You can consider this a companion piece to my recent Why aren't there more miracles?, in short why aren't there more ghostly encounters? Having gone to a wake recently this thought's been rattling around the ole mental attic for a while but as it stands now the age-old question is there life after death is still quite up in the air. Now it's easy to make Casper jokes when this subject comes up but let's be a little serious here. The purpose of more visitations from our dearly departed would be twofold -- to ease the pain of the survivors and to add the weight of the evidence to that timeless question.
When I was a member in good standing at Hannityland I was mostly political but occasionally poked my nose around into other territory and I brought up the subject one day in the Religion Forum (please no dissing there, either respect any and all beliefs or consider yourself eternally banned). Monsieur Hben, the resident Protestant minister pounced on the topic and said consider any and all ghostly manifestations as the work of Satan but then two longtime and stalwart conservative Catholic posters chimed in too. Socrates and Apatriot agreed with Hben and pretty much said the same thing, that if your dearly departed Uncle Charlie walked through your living room one night to say hello that he's really a demonic imposter. Really?? I wasn't even aware the Church had such voluminous teachings on the matter, has Benedict given a recent statement? I'm aware of a few true-life ghost stories, some in the family and some I heard about involving friends and acquaintances. The tales are benign in nature and quite inspiring so Soc and Patriot's point would be what exactly, that some of these folks are actually in a rather bad place and the Devil is trying to hoodwink us?
I always liked that old TV series The Ghost and Mrs. Muir starring Edward Mulhare as the deceased sea captain and Hope Lange as the tenant of the house he's haunting. The ole Cap'n would appear constantly and converse with her and offer advice, take in and sympathize with her problems, he was a friendly spirit and took all the shock and dread out of death through his regular appearances, just a member of the family you could say. If only Real Life were this way instead of this eternal mystery, this perplexing and to many disturbing enigma that keeps us wondering and guessing right up 'til the bitter end, what's behind the curtain Monty? So anybody out there got any good ghost stories? I promise I won't tell Hben.
I am no theological expert but it seems to me you answered your own question when you said ghostly encounters would answer the timeless question, and truly I don't think God wants there to be an absolute, because then it wouldn't be about faith but about evidence.
ReplyDeleteBut I can see where you are coming from, of course, whenever someone near to you dies, it does give us pause and does get our mind thinking of the afterworld. I hope you do find comfort believing that the deceased is in a better place now.
But here's what I'm getting at and stay with me on this. Faith simply means we believe even in the absence of hard scientific fact. Now let's say there's no life after death, if your life or your existence put it is finite in duration then your life has absolutely no meaning and this spawned the whole existential movement in the first place. The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was what you'd call a reluctant atheist, wanted to believe in a God but he felt logic dictated the other way. So if you are finite and your existence has no meaning then doing the usual things, getting yourself born (no mean feat these days!), going to school, developing your career, getting married and having kids and a Golden Lab and a white picket fence and grandkids and all the rest and the very last thing you do is go to your own wake, it's all a cosmic farce and I refuse to fully enjoy life and follow societal protocol by doing all of the above until I know the Answer. IF, on the other hand there is life after death that's a whole new ballgame.
ReplyDeleteto be continued...
Spin it another way, with The Answer you'd know if you're living a farce or not and don't tell me an atheist can give meaning to his or her life. If the dot at the end of the sentence is all there is then it's a race against Time to cram it all in.
ReplyDeleteIf The Answer gives meaning or not to your own life isn't this where the ghost comes in? A wake is what exactly? the very end of someone and a tribute to him who has lived his life in the socially expected ways and that's it at least this would be my take if I didn't believe in God. At the very end of David Lynch's The Elephant Man when the poor guy rests his head on his pillow at night knowing he's going to die his mother appears to him saying nothing ever dies. So for me only in this way can your life have meaning and it's why I subscribe to the God school of thought, I would find life as an atheist to be an unbearable burden and going to a wake or even the death of a beloved pet can get your mind wandering through these moors and swamps where your only landmarks are question marks. So in this sense the ghostly encounter would serve the purpose of replacing some of those question marks with exclamation points.
I would indeed prefer there not be so many question marks, can you imagine how different Life would be without some of the biggie questions? I tend to think the question marks are part of God's design though, keep us guessing, make the aftrlife the Ah-HA! moment. In some ways, I prefer to have the wonder rather than the absolute knowledge, takes something away, like acting surprised when someone gives you a party but you found out about it before.
ReplyDeleteI promise you, if I go before you, I will try to come back and make contact with you. Maybe I could ask to be buried with my laptop, just in case.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't cut it with me, I need faith and a little evidence too. So God's whole purpose is to keep us guessing? You didn't ask me about my ghost stories yet but that's a funny one w/your laptop. Now if this were a Twilight Zone you'd still be e-mailing people.
ReplyDeletePlease do share your ghost stories.
