1. What I meant by amateurs is that they themselves are not scientists. They simply take science and information already discovered and turn it into their own way of feeling superior. I did not mean amateur scientists. My mistake for the misunderstanding.

2. Well there's Isaac Newton; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_religious_views as well as Roger Bacon, who was actually a Franciscan friar, then there is Blaise Pascal who was a theologian and writer as well as a physicist and mathematician; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_pascal#Religious_conversion I'm not saying all famous thinkers were religious but many of them were and this proves that the two can coexist. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church repressed many ideas and revolutionary ways of thinking and this is undoubtedly their fault, but they also made contributions.

Sent.

Could you please send it to me as well? It has piqued my interest.

Nope, I never said that. Science is meant to be scrutinized, that's why people do research and constantly refine the way we understand the universe.

If people accepted science as fact and just left it at that then we would never have as advanced as far as we have.

Then again, I'm not sure what errors you're talking about here.

nope. and don't care. its better that way any ways

No I don't believe in ghosts. Eddie Izzard summed it up quite well with the question "why aren't there thousands of animal ghosts in butcher shops?". Though, of course, all of the symptoms of sensing a ghost can be attributed to one thing. Hallucinations, a cold feeling inside and dizziness are all symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning which sounds far more likely then your great uncle Albert floating down the hall.

I believe that there are things that exist in this world that are simply beyond what we can comprehend. Almost every (or possibly every) culture has at least some belief in demons, spirits, or ghosts. All legends and myths come from somewhere, therefore I am of an open-mind to the supernatural. But that being said, many things can be explained. I personally have suffered from "Night Terrors" or "Incubus Attacks" as a child, such an occurance consists of seeing your dreams while you are awake mixed with sleep paralysis. Very frightening for a child. I still experience sleep paralysis often. These things have severely skewed my views of the existence of the supernatural due to the fact that every even of sleep paralysis has been coupled with a religious dream or nightmare. Demons, angels, spirits, physically attacking me during this odd state of being. Do I believe I was attacked? No. Does it make me feel like things like that could exist? Hard not to.

Many skeptics state that ghosts cannot physically exist in our world do to physics and they would be right. But then what about the believer's major counter argument of "Historically Haunted Houses"? There are documented cases of the residents of a house claiming that it was haunted without any information on the previous owners, only to discover that they too stated the same claims when they owned the house themselves. At time this can be traced back for decades. Does that mean a spirit resides there? No, but it does mean that something is different about that house or specific location. Then it becomes a statement of opinion. Could it be magnetic and or electrical interference of some kind having effects on the inhabitants or the location itself? Maybe, but it could also mean that the spirit or soul of a human being resides there, or maybe both opinions are correct and said spirit creates said electrical or magnetic effects. Everything is relative.

Obviously ghost aren't real it's all in your head. Either it's a halucination, placebo effect, you want to scare some kids, or a story made up to make money.

I'd like to think of myself as an open minded person as well, but it is far more likely that their chimney was just blocked.

No. At best, I think living beings might leave behind some type of "energy" when they die, but it is nothing more than "energy," and has no consciousness or shape. At worst, I think humans are just narcissistic and think up things like an afterlife and ghosts to feel like they'll be immortal because they can't cope with the thought of dying.

I do not have an explanation for why there are so many reported hauntings and things like that, and I do not think those are all just coincidences and/or people's imaginations. Nor do I think, however, that those "hauntings" are caused by ghosts.

I believe in ghosts, they could be a reflection of humanity & nature from another dimension.

I for one seemed to see what appeared to be a ghost of a deceased dog I had once awhile back

it was more of a dark but not threatening visage than what many say when they talk about ghosts

& no I don't think it was a demon Chihuahua

If you ask me, saying something is a "Ghost" is almost the same thing as calling something a "UFO." (Or at least, I feel it should be classified in rather the same manner.) A lot of people forget that a UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Saucer. But I come across that a lot (it seems quite often on the History Channel,) where a "UFO expert," upon exhausting all other possibilities, will call that "proof" that said UFO is an alien spaceship. Which, obviously, is a scientifically fallacious conclusion. It only means it continues to be unidentified.

