Why Do People Believe in Ghosts?

[LonestarCowgirl]

You can take authority over unfriendly ghosts, as I described earlier, but I forgot to mention an important step. I want to make sure everyone stays safe, so make sure you pray for a hedge of protection before you begin commanding them to go. God *will* protect you, but you must pray for him to send a hedge of angels to protect you in battle. Don't try to have a conversation with the things, don't get angry and challenge them, just keep commanding them in the name of Jesus to go. Don't back down.

P.S., Stay away from Ouija boards. If you do it anyway and beasts come through, just remember the simple instructions above.

 

[Lexicon]

I want to go to this cemetery in Vermont & conduct a séance.
Anyone care to join?

http://www.benjerry.com/flavors/flavor-graveyard

 

[á´…eparted]

Yeah, I agree it's unlikely to be aliens messing with us for sport; it's more likely time traveling ESFPs.

Electronic voice phenomena (EVPs) and ghost studies.

PHOTONIC MEASUREMENT OF APPARENT PRESENCE OF SPIRIT USING A COMPUTER AUTOMATED SYSTEM

Was that an intentional joke? If so LOL. Even then, it's not the unlikelyness of aliens messing with us for sport. It's many many larger steps down from that (that idea is an even higher level of complexity), but just the sheer odds of another lifeform being able to make it here.

As for the paper, it's a single author, in super low impact journal (it's not even 1). Hardly worth considering. Further the journal itself seems, well rather hokey and I suspect it's rather disregarded and not taken seriously in its field given all these factors. What would be much more interesting is if physicists were to analyze this and preform the experiment. I am almost certain they would have an explanation for this. I can't offer one because it's not my field.

Something is amiss here. We know that roughly 40% of Americans believe in ghosts and while I know that this forum isn't exactly representative of the general population, I still expect a couple of "yes" responses to the poll (especially given the greater proportion of INFJs here). I suspect that many are afraid to admit they believe in ghosts for fear of ridicule. It's a private poll; don't be scared.

It's a very small sample size, and given the active memberbase here, it's not a susprising result. I would not guess the majority here would be believe in ghosts. Besides, this forum isn't representive of a general population even slightly. To suggest people are hiding that's well, almost like trying to get the data to fit the hypothesis.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

This effect is very easy to replicate, even with film cameras, if your camera is high-quality enough.

 

[Polaris]

If we can understand that a person who has sustained severe brain damage in a car wreck is not floating around somewhere with their personality fully intact, why would we expect that a person who has undergone the even more severe brain damage involved in death to be floating around somewhere? When the parts of you that store and process information about reality are scrambled up, removed, or destroyed, there's no more reason to think that the information remains intact and functional than there is to think that a book torn to shreds and scattered to the winds remains intact and functional.

 

[LonestarCowgirl]

If we can understand that a person who has sustained severe brain damage in a car wreck is not floating around somewhere with their personality fully intact, why would we expect that a person who has undergone the even more severe brain damage involved in death to be floating around somewhere? When the parts of you that store and process information about reality are scrambled up, removed, or destroyed, there's no more reason to think that the information remains intact and functional than there is to think that a book torn to shreds and scattered to the winds remains intact and functional.

Humans are very, very complex creatures. We seem to be body, soul, and spirit. The soul is what seems to animate the body and give us our personality. I believe we will absolutely take our personality and memories with us when we die, despite any damage to our physical brain and body.

Our soul likely has three components: mind, will, and emotions. Our mind has a conscious component and a subconscious component. The conscious is where we do our thinking and reasoning. The sub-conscious is where we hold our beliefs and attitudes. It’s also where we have our feeling, our emotions and retain our memories. Our will is what gives us the ability to make choices. Through a very complex way, our mind, our will and our emotions are connected to the body through our endocrine, nervous and immune systems.

There's a free online book by Watchman Nee called The Spiritual Man, you might find interesting.

 

[Bullet]

If we can understand that a person who has sustained severe brain damage in a car wreck is not floating around somewhere with their personality fully intact, why would we expect that a person who has undergone the even more severe brain damage involved in death to be floating around somewhere? When the parts of you that store and process information about reality are scrambled up, removed, or destroyed, there's no more reason to think that the information remains intact and functional than there is to think that a book torn to shreds and scattered to the winds remains intact and functional.

