:cool:

Gotcha. Now I know where you are coming from and this makes perfect sense. I'm not for certain who these Atheists are who could argue that "There is no God and I won't believe it even if you show empirical proof!" but on the opposite side I perfectly accept that I fully believe in my faith and my attempt at following the path that God wants me to follow (even though regularly failing). At the same time, I accept that yes, there's always a possibility that my faith and ideology are not accurate. Is it possible that it's all a shame? Sure. I accept my faith on a matter of faith as well as a priori reasoning, which to me is more important than any fallible empirical demonstrations.

At the same time, there's always the remote possibility that I may die and Zeuss may stand in front of me and start laughing as he says: "Hey, you thought you had it all figured out didn't you?". There's also a possibility that there may be a glitch in the matrix one day and we may all wake up from it. As humans, we see through lenses -- while I believe in Truth (as objective) as fallible individuals we will always only catch a perspeective of Truth and thus we see through our own subjective 'truth'. Is it possible that I am wrong about God? Certainly. There's no absolutes we can properly grasp as being flawed creatures. At the same time, it's also folly for anyone to say there's no possibility for a God in existence.

I think the best way of summing it all up for me is the prayer a man had while encountering Christ in scripture: "Lord, I want to believe, help my unbelief." :cool:

j.p.

[Terran]

At the same time, I accept that yes, there's always a possibility that my faith and ideology are not accurate. Is it possible that it's all a shame? Sure.
Dude your like totally breaking a few commandments right there!
:eek:

Really not intending this as an attack or anything else detrimental to you....just goofing around.

Thus far I am very proud of everyone maintaining a reasonable level of civility in this discussion

[EvilNed]

At the same time, it's also folly for anyone to say there's no possibility for a God in existence.


Right, I understand where you're coming from with this. But what if I were to say that there is no possiblity of a god in existance as he is described in various religious texts? Not pinpointing one god in particular, but I do know without a shadow of a doubt that some religious texts portray an impossible god.

[darth los]

Dude your like totally breaking a few commandments right there!
:eek:

Really not intending this as an attack or anything else detrimental to you....just goofing around.

Thus far I am very proud of everyone maintaining a reasonable level of civility in this discussion

Well, these definitely aren't the boards you remember. The mods have done an exemplary job of weeding out the knuckle heads.

There are lots of discussions like this now days.

:cool:

[JDFP]

Right, I understand where you're coming from with this. But what if I were to say that there is no possiblity of a god in existance as he is described in various religious texts? Not pinpointing one god in particular, but I do know without a shadow of a doubt that some religious texts portray an impossible god.

Great question, Ned. Back when I was highly agnostic back in high school and my first year of college and I was really seeking after God I had the same question. Christianity? Buddhism? Hinduism? Who is right and who is wrong?


IN MY OPINION...

As a Catholic I believe there is a level of truth within religious ideologies/scriptures (the Vedas, Holy Bible, Koran, etc.), and that God works through individuals in these different religious ideologies. In fact, Vatican 2 (the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council) stresses that there is truth found within all major religious ideologies that can ultimately lead to God (it's like attempting to hike up a mountain using different pathways to lead all to the same place, you'll eventually get there, it's just a matter of how long and how much difficulty it is to get to the same place).

As humans we can't truly comprehend God. Thus, God attempts to make Himself evident to us -- and this making evident can be through different forms of scripture, different paths, different ways.

So, while I believe that Catholicism is the most accurate way of understanding the teachings of properly following God through Christ, I don't doubt that God also works through other religions to make Himself evident to other people everywhere.

j.p.

[krakenslayer]

Yeah, when I was a little nipper. Nothing happened, of course. Although I heard a story from my aunt who did a seance with some pals, and apparently the door to the room they were sitting in suddenly slammed shut. She swears it was a ghost but I'm more inclined to believe a window was open somewhere.


Yeah, as a sceptic (not a cynic ;)), I'd suggest that a big, big part of such "anecdotal" evidence can down to bias. I don't say this because I want to disprove all claims, but because I'd like to get to the bottom of such claims and sort the wheat from the chaff (and find out if indeed there is any wheat to sort).

Here's an example: you're sitting in the house, you're thinking about someone, and the phone rings and it's that same person and you think "OHH! CREEPY!" It might seem like it happens to you a lot.

It does seem creepy until you think of it as a numbers game. How often does that happen? Once a month? Once every two months? How many phone calls do you get within that time? Dozens and dozens of calls. You don't remember all the other times when you're thinking about someone and the phone rings and it's NOT them, because it's not memorable, it's a non-event!

You only remember the times when it's "creepy", so in retrospect it seems like weird shit happens to you all the time, when in fact weird shit only happens rarely (well within the statistical likelihood of such an event occurring) but you're more likely to remember it over and above all "normal" events.

I'd be interested to find out how often doors and windows rattled and slammed due to drafts in your aunts house when there was no seance taking place. Of course, it's difficult to know because people's memories of such things are so selective: when a door slams in the middle of a bright spring afternoon you think "shoulda closed that window" and then forget the incident forever, when the same thing happens during a seance at midnight you will undoubtedly remember it for the rest of your life.

Bear in mind, I'm not saying your aunt is wrong - I certainly can't disprove the existence of ghosts and personally think it would be pretty cool if they did exist - but even if they do exist we can never prove that unless, after testing various other possibilities as well, the presence of a ghost remains the most logical explanation.

[Wyldwraith]

This evidence points towards one thing, whereas the lack of any evidence points towards something else. And that is why I don't believe in spirits. If they exist, they've been around for 50,000 years. Plenty of time to leave something behind... Yet nothing? Sorry, not buying it.


I can sum up the inherent absurdity of your statement with an old maxim.
"The Absence of Evidence is NOT Evidence of Absence"

In other words, you cannot make a persuasive statement "that holds water" based on a current lack of evidence one way or another.

Pretty much the basic crux of the differences between Atheism and Agnosticism as well.

You are entitled to your opinions and beliefs EvilNed, but that's all we have here. A statement of what you don't believe in. There is literally/factually nothing else here.

[Wyldwraith]

Here's the thing,
None of us here are members of completely ignorant prehistoric tribal units, forced to adopt a crude Animist belief structure to lend the illusion of them possessing the minimum amount of control over and knowledge of their surroundings in order to function.

We are separated by an uncrossable gulf from the origins of belief without evidence. That's a good thing, as it indicates growth on our part as a species. Belief may still play a superficially similar role for the modern believer as it did for the ancient believer, but these days the vast majority of individuals are capable of opening their minds enough to consider possibilities beyond what we know and believe. In other words, we can travel beyond our intellectual comfort zone should we choose to do so.

It's what separates most of us from the tiny minority of inflexibly zealous fanatics. Again, a GOOD THING.

When I speak about the supernatural I speak from an assumption that there IS a rational, comprehensible cause for each and every one of these events.

However, I DON'T believe that these rational and comprehensible causes for "supernatural" activity are necessarily mundane explanations, or even currently comprehensible with our present understanding of what we consider reality.

Yes, no doubt a % of these strange and creepy happenings are simple coincidence, simply a rare improbability occurring, and/or all the very reasonable possible explanations offered by the skeptic.

After all, sometimes strange things happen.

HOWEVER, what I take issue with is the incredibly arrogant assumption that we understand enough to confidently, boldly proclaim that these strange events are nothing but simple natural phenomena.

How do we know whether or not benign, malevolent or indifferent extra or trans-dimensional entities exist?

How do we know whether or not one or more extraterrestrial species capable of interstellar flight have visited, or are visiting the Earth?

How do we know whether or not this or that ancient civilization discovered a means of affecting reality that had nothing to do with conventional tool use or "science" as we know it?

How do we know what happens to the sum of our being after physical death occurs? -Then how do we know whether or not the now incorporeal essence of a deceased human being may intermittently interact with this dimension?

These are serious questions. The answer to any one of them possibly holding the potential to redefine life as we know it forever.

Is this the sort of subject matter anyone SHOULD feel comfortable or confident in smugly dismissing?

It isn't necessarily about what any one of us believe. It's about the Truth. How one defines it, seeks it, and what one finds.

Pretty much my point, for whatever it turns out to be worth.

[Terran]

Ahhh this mostly derives from the music thread but is relevant here...

Jeeze, They Might Be Giants, you guys are such rapscallions....
ty33v7UYYbw

[Kaos]

Is this the sort of subject matter anyone SHOULD feel comfortable or confident in smugly dismissing?


I think the gist of my smugness is not that these supernatural explanations are not the reality of whatever phenomena discussed, it is that they are entirely unprovable and therefore entertaining them is a subjective choice as opposed to any sort of connection with objective reality. If science ever demonstrates the nature of these phenomena, I will change my position accordingly. No smugness intended, but entirely dismissive. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. :)

[Terran]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.


Oh man!... I was so tempted to use this statement to make various jokes about various peoples genitals...

:rockbrow:
:o

[rongravy]

They Might Be Giants kicks ass. Ouija boards are a joke, however. That is all. I don't believe in any of that crap. I would like the zombie apocalypse to hurry the fuck up though...
:elol:

[EvilNed]

, you cannot make a persuasive statement "that holds water" based on a current lack of evidence one way or another.


I couldn't agree more. Which is why science and evidence is so great. Yet, considering there's no evidence one way or another regarding ghosts, but reasonable theories only go one way (infrasound, for instance as Terran explained) I'd say the lack of evidence clearly favours one of the viewpoints.

As Kaos said, more or less:


Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[Yojimbo]

Have little to add except to admit I find the quality of the rhetoric here impressive. It might be lame to say, but this thread really rules!

[LoSTBoY]

I’m liking this thread, reminds me of the old forum. :)

Anyway, to the subject. I am not arrogant enough to say ghosts exist either way, same way I cannot say Gods exist either way.

Just being hypothetical here, but those who say the Ouija board is nothing more than a bit of wood with numbers and letters on it are correct, I would assume the real ‘summoning’ would come from the people using the board.

Perhaps there are those with a connection to the spiritual who can use the board to pick up spirits easily, perhaps others who are spiritual blanks who are shunned by spirits.

Just an assumption, probably been reading too much Warhammer books. :confused:

[Terran]

Have little to add except to admit I find the quality of the rhetoric here impressive.

Absolutely...
The very act of defining has itself been a central part of rhetoric.
Hmm. Wait a minute...
The very act of defining has itself been a central part of rhetoric?



Crap.
*Head Explodes*

[mista_mo]

For what it is worth, I am completely dumbfounded that this hasn't exploded into a complete clusterfuck of "NO, YOU ARE WRONG, DAMNIT MAN, JUST ADMIT THAT SHIT STRAIGHT UP!"

Seriously, this is a huge change from even a few months ago, when many discussions of a similar nature would become complete battlefields of rival viewpoints meeting in the center of no mans land, gutting each other with bayonets, and screaming praises to their affiliated belief system.

My post may not contribute too much to this discussion, but I just thought that I had to say it.

Also Aces, I thought of it more like
"The person with the incorrect beliefs has to spend all day measuring dicks"

Carry on.

[JDFP]

Seriously, this is a huge change from even a few months ago, when many discussions of a similar nature would become complete battlefields of rival viewpoints meeting in the center of no mans land, gutting each other with bayonets, and screaming praises to their affiliated belief system.



http://www.startrek.com/imageuploads/200306/tos-034-spock-and-kirk-battle/320x240.jpg

No, I couldn't resist. :D :p

j.p.

[Danny]

http://www.startrek.com/imageuploads/200306/tos-034-spock-and-kirk-battle/320x240.jpg

No, I couldn't resist. :D :p

j.p.

gorram it.

now that fucking music is playing in my head as well as everyone elses right now.

[Wyldwraith]

I couldn't agree more. Which is why science and evidence is so great. Yet, considering there's no evidence one way or another regarding ghosts, but reasonable theories only go one way (infrasound, for instance as Terran explained) I'd say the lack of evidence clearly favours one of the viewpoints.


You're doing it again Ned,
Drawing a conclusion based upon a current lack of definitive evidence one way or another is logically unsound. Implying that the lack of such evidence is indicative of anything is an unsound position. I don't know any clearer way to say it.

I'm certainly not saying that I can make a persuasive argument, supported by logic and evidence at this time.

Nor can the skeptic offer any tangible support for the argument that the supernatural doesn't exist.

Yes, the burden of proof IS on the party who makes a positive assertion. If someone wants to say (for example) that good and evil spirits exist, it's on them to offer something concrete to support their statement.

What bothers me is the leap to logical fallacy by some skeptics. Seeing no evidence, they conclude their belief in the non-existence of the supernatural is sound.

If however, one were to state a belief in the possibility of any aspect of the supernatural existing, no burden of proof attaches, because it's simply an observation of the possibilities.

It is an extraordinary claim in and of itself to state a belief in the non-existence of the supernatural. The much sounder position to take would be an observation of the possibility that there is nothing to the supernatural.

Ultimately, skepticism has the potential to limit the pursuit of genuine avenues of inquiry into any facet of the supernatural, and THAT is a shame.

No one should take sides when the issue is an unknown. Yet that's what people do. We expend energy trying to convince/woo others to our way of thinking, instead of expending that energy in an attempt to actually find out what the Truth really is.

It's a funny thing, the way belief can be so magnetic and divisive simultaneously, while Truth simply is.

[EvilNed]

Wyld, this is usually how it works...

As ghosts are not the norm in our daily lives and routines, we can easily call them "lacking" in appearances. Only a few claim to have seen them. Most of those (note: I say most) are obviously either faking it or nuts. That leaves a small number of people who seem sensible (to tell the truth, I've never met anyone).

So, we can clearly agree that ghosts are not the norm. Adding to the fact that ghost "sightings" vary a lot and people never really get a good view of them. People also never get any evidence of it, whatsoever. Also, ghost sightings, as with most supernatural things, don't seem to follow any specific rules as everything else does. How, why, where and who vary greatly from case to case (or rather, witness to witness).

All this adds up to a rather questionable subject in the first place. Now, you with me so far? You seem to agree that the burden of providing proof (in such a situation) would definetly fall on the person trying to claim there is such a thing. And that's where I agree.

