Is belief in ghosts compatible with the Christian faith, or other religions?

[logician]

Ah, no.

There are many classifications of "demons" and different types of spirits and ghosts. I classify them (but I'm not a demonologist or exorcist):

1) amoral spirits that can be manipulated by medicine men to do what they want them to do - good or bad and everything in between

2) daimonion - we know these as angels or demons and vary in power and severity

3) ghosts and spirits - mostly these seem to be confused souls repeating what they did when they died. Most are amoral but powerful ones can do some interesting stuff.

Where are you getting this info from , personal experience?:sleep:

 

[angellous_evangellous]

As far as I know , there is not one verifable instance of a demon haunting a house.

The movies you've seen like the exorcist are so much Hollywood amplified rubbish, and "GHOSTHUNTERS is laughably absurd - strictly produced to make money off the those easily convinced that ghost already exist. The lead you into thinki ng every "grunt ", groan , noise, and eerie light is some indication that a spirit is there.

I really like it when they go in and startking the "ghost" questions - already assuming therr's a ghostly presence there. Completely unscientific, and crass commercialization.

Yeah, I agree.

I'm not basing this knowledge / judgment on cable ghost shows. AND I didn't say that it's been "scientifically proven."

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Where are you getting this info from , personal experience?:sleep:

I'm not going to hold your hand on this one, logician.

You can go to JSTOR yourself and read anthropological essays on shamanism, medicine men, and voodoo and make up your own mind (which, I gather, is already made).

There are well documented videos of mediums and corresponding reports that are only debunked by bias.

 

[logician]

Yeah, I agree.

I'm not basing this knowledge / judgment on cable ghost shows. AND I didn't say that it's been "scientifically proven."

My mother seemed to have somewhat a gift of ESP although I would never really admit that it was scientifically true.

Some things she predicted however scarily came true.

 

[footprints]

Although heaven (and hell) are not particularly well biblically supported in the Christian bible, I don't believe it talks anywhere about ghosts haunting houses.

My question is, is belief in ghosts compatible with the Christian faith?

What about other religions?

Christians I have found believe 1 of 2 things.

1. All the faithful will be raised from the dead in the final judgment.

This pretty much does not go with any ghost or spirit belief.

2. You go to heaven (or hell) when you die.

This allows for spirits, however, there is nothing in the bible or anywhere else in the religion that indicates a spirit will "hang around" a house, for example, to haunt it, or otherwise. The spirit will go straight to heaven, or if you are Catholic, you may believe it goes to purgatory.

So who actually believes in ghosts, and if so, how do they jive that with their religion, if they have any?

Ghosts, spirits, angels, souls et al, roughly translate to be the same thing. It is generally only a persons own belief patterns which seperate them and conclude that they are different. An example of this, Heaven, Utopia and the Dreamtime all point to being the same place.

As it is attached to the deity debate, my probability says 50:50.

 

[Buttercup]

I had one quite a while back - http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/comparative-religion/27522-ask-angellous-anything-26.html

I had forgotten how many questions I asked you early on. Felt odd rereading those as I don't believe any of that stuff nowadays. However, your beliefs have stayed relatively steady over the last four years. :angel2:

1) amoral spirits that can be manipulated by medicine men to do what they want them to do - good or bad and everything in between

An amoral spirit? Was this person an atheist/agnostic while alive? How or why is a spirit amoral?

2) daimonion - we know these as angels or demons and vary in power and severity

If angels are created by God, who creates demons?

3) ghosts and spirits - mostly these seem to be confused souls repeating what they did when they died. Most are amoral but powerful ones can do some interesting stuff.

Why is a soul confused after death?

I realize these questions are very broad but I'm seriously interested in your thoughts.

 

[logician]

Ghosts, spirits, angels, souls et al, roughly translate to be the same thing. It is generally only a persons own belief patterns which seperate them and conclude that they are different. An example of this, Heaven, Utopia and the Dreamtime all point to being the same place.

As it is attached to the deity debate, my probability says 50:50.

But how does this relate to religious belief, or how can the 2 co-exist comfortably?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

I had forgotten how many questions I asked you early on. Felt odd rereading those as I don't believe any of that stuff nowadays. However, your beliefs have stayed relatively steady over the last four years. :angel2:

haha - I have changed a lot, but only in deepening and clarification.