I feel the same way about ghosts, really. I rather think there might be something to it. In the same way that many UFOs are gas, lights, aircraft, atmospheric phenomena, etc; yet some still can't yet be fully explained - yes, many (or even most) ghost sightings can be explained away as hallucinations, waking nightmares, electromagnetic fluctuations, that this still doesn't categorically disprove that "something" isn't happening.

Interestingly, somewhere I believe I came across some studies of waking nightmares that explained a lot of alien abduction experiences, ghostly encounters, and even demonic possession and attacks (and even a couple people whose experiences changed over time from one to other.)

That's not to say that I 100% believe that a "ghost" is evidence of an afterlife, or even that one would in any way necessarily attribute it to anything other than "something unexplained." I just think there's a lot of stuff we don't know, and that there might be something to this, whether it be just in one's head, or what, I certainly wouldn't presume to know in every case, categorically.

Of course, I am a little bit biased. I've actually seen a few "ghosts" in my time, and had other unexplained phenomena. But I tend to kind of leave it at that. What I experienced in each case was simply something that I can't explain. To the extent that anyone can say with any certainty, I'm pretty sure none of them were hallucinations. There could be other explanations in each case for what I experienced, but at this point they're simply "unsolved mysteries." I don't see it as any conclusive proof of any sort of afterlife, and posit no guesses as to what they actually "are" in any sense (I'm a confirmed agnostic, so it's all just a big question mark as far as I'm concerned.)

Anyway, that tends to be my take on it. I know what I've experienced in my own life. Thus far, scientific methods haven't been able to explain what happened to me. I firmly believe, however, that a scientific explanation could exist. But I don't presume to know what that would be.

I most certainly do, I think anyone who believes otherwise is just ignorant.

I believe it is more between the earth and sky than meets the eye, but wheter it is ghosts, angels or something else entirely I truely do not know.

I believe that ghosts are real in the sense that ghosts are our consciousness trying to warn us of something.

I've pondered that. Ghosts could be a projection of our minds.

Nope, but I love a good ghost story. I don't care if other people believe in ghosts or not - however, when people take advantage of the bereaved by saying they can communicate with someone's lost loved one, I think it's crossed into some kind of fraud. If someone claims to communicate with spirits, they should have to prove it under reasonable, testable conditions and earn a permit to do so before they can charge money, or else just mess with people's grieving process.

Did his name start with an A? No? A B? No? A C?

For me, ghosts are a lot like UFOs - some truth, surrounded by an overwhelming amount of lies and [censored].

I don't really believe in ghosts, but I believe in the paranormal, and believe there are things we don't really understand about the universe and other dimensions that could explain ghostlike phenomena.

I don't believe in UFOs (the idea is laughable), but I absolutely 100% believe in intelligent alien life elsewhere in the universe (the idea of not believing is even more laugable).

2 years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and found my step dad kneeling in the middle of the stairs. I was perplexed and so I called out his name. A few seconds later my actual step dad got out of his room and the apparition in the middle of the stairs started to disappear. No, I wasn't under the influence of any drugs, it was just a normal night in.

Basically, a hallucination. This is where my elitist side crops up - if I were somewhat weaker I'd try to attribute it to some ghost haunting my house, but I damn well know it's just my mind playing tricks on me.

Or maybe you were playing mind on your tricks!

I'm laying in bed right now browsing the forums. That story scared the [censored] out of me. I have two flights of stairs leading to the downstairs part of my house, and Cinderella stairs leading into where I am now. I have a large downstairs room and a smaller upstairs room with where my bed and tv are. Creepy.

My thoughts exactly. Also, even if there was alien civilization that was near enough to contact Earth they still needed to exist at the same time we do. If they were to contact us through radio signals (which humans have been trying) the odds of the signal hitting a civilization is pretty much impossible. For all we know there might have been advanced little green men in the closest solar system, but too bad they died out two hundred million years ago which is a pathetically small margin of time in universe.

How this had to do with ghosts, I don't know.

Alien ghosts are among us.

I agree with that. And even though it's theoretically possible to travel faster than light, it's not viable due to the insane amount energy it would require. But it goes to show that even though you can't break the laws of physics, you can bend them