by yadda yadda 2 78 Replies latest jw friends
Nambo said:
I work at the Houses of Parliament Yadda, if you ever come visit, I will tell you a few evidences to back up your world view, I personally have seen one, smelt another and had £1000 worth of damage done to my car by another that I managed to upset. - Nambo
Heh-heh, that's one I'll have to remember to use: blaming a really bad smell on a ghost...
THANKS!
Dane Cook on a chain-car accident caused by a ghost (in fog):
I have never experienced anything paranormal. My brother, sister, and sister-in-law always talked about how they always saw weird stuff in the house or heard strange noises that they attributed to the paranormal. I lived in that house for 21 years of my life and never heard or seen a single thing that makes me think anything paranormal exists. Those three people have all done a lot of drugs in their life time. I attribute anything that they have seen/heard to effects from those mind-altering drugs.
I have a coworker who goes to supposed haunted houses. Claims to have seen and heard things. Says she has pictures of ghosts but she never shows them. My feeling is if you believe it strong enough, you just might see things or hear things. Doesn't make them real. Might feel and seem very real to you. The mind is a powerful agent in this.
Spirit mediums have been disproven time after time. They use a technique called cold-readings. All of those shows you see on TV are heavily edited. These mediums go fishing for answers. The only thing people who go to see these mediums don't tell you is how often they get things wrong but when they get a hit, it makes people forget all the misses.
Ouija boards are in the same class. It has been shown that people who use them subconsciously move the piece without even knowing it.
In the end, I have never seen anything. The "witnesses" I know are not the most trustworthy. There is no scientific evidence. Notice that the ghost hunters have never found anything? If they would find something, it would become one of the biggest discoveries we've ever seen.
Yeah, technically we should all be 'teapot agnostics' ... I mean, you can't prove beyond all doubt that there is not a china teapot orbiting Venus right now ... can you?
But at a certain point, reasonable doubt has to kick in. There is no evidence of paranormal activity or spirits and plenty of evidence that people who believe it are in fact idiots, hence ... atheism.
To anyone ....how do you define the difference between paranormal and supernatural or is it considered the same thing?
Why is simple logic not enough to prove the existence of God ?
Caliber asked:
To anyone ....how do you define the difference between paranormal and supernatural or is it considered the same thing?
The difference is subtle, but interesting to consider.
Paranormal – phenomena that defies known laws of science; anything outside scientific explanation.
Supernatural – relating to existence outside the natural world.
Paranormal relates to the PHENOMENA, the actual experience (which is a perception) that we make which is outside of normal daily experience. eg you don't normally see objects floating in mid-air, etc.
Supernatural pertains to the existence of a force that MAY be the CAUSE of a paranormal event. However, the existence of supernatural forces doesn't depend on whether a paranormal event is produced. eg God is described as a supernatural being, but his being characterized as such doesn't depend on whether he actually creates paranormal events or not.
In fact, someone like me would say that the supernatural being known as YHWH MUST create paranormal events, in order to demonstrate his existence (which is another way of restating the issue of God's existence). He doesn't, so I won't accept the premise of such a being.
Paranormal – phenomena that defies known laws of science; anything outside scientific explanation.
Supernatural – relating to existence outside the natural world.
So scientific machines can be used to discredit paranormal here are earth... but what of laws that may exist
outside our natural world ? Does logic say these too can be measured by us in the same way , with the same certainty ?
Could quoting scriptures or advanced mathematical calculations alone .....ever create not just belief but faith in God ?
Who gets to decide that subjective experience is of lesser value to us as individuals ?
"zid, what did u see?" Grumblecakes
[sigh] Get comfortable. This is a long story...
I left the cult in the early 80's - around 1983?
Anyway, I dated worldly guys, married a pretty good one [he has control issues, however - how cultish!], and we moved to southern California.
I was riding my bicycle to work, taking GREAT care of myself, and hiking and back packing on weekends.
I was angry though - an underlying, constant state of anger that I now attribute to being forced into the cult by my parents - at the time, though, I thought it had something to do with ending up in S. Calif.