An amoral spirit? Was this person an atheist/agnostic while alive? How or why is a spirit amoral?

I don't know. That's just the way it is.

If angels are created by God, who creates demons?

I don't know that one, either. There are several traditions regarding the creation of demons. The Bible says that demons (the evil ones) are angels that God created for good, but rebelled against God.

Why is a soul confused after death?

I don't know. That's just the way it is sometimes. It seems to me that sometimes someone dies an unusually violent death - or many people die together violently... or someone dies unexpectedly while doing a normal chore and they just keep doing it after death. The reason why it's amoral is that it might be some kind of human imprint of suffering that we experience when we are open to that kind of thing... that is, we're sensing that something unusual happened and having some kind of experience, but the "ghost" actually isn't there. Hope that makes sense.

One thing that I've learned in my studies is that a holy place in an ancient city will be and has been holy ever since the area was inhabited. This is a place where the people of the city experienced the divine, and altars are built on top of altars for centuries, then temples, then perhaps Christian churches.

And, significantly, there are places in a city where the trash is placed, for centuries. There are places that people just don't want to go.

There are places in and around communities where bad things happen, and it lasts forever.

There is more to human nature than our current understanding.

 

[WayFarer]

Since Christianity is mentioned in the original post and a few posts since then have tried to connect Christianity with ghosts, I thought, with your kind indulgences, I would try to make another argument for ghosts in Christianity/the Bible.

I'll start with an example from the Old Testament book 1 Samuel chapter 28: 7-25. This is where Saul goes to have the ghost of Samuel called forth. The Bible says "Saul knew it was Samuel" (NIV) and says nothing further to discredit the event or the ghost.

In the New Testament Mathew 14 has the disciples looking at Jesus (walking on water) and thinking he was a ghost. If ghosts did not exists, you would have thought Jesus would have put his followers right then and there, but instead he just calms them down and let them know it was him. And to head off any "maybe they thought he (the ghost) was evil spirit and were frightened" in chapter 10 Jesus had given them the authority to drive away evil spirits and so they could have dealt with that if that was what they thought it was.
In Mark 9 Peter, James and John went with Jesus and saw Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah.

So evidence of ghosts (spirits of dead people not spiritual entities that may not have ever been a person) does exist in the Bible. (As does some references to reincarnation. Had to just mention that for fun. )

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Since Christianity is mentioned in the original post and a few posts since then have tried to connect Christianity with ghosts, I thought, with your kind indulgences, I would try to make another argument for ghosts in Christianity/the Bible.

The simple fact is that the Bible itself does not explain everything about human nature and the spirit world.

 

[WayFarer]

The simple fact is that the Bible itself does not explain everything about human nature and the spirit world.

I never said it did. Logician asked "My question is, is belief in ghosts compatible with the Christian faith?" my response was about ghosts being in the Bible and so Christians do have something to base (from the Bible) a belief in ghosts. My post had nothing to do with human nature, the spirit world or even if the Bible tried to explain everything therein, just that it mentions ghosts.

 

[AxisMundi]

Although heaven (and hell) are not particularly well biblically supported in the Christian bible, I don't believe it talks anywhere about ghosts haunting houses.

My question is, is belief in ghosts compatible with the Christian faith?

What about other religions?

Christians I have found believe 1 of 2 things.

1. All the faithful will be raised from the dead in the final judgment.

This pretty much does not go with any ghost or spirit belief.

2. You go to heaven (or hell) when you die.

This allows for spirits, however, there is nothing in the bible or anywhere else in the religion that indicates a spirit will "hang around" a house, for example, to haunt it, or otherwise. The spirit will go straight to heaven, or if you are Catholic, you may believe it goes to purgatory.

So who actually believes in ghosts, and if so, how do they jive that with their religion, if they have any?

We Gaels tend to believe that the heavens, hells, and other places religions create are echoes of this world, that, like the Gods and Goddesses themselves, Man has created these places/deities through religion out of subtle energies of the universe, through the concentrated Will of many human beings over time.

We also believe that our Spirits/Souls are also echos as well, created when a person is first born into the universe, a person who doesn't already have the soul of someone being reincarnated.