Many people have claimed to have had out-of-body experiences while their body was in a state of unconsciousness. Some have recalled details that would seemingly corroborate that claim. Similarly, remote-viewing experiments have been conducted on individuals who demonstrated remarkable accuracy at describing unknown locations from a distance. This was exploited heavily by both the axis and allies during WWII for intelligence purposes.

 

[Kullervo]

Because they suffer from hallucinations and/or retarded religious beliefs.

 

[Tellenbach]

When the parts of you that store and process information about reality are scrambled up, removed, or destroyed, there's no more reason to think that the information remains intact and functional than there is to think that a book torn to shreds and scattered to the winds remains intact and functional.

Some people (I read something about Nicola Tesla getting some of his ideas through meditation.) believe that all knowledge is stored in a mass consciousness that can be accessed. Look up Akashic records.

 

[eudaimonia]

The mind naturally tries to find human faces. It is instinctive to connect by anthropomorphizing our environment as well as the desire make our existence infinite in some way through this idea that our consciousness will thrive after our physical bodies will (no doubt) naturally succumb to death and decay.

 

[small.wonder]

I believe in demonic principalities, not ghosts.

Both my aunts and great aunts were pretty involved in what we'll call spiritualism-- seeking the spirits of the dead in various ways. My grandmother saw that what her sisters were doing was messing with them (spiritually, emotionally and psychologically) and knew that scripture (the Bible) speaks against such things pretty stongly, so she put her foot down. She raised my Mom, and my Mom raised me with an awareness from a young age about what scripture says about the spiritual realm, and the power the blood of Christ has over demonic presence. Unfortunately, my Mom's sisters fell prey to their desperation for control after my grandfather died when they were young, and set out to find him.

I think because I'm aware of these truths, I've already dealt with a lot of spiritual warfare in my short life. This topic has a funny way of following me around, and I've become kind of passionate about offering a usually unheard of viewpoint (which baffles me). Most of our society has been blinded and deceived by pop culture's explanation of the demonic: the departed souls of loved ones that just need to be heard or want revenge or what have you. It's a short path to self righteousness, and a belief that we can know all apart from God. Oh, and a sick way to terrify ourselves, which of course we need. ?

Just my take, I'm glad to talk details if anyone would like.

 

[miss fortune]

every night when my grandfather got home from work he would sit in his chair and light his pipe before turning on the news. right before the news came on he would hear 3 knocks from the inside of the wall beside his chair... 3 knocks at the same time every night. the whole family thought that it was strange and they opened the wall and looked around several times but nobody could find anything that could have caused the noise. over the years the knocking gradually became fainter and fainter until finally it faded away.

my aunt liked to claim that it was a ghost, pointing out that a man who had previously lived in the house had his leg sawed off by the local doctor under the tree out front and later died from complications. the others all disagreed, but nobody could ever say for sure what it really was...

it's things like that... things that can't be easily explained... things that cause people to wonder and come up with their own explanations, far fetched and illogical as they may seem. just about every culture on the planet has stories about spirits wandering and those stories may change over time, but they stay a part of our stories, ingrained in our minds, always nagging at the back and wanting to come into the light.

of course, the easy answer is that ghosts make for some pretty decent movies

 

[LonestarCowgirl]

I believe in demonic principalities, not ghosts.

Both my aunts and great aunts were pretty involved in what we'll call spiritualism-- seeking the spirits of the dead in various ways. My grandmother saw that what her sisters were doing was messing with them (spiritually, emotionally and psychologically) and knew that scripture (the Bible) speaks against such things pretty stongly, so she put her foot down. She raised my Mom, and my Mom raised me with an awareness from a young age about what scripture says about the spiritual realm, and the power the blood of Christ has over demonic presence. Unfortunately, my Mom's sisters fell prey to their desperation for control after my grandfather died when they were young, and set out to find him.

I'm with you. Have you heard the term 'familiar spirits'?

I think because I'm aware of these truths, I've already dealt with a lot of spiritual warfare in my short life. This topic has a funny way of following me around, and I've become kind of passionate about offering a usually unheard of viewpoint (which baffles me). Most of our society has been blinded and deceived by pop culture's explanation of the demonic: the departed souls of loved ones that just need to be heard or want revenge or what have you. It's a short path to self righteousness, and a belief that we can know all apart from God. Oh, and a sick way to terrify ourselves, which of course we need. ?