But that would also apply to me saying that whenever I take a shit, my ass reads outloud from the script to the Pilot Episode of Dallas, in a voice vaguely resembling Bill Pullmans. Would you believe me if I said that was the case? Would you outright rule it out? I know I would. I'd never in a billion years believe you if you said that. I'd definetly have to back such an outrageous claim up with something or I'd get thrown out of court.

Well, the same goes for ghosts. THere is a difference, you see, between impossible and just so damn improbable it might as well be impossible.


Ultimately, skepticism has the potential to limit the pursuit of genuine avenues of inquiry into any facet of the supernatural, and THAT is a shame.

Actually, quite the opposite. On numerous occasions cash rewards have been offered by skeptics to people who advocate the supernatural if only they can prove it. That way, the scientific people can keep on being all crazy and (god forbid!) "logical", whereas the Supernatural-believers can go about their business - and actually make money from it. So I couldn't disagree more.

I hereby state a belief in the non-existence of the supernatural, and I don't find it an extraordinary claim at all. Infact, I find it quite an ordinary claim.

[Terran]

For what it is worth, I am completely dumbfounded that this hasn't exploded into a complete clusterfuck of "NO, YOU ARE WRONG, DAMNIT MAN, JUST ADMIT THAT SHIT STRAIGHT UP!"


*Grins*
I remember I said this at the start of a response in a thread from the past.


As this conversation relates to mista mo I wash my hands. What your saying is so fanatical and narrow of scope that continuing an intelligent conversation with you about the subject would be impossible.

Then I continued to address other people....


Ahhh the good ole days.

[Mike70]

Actually, quite the opposite. On numerous occasions cash rewards have been offered by skeptics to people who advocate the supernatural if only they can prove it. That way, the scientific people can keep on being all crazy and (god forbid!) "logical", whereas the Supernatural-believers can go about their business - and actually make money from it. So I couldn't disagree more.

I hereby state a belief in the non-existence of the supernatural, and I don't find it an extraordinary claim at all. Infact, I find it quite an ordinary claim.

the fact that no one has claimed the $1 million prize that the james randi foundation is offering to anyone who can definitely prove the existence of ANY supernatural phenomena speaks volumes about the nature of the so-called "evidence". all who have tried have failed. in fact, no one has ever made it past the prelims.

sooooo, if the believers out there are so convinced that there is "evidence" of the supernatural, then someone should get to proving it in order to claim the prize.

[Wyldwraith]

::shakes head::

You've missed the point completely Ned. Also, regarding your improbability = practical impossibility. Wow, I'm sure glad the guys in the Manhattan Project hadn't taken such a view. Hiroshima would still be standing, and given that every military analyst on Earth worth their salt agrees the land invasion of Japan would've cost 300-500,000 American lives.

For that matter, the US gov't invested more money than in literally any other venture to date, pretty much on nothing but the strength of some academic reputations. The only hard data related to the Little Boy A-Bomb they had pre-detonation above Japan was the infamous "Blank shot" which *would not have* resulted in a fission reaction.

Of course nowadays everyone accepts nuclear fission as just another facet of known science. Back then? It was scientific heresy to most of the scientific community, and even Quantum Theory couldn't do better than give you the probability that out of X million Uranium atoms, Y single digits worth may fission.

See what I'm saying? Do you think the Japanese would have been terribly frightened if we'd called them up and said "Surrender or we will drop our barely-tested new bomb on you, the only data we on said bomb saying it will NOT explode".

Yet BOOM, BOOM, Japan surrenders.

Improbabilities are important.

[Kaos]

The math that suggested the bomb was possible predated the bomb itself. There would be no bomb had the mathematics suggested otherwise. (The germans happened to get the math wrong - btw) People didn't spontaneously suggest the atom bomb prior to the mathematics that suggested it was possible. The atomic bomb analogy is not sound.

Spontaneously suggesting that ghosts exist without any evidence is staking a claim on nothing. No more significant than guessing whether a coin flipped lands on heads or tails. If you guess heads and it lands on heads, great for you - but putting any significance on that guess is kind of meaningless. Science and Tech are not the end all or be all of existence. Some things are by their very nature subjective. If science ever gets around to proving that ghosts exist for example - it will happen because the method to investigate and test the hypothesis has been developed. Only then will the hypothesis be significant. Prior to that date it is idle speculation and claims staked on the position are not to be ridiculed necessarily but dismissed as idle speculation.

[darth los]

::shakes head::

You've missed the point completely Ned. Also, regarding your improbability = practical impossibility. Wow, I'm sure glad the guys in the Manhattan Project hadn't taken such a view. Hiroshima would still be standing, and given that every military analyst on Earth worth their salt agrees the land invasion of Japan would've cost 300-500,000 American lives.

For that matter, the US gov't invested more money than in literally any other venture to date, pretty much on nothing but the strength of some academic reputations. The only hard data related to the Little Boy A-Bomb they had pre-detonation above Japan was the infamous "Blank shot" which *would not have* resulted in a fission reaction.

Of course nowadays everyone accepts nuclear fission as just another facet of known science. Back then? It was scientific heresy to most of the scientific community, and even Quantum Theory couldn't do better than give you the probability that out of X million Uranium atoms, Y single digits worth may fission.

See what I'm saying? Do you think the Japanese would have been terribly frightened if we'd called them up and said "Surrender or we will drop our barely-tested new bomb on you, the only data we on said bomb saying it will NOT explode".

Yet BOOM, BOOM, Japan surrenders.

Improbabilities are important.

And how many lives were lost because of nuclear weapons and the threat of Nuclear war? (One of which was through the unchecked spread of comminism which this country made it it's business to stop?)

Atleast that many.

The world would be better off without many things. Nuclear weapons is near the top of the list.

:cool:

[Wyldwraith]

See it's a difficult situation for me,
7-8yrs ago, I probably would have been right beside you Kaos. I just happen to have first-hand experience that *some form* of malevolent incorporeal entity exists.

Can I PROVE IT? Nope. Wish I could.

All I can say is that had you seen what I did, it would've made a believer out of you too. This wasn't one of those corner-of-the-eye/late at night/or for just a couple seconds seeing something.

What I saw was a free-standing black "anti-light" quasi-humanoid/quasi-gaseous formed apparition for well over a minute, standing where no shadow could possibly be. It even moved *against the wind*. I remember that clearly from the broken ground floor window. The wind was out of the SW, yet this entity, gaseous-seeming though it was, moved consistently east/northwest, then south in a deliberate manner.

To tell you the truth, I didn't even believe my friend from highschool when she first told me about the murder(s)-suicide related to the home in her neighborhood. I eventually believed it was possible it was the house (shortly before we went out there), by checking out the microfilm of newspaper entries from the year prior at the local library. The article only gave the street-location of the incident, but it WAS the only clearly abandoned house on the street in the article.

So far from being predisposed to believing I would see something, all I had was a common-sense sort of belief that it was probably the right house, based on process of elimination.

Plus, and believe me when I say this, I'm not given/predisposed to being startled or tricked by the light. On the contrary, I'm one of those people who looks at one of those posters with a picture hidden amongst millions of dots and sees the concealed image at the first glance. I believe in patterns and probabilities as a rule.

So, what am I supposed to do with the evidence of my senses in direct opposition to what is commonly accepted to be "real"?

Maybe you can sit there and be certain such a thing doesn't exist, but I don't have that luxury.

[Kaos]

That sounds pretty unsettling. And I am not in any position to tell you that what you experienced did not occur in whatever manner you perceive it to have occurred. How would I know? What I do know is that if it is something whose very nature is unprovable, doubt will be an insurmountable hurdle to convince others of the reality of say demons or ghosts or alien abductions or faster than light transportation. All of which may be (or will be) true but with no current way foreseeable to test and repeat testing to demonstrate this existence or even understand it. In human history many people have been put to death based solely upon anecdotal evidence. It is the very heart of most witch hunts. The requirement of more substantial evidence has served science and humans in general pretty well.

And to be clear, I am more than willing to entertain all these ideas... but for only entertainment purposes or for an exercise in understanding my own internal logic. One of reasons I like the original Romero zombie flicks is because it takes a preposterous premise that is then played out as if it really happened. Characters act both rationally and irrationally to the phenomena just like they would in real life. I get a huge kick out of it. The prospect of alien abductions is extremely unsettling when we are the ants in the alien ant farm ... it is also a fantastic exercise in imagination whether it is is believed to be true or not.

[EvilNed]

Improbabilities are important.

You do realize that splitting the atom was suggested by Albert Einstein as early as 1907, right? When the Manhattan Project got rolling, the scientists had worked up the numbers and it had a high probability of success.


Maybe you can sit there and be certain such a thing doesn't exist, but I don't have that luxury.

I think you saw something. And I think there's a reasonable explanation behind it. Believe me, I've seen some crazy shit myself. Stuff I couldn't explain. But weeks, months or even years later I sat down and analyzed the situations. I figured out what it could have been. And realized that even if it wasn't that thing it could have been, the odds were still 9 billion to one it was just something completely random, rather than a ghost.

If you believe it was an apparition, then nothing is going to change that. But I've seen similar stuff myself, and they weren't apparitions.

[darth los]

unexplainable scientific phenomena has been given supernatural origins since the beginning of recorded history.


again, just because something is beyond our comprehension doesn't mean god did it.

2500 years ago when there were lightning bolts in the sky and man couldn't explain it they attributed it to Zues hurling them down from olympus.

There are plenty of other examples i could give but you get my drift.

Perhaps in 2,500 more years they'll be saying the same about "ghosts" and how ignorant and in the dark we savages must have been to believe in something so silly, you know kinda like lightning bolt dude and rain dances. :rolleyes:

:cool:

[EvilNed]

Very good point. And still, given human history (as you pointed out) this is still all very much more likely than it being supernatural and unexplainable.



sooooo, if the believers out there are so convinced that there is "evidence" of the supernatural, then someone should get to proving it in order to claim the prize.

I read somewhere that some people who claim to be able to prove the supernatural simply passed on it because they didn't "need the money". Now there's something else I won't believe.

[darth los]

Very good point. And still, given human history (as you pointed out) this is still all very much more likely than it being supernatural and unexplainable.



I read somewhere that some people who claim to be able to prove the supernatural simply passed on it because they didn't "need the money". Now there's something else I won't believe.

There always seems to be a covienient enough excuse doesn't there? :rolleyes:

:cool:

[Danny]

There always seems to be a covienient enough excuse doesn't there? :rolleyes:

:cool:

yes. for both arguments there is always a convenient excuse. Welcome to humanity. contradiction, self loathing and obsession with boobs and dat ass aisle 1 :lol:

[Wyldwraith]

On a sheer philosophical level,
I find the idea of a universe that's even .1% understood by a species as primitive and flawed as humanity repugnant in the extreme.

And again, I do believe there are reasonable explanations for every aspect of the "supernatural"...I just don't believe that trivial things like IF waves, ELPs and ELFs begin to address the sum of experienced phenomena.

People don't abandon homes including all personal possessions because they refuse to even enter the house for 5-10 minutes with company in broad daylight because of tricks of the light or sound waves.

[clanglee]

Really? :rockbrow: Over onehundred posts in 2 days on the subject of Oija Boards? I leave for a couple of days and this place becomes a madhouse.

[AcesandEights]

It's all been quite cordial, Clang. I assure you.

Mmmm, cordials.

[Danny]

People don't abandon homes including all personal possessions because they refuse to even enter the house for 5-10 minutes with company in broad daylight because of tricks of the light or sound waves.

Actually you'd be surprised on this one. Ive seen tons of stories online, in tv shows, hell occasionally i'll buy one of those paranormal magazines in wh smiths just because its an interesting read and plenty are something simple like ventilation carrying lights and sounds to some more radical things like nearby power cables or a gas leak.

I'm not arguing peoples spiritual beliefs because lets face it, if the fact that a dead persons brian shuts down and all electrical impulses dissipate counts for nothing then it IS belief and arguing it is pointless. However instead of using the paranormal as the first unusual port of call theres plenty of logical, albiet uncommon possibilities to explain just about anything paranormal or unusual.
Hell, we live on a floating rock around a burning mass of hydrogen, we are hairless apes driving around on wheeled combustion engines, we can find turtles with two heads, it can rain frogs after a tornado, we can observe bolts of lightning that for a second are hotter than the sun, we've seen chickens survive with there heads cut off, we are 70% water, but 97% of water on the planet is undrinkable!
The world is amazing, the cosmos is amazing. its spectacular, surprising and impossibly brilliant in exponential measure.
Just because theres a perfectly explainable, no matter how unlikely or uncommon explanation for things doesnt make them less special. In fact it probably makes them more so because there "normal" and not governed by this unexplainable other-dues-science called magic.


-but to the topic of the ouiji boards, fuck them. believe in anything you want but that is still a goddam piece of wood with alphanumeric characters on it. there not magic, never where, never will be.

[MikePizzoff]

there not magic, never where, never will be.

they're* were* ;)

[Danny]

they're* were* ;)

its like fucking from and form i will never type them out right. ever. i need self facepalm.

[Wyldwraith]

::shrugs::
Guess we've exhausted the subject. I'm still where I was when we started, and now we're recycling positions.

Will say this. It's a different world entirely once you get smacked in the face with the supernatural. Not one "mundane" experience in my life has ever been so real as ironically an experience few believe is what I know it was.

[Terran]

On a sheer philosophical level,
I find the idea of a universe that's even .1% understood by a species as primitive and flawed as humanity repugnant in the extreme.

What makes you think that humans level of understanding is so small?

People often say things like this...
"Science hasnt explained the mysteries of existence"
or you statement in nutshell.
"Its silly for humanity profess an understanding of the universe when we know so little"
etc etc...

These statements resonate with people...people say them...and others nod thinking in awe of the magical reality of everything.
"We know next to nothing the universe"
What frustratingly hilarious about the statement is the following
They seem to have no idea what is already known.
They seem to have no idea what is not known.
There presupposes their perceptive reality to generate invalid questions,statements and conclusions.

Next time someone states:
"We know next to nothing the universe"
Ill Respond
"I know!! Does the Higgs particle exist?! What are the implications if it does not!?"

or If someone say:
"Science hasnt explained the mysteries of existence"
Ill respond
"Yeah those bozos just can seem to figure out if a fully consistent quantum field theory would require a force mediated by a hypothetical graviton, or be a product of a discrete structure of spacetime itself (as in loop quantum gravity)."