Anyway, I went to work for a computer company in their accounts payable department. The company moved all accounting functions to a different building. The building was located in Santa Ana - a nicer part of it, to be sure - up on one of those elevated areas in Orange County.
The building was fairly new - probably built in the early 80's, so there's NO chance of "older" plumbing or - more to the point - air conditioning - causing what I saw, to occur... Well, maybe....
Anyway, soon after our departments were moved there, my co-workers who put in overtime began to claim that there was a "ghost" on the premises. Supposedly a chair would move in a cubicle; when they went to check on their co-worker, who they THOUGHT had left work earlier, there was NO ONE THERE....
Cue spooky music
I laughed my head off at these stories, and practically sneered at my co-workers for believing in such nonsense! I basically viewed their tales as inadequate attempts at entertaining "ghost" stories - and I do enjoy a good "ghost" story - I just consider it to be FICTION...
But one day...
I was walking past the conference room. It was around 2:00 in the afternoon; a bright, sunny, HOT southern California day was blistering the pavement outside. Yeah, no 'atmospheric' thunder or lightning or darkness - and in a boring conference room, to boot!
Anyway, I happen to glance thru the door, and see one - and ONLY ONE - of the vertical 'vanes' that functioned as window coverings
These things - only a bit shorter. They hung from the top of the ceiling-high windows to about 3 feet above the floor...
Anyway, only ONE of the vane blades was sticking out at a 45-degree angle. AND IT WAS SHAKING...
I stared for a second, then slipped into the conference room and ALMOST closed the door behind me. Big mistake - I SHOULD have closed the door entirely, as you will see in a moment.
I approached the shaking vane like a stalking tigress. I wanted to get right up to it and see if there was a "cold" spot.
UNFORTUNATELY, since I'd left the door partially ajar, one of my co-workers spotted me, poked her head in the door and yelled, "Zid! Meeting in five minutes!"
The damned vane went back into position, and I NEVER DID get to see if there was a "cold" spot - OR a breeze of some sort, though how THAT could be - the windows were permanently sealed and could not be opened, unless one threw a chair through them - and I was tempted, sometimes, during those LOOOOONGGG meetings in that conference room...
But here's another interesting thing...
When the vane resumed its vertical position, there was ABSOLUTELY NO RESIDUAL MOTION!!! In other words, if it had been a totally 'natura' force acting upon that single vane, it should have swung a little after it "fell" back from its 45-degree position - a bit of "pendulum" motion, so to speak.
But no...
It resumed its former position with ABSOLUTELY NO swinging, shaking - didn't even tap the surrounding vanes.
And for the record, I have NEVER had:
Waking dreams, night terrors or night paralysis, hallucinations, or anything that would explain this.
I finally chalked it up to some sort of malfunction in the air-conditioning system, though to be honest, there was no air coming through the vents at the time I observed this - weird incident.
And that's basically what I saw. Later on, I realized that there had been some weird actions with the vanes during our business meetings in there - they'd start swinging as though someone had run their finger along the vanes - and I tried, a couple of times after the meetings, to duplicate that motion by walking very fast past the vanes.
I'd assumed that I had fallen asleep during those BORING meetings, and someone had walked in without my noticing. But I could never duplicate that motion by just walking past the vanes.
Anyway, that's what I saw - and frankly, I'm still rather irritated by it, to this day. If there ARE such things as "ghosts", I'd rather remain "numb" to them - unaware - so that I wouldn't have to deal with them.
As in - have you noticed that some supposedly "haunted" houses, DON'T display "hauntings" when a new owner moves in? Either there's no such thing as "ghosts" - my present position - or, worse yet, SOME people seem to bring out the "haints"...
Lol cofty....
Nambo: dont clunk n click if you have had a sip...
zid, I have to point out something in your story. The big question I have when someone presents stories like this is "Why?" Why would a spirit being move the blind? Think about it, if you were a ghost, why would you hang out in a conference room moving blinds? It just doesn't make sense to me. I hear people tell stories about keys moving or cupboards being opened. Why would the spirits be doing that?
