I can not see it, so it does not exist

[Spirit of Light]

No. There is evidence you exist because you post here (and at one time your face was your avatar).

But your statement in the OP piques my curiosity. Why do you accept the existence of God and spiritual beings, but not ghosts?

The OP does not reflect my personal view, on ghosts i have seen something that could be a ghosts, but i was not sure at the time, but i believe them to be real.

 

[Spirit of Light]

You're forgetting one, and I think it's a better answer.

"I do not know, but I would like to find the answer, and until I find such evidence, I won't know and/or believe that God exist."


The answer to your question from a lot of people would be, yes, research was done and no evidence was found.

The problem here is that a lot of people will assume that those who do not agree with them have not researched and/or have the same knowledge as themselves. Another assumption would be that if someone would have done the research, they would have the same knowledge and come to the same conclusion. This can be for any topic, not just about god.

I agree i could put the " i dont know" but it's not often to hear non believers say i dont know. Often they are sure notting vanlige exist if they can not see it's, or touch it

 

[Heyo]

The statement in the headline is not from me
But I got me thinking, does a thing, a being, a place not exist just because we can not see it?

Some examples.

God can not exist, I have never seen him/her/ it
Ghosts does not exist, I never seen proof of them ( that I accept)
Spiritual beings can not exist, science has not proven it.

That is called argument from incredulity, a logical fallacy, a.k.a. absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I don't believe in gods, ghosts or spirits but not because "I can't see them". I don't believe in them because every experiment or logical line of reasoning has failed to provide enough evidence. I.e. I know that all the gods, ghosts and spirits that had a definition attached to them sufficient to make a (Gedanken-) experiment do not exist.

Amanaki asks : Do I not exist because you have not seen me?

Does Dark Matter not exist because we can't see it?
I see evidence of "Amanaki" every day. Amanaki, I can say with great confidence, is an entity behind the account 65429 on RF.
With less confidence I also assume that Amanaki is a single human being, probably male. I'm less sure but any other assumption can be cut off with Occams Razor.
Or, as Descartes would have formulated: "I post, therefore I am."

 

[Erebus]

I think @epronovost pretty much hit the nail on the head when it comes to deities. Anything can be deified so the question often isn't about whether or not they exist but whether or not a given individual sees fit to think of them as gods. When the deity in question is said to perform specific actions or possess a certain personality, I don't think it's unreasonable to say, "I haven't seen anything that would convince me that's true."

Ghosts does not exist, I never seen proof of them ( that I accept)

Ghosts are in a weird position in that I'm not convinced it's actually possible to prove their existence. I've heard some people say that if ghosts were real, we'd have pictures of them by now. My response to that is always, "Google it."

The problem with asking for photographic evidence of ghosts is that it's so damn easy to fake them but quite a bit trickier to definitively prove a photo is a hoax. There are so many pictures now that trying to determine whether or not each one is fake is genuinely impossible. By the time you've found one definite hoax, hundreds of new pictures will have been uploaded on the internet. The end result here is that pictures or videos of ghosts just don't constitute proof anymore. Some paranormal researchers* have complained that it makes their job significantly harder and ask people to make them aware of any apps that add a ghost to a picture.

So if photos/videos aren't good enough, what else is there? The testimony of people who claim to have seen ghosts isn't good enough since it's possible that they're either lying or they hallucinated. You could perhaps measure the temperature of a supposedly haunted house to check for cold spots. Unfortunately you just can't prevent drafts and humidity in old houses, both of which can cause cold spots. Perhaps a place that causes an inexplicable sense of dread might suggest a haunting? Again, not necessarily. Faulty electronics (fans and air conditioning in particular) can create infrasound which may potentially cause feelings of discomfort. Alternatively, people might just naturally feel nervous in the kinds of buildings that tend to be associated with hauntings.

On top of all that, we're just assuming that it's possible for a ghost to appear on camera, be visible to the naked eye, create cold spots and cause feelings of dread. Without a concrete idea of what a ghost actually is or whether it's a material being at all, we're fumbling in the dark in trying to prove their existence.

Does that mean it's unreasonable for people to not believe in them? No, of course not. Any of the things I just described constitute pretty valid grounds for scepticism. It does mean though that asking those who do believe in ghosts to provide evidence is putting them in an impossible position. There's nothing they can provide that can't be dismissed out of hand regardless of whether or not the thing they show is genuine.