Hmm I think I like that one.

Come on! only .1% understood in 2010,,,,
Hell, think of Isaac Newtons.


First Law: In the absence of a net force, the center of mass of a body either is at rest or moves at a constant velocity. This means that an object at rest tends to stay at rest, or if it is in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by a sum of physical forces
Second Law: A body experiencing a force F experiences an acceleration a related to F by F = ma, where m is the mass of the body. This means that an object will accelerate with acceleration proportional to the force and inversely proportional to the mass. Alternatively, force is equal to the time derivative of momentum.
Third Law: Whenever a first body exerts a force F on a second body, the second body exerts a force −F on the first body. F and −F are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. This means that for every action there is a reaction equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. This law is sometimes referred to as the action-reaction law.
This may seem relatively mundane but this is the mathematical foundation for classical mechanics.

Classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of study in the science of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws governing and mathematically describing the motions of bodies and aggregates of bodies geometrically distributed within a certain boundary under the action of a system of forces.
Classical mechanics is used for describing the motion of macroscopic objects, from projectiles to parts of machinery, as well as astronomical objects, such as spacecraft, planets, stars, and galaxies.
He also is responsible for Newton's law of universal gravitation

Newton's law of universal gravitation states that every massive particle in the universe attracts every other massive particle with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Represented by: http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/b/6/5/b65000f8f887a68545ce63eb1cada232.png
Also he additionally he invented "Calculus"(Infinitesimal calculus).

It consisted of differential calculus and integral calculus, used for the techniques of differentiation and integration respectively.
Using these laws in addition to his calculus he was able to explain Kepler's laws of planetary motion

Kepler's laws are concerned with the motion of the planets around the Sun. Newton's laws of motion in general are concerned with the motion of objects subject to impressed forces. Newton's law of universal gravitation describes how masses attract each other through the force of gravity. Using the law of gravitation to determine the impressed forces in Newton's laws of motion enables the calculation of planetary orbits
He accomplished this the late 1600s!
These Laws are still valid today however with new discoveries it was discovered that Newton's Laws, while true, were describing too specific of phenomenon to satisfy physicist's desire to explain the nature of "everything"

In modern physics, the laws of conservation of momentum, energy, and angular momentum since they apply to both light and matter, and to both classical and non-classical physics.
The significance of these laws cant be overstated enough.

The law of conservation of energy is an empirical law of physics. It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time. A consequence of this law is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be transformed from one state to another.

We have Quantum Mechanics!

Quantum mechanics (QM) is a branch of physics describing the behavior of energy and matter at the atomic and subatomic scales.

We have Quantum electrodynamics

Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics. QED was developed by a number of physicists, beginning in the late 1920s. It basically describes how light and matter interact. QED mathematically describes all phenomena involving electrically charged particles interacting by means of exchange of photons.

We have Albert Einstein's theory of relativity

Which unifies special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, and describes gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the four-momentum (mass-energy and linear momentum) of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of partial differential equations.
Albert Einstein's theory of relativity shows that energy and mass are the same thing, and that neither one appears without the other.

And now we have the Hadron Collider.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, a synchrotron intended to collide opposing particle beams of either protons at an energy of 7 trillion electronvolts per particle, or lead nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV per nucleus. The term hadron refers to particles composed of quarks. It is expected that it will address the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing our understanding of the deepest laws of nature.





On a sheer philosophical level,
I find the idea of a universe that's even .1% understood by a species as primitive and flawed as humanity repugnant in the extreme.


I mean really you think that we understand less than .1% of the Universe.

The List of unsolved problems in physics is tiny in comparison to what we know and the Large Hadron Collider seems prepped and ready to answer some of them.






I just happen to have first-hand experience that *some form* of malevolent incorporeal entity exists.

What I saw was a free-standing black "anti-light" quasi-humanoid/quasi-gaseous formed apparition for well over a minute, standing where no shadow could possibly be. I
The description of you experience does seem striking similar to Infra sound hallucinations.

Listen to these two stories:

Vic Tandy was working as an engineering designer at for a company that produced medical equipment at that time. The Warwick laboratory he was working at supposedly haunted.
Then one night, while working alone, Vic Tandy saw a grey apparition appear, which moved as Vic Tandy described as "how a person is expected to move".
On the following day, Vic Tandy was working on a fencing foil blade held in a vice when it started the free end of the blade started vibrating up and down strongly. Vic Tandy then moved the blade and found out that the blade vibrated the strongest when it was in the middle of the room, and stopped altogether when the blade reached the far end of the room.

It turned out that there was a low frequency standing wave in the “haunted” laboratory, thanks to an extraction fan. Since the wave peaked in the centre of the room, it means that there was half a complete cycle in the room. In other words, the length of the lab was just right enough for the sound wave to be reflected at each end, and thus creating a standing wave. After some calculations, Vic Tandy came to the conclusion that the wave in question had a frequency 18.93 Hz.


Vic Tandy then continued his research on infrasound by investigating a “haunted cellar” below the Tourist Information Centre near Coventry University.
Many anecdotes were present about paranormal experiences that happened in this cellar, including a woman who claimed that there was an apparition blocking her way into the cellar, white witches “making contact” with the spirits inside, and many more.

A sound level meter was used to measure whether the hypothesis that infrasound was the cause the experiences, and it detected high levels of 19Hz infrasound present, which fits nicely with Vic Tandy’s earlier hypothesis.

There are varying degrees of hallucinations. They are perfectly capable of seeming completely real. A infrasound hallucination is not a trick. Its not shadows playing tricks with you.
The vibrations from the sound are probably exciting particular neurons in your brain....Like having a dream while your still awake with your eyes open.

[EvilNed]

On a sheer philosophical level,
I find the idea of a universe that's even .1% understood by a species as primitive and flawed as humanity repugnant in the extreme.

Primitive compared to what? Cats? Compared to every species we know off, Humans are the most advanced there is in terms of understanding the universe. I'd say we're the best equipped and best endowed species around for just this sort of thing. Some people are stupid, for sure and sometimes we do stupid things. But we're definetly not primitive.


People don't abandon homes including all personal possessions because they refuse to even enter the house for 5-10 minutes with company in broad daylight because of tricks of the light or sound waves.

Yes they do. You just called us primitive and flawed, remember?

[paulannett]

I've used a Ouija board 3 times, in 3 different places at 13/16/19 years old (roughly!) and nothing has happened.

I'm a skeptic when it comes to the supernatural; I've had some scary, unexplainable things happen, but I'm not quite willing to jump onto the "ghosts are real" bandwagon.

[Wyldwraith]

Oh c'mon,
You're honestly going to make the argument that we've grasped a significant portion of scientific principles in operation throughout the universe?

Where's the Unified Field Theory? Why can't we do more than guess at what order the Fundamental Forces separated (beyond knowing Gravity broke off first) in the time immediately after Inflation took over?

Where does the unaccounted-for mass swallowed by a black hole end up? Do wormholes exist, and if so how can we define their properties? Tachyons seem at certain junctures to exceed the speed of light. Is this in fact the case, or is spacetime being dynamically warped to create the illusion that they are?

How many dimensions are there, for certain? In what ways do they interact, and what if anything can we derive of value from those beyond the 4 we operate within?

Here's an easy one. How should we go about the development of the infrastructure, the required innovations in the practical applications of efficient energy production & storage, and the necessary social engineering to bring our civilization within striking distance of becoming a Type 1 Civilization?

In fact, I need proceed no further than the first four Civilization Types to demonstrate the gulf between what we understand/are capable of, and what remains to be discovered.

We aren't even close to utilizing 100% of our star's energy output!

For a member of a Type 0 civilization, I believe you overestimate the humble beginnings of scientific inquiry by our species.

[EvilNed]

Oh c'mon,
You're honestly going to make the argument that we've grasped a significant portion of scientific principles in operation throughout the universe?


Actually, I already believe we did.

We don't know everything. We don't know it all. But we know alot. We know a hell of a lot. All of the things you mentioned all have theories attached to them. Nothing conclusive, nothing scientific yet. We're aware of our own limitations and we try to expand our understanding of the universe.

If that doesn't count for something, then nothing does.

[Wyldwraith]

Ned,
By your own prior arguments, inquiry without currently tangible results are absolutely worthless.

It can't be one way for the unproven theories of scientific endeavor and another for the field of paranormal inquiry.

So for the record: That's a no then. We don't know any of the 7-8 things I chose off the top of my head.

My God man, we've surveyed less than 1% of our own ocean bottom, and only 2.8-3.1% of the visible night sky.

It's absolutely ASTOUNDING to me that anyone could claim humanity has unlocked the bulk of the universe's secrets after a mere 250-350 years.

---------- Post added at 01:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:21 PM ----------

Let's get more basic and practical,
EvilNed has put forward that owing to humanity having theories about a variety of phenomena, we're much closer to completely understanding the workings of the universe than not.

Just a few things mankind desperately needs and hasn't figured out yet:

Clean/Abundant energy production, independent of the vagaries of weather (Ie: No wind where we have wind power, overcast skies where we have solar panels)

Multi-Strain Vaccines & Universally effective Anti-viral medication. (Let's call this the equivalent of Penicillin for the Virus)

Commercially viable potatoes (yes, potatoes) with extremely high resistance to Fungi.

This is pretty basic. We're talking about the natural progression from prehistory on into the future here. Humanity learned to control fire only several thousand years ago. We still haven't reached a point where we can easily feed our entire population, prevent tens of millions of deaths from disease annually, or learned to power our industries with anything besides limited deposits of fossil fuels and the even rarer uranium.

In fact, I can't think of ONE of the basic survival needs we can be said to have completely mastered. Shelter? Nope. 1/6th our total population is homeless. Water? Nope. Even in the "first world" groundwater supplies are being consumed far faster than rainfall can replenish. We won't go into the less developed nations on this one. Food? Again, No. Even the best efforts of the developed nations are unable to stamp out widespread famine.

In fact, the only one of the basic needs we can be said to have met on a widespread, long-term scale is Defense. Obvious problems here too, but it's where we come nearest the mark as a species.

How can we be deemed "advanced" by any but the exclusionary observation that we are the only developed, tool-using species we know exists?

Now, if someone had instead asked me what I thought of the rate of progress since the beginning of the Enlightenment, I would have had nothing but praise for Man.

[darth los]

Now, if someone had instead asked me what I thought of the rate of progress since the beginning of the Enlightenment, I would have had nothing but praise for Man.


So... what do you think of the rate of progress since the beginning of the Enlightenment?

Well, someone had to ask.

:cool:

[Danny]

Ned,
By your own prior arguments, inquiry without currently tangible results are absolutely worthless.

It can't be one way for the unproven theories of scientific endeavor and another for the field of paranormal inquiry.

So for the record: That's a no then. We don't know any of the 7-8 things I chose off the top of my head.

My God man, we've surveyed less than 1% of our own ocean bottom, and only 2.8-3.1% of the visible night sky.

It's absolutely ASTOUNDING to me that anyone could claim humanity has unlocked the bulk of the universe's secrets after a mere 250-350 years.

You seem to assume every location in the universe is completely special and unique. When honestly you can take a square cube of space in any location and the same physical laws will apply. Your explaining your opinion and its coming off like we need to see everything literally but we dont as long as we can explain it. nobodies seen saturn well enough without machinery but we still know that its mass and density could allow the entire planet to float on water that is subject to the effects like gravity on earth. how do we know this? because everything is made of the same material, it follows the same laws. in extreme cases these laws can bend, there can be materials out there we have yet undiscovered but we are mind boggling advanced animal in terms of one species on a single planet made up of up to 100 million species and we have advanced scientifically enough that we can say this is 1, this is zero. hot and cold. action and reaction and inaction. motion and standing states.

I am incredibly simplifying this but in the news yesterday we had announcements about artificial life, being able to detect a star eating one of its planets light years away and that another star will drift towards our system in 10,000 years.
It is incredibly nihilistic to assume we are just these stupid apes which are just figuring out how to kill ourselves in new ways or something. Every day we argue about land vs diary or some such shit on here whilst there are people constantly out there figuring out how things work and how they apply to existence, not just our little blue rock.

[krakenslayer]

Science has never claimed to have unlocked more than a small fraction of the universe's secrets. And it never will, since pushing back that "known/unknown" barrier is what keeps most scientists in a job!

That is not the question here. No one can seriously deny that there is a lot out there that we, as a species, do not understand.

The question is whether, given all possible evidence and laying aside all prejudice and bias, there is anything about claims of ghostly encounters that actually cannot be explained within known science? Just because the "unknown" is there doesn't mean we should turn to it first for an explanation. Do we actually need to go into the realms of the unknown for an explanation, or is it just that most people tend to unevenly favour mystical explantions in such cases?

And if there is something genuinely unknown happening in even a tiny minority of cases, whether it be psychological or (meta)physically real, how can we be sure we don't let sentimentality and thousands of years of anthropocentric legend and wooley superstition cloud our scientific investigation of the phenomena.

[strayrider]

Haven't tinkered with the Ouiji board since I was a youngster...nothing happened...NOTHING...the palette (or whatever it is called) didn't even move.

However, something quite strange did happen here a couple of weeks ago...

I work second shift so I'm often up until the wee hours. The family is asleep when I get home, so I usually spend a couple of hours surfing the 'net, writing, or whatever. The other night my wife came down stairs to my office in the basement and DEMANDED that I stop the pounding noises before I woke the kids up...huh?

She thought that I was working on something at my workbench (my office doubles as a shop of sorts). I was not. I was sitting quietly at my desk. She asked what the hell was it that I was hammering on...I told her 'nothing'.

She went back upstairs and had no sooner reached the livingroom, when she called me up. So, I go upstairs...and I heard it.

thumpthumpthump...thump...real gently, softly.

We have hard wood floors and it was coming from directly below...in the basement where I had just been, but in another section opposite my office.

thumpthumpthump...thump

I figured that one of our cats had gotten up between the floorboards and the drop ceiling downstairs as they often do; however, both cats were upstairs and in plain sight. Our Tom, in fact, was squatting in the middle of the livingroom with his ears flat against his head acting like he was freaked.

thumpthumpthump...thump

I then thought that maybe a squirrel, or some other critter had gotten into the basement and was up in the ceiling, so I tore ass back downstairs, grabbed my MagLite and a step stool and started popping ceiling tiles directly below the spot where we had heard the thumping...nothing was there...nada...hell, that end of the basement is basically void of anything...no water pipes (my next logical assumption)...nothing...just cross beams...

