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would you be a good paranormal investigator?


man_in_mudboots

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now, say that all of a sudden, you saw a ghost. considering that you are convinced of its authenticity, after the shock, horror, whatever was gone, what would your reaction be?

would you think "so, then, the supernatural is possible"

~or~

would you think "so, then, the appearance of a ghost is, contary to what is taught, whithin the laws of nature, and therefore not at all supernatural"

scroll down.

turns out that the people that think along the lines of the second response, would make better paranormal investigators.

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As a former military police officer for eight years, I know how unreliable the human senses are for quick snapshops of info. Seeing a ghost would inspire me to conduct further testing, but it would take a lot more than a little peek to convince me that it is a ghost.

The 'laws of nature' do not, according to what I was taught, state that there are no such things as ghosts. Scientific methodology isn't about stating that things don't exist. It is about interpreting evidence in the simplest way possible. Currently, ghosts are considered supernatural because they have not been able to leave any evidence that can be measured in the natural world. It is entirely possible that we may discover a means to measure forces that we do not yet understand, such as 'ghosts', but until then, we have to find explanations in the natural world. Theorizing about things that we cannot measure or predict would be pointless, because, since we cannot verify the accuracy of the theory, we cannot use it to advance our understanding.

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aquatus1, I agree with what you posted, however, I do believe it is one of man's greatest follies to rely solely upon what can be measured and categorised by science alone as a basis of his understanding and acceptance of what is around him.

During the past 400 years man has put the scientific blinkers on his head, and it's about time he realised that life and existence are a lot more complex than what can currently be measured by the blunt little tool we call science.

That said, it has given us advancements and achievements and triumphs over problems and goals, but to put all one's eggs in one basket is, proverbially, foolish.

dontgetit.gif

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Hard for me to agree. Religion has been around for the many thousands of years that man has been around. Science (or at least, scientific methodology) has only been around since the Renaissance. As you said, in that miniscule amount of time, we have gathered a greater understanding of the universe and nature than in the ten thousand years before. I can not call that blinkers. In fact, considering the advances that we have made, I would have to consider the religions to be the blinkers, in that they attempt to put a halt to discovery by claiming that they know the final answer to all.

Disclaimer: I am referring to religions that attempt to pass themselves of as scientific equivalents, not to ones who maintain a seperation of scientific evidence and personal belief. I have no issue with the latter, just the former.

The advantage of scientific thought is that it will always grow with us. Religious thought, unfortunately, has not advanced beyond it's original beginnings, and thus offers nothing new to our knowledge base. Now that we have removed these blinkers to our methodology of factual evidence, it only remains to remove it from our creative thoughts and philosophies, so that they may advance as well, without the limitations placed on them by the supernatural.

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aquatus1 you said previously that you were a military police officer.

I was curious if you were ever made aware of any type of "supernatural" event or experience that anyone had during military duty, or if you yourself experienced anything that would fall under that classification?

If so how was it handled ?

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Hmmm. Well I wasn't refering to religion specifically, nor a confrontational balance between science & religion as the only two means of understanding our environment.

Religion has benefitted many a person, but it has also got more than a few into serious trouble. As has science.

Science is very useful for man to understand his environment in physical & tangible terms, but not all in our experience is physical or tangible.

There are many other facets to our experience in life, such as spirituality and emotion. Can a scientist explain what the feeling of romantic love is or prove it in scientific terms? Nope, he can't even come close. But each of us has felt it and knows it exists.

Many folks have premonitions which later come to pass. They might not be able to prove them, but they had them and know they happened.

Man has to take off the blinkers and realise what an open mind has to offer. Science is not the ultimate goal and the single way of understanding life, it is but one tool in our arsenal. Faith and science are by no means mutually exclusive, but to rely upon one or the other is unsound.

We should question everything and try to see things with fresh eyes, and not just from a scientific or religious perspective.