*By which I mean people who make a serious attempt to study the paranormal. I do NOT mean those cretins who make reality TV shows.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...
Or, as Descartes would have formulated: "I post, therefore I am."

Well, even that one is not really true as with strong evidence.

 

[Heyo]

Well, even that one is not really true as with strong evidence.

What strong evidence? I think I can claim at least 2σ.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

What strong evidence? I think I can claim at least 2σ.

Existence as I am have no observable properties. It is a mind game in philosophy and not different that "God". You can believe in it, but you don't need it to explain the world. It is an unnecessary hypothesis just like "God".

 

[Spirit of Light]

That is called argument from incredulity, a logical fallacy, a.k.a. absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I don't believe in gods, ghosts or spirits but not because "I can't see them". I don't believe in them because every experiment or logical line of reasoning has failed to provide enough evidence. I.e. I know that all the gods, ghosts and spirits that had a definition attached to them sufficient to make a (Gedanken-) experiment do not exist.

Does Dark Matter not exist because we can't see it?
I see evidence of "Amanaki" every day. Amanaki, I can say with great confidence, is an entity behind the account 65429 on RF.
With less confidence I also assume that Amanaki is a single human being, probably male. I'm less sure but any other assumption can be cut off with Occams Razor.
Or, as Descartes would have formulated: "I post, therefore I am."

Can I ask in all honesty. Is it so for none believers that if science has not yet discovered it, or can not explain/give solid answer, one can not believe it to be true?

 

[Vee]

The statement in the headline is not from me
But I got me thinking, does a thing, a being, a place not exist just because we can not see it?

Some examples.

God can not exist, I have never seen him/her/ it
Ghosts does not exist, I never seen proof of them ( that I accept)
Spiritual beings can not exist, science has not proven it.


Amanaki asks : Do I not exist because you have not seen me?

The human eyes can do amazing things but there are many limitations. The universe is full of things our eyes can't see, like the wind, radio waves, WiFi, etc

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Can I ask in all honesty. Is it so for none believers that if science has not yet discovered it, or can not explain/give solid answer, one can not believe it to be true?

I can answer that. It varies. The most dogmatic and fundamentalist ones will deny any anything that is not strong science. That is call scientism. The more well-educated of them know science is a limited human behavior.

Non-believers are just like all other humans. They vary in cognition/intelligence, psychology and so on. They are like everybody else a product of nature and nurture. For the Western kind it means for the strong ones, that you can't doubt evidence, logic, reason, philosophical naturalism and so on.
You can make a "hit" list of words that you are not allowed to question and doubt, because they are to be trusted completely with the same trust as some people have in that there is a God.

In short, in practice for the everyday world we all share; they, the strong non-believers, use the same certainty as strong believers. I.e. it makes so subjectively much sense to them individually, than it must be true of the world as such.

 

[Spirit of Light]

I can answer that. It varies. The most dogmatic and fundamentalist ones will deny any anything that is not strong science. That is call scientism. The more well-educated of them know science is a limited human behavior.

Non-believers are just like all other humans. They vary in cognition/intelligence, psychology and so on. They are like everybody else a product of nature and nurture. For the Western kind it means for the strong ones, that you can't doubt evidence, logic, reason, philosophical naturalism and so on.
You can make a "hit" list of words that you are not allowed to question and doubt, because they are to be trusted completely with the same trust as some people have in that there is a God.

In short, in practice for the everyday world we all share; they, the strong non-believers, use the same certainty as strong believers. I.e. it makes so subjectively much sense to them individually, than it must be true of the world as such.

So that mean that for dose who have a strong God believe and those who has a strong science belief is exactly the same when it come to strong belief, they just believe in two different realities of truth should not that make it ok to be on both sides of religion or science.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

So that mean that for dose who have a strong God believe and those who has a strong science belief is exactly the same when it come to strong belief, they just believe in two different realities of truth should not that make it ok to be on both sides of religion or science.

Yes, by analogy consider it a coin. The 2 "sides" have chosen one side of the coin respectively and claim that the rest of the coin is not really real in effect. And there is no way to combine all of the coin including not just the 2 sides of the coin, but also the rest of the coin.
So learn the whole "coin" and you will become wise.

 

[Spirit of Light]

Yes, by analogy consider it a coin. The 2 "sides" have chosen one side of the coin respectively and claim that the rest of the coin is not really real in effect. And there is no way to combine all of the coin including not just the 2 sides of the coin, but also the rest of the coin.
So learn the whole "coin" and you will become wise.