I could not find the source of the thumping...it stopped when I went back downstairs.

My wife and my kids have all told me that 'weird' things happen at times in this old house, but that was the first time I've experienced it. I'm not ready to conclude that it was anything supernatural, but I can't explain it logically either.

I've since checked the house's foundation for holes that a raccoon might have entered, but there are none. The foundation is solid. There are no pipes or utility lines in that part of the basement. It was not one of the cats. The woodwork is in place and secure.

I do not know what went 'thumpthumpthump...thump' below my feet that night, but if I catch it, I'm going to kill it.

:evil:

-stray-

[EvilNed]

Ned,
By your own prior arguments, inquiry without currently tangible results are absolutely worthless.

Not if one tries to prove it with scientific means, and draws logical and analytic conclusions. Infact, if you go back, you'll see that's exactly what I've been saying. But interesting interpretation of my previous posts.



So for the record: That's a no then. We don't know any of the 7-8 things I chose off the top of my head.

No, we don't know them. We don't know that gravity exists either. Or that evolution works. But there's strong evidence to support both. Unlike, say, ghosts.



How can we be deemed "advanced" by any but the exclusionary observation that we are the only developed, tool-using species we know exists?


How can we not be? You say we're not advanced because we don't have the most advanced medicine possible, we can't feed everyone, we can't provide shelter for everyone. These are social problems, and really is not relevant to wether ghosts exist.

[Neil]

I do not know what went 'thumpthumpthump...thump' below my feet that night, but if I catch it, I'm going to kill it.

:evil:

-stray-

And couldn't have been wood expanding/contracting and knocking?

[strayrider]

And couldn't have been wood expanding/contracting and knocking?

I certainly would not rule that out as an explanation, but it didn't seem to me to be that. It was a set pattern of knocks...three...pause...then another, spaced out over a minute or so. Knock on your desktop, allowing the weight of your hand to determine the force of the knock. This approximates the sound that I heard.

Three knocks, pause for a second, then one more. The pattern repeated several times with 15 or 20 seconds between each. It was like there was an intelligence behind it (I am not saying that there was, but it did seem that way).

Just for grins I looked on a Morse code chart to see if there was something similar. According to the chart 'knockknockknock...knock' is dot dot dot dash or "V".

"V" stands for "Visitors"...they're here. :lol:

Honestly, I do not know what made the noises, but I don't think it was the house settling. It was the first time I've heard it, and I haven't heard it since.

Maybe another time I'll tell you about the spooky little girl in the nightgown that my wife claims came out of the laundry-room one night and stood there staring at her while she was working at her desk. :D

-stray-

[C5NOTLD]

The grand daddy of ouija board stories is the little boy from Maryland who played with one after his aunt introduced him to it. Thing progressed and we know his basic story today which was told in the Exorcist film (the boy was changed to a female character in the film). Events include hearing the scratchings in the wall, had words raise up on his body, became possessed, and ultimately the Catholic church came in and performed an exorcism in St. Louis. 41 people had signed a document attesting to the fact that they had witnessed paranormal phenomena in the case. It's also the one case the Catholic church says was a "genuine demonic possession."


Having known someone who knew the priest involved in the case and who was able to see the actual diary of the exorcism (which still had dried vomit/spit on it) - That's enough for me never to use a ouija board regardless of what excuses science comes up in attempts to explain it away.

[EvilNed]

Cool, so sometimes people go insane - and blame the ouija board.

[JDFP]

Cool, so sometimes people go insane - and blame the ouija board.

Ahem, that's one subjective opinion...

But like most other religious/political threads around here, I hardly find it worth arguing/debating any longer as it just continues as a cycle.

We should stick with zombies, hot chicks, horror films, and beer -- I think all of us here can agree on the merits of all four of these discussions. They are also usually less argumentative.

j.p.

[EvilNed]

Ahem, that's one subjective opinion...


Again - Make an outrageous claim, put up the evidence.

[Tricky]

There was one thing happened to my dad in the old house I used to live in probably about 15 years ago (a cottage built in 1767). Myself, my mum & sisters had gone to stay at my grandmas for a weekend down in Bromsgrove. He was in bed, probably in the middle of the night since he usually stays up late, and he heard footsteps coming up the stairs, he says he kind of froze thinking there was a burglar in the house, the old adrenaline was probably pounding, and the footsteps came across the landing and up to his bedroom door & just stopped. I think (cos I cant remember the story in detail,I was a kid then) he eventually dared open the door to confront the supposed burglar but there was nothing there, and after checking the rest of the house he concluded nobody had been in either :stunned: now whether that was the creaking and moving of an old house, his imagination going wild seen as he was on his own, or something more is anyones guess, but it was still something that always creeped me out, especially as occasionally I heard creaking on the stairs as a kid & used to hide under my covers!

[Dtothe3]

I believe in Oiuji boards. I also believe in the tooth fairy, Jesus and George Bushs' good intentions. KTHXBAI.

I spose I should point out (for balance) my mum and stepdad once noted that my mums favourite dog barked and kept them awake during the night once. Nothing spooky about that. Until it's pointed out that she'd been put down at 6:30pm that night, and they are similar to me, don't believe it until they see it. I'm still trying to work out an explanation for that night.

If, however, you consider death to be a force of nature itself, then it should be quite natural. Out of interest, just how many animals can be seen within 5 miles of the famous German concentration camp these days?

[mista_mo]

I believe in Oiuji boards. I also believe in the tooth fairy, Jesus and George Bushs' good intentions. KTHXBAI.

Thank you for contributing to the discussion at hand. Surely, your highly articulate response shall always be the gold standard that every other poster that wishes to contribute to this thread must live up too.

Edit,
okay, so you edited your post, you may ignore the above statement.

poof.

[Dtothe3]

Do you mean "poof" as in you disappear in a magical smoke that makes people unsure of where you went?

Do you mean "poof" in an offensive sense as in that I'm a homosexual (not actually offensive other then to the narrow minded folks)

Or were you angered by the fact that I used my comments to express my personal discontent at the spiritual beliefs of people, those same people who have expressed their discontent with me using phrasing such as "You're going to hell!" and "Burn in hell you piece of shit!"

Please answer, I'd be so interested to know.

[JDFP]

Do you mean "poof" as in you disappear in a magical smoke that makes people unsure of where you went?

Do you mean "poof" in an offensive sense as in that I'm a homosexual (not actually offensive other then to the narrow minded folks)

Or were you angered by the fact that I used my comments to express my personal discontent at the spiritual beliefs of people, those same people who have expressed their discontent with me using phrasing such as "You're going to hell!" and "Burn in hell you piece of shit!"

Please answer, I'd be so interested to know.

What the hell does any of this rambling have to do with anything?

You made a snide comment for the sake of making a snide comment, Mo called you out on it, rightfully, and you went back and added some thought to it instead of just keeping a snide comment up.

And a person's sexual preferences certainly have nothing do with anything in this discussion. However, attacking religious individuals for their beliefs with silly arguments is no greater than calling out homosexuals for equally silly reasons.

j.p.

[Marie]

We should stick with zombies, hot chicks, horror films, and beer -- I think all of us here can agree on the merits of all four of these discussions. They are also usually less argumentative.

j.p.

Can I talk about hot dudes instead?;)

Marie

[JDFP]

Can I talk about hot dudes instead?;)

Marie

Of course, Marie, you and Chic are more than welcome to share your images of myself and other handsome board members here anytime you would like -- oh, and the occasional 'hot guy' as well, I suppose, that isn't a board member. :D:p

j.p.

[Mike70]

What the hell does any of this rambling have to do with anything?



perhaps you should kick it clinton style and post a 8 para response on the definition of the word "pool" as used in your post.:D

[JDFP]

perhaps you should kick it clinton style and post a 8 para response on the definition of the word "pool" as used in your post.:D

Mike, it would all depend on what the definition of 'is' really is, you know?

Me thinks that Clinton's brother Roger was taking a course on Wittgenstein at his local community college and sharing his findings when Bill made the statement...

:D

j.p.

[Wyldwraith]

One thing that hasn't been brought up yet,
In specific regard to inhuman spirits of that we might consider to be either "good" or "evil" based on their actions.

A natural phenomena like say gravity or electrical current is there and available to be quantified and explored at our leisure. These are mindless forces of nature, that do not thing, and operate only insofar as natural law dictates.

If you consider a theory that focuses on a being presumed to be intelligent and self-aware (ETs, Spirits, Ghosts etc) then any solid scientific theory would absolutely require the consideration of the possibility that such intelligent beings have a minimum of ability equal to that of humans, and possibly much greater. (After all, the good scientist would consider the possibility that the inhabitants of a world that became fit and conducive to complex life-forms far earlier than Earth did could definitely have given rise to intelligent life far earlier than the rise of humanity. This could easily and logically explain the possibility of civilization(s) FAR more advanced than we are.

Referencing ETs in particular: Consider the pattern of advancement in our own arms race. Stealth technology doesn't require incredibly advanced scientific achievements in related fields. It's at its most basic the simple study of what you wish to remain unnoticed by, and then exploiting the weaknesses of the detection system.

After only 200-300 years of serious, systematic, UNIMPEDED scientific inquiry, man can already produce vehicles that travel quickly through the water, yet defeat sound-detection (Ie: Sonar). We have air-vehicles that do the same thing in their element. Every decade sees new developments. Thermal shielding to render infrared useless, and now we're up to synthetic materials that refract light waves, bringing actual invisibility within reach.

Undoubtedly I am impressed by the fact we have moved from pedestrian to supersonic travel in only a couple thousand years.

I am equally impressed by the certainty that if any government somehow gained access to a piece of cutting edge stealth tech from say, 50 years from now, it could float along at the speed of a balloon on the breeze and remain completely undetected even if it was firing on nearby targets.

So, would it not be reasonable to seriously consider the possibility that a society with a mere 1,000 more years of scientific inquiry under its belt could normally evade our ability to detect any vehicle they deployed within our atmosphere under all but a certain narrow range of situations dictated by natural law. (For example, a vehicle entering the atmosphere at high speed would create a great deal of heat, a portion of which would be radiant and possibly beyond the effective range of the craft's anti-thermal-detection tech. Or a "cloaked" vehicle skimming or moving under a hundred feet above the surface of the ocean creating an unavoidable wake/disturbance.)

If we can go from the Model T to the Ferrari in less than a hundred years, it's only logical to believe a species with even a mere two-century "jump" on us could possess technology we couldn't grasp more than the rudimentary natural laws it takes advantage of (assuming we had it available for direct observation).

As for "Spirits", the possibility of extra-dimensional life leaves us with very little room to even speculate about the capabilities of.

For anyone familiar with the scientific fictional-construct of the 2-Dimensional "Flatlander" life-form, you're familiar with the principles that support the reality that from the perspective of a 2-Dimensional observer, a 3-Dimensional life form such as Man would appear to have completely unfathomable, almost "godlike" abilities.

From the Flatlander perspective, we could "appear" (lay ourselves flat on their sheet of paper-like world) in their reality, and vanish or teleport at will. Their inability to fathom the PRACTICAL day-to-day ramifications of existing in 3 dimensions would render a large portion of our nature a completely impossible-to-unravel mystery for Flatlander scientists.

In the same way a 4-Dimensional life form could move forward or backward in time from our perspective, which would make them appear to be able to teleport or move at infinite speed across infinite distances, with no more apparent effort than it takes us to get off our beds. In reality, the 4th-Dimensional Being would consider what it was doing completely normal, and while they could effortlessly grasp the entirety of our nature, without refined time travel technology we could never understand then.

We'd be the Flatlanders then.

That's a being existing in only ONE more dimension than us, yet already we're into the inevitability of a being vastly more capable than we are.

No one besides individuals conversant with a depth of Physics-related knowledge could conceive of even the absolutely most basic attributes of a 5th-Dimensional Being.

If current scientific theory is correct about the number of dimensions, isn't it sort of ridiculous not to consider that one or more of the vastnesses of each of these dimensions could be inhabited? They could intermittently "appear" and disappear by means completely beyond our ability to detect, let alone understand.

My point is that what we call the "supernatural" could very well encompass Truths greater than the sum of our knowledge, all have rational explanations from the perspective of a sufficiently informed individual, yet remain a complete mystery to us from our limited perspective.

Hell, a being from a higher dimension might derive amusement on occasion by spooking the hopelessly limited member(s) of our species when they perceive us seeking to make contact by an absurd means. Who knows?

I simply don't consider the possibility to be the so-improbable-as-to-be-practically-impossible chance that EvilNed states such things are.

[krakenslayer]

One thing that hasn't been brought up yet,
In specific regard to inhuman spirits of that we might consider to be either "good" or "evil" based on their actions.

A natural phenomena like say gravity or electrical current is there and available to be quantified and explored at our leisure. These are mindless forces of nature, that do not thing, and operate only insofar as natural law dictates.

If you consider a theory that focuses on a being presumed to be intelligent and self-aware (ETs, Spirits, Ghosts etc) then any solid scientific theory would absolutely require the consideration of the possibility that such intelligent beings have a minimum of ability equal to that of humans, and possibly much greater. (After all, the good scientist would consider the possibility that the inhabitants of a world that became fit and conducive to complex life-forms far earlier than Earth did could definitely have given rise to intelligent life far earlier than the rise of humanity. This could easily and logically explain the possibility of civilization(s) FAR more advanced than we are.

Referencing ETs in particular: Consider the pattern of advancement in our own arms race. Stealth technology doesn't require incredibly advanced scientific achievements in related fields. It's at its most basic the simple study of what you wish to remain unnoticed by, and then exploiting the weaknesses of the detection system.

After only 200-300 years of serious, systematic, UNIMPEDED scientific inquiry, man can already produce vehicles that travel quickly through the water, yet defeat sound-detection (Ie: Sonar). We have air-vehicles that do the same thing in their element. Every decade sees new developments. Thermal shielding to render infrared useless, and now we're up to synthetic materials that refract light waves, bringing actual invisibility within reach.