I understand. I think it's important for Christians to have compassion, and be patient and kind to people that don't understand spiritual things. There are different levels of spiritual maturity and experience. The Holy Spirit will work through it.

 

[Bullet]

I believe in demonic principalities, not ghosts.

Both my aunts and great aunts were pretty involved in what we'll call spiritualism-- seeking the spirits of the dead in various ways. My grandmother saw that what her sisters were doing was messing with them (spiritually, emotionally and psychologically) and knew that scripture (the Bible) speaks against such things pretty stongly, so she put her foot down. She raised my Mom, and my Mom raised me with an awareness from a young age about what scripture says about the spiritual realm, and the power the blood of Christ has over demonic presence. Unfortunately, my Mom's sisters fell prey to their desperation for control after my grandfather died when they were young, and set out to find him.

I think because I'm aware of these truths, I've already dealt with a lot of spiritual warfare in my short life. This topic has a funny way of following me around, and I've become kind of passionate about offering a usually unheard of viewpoint (which baffles me). Most of our society has been blinded and deceived by pop culture's explanation of the demonic: the departed souls of loved ones that just need to be heard or want revenge or what have you. It's a short path to self righteousness, and a belief that we can know all apart from God. Oh, and a sick way to terrify ourselves, which of course we need. ?

Just my take, I'm glad to talk details if anyone would like.

Growing up in a fundamentalist church, I was told the same thing. But to my knowledge, there is no scripture to support that claim. On the contrary, the witch at Endor summoned Samuel's spirit from the grave at the behest of King Saul. I've heard people disregard this as a demonic spirit, but the Bible certainly doesn't indicate that. The spirit of the prophet complained about being awakened and rebuked Saul for disobeying God, then predicted the king and his army would perish in battle the following day.

The Bible also prohibits necromancy, which is a form of magic involving communication with the deceased – either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily – for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge, or to use the deceased as a weapon.

From a biblical perspective, it doesn't make sense that God would forbid a practice that doesn't exist.

 

[SD45T-2]

I'm not sure.

"LET'S GET READY TO REHABILITATE NOT SURE!"

 

[LonestarCowgirl]

Growing up in a fundamentalist church, I was told the same thing. But to my knowledge, there is no scripture to support that claim. On the contrary, the witch at Endor summoned Samuel's spirit from the grave at the behest of King Saul. I've heard people disregard that as a demonic spirit, but the Bible certainly doesn't indicate that. The spirit of the prophet complained about being awakened and rebuked Saul for disobeying God, then predicted the king and his army would perish in battle the following day.

The Bible also prohibits necromancy, which is a form of magic involving communication with the deceased – either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily – for the purpose of divination, imparting the means to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge, or to use the deceased as a weapon.

From a biblical perspective, it doesn't make sense that God would forbid a practice that doesn't exist.

You may be right. Let’s put things in proper context and see:

Before Christ died and resurrected for us...

In the Old Testament, the Law of Moses forbid the *Jews* from consulting mediums in order to talk to the dead [in Sheol]. (See Deuteronomy 8:10-12.)

The Old Testament taught that everyone who departed from this life went to a place of conscious existence called Sheol, which could be translated “the grave” or “the realm of the dead.” (See Genesis 37:35, Job 14:13, and Isaiah 38:10.)

The New Testament equivalent of Sheol is Hades. Luke 16:19–31 shows that prior to Christ’s resurrection, Hades was divided into two realms: a place of comfort (aka, Abraham’s bosom) where Lazarus was and a place of torment (aka, hell) where the rich man was. Lazarus’s place of comfort is elsewhere called “paradise” (Luke 23:43). The place of torment is called “Gehenna” in the Greek in Mark 9:45. Between paradise and hell (the two districts of Hades) there was “a great chasm” (Luke 16:26).

"[Lazarus] died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom," and the rich man died and suffered torment in Hades. A "great gulf" separated the two and was "fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence." (Luke 16:19-31)

The fact that no one could cross the chasm indicates that, after death, one’s fate is sealed.

At the death of his son, David testified: "I shall go to him, but he shall not return unto me." (2 Samuel 12:15-23)

After Christ died and resurrected for us...