That to me is the answer to my OP thank you.

 

[Heyo]

Can I ask in all honesty. Is it so for none believers that if science has not yet discovered it, or can not explain/give solid answer, one can not believe it to be true?

Obviously not. There are none believers and scientists who do believe in things that aren't explained or even shown to exist.

But they shouldn't.

The duty of a scientist is to keep an open mind. Believing something without strong evidence is closing ones mind.
When the scientists at CERN discovered the Higgs boson and had millions of successful collisions they had some hope and said "we might be on to something". They only announced the discovery when they had billions of successful collisions (5σ). That's the spirit.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Obviously not. There are none believers and scientists who do believe in things that aren't explained or even shown to exist.

But they shouldn't.

The duty of a scientist is to keep an open mind. Believing something without strong evidence is closing ones mind.
When the scientists at CERN discovered the Higgs boson and had millions of successful collisions they had some hope and said "we might be on to something". They only announced the discovery when they had billions of successful collisions (5σ). That's the spirit.

Evidence and only evidence as per science for that!!! The joke is that you can't, because it is not science. It is in the end morality about what we ought to do.

 

[night912]

Can I ask in all honesty. Is it so for none believers that if science has not yet discovered it, or can not explain/give solid answer, one can not believe it to be true?

No. When it comes to things that science deals with, if there are no scientific data that can explain/give solid answer, one should not believe it to be true. But it does really depends on the individual who hold the requirements for an explanation. But one thing must be realize, there are limits to science, but at the same time, can cross into other areas that people don't usually recognize as being science. It can be use to help rationalize our way of thinking.

Science doesn't deal directly with the supernatural. Science can deal with "supposed supernatural" situations. If someone is hearing some faint voices in their house and believe that it is a ghost, science can be use. It cannot be use to validate if the voices are the result of a ghost, but it can validate if it is not.

 

[night912]

So that mean that for dose who have a strong God believe and those who has a strong science belief is exactly the same when it come to strong belief, they just believe in two different realities of truth should not that make it ok to be on both sides of religion or science.

In what sense?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No. When it comes to things that science deals with, if there are no scientific data that can explain/give solid answer, one should not believe it to be true. But it does really depends on the individual who hold the requirements for an explanation. But one thing must be realize, there are limits to science, but at the same time, can cross into other areas that people don't usually recognize as being science. It can be use to help rationalize our way of thinking.

Science doesn't deal directly with the supernatural. Science can deal with "supposed supernatural" situations. If someone is hearing some faint voices in their house and believe that it is a ghost, science can be use. It cannot be use to validate if the voices are the result of a ghost, but it can validate if it is not.

So how do you do this:
Science has limits: A few things that science does not do

 

[shivsomashekhar]

The statement in the headline is not from me
But I got me thinking, does a thing, a being, a place not exist just because we can not see it?

Some examples.

God can not exist, I have never seen him/her/ it
Ghosts does not exist, I never seen proof of them ( that I accept)
Spiritual beings can not exist, science has not proven it.


Amanaki asks : Do I not exist because you have not seen me?

There is little reason for me to doubt the existence of people I have not seen (yet). Let’s take the example of John Doe in Portland, OR. Never heard of him before, but if I see the name on white pages or linked in, then two things follow -

1. It is very unlikely that this profile is bogus
2. It is verifiable by anyone (corroboration through other trusted parties or by myself)

A second example would be an island in Indonesia . There is little reason for me to doubt its existence and if I do, I can test the claim like in the first example.

Now, moving on to concepts like Gods, Heaven, Spiritual brings, Santa Claus, Reincarnation, etc. the problem is there is no evidence. There is no reliable test. The claims are made by other people (book authors) and they are to be simply accepted on the basis of faith. There is no other way.

And this is where we all differ. My mother could accept the Indian Gods and rituals without questioning. It would never occur to her to doubt any part of her religion. In sharp contrast, I am highly skeptical and question everything. And once I started to probe, these claims started to fall apart for lack of evidence.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The claim of the existence of Amanaki is not extraordinary, but the claim of Loki or Krishna, is.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

There is little reason for me to doubt the existence ...

Well, start by doubting existence, because there is no evidence of existence, as it has no objectionable properties. It is no different than God. You don't have to believe in to explain the world.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

In what sense?

That both "sides" claim a methodology that doesn't work on the everyday life in practice. In other words they both are unable in some cases to understand that they are subjective about something they claim is objective.