Undoubtedly I am impressed by the fact we have moved from pedestrian to supersonic travel in only a couple thousand years.

I am equally impressed by the certainty that if any government somehow gained access to a piece of cutting edge stealth tech from say, 50 years from now, it could float along at the speed of a balloon on the breeze and remain completely undetected even if it was firing on nearby targets.

So, would it not be reasonable to seriously consider the possibility that a society with a mere 1,000 more years of scientific inquiry under its belt could normally evade our ability to detect any vehicle they deployed within our atmosphere under all but a certain narrow range of situations dictated by natural law. (For example, a vehicle entering the atmosphere at high speed would create a great deal of heat, a portion of which would be radiant and possibly beyond the effective range of the craft's anti-thermal-detection tech. Or a "cloaked" vehicle skimming or moving under a hundred feet above the surface of the ocean creating an unavoidable wake/disturbance.)

If we can go from the Model T to the Ferrari in less than a hundred years, it's only logical to believe a species with even a mere two-century "jump" on us could possess technology we couldn't grasp more than the rudimentary natural laws it takes advantage of (assuming we had it available for direct observation).

As for "Spirits", the possibility of extra-dimensional life leaves us with very little room to even speculate about the capabilities of.

For anyone familiar with the scientific fictional-construct of the 2-Dimensional "Flatlander" life-form, you're familiar with the principles that support the reality that from the perspective of a 2-Dimensional observer, a 3-Dimensional life form such as Man would appear to have completely unfathomable, almost "godlike" abilities.

From the Flatlander perspective, we could "appear" (lay ourselves flat on their sheet of paper-like world) in their reality, and vanish or teleport at will. Their inability to fathom the PRACTICAL day-to-day ramifications of existing in 3 dimensions would render a large portion of our nature a completely impossible-to-unravel mystery for Flatlander scientists.

In the same way a 4-Dimensional life form could move forward or backward in time from our perspective, which would make them appear to be able to teleport or move at infinite speed across infinite distances, with no more apparent effort than it takes us to get off our beds. In reality, the 4th-Dimensional Being would consider what it was doing completely normal, and while they could effortlessly grasp the entirety of our nature, without refined time travel technology we could never understand then.

We'd be the Flatlanders then.

That's a being existing in only ONE more dimension than us, yet already we're into the inevitability of a being vastly more capable than we are.

No one besides individuals conversant with a depth of Physics-related knowledge could conceive of even the absolutely most basic attributes of a 5th-Dimensional Being.

If current scientific theory is correct about the number of dimensions, isn't it sort of ridiculous not to consider that one or more of the vastnesses of each of these dimensions could be inhabited? They could intermittently "appear" and disappear by means completely beyond our ability to detect, let alone understand.

My point is that what we call the "supernatural" could very well encompass Truths greater than the sum of our knowledge, all have rational explanations from the perspective of a sufficiently informed individual, yet remain a complete mystery to us from our limited perspective.

Hell, a being from a higher dimension might derive amusement on occasion by spooking the hopelessly limited member(s) of our species when they perceive us seeking to make contact by an absurd means. Who knows?

I simply don't consider the possibility to be the so-improbable-as-to-be-practically-impossible chance that EvilNed states such things are.

A fascinating post and I agree with a lot of what you say. I actually consider it possible, in fact highly likely, that life can exist in other universes, and in other spacial dimensions within our universe. However, just accepting the potential existence of such things doesn't make it likely that this is the explanation for some, or even any, of the ghostly encounters people claim to have experienced. I would turn to the field of psychology for an explanation first, before I turned to (meta)physics.

That's not to say I think people who experience ghosts are mad or stupid. There are, however, a lot of factors involved in how human beings process sensory and cognitive information. The processes used are fantastically impressive in how they turn the mind-bogglingly complex world into something easily understood, but this sometimes causes information to be lost or misinterpreted. Of course people will swear up and down that what they experienced was "real", but obviously everyone makes mistakes and if we all could see which of our beliefs and interpretations of the world were wrong then we wouldn't hold those beliefs in the first place.

I'm not giving it a great description here, but read up on "psychology of anomalous experiences". It's fascinating stuff.

[EvilNed]

Let's get a few things straight:

You suppose that ghosts may actually be cloaked aliens, or ETs or some such thing. You suppose space travel and beings with a few centuries ahead of us actually coming to visit us. Well, that's not impossible.

Oh, wait, how big was the universe again? Oh, it's that huge? Yes, it's that huge. And how was speed of light achieved again? Oh, so it's only achieved by light itself? Ah. Got it. That means that any alien wishing to visit us would have to spend thousands of millenia to get here. For us, at our current top speed, it would take roughly 25,000 years to reach the end of our solar system. It's simply that huge. So here entereth the probabilities again. Yeah, sure, aliens might actually be here to visit us and be all cloaked and stuff. But the number of variables to be checked for that actually to happen are so improbable that anything, anything else might also be probable. Again, my ass could be talking like Bill Pullman whenever I take a shit. That's at least as probable.

For reference, take a look at this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Oort_cloud_Sedna_orbit.svg/600px-Oort_cloud_Sedna_orbit.svg.png

That's how big our solar system is. Not the universe, our solar system.

As for travelling in the 4th dimension, you do know that the concept that time is the 4th dimension is something popularized by H.G. Wells in his book "The Time Machine" from the late 19th century? It's a convenient way of describing how things exist in time, as well as the regular three dimensions. But it's not a dimension like the others in any way.

You offered an explanation, but that explanation is incredible implausible, if you know what I mean. Do you know of any way to travel through time? Have you heard of anyone ever doing it? Unlike travelling in space, which we know we can do it just takes an awful lot of time, we don't even know where to begin looking in how to travel through time. Because time is not really a scientific concept. It's a human concept. It's a term we humans invented to categorize distances, days and nights. Time can even be personal. If I watch a film that I think sucks, I'm going to experience it as being slow and boring. If you like it, it'll probably fly by.

Time travelling is not the answer to anything. It raises way more questions than it answers

[Danny]

We should stick with zombies, hot chicks, horror films, and beer -- I think all of us here can agree on the merits of all four of these discussions. They are also usually less argumentative.

j.p.


http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/khazrak/spaghett.jpg

[C5NOTLD]

Cool, so sometimes people go insane - and blame the ouija board.

They even speak Latin, a language they never studied, at 13 yrs of age.

[EvilNed]

They even speak Latin, a language they never studied, at 13 yrs of age.

I'll be sure to believe that when I see it. Until then, oh really?

[Wyldwraith]

@EvilNed,
Why do you insist on making parochial assumptions based solely on the certainties of what humans have already achieved as being "probable"?

Scientists are already manipulating particles and anti-particles, even causing the controlled impact of two or more of these particles moving at absurd speeds from opposite directions.

Pinpoint black holes are considered a feasible lab construct that can be used to define the properties that are prohibitively difficult to study in black holes a vast distance away.

So while considering that, why would you consider it so vastly improbable that a civilization with even a mere 100 years more of determined scientific inquiry as a race couldn't easily be manipulating wormholes the way we manipulate atoms?

Quantum theory even allows for the possible of a Quantum Event creating a stable, safely traversible wormhole with one of its ends inside a star system with planets. Yes, that's the most unlikely means of accessing a wormhole, but there are a variety of potential means of doing so.

For instance, some theories if they turn out to be correct limit the maximum size of wormholes to the point that nothing larger than a single cell could safely traverse them. There are physicists right now working on theories of how we could still derive benefit from such tiny wormholes.

One proposed idea is sending a single self-replicating nanite through, followed by a small stream of atoms to ensure the Prime Nanite would have the necessary raw materials to manufacture the first-generation nanites. From there the nanites could form more complex devices based on orders transmitted through the wormhole in simply binary pulses.

The advantage for such a plan would be speed. A device a 1/10th the size of a human white blood cell, consisting of perhaps a thousand nanites, would have such low mass that it would take a negligible amount of energy to accelerate to .999 of light speed.

That's just ONE viable theory related to non-conventional means of "working around" the "light barrier" in order to achieve interstellar travel.

So, WHY is it reasonable to ASSUME, because that's what you're doing Ned, that anyone, our own species included that has the results of 100 years more scientific inquiry than we do today won't be actively working towards the manufacture and manipulation of wormholes in much the same way that the Large Hadron Collider is helping us iron out the unanswered questions in subatomic theory today?

I don't believe it IS a reasonable assumption to make. The way you fashion your arguments reminds me of the naysayers that prognosticate about the "certain" failure of each major effort undertaken to expand Man's capability.

Had you lived 110yrs ago Ned you probably would have been making your "Ass-Talking example" about the possibilities/probabilities of controlled flight. Had you been born 50-60yrs ago you would have been making these arguments in defense of the "unbreachable" sound barrier.

Had you been around in the 1960s I'm nearly positive you would've been one of those adherents of the pseudo-scientific Van Allen Belt of radiation being 100% fatal to anyone traveling beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

Do you get what I'm saying? NOTHING of any worth has EVER been achieved by consistently searching for reasons why something ISN'T possible. In the best case you turn out to be right, and what have you achieved? You now know one more thing that man will not be able to do.

I won't argue that such a discovery has no value, but to me....it's a hollow sort of vindication.

In the worst case, you're persuasive enough to convince someone who could have achieved what you consider to be vastly improbable otherwise.

I don't know any clearer way to explain why Exclusionary Assumptions are dangerously counterproductive.

[EvilNed]

As I said: The number of improbable variables to actually fall in place for this theory of yours are just too many to be taken seriously. First off:

Space is huge. I cannot stress that enough. Even if someone knew how to travel at .999 at the speed of light, it'd take us over 4 years to reach the outskirts of the nearest solar system. Exploration would not be a viable waste of resources (and resources it would cost).

Add to that, these aliens would also be able to manipulate wormholes. Even creating their own, you say? Again, this might all be possible.

But all of this together is so damn improbable that... I'm sorry. But as for breaching the soundbarrier... That's not a valid comparison in anyway, because that one deals with a technological achievement that was actually deemed possible at the time.

Acceleration to the speed of light has been theorized impossible for decennia. Oh, and another thing...

Space is huuuuuuuge!

[Wyldwraith]

What are you talking about?
What # of variables? I put forward the possibility that another intelligent species might manipulate wormholes in the same way we manipulate subatomic particles. Just a product of a few decades more scientific inquiry than our species has done. A matter of degree.

One possibility. Wormholes as viable conduits of practical faster-than-light travel. Two possibilities, the existence of another intelligent life form somewhere in the universe.

The conjunction of 2 possibilities is too much for you to consider reasonable?

[EvilNed]

The variables are:

- Intelligent life exists.

- Intelligent life is more advanced than us.

- Wormholes are a viable tunnel for faster-than-light travel.

- Intelligent life can manipulate wormholes.

- Intelligent life knows of us.

- Intelligent life visits us.

- Intelligent life spends years just trying to get to us.

[Wyldwraith]

@EvilNed,
Why do you cherry-pick bits of someone's statement out of context to seemingly validate your point?

For example, you locked onto ONLY my partial statement about the ease of accelerating an extremely low-mass nanite "swarm" to near the speed of light, while ignoring the fact that the rest of the statement was in regards to sending said nanites through a wormhole that most physicists agree high-energy wormholes can in theory vastly exceed the speed of light for all practical purposes.

I THOUGHT the implications of how one would use a technology like that productively were obvious, but apparently not. So, I'll spell it out.

If one were to create a wormhole, even one only a centimeter or less in diameter (if the theory that limits their size to such small dimensions turns out to be correct), one would obviously place the far end of such a wormhole somewhere useful. Like say, inside the star system you wish to explore in more depth.

In THIS context. Ie: Nanites deposited inside the confines of a distant solar system, accelerating them to .9 of light-speed DOES have practical benefits. Instead of light-years to traverse, we're talking about "light-minutes" or even as little as 30-40 light-seconds.

Of course .9 light speed is relatively useless for traversing the VAST distance between star systems. I never disagreed with this basic and obvious fact.

Evilned: I have NO problem with you holding vastly different beliefs than my own, and I don't mind in the slightest that you consider many of the possibilities I endorse to lack merit.

All I ask is that if we're going to debate, oppose the idea in its complete form, instead of cherry-picking portions that lack context on their own.

Now, what do you think about the idea as a whole? Ie: The viability of creating and controlling a wormhole perhaps half a centimeter in diameter?

Lastly, from the perspective of the Universe in its totality, I can think of no more extraordinary claim than to say bipedal primates who rose to prominence on their home planet much less than a 100,000 years ago on a planet in an unusual star system (single-star systems being in the vast minority compared to binary-star arrangements of various sorts), in a backwater arm of an unremarkable galaxy are the pinnacle of Universal Life.

As an adherent of the Strong Anthropic Principle, I find it not only improbable but actually deranged to believe that in the vastness of our billions-of-years-old Universe, that intelligent life a) has emerged nowhere else in our Universe, let alone in the Local Group or our own Galaxy, and b) That at least ONE intelligent/self-aware species hasn't developed far earlier than we have, and that one of these Life-Forms/Species/Civilizations hasn't been pursuing *some form of* scientific inquiry for thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years.

Whatever else you believe, I feel one must admit that such a claim IS an Extraordinary one. I would be interested in the thoughts, opinions and information that those who believe this to in fact be the case as to what they believe substantiates the claim that Mankind is the most advanced self-aware and tool-using global civilization/population in the Universe.

Since it's trendy, I believe it would be appropriate to point out that Einstein was convinced in the (seemingly) contradictory positions that the Light-Barrier is absolute and unbreachable, but that Man would develop a means of "practical conveyance" (as he described it) that would for all practical purposes permit non-relativistic travel orders of magnitude faster than light-speed (though the word Faster is misleading, and only used here as a relative term/descriptive. The potential "workarounds" of the light-barrier all share the common trait of having next to nothing to do with conventional movement).

However, for the sake of intellectual honesty, I'll also mention that Einstein qualified these statements. Essentially saying it would only happen if we didn't destroy ourselves with weapons of mass destruction, and if we overcame the crisis he foresaw involving the waste heat our civilization continues to produce at a steadily rising rate.