I also believe that "ghosts" come in a number of categories. The first isn't a separate entity, but a "marked place", marked either by long association with humanity (schools, hospitals, churches, etc) or by calamity, such as a fearsome battle or murder.

Another category involves the atypical "lost soul" someone who is resisting passing through the Veil between worlds for whatever reason.

Another category might be someone from the other side reaching through, whether for mischief or an attempt to reach a certain person that the Spirit might know to give warning, comfort, or guidance.

However, just as standing at the end of a canyon and yelling "Slap!" won't get one slapped, spirits, and Deities, cannot effect human beings directly unless we let them. IOW, they only possess as much power as we give them.

 

[Baydwin]

I have to agree with Wayfarer, the witch of Endor summoned a ghost, so if Christians choose to interpret the Bible literally, then they should believe in ghosts.

 

[logician]

I really wish someone would answer my questions, instead of running in circles around them

 

[dogsgod]

If you're not worried about reconciling one irrational belief with reality, you're probably not overly concerned with reconciling multiple irrational beliefs with each other.

True, if one can be convinced of an invisible God, creator of the whole universe, it's not a stretch to believe in ghosts, or any other such nonsense.

 

[dogsgod]

I really wish someone would answer my questions, instead of running in circles around them

It's difficult to say if a belief in ghosts is directly related to Christianity, or if it's compatible, but I can see how believers in general would be led to believe in ghosts. I think the scriptures say that no one goes to heaven until after the second coming of Christ, so people's souls must be hanging around somewhere.

 

[dogsgod]

I found some info. If it's accurate, Christian souls hang out in Hades, not in old houses, so I guess it's not compatible:


Modern Christians have also adopted the view that people will "go to heaven" now after they die, but nowhere in the New Testament is this supported at all, in fact the opposite is the case. In all of the New Testament writings the people who are saved by Jesus will go to heaven after the coming (or second coming) of Jesus, i.e. the end of the world. In all of the New Testament, aside basically from 2 Peter, the latest book of the Bible, claims of the imminent end of the world are central to the whole story. No one goes to heaven in the New Testament except Jesus, the angels, and the souls of the people from before the flood, everyone else in trapped in the earth or Hades and waiting for the end of the world, upon which time those who believed in Jesus will be resurrected and taken into the New Jerusalem. So, modern Christianity has really completely warped the entire religion and doesn't even pay attention to the scriptures. A part of this warping is the historization of Jesus and the dismissal of the obviously mythical origins of the whole story. Jesus Myth Part II - Follow-up, Commentary, and Expansion

 

[logician]

I just don't see any support biblically for belief in souls, spirits, ghosts etc. that "roam the earth".

I mean, there is scant support for heaven and hell in the Christian bible, I think belief in ghosts has had a non-religious evolution, and religions, to incorporate existing tradition, came up with all sort of "rules" about ghosts including why they are here, how they can move about etc. It's like reliigon, as it has done so many times, has attempted to catch up with "pagan", or non-religious belief by adding its own "spin" to it.

 

[logician]

It's difficult to say if a belief in ghosts is directly related to Christianity, or if it's compatible, but I can see how believers in general would be led to believe in ghosts. I think the scriptures say that no one goes to heaven until after the second coming of Christ, so people's souls must be hanging around somewhere.

Except if you soul is still around, there is no reason for you to "raised" fom the dead, because you aren't dead.

 

[McBell]

Although heaven (and hell) are not particularly well biblically supported in the Christian bible, I don't believe it talks anywhere about ghosts haunting houses.

My question is, is belief in ghosts compatible with the Christian faith?

What about other religions?

Christians I have found believe 1 of 2 things.

1. All the faithful will be raised from the dead in the final judgment.

This pretty much does not go with any ghost or spirit belief.

2. You go to heaven (or hell) when you die.

This allows for spirits, however, there is nothing in the bible or anywhere else in the religion that indicates a spirit will "hang around" a house, for example, to haunt it, or otherwise. The spirit will go straight to heaven, or if you are Catholic, you may believe it goes to purgatory.

So who actually believes in ghosts, and if so, how do they jive that with their religion, if they have any?

seems to me that belief in ghosts is just par the course.
I mean, they already believe in God with absolutely no empirical evidence, why not ghosts, vampires, and werewolves as well?

P.S.
what about the "Holy GHOST"?