When a person dies in Christ, he goes to heaven to be present with the Lord (see 2 Corinthians 5:1-9).

Now, what do you think?

 

[Bullet]

You may be right. Let’s put things in proper context and see:

Before Christ died and resurrected for us...

In the Old Testament, the Law of Moses forbid the *Jews* from consulting mediums in order to talk to the dead [in Sheol]. (See Deuteronomy 8:10-12.)

The Old Testament taught that everyone who departed from this life went to a place of conscious existence called Sheol, which could be translated “the grave” or “the realm of the dead.” (See Genesis 37:35, Job 14:13, and Isaiah 38:10.)

The New Testament equivalent of Sheol is Hades. Luke 16:19–31 shows that prior to Christ’s resurrection, Hades was divided into two realms: a place of comfort (aka, Abraham’s bosom) where Lazarus was and a place of torment (aka, hell) where the rich man was. Lazarus’s place of comfort is elsewhere called “paradise” (Luke 23:43). The place of torment is called “Gehenna” in the Greek in Mark 9:45. Between paradise and hell (the two districts of Hades) there was “a great chasm” (Luke 16:26). The fact that no one could cross this chasm indicates that, after death, one’s fate is sealed.

After Christ died and resurrected for us...

When a person dies in Christ, he goes to heaven to be present with the Lord (see 2 Corinthians 5:1-9).

Now, what do you think?

I have no idea. Prophecy talks about the resurrection of the dead and their bodies being transformed. It would seem to indicate the deceased reside in a resting place until the great judgment. I've never given too much thought to prophecies because they're so cryptic and endless theories abound regarding what they mean, as far as heaven, hell, the lake of fire, the new heaven and the new earth, the thousand year reign, etc... I've heard so many different perspectives and everyone uses some verse to explain their theory. All I know is, there are instances in the Bible of necromancy and ghostly spirits dwelling on earth. As far as dispensationalism, it seems to get applied to a lot of different aspects of scripture that may or may not be accurate. I think people tend to forget that it's a theory in itself. There was no "old" and "new" testament until someone compiled all of these books into an anthology called the Holy Bible, whilst disregarding other books that were also believed at the time to be divinely inspired words from God.

I tend to keep an open mind about things instead of coming to conclusions, precisely because I can't be certain of anything.

 

[Opal]

Letting go of the dead is hard, as is facing our own mortality.

 

[LonestarCowgirl]

I have no idea. Prophecy talks about the resurrection of the dead and their bodies being transformed. It would seem to indicate the deceased reside in a resting place until the great judgment. I've never given too much thought to prophecies because they're so cryptic and endless theories abound regarding what they mean, as far as heaven, hell, the lake of fire, the new heaven and the new earth, the thousand year reign, etc...

You're close. The prophecy is talking about our physical body. When we die, our soul/spirit goes on to heaven to be with the Lord. In Luke 23:43, when Jesus was on the cross, he told the thief hanging on the cross next to him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." Christ told the thief that because their soul/spirits were going to paradise. After Christ died, his physical body was buried in the tomb. After three days, Christ's body was resurrected and then many days later ascended to heaven.

All I know is, there are instances in the Bible of necromancy and ghostly spirits dwelling on earth. As far as dispensationalism, it seems to get applied to a lot of different aspects of scripture that may or may not be accurate. I think people tend to forget that it's a theory in itself.

As far as I understand, necromancy is a term/concept only used in the Old Testament.

There was no "old" and "new" testament until someone compiled all of these books into an anthology called the Holy Bible, whilst disregarding other books that were also believed at the time to be divinely inspired words from God.

The books were divided up into Old and New Testaments according to the Old and New Covenants. The Old Covenant being the Laws of Moses and the Ten Commandments (law of sin and death) and the New Covenant being the blood of Christ fulfilling that law.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

Human beings are capable of profound experiences in response to someone dying. I've felt connections to loved ones who have died that don't have rational explanations. This might be part of how the human mind deals with loss, or there could be aspects of reality that we don't understand.

I don't personally believe in ghosts as specific individuals who maintain their same appearance, but now are translucent looking entities, etc. I have wondered at the concepts that time is an illusion and separateness is an illusion which are described both by Buddhist philosophy and theoretical physics. I mostly leave those exploration of possibilities as speculation rather than belief.