Einstein believed that the need to dissipate waste heat would be one of the first momentous hurdles any civilization would have to overcome or be destroyed. Some of his peers elaborated on this by speculating that the disposal of Waste-Heat would in all likelihood be the one means a less developed species could locate the worlds of a more advanced species that did not wish to be detected.

[mista_mo]

Do you mean "poof" as in you disappear in a magical smoke that makes people unsure of where you went?

Do you mean "poof" in an offensive sense as in that I'm a homosexual (not actually offensive other then to the narrow minded folks)

Or were you angered by the fact that I used my comments to express my personal discontent at the spiritual beliefs of people, those same people who have expressed their discontent with me using phrasing such as "You're going to hell!" and "Burn in hell you piece of shit!"

Please answer, I'd be so interested to know.


The first answer actually.

Look pal, you made a shitty comment that added nothing to the discussion, even including KTHXBAI. It was a very very snide remark, and as JD said, I 'called you out on it'.

When I saw that you had edited your post so that it actually included some content, I edited mine stating that you could now ignore the first part of my post.

[Chic Freak]

So Infrasound would account for both the mirrors breaking and both you and your friends uneasiness.

Not saying this is definitely what happened...but this is a rational and completely feasible explanation for the events stated.

:| I have no friends :|

You have a fan though! :D

An interesting scientific explanation that sounds much more feasible than ghosts or goblins or whatever.

[darth los]

The simplest explanation is normally the correct one.

:cool:

[EvilNed]

@EvilNed,
Why do you cherry-pick bits of someone's statement out of context to seemingly validate your point?

They make up the whole, do they not? You cannot simplify something like this. Even if the wormhole theory of yours is possible, all the other factors have to fall into place. That's not cherry picking. That's breaking down your statement into what it really implies.

Let's say the wormhole works. All those other factors still have to fall into place.


Now, what do you think about the idea as a whole? Ie: The viability of creating and controlling a wormhole perhaps half a centimeter in diameter?

That's not the idea as a whole. The idea as a whole is that some other intelligent life form knows about us, is visiting us and has developed the technology to create and control a wormhole. And I think the improbabilities are too many for that to hold any water as an argument.


Lastly, from the perspective of the Universe in its totality, I can think of no more extraordinary claim than to say bipedal primates who rose to prominence on their home planet much less than a 100,000 years ago on a planet in an unusual star system (single-star systems being in the vast minority compared to binary-star arrangements of various sorts), in a backwater arm of an unremarkable galaxy are the pinnacle of Universal Life.

Nobody's claimed that human life is the pinnacle of life. Nobody's claimed that there isn't intelligent life out there.

But let's face it: We know only of one example of where life has evolved: Here on Earth. We have nothing to cross-reference it with. We might be alone. We might not be. We cannot make any statements about it whatsoever.

You might find it hard to be believe that we are the smartest thing that's ever evolved in this universe. But for all we know, we are. But who knows, we might not be.

[Wyldwraith]

Might not be?

I'm absolutely staggered that the lack of confirmation about what's contained in the visible universe we've examined less than 3% of is sufficient for you.

May I make a suggestion EvilNed? Perhaps exploring a standard of fact-finding/inquiry beyond "we don't currently have 100% confirmation, so it's best to make an assertion of improbability, even when a body of credible evidence exists that strongly implies otherwise"?

Military and commercial pilots rely on their judgment and perceptions being considered sound for their very livelihoods. These individuals have NOTHING to gain, and potentially everything to lose by going public or even filing an internal report about a UFO sighting. Many of these UFOs have been tracked by ground stations during intervals while said pilot(s) had the UFO under visual observation.

Two of the most substantiated sightings are remarkable for two reasons. 1) The extensive body of evidence related to each sighting, and 2) The clearly non-natural maneuvers and documented speeds that preclude the old "experimental military aircraft" excuse.

If sightings aren't your thing (there is something to be said for inherent flaws in eyewitness testimony), one can look to the Ancient Astronaut theories. Admittedly I don't personally buy a lot of what gets lumped into this area of inquiry, but I do find the commonalities of sudden development of advanced mathematic and astronomical measurements/observation by widely separated civilizations at the same time interesting.

In any case, there's a lot more to credible inquiry than "we haven't confirmed it, so there's no point considering it."

[darth los]

I haven't answered in this thread not because it has strayed from the o.p.'s q, but because i can't define half the words you nerds are using. :o :p

:cool:

[EvilNed]

Might not be?

Who am I to question wether or not intelligent life exists or not? And who are you? As I said, we have nothing to cross-reference it with. It's just as probable as it is improbable. But it is a factor that would have to be true for your theory to work. And how can we know how probably or improbable this factor is? We have no idea. But what we do know is that this is but one factor in your theory.


I'm absolutely staggered that the lack of confirmation about what's contained in the visible universe we've examined less than 3% of is sufficient for you.

I won't doubt you when you say 3%, but I would like a source. No, I'm not being nitpicky, but if it really were 3% and that has been established, then that would be interesting to know.



May I make a suggestion EvilNed? Perhaps exploring a standard of fact-finding/inquiry beyond "we don't currently have 100% confirmation, so it's best to make an assertion of improbability, even when a body of credible evidence exists that strongly implies otherwise"?

You've misjudged this entire conversation. We're not talking about getting 100% confirmation on anything, and we haven't talked about a single phenomena that strongly implies that it is, infact, true. So what are you on about?


Two of the most substantiated sightings are remarkable for two reasons. 1) The extensive body of evidence related to each sighting, and 2) The clearly non-natural maneuvers and documented speeds that preclude the old "experimental military aircraft" excuse.

What evidence would that be? I am interested, and not trying to be a dick. But if there is evidence, I would like to know about it.

[Wyldwraith]

@EvilNed:

The 3% observation of the visible night sky figure has been established by the Royal Observatory in the U.K and the various observatories in the Americas charged with plotting the position of Near Earth Objects. (The guys trying to make sure we get sufficient time to do something about it after being warned of a probable or certain impact by a large asteroid, comet etc.)

The History Channel homepage and Wikipedia will both provide you with citations of the "Less than 3% figure. Wikipedia will send you to a couple of cool (if long-winded) congressional reports on the dangers posed by Near Earth Objects, and the current deficits in our ability to track them, and why those deficits exist.

As for the two sightings I referenced. One occurred in 1992 in the airspace above the English channel, in an area of shared jurisdiction. Visual sighting was by a U.K commercial pilot doing a maintenance hop, and the UFO was tracked by the nearby Air Traffic Control tower. U.K law requires a report be filed with the government concerning UFOs sighted in U.K airspace, but the U.K response was to say the object didn't pose any threat they were aware of, and while they would be concluding their investigation, perhaps French authorities would wish to continue. The French never released an official statement.

The 2nd sighting I mentioned was by an Isreali military pilot scrambled to intercept the UFO 23-25 miles north of his base. Interesting fact here is that there is a damned MOUNTAIN of intelligence community chatter between Isreal and the U.S concerning the incident that are now available via Freedom of Information Act request after being declassified a couple of years ago.

The apparent interest by the U.S was due to the confirmation of the UFO rapidly changing direction, coming to a near-instantaneous stop and then accelerating back to an equally absurd speed fast enough to literally liquefy a human being.

I'm not a military analyst, but even I can understand why any sovereign nation would be troubled by the existence of intelligence-directed objects traveling 10-11x faster than anything we know of, and doing so with apparent Inertia-Cancellation capabilities.

[EvilNed]

Do you have sources for all those sightings? And does the evidence conclusively point towards it being of extra-terrestial origin? Or unexplainable?

[Wyldwraith]

Ok,
EvilNed, you've commented more than once on a given statement of mine including "multiple improbabilities". So, in the interest of getting somewhere in the debate, I want to put a few single-topic questions to you, and the reason(s) I feel they're important enough to merit serious ongoing inquiry. Then I'd like to see what you have to say about the question(s) you find you wish to respond to.

1) We've established that excepting humanity, we have no certain confirmation of the existence of extraterrestrial life that is intelligent/self-aware, whose nature includes a penchant for scientific inquiry even vaguely similar to our own.

The question 1: Given the potentially horrific possibilities if an advanced race that happens to discover us and has the means to reach us, do you consider the pursuit of answering the "Are we alone?" question to be important?

My reason(s) why I consider the "Are we alone?" question to be an extremely serious one.

Even if the overall possibility of our world being discovered by a race with the means to reach us and the desire to harm us for whatever reason (taking our planet comes to mind) is incredibly remote, given the absolute certainty of our complete extinction if we were to come into conflict with a interstellar-travel-capable species at our current level of development, I believe its worth exploring in the same way we're trying to develop means of monitoring potential sources of Short/Long Gamma Ray Bursts that may be pointed our way, or the same measures for the poles of a Magnetar.

In simpler terms: Even if the chances of such an advanced race a) existing, b) being capable of interstellar travel, c) actually discover us, and d) wish to destroy us is .00000000001%, it's still something we should be considering for the obvious threat of extinction posed by such an eventuality.

2) The Question 2: Do you believe non-conventional means of "getting around" the light-barrier are or aren't achievable?

My reasons: Given the very vastness of space that you've emphasized, without such means we will be forever confined to our own solar system...or at best may develop multi-generational colony ships, or cryogenic/other hibernation method "Sleeper Ships" that could/would take tens of thousands of years to get anywhere in an interstellar sense.

I just find the idea of humanity being essentially imprisoned in our own solar system forever to be incredibly depressing.

[EvilNed]

I believe that for all intents and purposes, we are alone and will always be alone. I believe there's life out there, somewhere. But only because the universe is as large as it is. There may be several other civilizations out there, or there may be none. There may only be planets populated by microbes. I do not believe that any extra terrestial species have contact with any other extra terrestial species, for space is too big. Even for faster-than-light travel, space is simply to huge.


In simpler terms: Even if the chances of such an advanced race a) existing, b) being capable of interstellar travel, c) actually discover us, and d) wish to destroy us is .00000000001%, it's still something we should be considering for the obvious threat of extinction posed by such an eventuality.

I'd say it's still something you could, if you wanted to, indulge yourself in worrying about. As much as I indulge myself in believing I'll be winning the international lottery for "all the money in the world" each and every week for the rest of my life. I believe the odds are about the same. The main reason is simply: Space. It's incredibly huge. It's soooo incredibly huge.


My reasons: Given the very vastness of space that you've emphasized, without such means we will be forever confined to our own solar system...or at best may develop multi-generational colony ships, or cryogenic/other hibernation method "Sleeper Ships" that could/would take tens of thousands of years to get anywhere in an interstellar sense.


I agree, it is depressing. But I do not believe Humankind will never reach other solar systems, and I do not believe that mankind will ever popularize any other planets, apart from maybe Mars and the Moon. Beyond that, it's all gas and inhospitable to human life. There are a few moons, but their enviroments are extreme.

The very sole exception is if mankind developed a way to transit their consciousness from one host to another, in which case my consciousness could essentially be transmitted into a space probe. Light years would still be impossible, but we'd be able to cover great distances by sending out hosts to our bodies, waiting a few years, and then transmitting that consciousness to said Probe which has no landed on Mars.

Altough, if we ever reach that point in our evolution (or development more like it) we'd probably no longer be anything closely resembling humans as nature has shaped us.

[Publius]

They even speak Latin, a language they never studied, at 13 yrs of age.

I'm only gonna get spooked if they said "liberate tutame ex inferis" before Event Horizon came out.

:D

[Wyldwraith]

Allow me to reference something,
We've been discussing the way that the lack of faster-than-light travel (or its practical equivalent, spatial folding, positive and negatively charged dark matter used to expand and contract space etc) would forever prevent humanity from reaching other stars, or setting foot on another earth-like planet.

First, would like to turn your attention to the discovery of Gleesa-581. Solar system 20 light-years and change from us that has multiple rocky planets, with 1 Venus-like planet that's in a bit too close to the star Gleesa to be in the habitable range, but most interesting is the next planet out. Liquid water, appropriately placed to gain sufficient heat to keep water liquid, but not too much. Radiation levels similar to Earth, and (although they haven't pinned down the composition of this planet's atmosphere yet) there are HINTS that it could be Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide or Monoxide-based, something nearly as transparent as Earth's atmosphere, and slightly more dense.

Most importantly, the planet rotates on a stable axis (so it isn't tidally locked like our Moon for example. Ie: One side constantly lit, one forever dark)...and its orbit is even more stable than ours.

Now, I should also mention that Gleesa-581s most promising planet is 5-8x as massive as Earth, so it would never be suitable for us given the gravity, but nothing else that's been studied so far precludes the long-term sustainability of complex life. Gleesa's "super-Earth" as it's being called even seems to have stable magnetic poles as Earth does, indicating an extremely similar geology to our own.

The reason I bring this up is that the "Planet Hunters" have only studied about 350 planet-bearing solar systems so far, but even in such a small sample we already have a planet that fits all the known criteria to allow for the rise of complex life. A "very close cousin" to Earth.

This was before the launch of the Kepler Telescope, its mission being the discovery and study of Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars. Despite being currently limited to analyzing only those rocky/solid planets that are in close to the same plane as our own planet via the "Transit Method" of measuring the dip in the star's brightness as the planet in question moves visibly across the surface of its star, Kepler promises to allow the discovery of thousands of potentially Earth-like planets.

http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/nasakeplernews/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=16

If you're interested in checking it out...

Moving on, I disagree that mankind will remain trapped in our own solar system. We're already studying a particle that appears to breach the light-barrier (the Tachyon), and have yet to devise viable experimental criteria to prove or disprove the wormhole theories, and not even close to figuring out how to prove/disprove the theory posed (The name of the scientist escapes me. It's something like Albucierre) about the viability of dynamically controlling the warping of space with a "Dark Matter engine" which uses positively and negatively charged Dark Matter to contract space in front of the theoretical vessel and then expand it behind the vessel. Effectively folding space to make the shortest distance between two points to bring those points together as one, then allowing space to "snap back" into its conventional shape, carrying the theorized vessel from Point A to B instantaneously.

While I have no basis to offer an opinion on the validity of using either tachyons or dark matter to violate the light-barrier, I believe that the fact our current understanding is sufficient to begin developing potentially viable theories of Faster-than-Light travel is indicative of the potential to achieve this feat.

