Can the paranormal be debunked?

[Juice007Ninja]

When it comes to the paranormal, I sit on the fence. I'm not really a skeptic or a believer. I try to stay objective although I do like to think there may be ghosts. I have heard the argument before that you cannot disprove what has not been proven. After reading endless debates between "Skeptics" and "Believers"( not about the argument of debunking in particular) , my wheels got turning. Can you debunk the paranormal?

Saying that we debunk the paranormal is insinuating that we know the rules of the game. We look to find natural causes to something that seems unexplainable. What if the paranormal doesn't always work beyond the normal? What if it sometimes mimics natural occurrences? We don't know the rules of the game with the paranormal world and until someone from the Otherside ( if there is an "Otherside") comes to give us a play by play of how it works we really have nothing to go on. We are working off of ideas and assumptions. How can we debunk something that we have no real evidence saying it a real occurrence? What are we looking for really? Do we even know? We have nothing to to give credibility in the way of debunking or proof. Seriously. Think about it.

Take pictures for example. Many of them are debunked because they have anomalies that can be reproduced. Is this really debunking them though? What are we looking for? Something paranormal could very well resemble an anomaly that we could explain. We don't have evidence that tells us how the paranormal works. We don't even know if we are going about it the right way really. We have been investigating for years and years yet we still have no proof of or against the paranormal. We have things we think are paranormal in nature but does that mean it works outside of the known laws of the natural world? Everything has to abide by natural law. It's there, none of us can get around it even if we don't understand it.

EVP. We can get these voices that we don't know the origin of but is that " evidence"? Evidence of what? We don't know. I like to believe that it is paranormal in nature but I know it could very well be something else. I don't see any evidence of paranormal phenomena that won't come under fire but on the same note, we really don't have anything to compare it to. Do we have anything we can present and say 100% for sure is paranormal in nature? Nope. Do we have anything that shows how the paranormal really works so we have something to use as the bases for debunking? Nope. We only have theories. A theory is nothing more than an idea.

Whether a Skeptic or a Believer , it is hard to argue because the entire system of exploring the paranormal is something we are just guessing at. While it is easy to debunk a claim of a cold spot and finding a old window that has not been caulked in too long what about things that are less obvious? We may think we know the answers but without concrete proof the truth may be much different than our ideas. Until we have indisputable proof for or against the paranormal both arguments are flawed.

Of course we should keep testing theories. Eventually we will stumble up on the answer. At this point though, one has to wonder what all the arguing is for? Neither side can win. I am not saying abandon all your ideas or beliefs. That is what drives us to find answers to our questions. Just understand that argument presented is going to be flawed. It is really our opinions and ideas we are presenting and nothing more.

[Lolipopkid]

Didn't I just pretty much say this an hour ago?

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum...p;#entry2929943

Anyways, with out new ways to monitor and track this phenomena we are pretty much at a stand still.

[They're Here]

I think you have answered your own question, but thank you for sharing your insights.

If the paranormal exists, then nobody will ever be able to debunk it. (Let me rephrase that, 'disprove' it.) There will always be something wrong with their logic and arguments because you can't disprove something that is true. Quite often, this logic comes down to trying to minimize the possibility of something being true. By saying that something is unlikely to be true, you try to convince people that it's probably not true, and that's just one step away from believing it's not true. These arguments, while probably being the most difficult to argue against, are still not proof of the absence of these things.

I am very confident that some of these paranormal phenomenon exist, due to personal experience, and therefore I will say that nobody will ever be able to disprove them. It is not an opinion, it is a fact. Unfortunately, I can't prove my own experiences or the fact so it is a meaningless fact to anyone but myself. So there will always be people without personal experience who try to disprove these things exist. That is just the nature of people.

So the real question is, will anybody ever be able to prove the paranormal? Now that's a question I have no answer to, but I wish I did. I have spent much of my life trying to figure out just how you could do something like that since having a ghost sighting in the early years of my life. Why do I care if others know the truth or not? I don't know, but I do. I don't like people being lied to and made to believe fantastic things aren't possible, when I know they are. Unfortunately, I have come to the probability that it all boils down to being at the right place at the right time, and even if you came up with pictures or recordings, there will always be people who don't believe it. It's really not their fault, it's that this evidence is so easily faked and that it's difficult to always get the best quality evidence. Also, scientific technology is still not up to par. Imagine a day when we will be able to record everything that goes into our retina or even our mind! Hopefully by that time we will also be able to seperate reality from hoaxes. If so, then I think some things will be proven then.

