Are Ghosts Real?
Just in time for Halloween I came across a news article straight out of the Associated Press, Oct. 26, 2006, by Seth Borenstein. It’s titled, “Science bites myth of vampires, ghosts.” Apparently, physicist Costas Efthimiou has found it compulsory to warn the public that ghosts, zombies and vampires are not real by publishing a research paper. He has used “math and science” in order to debunk their existence. Here is his reasoning.
The evidence is overwhelming that ghosts, supposedly disembodied spirits of the dead, are not real. The notion of ghosts derives from ancient tendencies towards animism, the practice of anthropomorphizing non-human objects. It was also likely formulated as an effort to come to terms with death, and to commune with one’s ancestors. Once ghost legends were initially imagined up, confirmation bias – the inclination to see what we want to see – took over, and perpetuated the phenomenon in human culture. When considered without wishful thinking, the idea of ghosts is filled with logical holes. For instance, why are reports of ghosts less numerous in cities that have been inhabited for many thousands of years, such as many in the Near East, than in those established relatively recently, such as less than 150 years ago? We would expect the opposite to be the case. Why, despite the existence of millions of video cameras for at least a couple decades, has no one ever captured a convincing video
Ghosts are real. The following is condensed from the book, Voyage Beyond Doubt First, the most important thing to know is that ghosts are just human beings not living in physical bodies. These are people just like you and me. Like people everywhere, ghosts can be friendly, scary, smart, stupid and everything in between, but they’re just people. Second, at its most basic, the reason you can be aware of a ghost is because its attention is focused at the level of physical world reality. There can be many reasons why ghosts do this. They may be unaware they’re dead and staying close to familiar surroundings or people. They may be aware of their death, but confused about what they’re supposed to do. Some ghosts may have a message they want to give someone still living in the physical world. There are lots of reasons why a ghost’s attention may be focused at the level of physical world reality, but that focus of attention is what brings them to your awareness and keeps them here. Third, you