Call it an article of faith for me if you wish. I staunchly believe mankind will solve the riddle and overcome the formidable obstacle posed by the vast distances separating star systems one day.

The alternative would ultimately deny meaning in the final analysis to EVERYTHING ELSE that we have been, are, or ever will be.

[Mike70]

Moving on, I disagree that mankind will remain trapped in our own solar system.

two words: laser sail.

a ship powered by a laser sail would be able to accelerate to a large percentage of the speed of light. the technology to build one already exists. the problem is money.

another thing to consider about high speed space travel is time dilation. a person on a such a ship would experience the passage of time far, far more slowly than an observer on earth. this is a proven rock solid fact. the faster you move, the more slowly you experience time. you might experience 4 years subjective time under those conditions while 40 years have passed on earth. you would, in effect and reality, wind up in earth's future.

at really high speeds this effect can produce astronomical amounts of time dilation. so any sort of mission involving speeds approaching that of light would need some long, long term planning. because such craft could be returning to earth decades, even centuries, after they left. the people traveling on that ship would've only aged a few years.

ain't the universe a fascinating place?

what this has to do with ouija boards i have no idea. it is certainly a more interesting topic of conversation.

[Kaos]

You have a fan though! :D

An interesting scientific explanation that sounds much more feasible than ghosts or goblins or whatever.

He does prefer fans to friends.

[AcesandEights]

He does prefer fans to friends.

For the right sort, Terran might be willing to make an exception, no?

http://cache.io9.com/assets/resources/2007/12/metropolis1.jpg

[Terran]

two words: laser sail.
a ship powered by a laser sail would be able to accelerate to a large percentage of the speed of light. the technology to build one already exists. the problem is money.


What do you consider a large percentage of the speed of light?...
10%?
50%?
90%?
99.9%?

I pretty much bowed out of this conversation in terms of responding...but this caught my eye...

If one were to move a given mass (a space ship for example) by exposing it to some external force you can use Einsteins special relativity...
This will demonstrate that its physically impossible to move an object with a mass at the speed of light...


According to special relativity, the energy of an object with rest mass m and speed v is given by γmc^2, where γ is the Lorentz factor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor).

When speed(v) is zero, γ is equal to one, giving rise to the famous E = mc2 formula for mass-energy equivalence. Since the γ factor approaches infinity as v approaches c, it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light. The speed of light is the upper limit for the speeds of objects with positive rest mass
So lets use a space ship as an example.

The ship is traveling in space and accelerating with hopes of reaching the speed of light or close to this speed (be it with solar sails laser sails or any other propulsion method).

Using Einstein's theory of special relativity one has to consider all the particles that exist in the ship in a relative fashion.
As the speed of all these particles increase their mass actually increases.
As the mass of these particles increase it takes more energy to accelerate all the particles.
The amount of energy to accelerate a given depends on its mass....so as the mass of the ship increases the amount of energy to accelerate it increases.

Consider a ship moving at 50% the speed of light.
The most powerful rockets we have today spending its entire payload for acceleration would not increase the ships speed at all.


So the first problem with moving a ship the speed of light is that you would need a near infinite amount of energy. Laser sails and solar sails wouldnt work because as the ship reaches reaches speed the relative tiny amount of energy would cease to accelerate the mass.


But thats not the most significant problem....

As the ship increases in speed to any larger percentage of the speed of light the structural integrity of the ship would begin to fail....eventually catastrophic...
so your left with a mass of wreckage.


Lets say this mass of wreckage continued to accelerate

As this wreckage continues to accelerate and the atoms within start become excited and generate heat as their relative mass increases...
Eventually this atoms would generate so much heat that nuclear fission occurs breaking down the atoms into smaller particles and releasing light....


The lesson is ...the amount of energy to get a mass to the speed of light is the amount of energy required to turn a mass into heat and light.

The speed of light is a property of energy and mass. By this definition mass cannot exist at that speed.




So does that mean we can not travel to the far reaches of space?

It does by means of typical propulsion, where an applied force pushes an object in a direction.


However it is possible to warp space to change where an object is in space. I dont want to get into that here though to lengthy....

Im not talking about wormholes though, think cosmic surfing.
:hyper:
Moving without moving.

---------- Post added at 12:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:30 PM ----------


He does prefer fans to friends.
I think I have a certain personalty disorder the makes me for most practical purposes indifferent to either praise or criticism.
:eek:


For the right sort, Terran might be willing to make an exception, no?

http://cache.io9.com/assets/resources/2007/12/metropolis1.jpg
Robot friends would be awesome!

[Wyldwraith]

Dynamic spatial warping is personally my hunch as to how we'll finally "breach" light-speed. (For practical travel purposes).

Obviously conventional propulsion is absolutely worthless, so we should stop pissing away billions on solid-state rocket-based missions and put the cash into better optics platforms to allow us to catch sight of some of the odder cosmic events that happen from time to time.

The analogy there would be playing the lottery. Total crapshoot as to whether we'd learn anything useful from a Quantum Event, but gotta play to win. If we can't see it/study it, it might as well not exist.

Beyond that we need more research grants for the really high-end physics experiments. (Think Large Hadron Collider)...there are better ways to trap those damned elusive Tachyons than we're using now, but the better ways cost TONS of cash. (Producing metric tons of 99.9999% pure Beryllium for one).

My basic point is we need better math and physics, because the conventional stuff we have now is worthless in regards to a space program. For getting to another solar system, Einstein might as well not have been born, for he offers nothing useful on the subject.

Feymann...perhaps.

Can't imagine how it will be done, but my gut says it'll boil down to folding space, or "moving without moving" as Terran said. That's unless we luck out and wormholes are lots more useful than current theories predict.

Edit: The inherent problems with interstellar travel are why I don't buy into conspiracy theories about crashed UFOs on Earth. At the very maximum, I MIGHT be able to buy a crashed ET probe, or conventionally propelled (albeit advanced) "shuttle" used for In-System travel.

Why? Can you imagine an intelligent race with the capacity to cross light-years of space easily being so generous as to allow us to just luck into Interstellar Travel at no expense or effort of our own?

If a vessel with Interstellar Travel-capabilities DID crash here, I find it MUCH more likely that the ETs would do ANYTHING to retrieve or destroy it. Up to and including "sanitizing" the Earth's surface.

Think about it. Would YOU give another far less developed race with a penchant for slaughtering THEIR OWN KIND by the millions potential access to your home world?

Thought not.

[EvilNed]

First, would like to turn your attention to the discovery of Gleesa-581. Solar system 20 light-years and change from us that has multiple rocky planets, with 1 Venus-like planet that's in a bit too close to the star Gleesa to be in the habitable range, but most interesting is the next planet out. Liquid water, appropriately placed to gain sufficient heat to keep water liquid, but not too much. Radiation levels similar to Earth, and (although they haven't pinned down the composition of this planet's atmosphere yet) there are HINTS that it could be Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide or Monoxide-based, something nearly as transparent as Earth's atmosphere, and slightly more dense.

Very interesting, what's that really got to do with anything? We found a planet we think is like earth. I haven't made a single claim that there aren't planets like that out there. Truth be told, we don't even know what life (in general) requires to evolve. All we know is what it required on Earth.

Gleesa-581 is probably a really nice planet. But it still answers nothing about life or the evolution thereof.


Moving on, I disagree that mankind will remain trapped in our own solar system. We're already studying a particle that appears to breach the light-barrier (the Tachyon), and have yet to devise viable experimental criteria to prove or disprove the wormhole theories, and not even close to figuring out how to prove/disprove the theory posed (The name of the scientist escapes me. It's something like Albucierre) about the viability of dynamically controlling the warping of space with a "Dark Matter engine" which uses positively and negatively charged Dark Matter to contract space in front of the theoretical vessel and then expand it behind the vessel. Effectively folding space to make the shortest distance between two points to bring those points together as one, then allowing space to "snap back" into its conventional shape, carrying the theorized vessel from Point A to B instantaneously.

I'll just say: Good luck with that. I hope they invent a way to traverse space. But I don't believe they will. For a number of different reasons. One of them being that space is fucking HUUUUUUGE. Imagine Columbus, in his day. The Atlantic was huge for him, right? In comparison, his atlantic would probably be the equivalent to a drop of water in relation to the distances we're talking about.

I'm just gonn ago ahead and say it - one more time: You know space? That thing out there? Yeah, it's huge. It's incredibly huge. You can't begin to fathom how huge it is. Nobody can. It's just that huge. Space? It's huge. Way too huge for us. That's a distance we'll never cross. The amount of resources that would come into play if we ever tried conquering space would be more than we actually have on our own planet. Which kinda sucks, but hey, there you go.

Another reason? We don't have the resources. The Earth is waning. We've used up most of it, and our population is growing. We can't even feed the number of people living here now, how do you expect it will look in another 25 or 50 years?

[Danny]

What do you consider a large percentage of the speed of light?...
10%?
50%?
90%?
99.9%?

I pretty much bowed out of this conversation in terms of responding...but this caught my eye...


-just cutting it off for page loadings sake.


So whats your opinion on the basis of the stargate idea then?

-assuming you could make a stargate type stable wormhole in the doorway in the show the ancient race that made the stargates didnt go around seeding planets with them becuase it was such a grand, time consuming job.

Instead they took automated ships that, in the show, are still old junkers now but keep doing the job long after there creators are gone, adding stargates to more worlds, further building up the network.

-i mean this aint exactly a here and now time saver but what about some automated system that takes....i dunno, lets say some form of teleportation or other form of fast transport across planets and it was an automated process.

It would be an incredibly long job but isnt it more likely in terms of say... building a large network- like i think this idea first came to me when some guys on a show were talking about lacing a string of sattelites about our system between the orbits of earth and mars to increase communication speeds.

-course pretty much any idea like this would require maintenance when space dust or a meteor cruises by- wallops booster gxf-2234 and now guys on mars lost there live superbowl feed :lol:

[Terran]

-just cutting it off for page loadings sake.


So whats your opinion on the basis of the stargate idea then?


massive gravity
huge amounts of energy (+or-)


I think when you get down to these extreme forces all sorts of different things appear plausible.

So yeah I enjoy the stargate series but other than that im not sure why type of opinion you were looking for.



I tend to think of any future with biological lifeforms traveling the stars as flawed....but a show featuring the offspring of the human race (sentient machines) would probably be boring. :skull: :lol:

[Wyldwraith]

EvilNed,
Your arguments based on the acknowledged vastness of Interstellar Distances (Light-Years) continue to assume we'd be attempting to traverse Light-Years using conventional propulsion, which a recent post did an excellent job of explaining why Special Relativity makes conventional propulsion useless for this purpose.

Side note: I brought up Gleesa-581 in reference to our discussion about the probability of life developing elsewhere. The core information I wanted you to take from it was that even in the presently TINY sample of studied Planets (a few dozen solar systems and 350 planets) we find an example of a planet that fulfills many of the criteria we know were required to create the long-term sustainability of the conditions necessary for life here on Earth.

To answer your question even more directly: Gleesa-581's most promising planet is that it lends tangible data in support of the Drake Equation. (in a preliminary sense. The Kepler telescope will provide a more conclusive context regarding how abundant Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars are).

Moving back to the Interstellar Travel topic. I fail to understand what the vast distances between star systems have to do with the possibility of developing a means of crossing those Light-Years. We've already rightly concluded that conventional propulsion is useless for this purpose.

I don't understand why you seem dismissive of the many credible theories that if proven correct promise to open the door to non-conventional travel.

Just a few of the theories considered credible, albeit most unproven due either to prohibitive cost or our current lack of experimental models to prove or disprove these theories:

1) The innumerable variety of wormhole-based theories.
2) What amounts to "Brane Skimming"...Ie: Pulling an object onto the edge of one of the dimensions that make up the Multiverse.
3) Albucierre's (mispelled) theories of controlled spatial warping. "Movement without moving" as previously mentioned. In addition to the gravity-related space-bending, and all the other theories for essentially making the shortest distance between Point A & B = zero, regardless of amount of conventional distance normally separating Point A & B.
4) Tachyon-based theories related to taking advantage of the (so far) unique faster-than-light properties of this particle. The major experiment at the moment being to get two Tachyons very close together to see if the value of constant-change increases. The prototypical hypothetical construct here being to surround an object in an unbroken field of tachyons and creating a "bubble" within the field where natural laws respond differently.
5) Feyemann's Quantum "Path values" theory (won him the Nobel prize)...the basic example of which is when you resolve to attempt to walk to the other side of the room there are a variety of potential outcomes besides going from Point A to B, each "Path" (some of which cross many light-years or even cross time) having its own assessed probability. (Incidentally, this is where Douglas Adams got the idea for the Probability Drive featured in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.)...

I can go on, and on, and on, but I've made my point. No one is laughing at these theories, and each one promises to allow for the crossing of Interstellar Space via technology which takes advantage of their operating principle at some point after we confirm which theory (or theories) are actually correct.

It's a body of evidence indicative at least of the potential for Faster-Than-Light travel. No law demands that the value of space-time remain constant, and unless or until such a natural law is discovered, there's no basis on which to assess the probability of Non-Conventional Travel turning out to be impossible.

Finally, we KNOW of at least one set of conditions that allowed for Faster-Than-Light acceleration of objects of great mass. Inflation. The scientifically sound principle of space's expansion (which in itself proves that Space is NOT a fixed value).

Not saying such a discovery will happen anytime soon, but I've found NOTHING in favor of the notion that such travel is impossible to develop, and quite a bit of preliminary indications that the potential exists.

[EvilNed]

EvilNed,
Your arguments based on the acknowledged vastness of Interstellar Distances (Light-Years) continue to assume we'd be attempting to traverse Light-Years using conventional propulsion, which a recent post did an excellent job of explaining why Special Relativity makes conventional propulsion useless for this purpose.

So far, nothing's been established, nothing's been proven (or disproven) nothing has worked, nothing has shown any real promise and we're still talking about particles. Folding space opening wormholes are all part of a new side in physics: Altering the shape of the universe. Something which we've never done before and nobody has any experience in. It'll be awesome if it works. Don't be surprised if it doesn't.


