A friend and I are arguing over ghosts.
I think it’s akin to astrology, homeopathy and palm reading. He says there’s “convincing “ evidence for its existence. He also took up company time to make a meme to illustrate our relative positions. (See image)
(To be fair, I’m also on the clock right now)
What do you think?
I am familiar with the Gods of the gaps argument. Its not a God of the gaps argument (I’m literally an atheist, if that matters). I don’t know how you can assume that you already know where this book goes wrong without having even read it. Or maybe you got that from my comment? Bur literally no where in my comment did I make any argument, and I certainly didn’t make any Gods of the gaps argument
This is exactly the problem with this topic, people have an understanding of it based on popular debunkers like Neil Degrasse Tyson or whoever and they think thats all there is left to hear on the topic. They just want to be on the side of science (understandable, I do too!) and see these guys are scientific and think thats it, cased closed. They never actually engage with the subject matter. They acquire a repertoire of buzzwords and debunking strategies that allow them to dismiss everything wholesale, then they never dig any deeper so they never realize the ways in which these skeptical responses are insufficient
With all due respect, you’ve latched onto 1. my introductory literary device for framing the argument, and 2. where I dismiss the book based on my argument, but missed my argument, which I would succinctly state as: By definition, we don’t know anything about the supernatural, but we know the natural world extremely well, and we can explain the way that it behaves fully and completely without supernatural influence. Not only do we lack evidence of the supernatural, the evidence that we do have rules it out.
How can you dismiss a book you’ve never read? You have to admit thats a bit shoddy. Even if you’re sure that the book is a crock of shit you won’t know why its a crock of shit (and which rebuttals to apply) until after you’ve finished reading at least part of it.
Regarding the other stuff: I don’t have the time to get into the weeds on the matter with everyone here so I’m considering this comment here to be my official statement.
You seem like an extremely gullible person.
you seem like an extremely close-minded person
To fantasy creatures? Yes, I am close minded towards things that cannot be proven or disproven because they don’t exist in the first place.
What a ridiculous hill you’ve chosen.
You are an unserious person.
Why so you care? If you want to discuss, sure, but why go out of your why to just name call people on the internet simply because they disagree with you? Get a life
Why do I care that people believe in fantasy stuff? Because we live in reality and people wasting their time on this crap is counter productive to society.
Use your brain. Read more than just that one book that agrees with your feelings.
Of course ghosts don’t exist, humans made them up. It’s that simple. It doesn’t require any additional thought. If there were ghosts, they’d be EVERYWHERE. There’d be animal ghosts, there would be virus ghosts, there would be neanderthal ghosts. They’d overwhelm the surface of the planet, and they aren’t and they don’t. Mystery solved. Use your precious life and energy on real things instead of this, again, ridiculous shit.
If a book claims something that’s fundamentally impossible by the laws of physics, I don’t need to read it to dismiss it.