On the other hand, 'paranormal' encompasses a lot of subjects. There might be some things paranormal that are simply not true, and perhaps one day could be disproven. I can't think of any offhand. But there's no way that all things paranormal could ever be disproven, just speaking from experience.

Edited June 13, 2009 by They're Here

[Juice007Ninja]

I wrote his back around the second of this month.

I was only musing over the argument and was looking at it from an objective perspective. I like to believe there are ghosts myself. I don't believe anyone will be able to prove paranormal phenomena yet. This post was just sort of saying, we can't say what it is but it's hard to say what it isn't. You are right when you say paranormal experiences encompass many different things. Things may be different than we think if some of it were to ever be proven or disproved. I was thinking more along the lines of ghost hunting when I wrote this but it could be applied to some other things. It is hard to look at something and say it is or isn't paranormal when we really have no idea how paranormal events manifest.

[frodonet]

and i thot i was the only one who has the same thoughts. Kudos to you

Long time back i have written something an article by my own words on the paranormal.

I hope this can help on some of your questions :

Ghosts - The Importance of Studying and Understanding Them. Here's Why...

Posted by: frodonet

There's a reason why i've been posting up sometimes a certain stories on ghosts or paranormal and of course some may be ridiculous but that doesn't mean they ain't true neither they ain't fake either.

Well there's something that i wanted to share why that i'm so interested in the paranormal or in layman's terms that are ' ghosts'. Please take note whatever written below here, is just a reflection of my humble opinion and doesn't represent the thoughts of the real professional paranormal investigators and their society.

As you all know, when someone brings up a topic of ghost, it usually with get scrutinized especially by non-believers or people who are too modernized with their thinking that life is just a mere cosmetic of money & enjoyment.

In recent years, the paranormal or 'ghosts' already evolved into something that we need to understand. The question is why? Why is it that we need to understand? It is because of the plain reason of our need in understanding about life after death. Is there life after death or is it just the end? No one knows for sure, even although there are people who experienced Near Death Experiences (NDE), sometimes it could all come down to just pure hallucination or the brain is playing tricks.

But the thing is, in my theory is that if something doesn't exists, there wouldn't be any trace of evidence of that thing. Imagine in this world, how many ghost stories have you heard, how many video, images captured that leave people baffling? So no one can assume 100% that all are fake. There are bound to be some that are real but not the problem is that it is NOT proven.

Some stories are told by people who are closed to you and who you can trust. So you can't deny such stories of course, and as much as there are inaccuracies from story told from a person to person, the main point stays whereby there's a paranormal situation that occurs. Go ask around, any bus driver or taxi driver or any old man, whether have they seen 'it' before? You'll be interested to hear their versions of course.

But then, for me of course, I read a lot of a supernatural stories whether fictitious or claimed true mainly because I want to know the truth. Because if we want to know something, we need to weigh between the truth and fake, because both cannot exists without each other. One day, let's say that paranormal has evolved into a scientific field and it allows us to communicate with the dead, let's say anyone from the past(whether an iconic figure,, someone close to you who lost, a victim of a scrupulos crime)...we can of course learn a lot of truth, and of course we could uncover a lot of unsolved murders. And from thereon, we could uncover the greatest secret in this world, that is ... Does God Exist?

and maybe answer another great question 'The Meaning of Life?'.

The key is how can we learn to understand ghosts presumably that they exists. That's the main problem, no one can for certain prove that ghosts exist. And as long that barrier exists, it's hard to move forward.

If you would like to be more understanding towards the supernatural, maybe i can recommend you a movie where this topic was viewed in terms of religiously and scientifically. The movie is called 'Exorcism of Emily Rose'. It's a good movie seriously.

Conclusively, i'm sorry to write such a long article that strain your eyes but i just would like to let people know that sometimes strange occurances that happens in your daily lives is not something to be ashamed to tell, because one way of another, sometimes in life, there's more than meets the eye.

[Juice007Ninja]

Nice article. Maybe one day this issue can be put to rest. As of right now the best people can do is search for their own truth. Whether one is a skeptic or believer, there is no real way to prove either ideology is correct. As paranormal phenomenon is unknown and it's workings unknown , we have no real way to know the correct way to test it.

Love BucketHead! That guy has talent.

[Black Hound]

Of course it can, though I haven't seen too many people being successful at doing it. If it doesn't make sense, it's paranormal.