Side note: I brought up Gleesa-581 in reference to our discussion about the probability of life developing elsewhere. The core information I wanted you to take from it was that even in the presently TINY sample of studied Planets (a few dozen solar systems and 350 planets) we find an example of a planet that fulfills many of the criteria we know were required to create the long-term sustainability of the conditions necessary for life here on Earth.

As long as we haven't discovered any new lifeforms, I fail to see why it's relevant. But meh. If you think it's important.


I don't understand why you seem dismissive of the many credible theories that if proven correct promise to open the door to non-conventional travel.

Just a few of the theories considered credible, albeit most unproven due either to prohibitive cost or our current lack of experimental models to prove or disprove these theories:


1) The innumerable variety of wormhole-based theories.

If they prove true, awesome, if they don't, too bad. Don't be expecting it to work. Altering dimensions and all that stuff is just not really something we have alot of experience with.


2) What amounts to "Brane Skimming"...Ie: Pulling an object onto the edge of one of the dimensions that make up the Multiverse.

Excuse me, what the fuck? Are you seriously expecting this to work?


3) Albucierre's (mispelled) theories of controlled spatial warping. "Movement without moving" as previously mentioned. In addition to the gravity-related space-bending, and all the other theories for essentially making the shortest distance between Point A & B = zero, regardless of amount of conventional distance normally separating Point A & B.

Altering physics and the dynamics of it (i.e. gravity) is a bad idea. If you want to bend gravity, the one thing that holds this universe together, you're likely to fuck something up along the way. This one, I don't put much stock in at all. Prove me wrong, awesome, until then I'll watch it on Star Trek.


4) Tachyon-based theories related to taking advantage of the (so far) unique faster-than-light properties of this particle. The major experiment at the moment being to get two Tachyons very close together to see if the value of constant-change increases. The prototypical hypothetical construct here being to surround an object in an unbroken field of tachyons and creating a "bubble" within the field where natural laws respond differently.

Prototypical hypothetical construct? Altering the laws of physics again? Good luck, that'll be so cool.


5) Feyemann's Quantum "Path values" theory (won him the Nobel prize)...the basic example of which is when you resolve to attempt to walk to the other side of the room there are a variety of potential outcomes besides going from Point A to B, each "Path" (some of which cross many light-years or even cross time) having its own assessed probability. (Incidentally, this is where Douglas Adams got the idea for the Probability Drive featured in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.)...

Whenever you put your hand on your desk, or leaning against the wall, there is a small chance (because quantum physics are what they are: almost random) that your hand will go right through the desk, or you will fall through that wall. Is it a big chance? No. Infact, it's a miniscule chance. Probably never happened, and never will. Infact, I can tell you right now that it never well. Because again, it's the perfect example of Theory vs. Practicality. In theory? It is possible. But in reality? It is impossible.

You also have to understand the difference between quantum physics and physics. Things operate quite differently on a minute scale, which may be why these things are possible. To particles.



Not saying such a discovery will happen anytime soon, but I've found NOTHING in favor of the notion that such travel is impossible to develop, and quite a bit of preliminary indications that the potential exists.

Have you found anything in favor of the notion that such travel is possible to develop, then? No, that's right. Because they're all theories. While I won't dismiss theories, these are all theories that have alot to prove until they become scientifically accepted theories. Evolution did too at the start. And then it pulled through. Why should we expect anything less from these?

Interesting how you avoided my "Resources" argument, tho.

[Wyldwraith]

Wasn't avoiding it,
Just had a lot else to reply with. Regarding the resources required to actually make one of these theories bear practical-value fruit: I'll state right now that as a Type 0 civilization, Earth/Man do not, and likely will not have the capacity to produce viable experimental models for many of these theories until we advance further in energy production/harvest and storage. The most promising candidates here being efficient geothermal, fusion and/or "cold" fusion, and large-scale solar-cell collectors, particularly in space where you get more collected energy by far.

In my estimation, Earth/Man will need to fulfill the criteria needing to be met in order to become a Type 1 Civilization. These requirements are:

1) Yearly power production/collection = to the yearly Solar output. Ie: Using 90-100% of our star's cast-off energies.

2) A truly Global, unbroken/nearly unbroken information transfer/communication network capable of transferring 1 Terrabyte of information nearly instantaneously between any two points on Earth.

3) Truly Global/unified scientific and industrial efforts. Not going into potentially needed social change that may or may not factor in to this one. Suffice to say that the sum of our research and production capabilities globally needs to become unified in direction and equally (as equally as physically feasible) shared resources.

The core trait of a Type 1 Civilization is its truly Global nature.

Mankind has and will continue to progress along the path to meeting these criteria, but I don't expect us to achieve Non-Conventional Travel until we've achieved Type 1 status at a bare minimum...or (more likely IMO) Type 1 and some small fraction towards becoming Type 2.

I really don't know why you continue to state many serious, well-regarded theories are some sort of fringe pseudo-science, and you continue to mangle my explanations in the effort to oversimplify and deprive them of context to seemingly make your point.

Out of the theories I mentioned in my last post, your crude statements in regards to Feynman's Quantum Path Values theory I want to respond to.

This Nobel laureate has himself proved mathematically that it is possible to alter the intrinsic Path Integral Value. Ie: The probability of arriving at a particular destination when attempting to walk across the room being the archetypical example. This theory is universally accepted and mathematically proven, and it states conclusively that the "So improbable as to = Impossible events described by Quantum theory" you stated is incorrect.

Feynman proved that an increase in the value of the Path Integer can increase the probability of a given event occurring, and his theory dealt with experimental criteria using a hypothetical object of significant mass (a human body).

While as a general rule Quantum Mechanics deal with the incredibly small, Feynman proved that objects of substantial mass are affected in precisely the same way as a traveling particle (for example).

If you're going to try and shred a theory, I suggest you start on something a wee bit less exalted than the work of one of the Fathers of Quantum Theory.

[Kaos]

I think I have a certain personalty disorder the makes me for most practical purposes indifferent to either praise or criticism.
:eek:


I would think you would prefer fans since it is entirely expected that you can ignore them. Friends require more effort to maintain.

[Terran]

I would think you would prefer fans since it is entirely expected that you can ignore them. Friends require more effort to maintain.
Yea Friends do require more effort to maintain.
But "literal "fans require more effort to avoid.


Fans, I imagine can be a significant nuisance because unlike friends, where effort needs to be mutual, they can make a great deal of effort to establish contact with their target.
It would be like the nuisance of telemarketers.

Friends are a nuisance of choice.
Fans are a nuisance of ....erm?...unchoice?

:shifty:

[Kaos]

It must be terrible for you. :p

[EvilNed]

It's also been "proven" that leaning on a wall, there is a small chance of falling through it. But please accept the ridiculous difference there can be between theory and practice. It's possible to walk through walls. It's just not probable in the least. See the difference? Even if something is possible (like Feynman's theory) doesn't mean it's in the least bit probable. And as far as I know, this hasn't been executed in reality yet, has it?

As for Earth reaching a "Type 1" civilization (nice communistic society you described there, tho, I do approve!) you do realize that the Earth, as a planet, is slowly dying, right? As I said, we've outgrown it and even if we're technologically reaching upwards and outwards, human civilization as a whole has seen it's hayday. We don't have the resources to maintain this large a population. The society you describe IS possible. If we kill off half of our population.

[Wyldwraith]

Well,
I'm not sure I agree humanity has seen its best days already. Yes, fossil fuels are disappearing faster than virgins on prom night, but there are a variety of stop-gap alternatives that are becoming more cost-effective all the time.

What we REALLY need though is a new advanced energy-application with as game-changingly profound an impact as oil had at the turn of the 20th century.

In the meantime I think we need more nuclear reactors to take weight off our beleaguered power grid, and some HUGE solar-cell farms in places like the Mojave Desert and Death Valley. Every scientist in the energy field considers this a no-brainer, but Big Oil has been cock-blocking major wind and solar installations forever.

Of course that doesn't solve the core problem/get us any closer to the Holy Grail of cheap, ever-abundant and clean energy, but if we manage the strain of the energy crisis better, we free up a LOT of money to go into more R&D.

That would also require Americans to stop eating up partisan rhetoric for 5 minutes and develop an attention span longer than said 5 minutes, but if we don't climb down the throats of legislators soon the first symptom of the worsening infrastructure problems will be a huge hit to the middle class's quality of life.

Quite disgusted with Obama. This oil spill is the PERFECT opportunity to rape Big Oil for what we need to get out of our energy woes, but typical for him he's prancing between the eggshells and squandering yet another choice opportunity. Depresses me that this prick is going to drive us into the ground when his unpopular ways doom us to another 4-8yrs of lying Republicans who believe the citizenry = medieval serfs existing to turn over 90% of their productivity so the "Nobility" can play.

Wonder who the next unnecessary mismatch of a war wrapped in the flag and the Holy Mantra of "The War On Terror/whackos that 97.5% of which could never hurt us despite the good game they talk" will be with?

Oh, for the record, don't believe in Communism but I do believe nationalism needs to die an unmourned death. It's high time the people of the world start thinking of themselves as Human, instead of Black/White/Asian/Latino etc., or American/Mexican/Canadian.

In Unity is Strength.

[MaximusIncredulous]

I certainly would not rule that out as an explanation, but it didn't seem to me to be that. It was a set pattern of knocks...three...pause...then another, spaced out over a minute or so. Knock on your desktop, allowing the weight of your hand to determine the force of the knock. This approximates the sound that I heard.

Three knocks, pause for a second, then one more. The pattern repeated several times with 15 or 20 seconds between each. It was like there was an intelligence behind it (I am not saying that there was, but it did seem that way).

Just for grins I looked on a Morse code chart to see if there was something similar. According to the chart 'knockknockknock...knock' is dot dot dot dash or "V".

"V" stands for "Visitors"...they're here. :lol:

Honestly, I do not know what made the noises, but I don't think it was the house settling. It was the first time I've heard it, and I haven't heard it since.

Maybe another time I'll tell you about the spooky little girl in the nightgown that my wife claims came out of the laundry-room one night and stood there staring at her while she was working at her desk. :D

-stray-

Thumps in threes. Don't know how BSsy this is but I read once that demonic hauntings will do things in threes, such as noises in series of three, paranormal activity occurring around 3am. Supposed to be a perversion of the holy trinity or something like that.

[EvilNed]

I'd recommend the documentary film "Collapse" for anyone who thinks human civilization is just going to expand and go on into a better and brighter future.

In 20 years we'll still have our good healthcare and all that stuff. But compared to now, most of the western world will look like a third world country. The third world, as it is now, is not as dependant on oil as we are. Countries like the United States which are very much more dependant on oil because of their extremely sucky public transport systems are probably going to suffer the worst of it.

The safest way to get across this issue is to install a advanced and easy to use public transport and logistics system that covers everything, which would eliminate the need for cars. They're going to go out of business pretty quick anyway.

EDIT:

It's also worth pointing out that the most common form of life, by about a billion to one, are germs and bacteria. So if there is alien life out there, it's probably just germs. Life is rare enough as it is. And when we get down to it, life is really just germs. We're the exception.

[Wyldwraith]

@EvilNed:
You're overlooking a crucial, historically proven trait of our species. When faced with deprivation due to changes in our environment and/or the dwindling of those resources we've utilized up until then, the driving necessity to discover a new means of "keeping the lights on" fosters an ever more favorable environment for such a breakthrough in energy production to occur.

Yes, the continued unwillingness to begin making the hard decisions and following through on them when it comes to using ever-more-scarce oil (didn't say fossil fuels because recent investigations have proven the vast majority of natural gas has yet to be tapped) is going to have a TREMENDOUS negative impact on the First World if we don't buckle down and change our ways.

Lack of resolve, greed (of Big Oil), and the glaring flaws inherent to a system that fosters the long-term dependency of our politicians on special interests, and more to the point, the huge amounts of money given to the politicians BY these special interests in exchange for vast influence over the bought politicians' decision-making are what:

A) Prevent each and every truly large-scale collection of wind and solar power.

B) Reroute, significantly cut or even completely withhold grants/research dollars from researchers either exploring completely new avenues of scientific inquiry into undiscovered and/or underutilized sources of energy production.

This is why I can't agree with your statement that mankind has seen its best days already. There are too many options left to explore, too many inhibiting factors that may yet be removed once necessity becomes more stark, and too much left to try to conclude (very prematurely, I believe) Man is definitely and inevitably on his way downward.

I know your general rule is to adopt a position of skepticism where new theories and technologies are concerned EvilNed, but surely you can conceive of the world-changing upswing if and when the next breakthrough harnessing of abundant energy is made?

We don't know which breakthrough will come through for our species, but there is NO reason to believe that such a source of clean abundant energy with the kind of impact the advent of Oil had isn't there, just waiting for us to put the last few pieces together and work out how to tap into it.

In the meantime,we can finally get off our asses, tell Big Oil to go to Hell, and follow common sense by establishing huge Wind Farms in the Great Plains and equally extensive Solar Farms in the southwestern United States.

I cannot emphasize ENOUGH the profoundly positive impact of doing so. 1) The construction of the needed equipment would create new jobs, or at least forestall the loss of more jobs when the government contracts to create these Solar and Wind Farms,

History has proven that these sorts of publicly funded, privately constructed building projects work. They worked as a linchpin of the New Deal during the Great Depression, and they can work again in exactly the same manner.

Also, these created and/or saved jobs would be a Godsend to skilled blue-collar workers, who have been one of the hardest hit demographics, first because of the bursting of the real estate bubble, and yet again when other types of large-scale construction projects disappeared.

I offer the construction of Hoover Dam as a PERFECT example of creating desperately needed jobs by harnessing renewable energy. The Hoover Dam project, in conjunction with the excavation of the four huge tunnels required to divert the Colorado River before work on the Damn could begin created well over 50-60,000 jobs, for a period of four years and change.

The Hoover Dam was an economic success, and its hydroelectric power production transformed the Southwest in a profoundly positive manner.

2) The vast increase in long-term, abundant and CLEAN energy would relieve a huge amount of strain from existing power plants, while significantly lowering the average citizen's energy-related expenses, which has more positive benefits for the economy than I can easily list here.

3) Once Big Solar and Wind pay off their initial construction expenses in energy, the big money desperately needed to further promising energy research will become available.

All of these are excellent reasons why Man isn't washed up. What do you think?