Edited by Loonboy
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Seeing a ghost would inspire me to conduct further testing, but it would take a lot more than a little peek to convince me that it is a ghost.

it was a hypothetical situation that you were supposed to put yourself in. imagine what ever you want, just pretend that you were completley convinced the ghost as real.

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I was curious if you were ever made aware of any type of "supernatural" event or experience that anyone had during military duty, or if you yourself experienced anything that would fall under that classification?

Strangely enough (because I was a mere E-5 at the time), I have. My hobby interest of the supernatural and paranormal were fairly well known around the station, so I was called into a case where a man's wife seemed to be, for lack of a better word, possessed. She had been locked into her room and we could hear her screaming and throwing things, yelling loud unkind opinions about us and God in general. It was handled in a fairly direct fashion; four of us charged in, tackled her down, restrained her and took her to medical. When I filled out my report, I stated that I believed the young lady was undergoing a state of extreme obsession consistent with the themes of possession. The next day, I was sitting with the commander in charge of the hospital, the captain of the base (NAS Bermuda was a small base, and something this unusual is going to attract all sorts of attention), and my WO, and they wanted me to expand on my opinion. As you might imagine, this was a somewhat nerve-racking experience for a young 23 year old who had barely been in two years. Still, I had taken a few courses in hypnotherapy, and while I was nowhere near a master hypnotists, I was able to recognize and explain several symptoms which were duly forwarded by the commander, including a recommendation to bring in a professional hypnotherapist, who, over the course of about three weeks, was able to bring the young girl back to normalcy, at which time she was transferred to more conventional care. We never had any other problems with her.

There are many other facets to our experience in life, such as spirituality and emotion. Can a scientist explain what the feeling of romantic love is or prove it in scientific terms? Nope, he can't even come close. But each of us has felt it and knows it exists.

True, a scientist cannot, as of yet, explain or prove love. Unfortunetely, neither can the average man. In my last two years as a commissioned officer, I have spoken to so many young and naive enlisted men who were going to get married, and were absolutely convinced that they were in love and would never leave the woman of their lives. Of the dozen or so that I spoke to, only one was still married when I left the service. I never failed to, and I still don't, ever recommend that a decision that will so radically affect your career be made using emotion as a deciding factor. It is unreliable, fleeting, and extremely deceptive.

it was a hypothetical situation that you were supposed to put yourself in. imagine what ever you want, just pretend that you were completley convinced the ghost as real.

Okay, now it gets exciting! At a minimum, I would need to have some sort of repeatable experiment before considering the possibility that ghosts exists. Let's say, for the heck of it, that I can tap a crystal ball with an oak wand and produce a ghost in front of me. Now that I have this repeatability, I can proceed with all the various tests I would need to meet the demands of scientific methodology. If I can meet these, than I would publish my results in as many scientific journals that would take me. If I could come up with a theory that explained my results, even better. If all that was done, then I would be able to state, unequivacaly, that ghosts are not a supernatural event, but an as yet not understood natural event.

If, on the other hand, I could get repeatability, but not meet the other rules of scientific methodology, I would be forced to consider that perhaps the apparation is not of the natural world, but rather ultra-dimensional (using the word Supernatural would be unwise, due to the pseudoscientific stigma it carries). It is possible that ghosts could be some sort of dimensional interferance that we haven't yet got the knowledge to perceive and record. This would require the understanding of higher level physics than I have, but I would still publish my results with as many limitations as I could, in the hopes that it would attract the attention of the higher-ups.

Personally, and without a shred of proof to back it up, I believe that ghosts are a perceptual creation that can only be seen at speeds faster than our eyes can process. Or more specifically, that our main line of sight can progress. Many of the more reliable reports that I hear about ghosts tend towards the "saw it out of the corner of my eye" type, rather than the "lady floating down the stairs type". Since the outer ring of the eye sees at a faster rate than the center of the eye, this may explan it. This might be why cameras sometimes capture things that the eye cannot see.

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