ReplyDeleteSee that's the trouble I have with the priestly class, they talk about faith on Sunday but nobody really goes about the task of actually proving anything. I think the Eastern religions are on to something though and it's the spiritual principle once something exists it cannot cease to exist. Let's apply this to people and maybe we need to develop a kind of spiritual physics here. I submit that your body dies but something continues on, your essence, what some call the soul. Here we enter the realm of philosophy too and I think if we delve deeply enough we can prove life after death but the first hurdle is those LSD blogs of mine. In those psychedelic threads there seems to be a consensus even among the religious that your thoughts and emotions, in a word your mind derives totally from a mass of gray matter known as the brain but if this is the case life after death becomes impossible. I say that the premise your brain is YOU is flawed and we can start there...this is gonna be a deep day.
ReplyDelete(You sound like the Doubting Thomas)
ReplyDeleteWould it be okay to say that the essence of us on earth is our brains but in Heaven it is our soul?
ReplyDeleteWell I have an uncle and his wife passed and he was sitting in his living room one night and she passed through as clear as a bell and said "I can't stay long but I'm okay and Mary says HI" and he talked about it with a priest and he was ok with it. Older chef guy I worked with was at an outdoor Papal Mass many years ago and he turned around and his late father was right behind him. I have some bad stories too...
ReplyDeleteThe Doubting Thomas is much maligned but I say he had a point.
ReplyDeleteThomas probably represents the fact that human nature does want evidence, but shouldn't we learn from his experience that Jesus wants us to overcome that flaw?
ReplyDeleteThis one is, well it goes like this. These folks had a cat and the cat starting hissing at an empty rocking chair so they were like what's up with that and so they physically put the cat on the rocker and he went nuts and practically flew off the chair and ran out the room. Then there's the car story, someone bought a used car once but it was used in a murder, someone was put in the trunk and so one night he's driving along and hears a loud thump in the back...
ReplyDelete...but why's it a flaw?
ReplyDeleteNobody can explain how we dream, I mean where exactly is the projector room inside our heads? Are the backs of our eyelids the screen? I say maybe the very act of dreaming is evidence of the spiritual but I notice BB has been silent here.
ReplyDelete"Would it be okay to say that the essence of us on earth is our brains but in Heaven it is our souls?"
ReplyDeleteSo we get our souls later? If this is the case, that you are your brain wouldn't that make artificial intelligence possible? I swear I've used a liberal computer a few times (lol). So what I'm getting at is let's say that your brain cells create thought and emotions but who created your consciousness? Let's define this as being aware of your own existence, so why can't a computer be aware of its own existence too? I say there's something else going on here, Rene Descartes' ghost in the machine.
I will read your other new blogs, but I did want to get back to the discussion we were having before I got a marathon phone call.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that we get our soul when we die, but that it is all that is left of us, so it is our essence at that time. Maybe before I mispoke, on earth we are body, spirit and mind together, after death we are just spirit.
As for the flaw, it's not a negative per se, just the fact that as humans we are flawed.
Modern science when you get right down to soups and nuts basically teaches that everything that exists is material in nature, materialism. The study of the paranormal is kind of considered a fringe science when it should be more mainstream imo. I just can't accept the notion that we are our brain and if there's not outright evidence that there's life after death I think God at least drops us strong hints. Geez you'd think this thread would be hotter than it is. You know I'm gonna give everyone an assignment here. On a certain day everyone blog about a nonpolitical topic of your choosing, a Messiahless day.
ReplyDeleteI think from experience I get fewer comments when I do nonpolitical stuff, besides you always come up with good topics so I just come here for the really deep discussions.
ReplyDeleteMy Dad, now retired worked with a guy once and his father had died. So this guy was taking a shortcut home from work one day through a vacant wooded lot and his father appeard to him and the guy got all scared and screamed but I would've been thrilled as it would've been an answer to The Question. I never got this, why so many people are afraid of ghosts. What are they afraid of exactly, that there IS life after death?
ReplyDeleteBut here's a question, how do you know these ghosts are the ghosts of our loved ones? If we are only a soul left, and our bodies are in the ground, then how do people know who the ghost is?
ReplyDeletePolls indicate half of us believe in ghosts. I fall in the half that doesn't, so call me unimaginiative. Seems human enough, though, given that even the most primitive of homo sapiens think that even 'things' have spirits. Hardheaded and pragmatic, though I be, I must confess that as a kid going past the large cemetary at night on the way home from Cub Scout meetings...I ran all the way!!
ReplyDeleteOh, you were a Cub Scout, BB? My son is working on his pinewood derby car, any helpful hints?
ReplyDeleteBeth, unfortunately no..my pinewood cars were always painted really fancy..barely went down hill. When I ran a laboratory, people from all over the company would call or drop in on advice on how to speed up the bearings on those cars (as well as "what can my kid do for science fair this year?...will you test my well water?...my dog doesn't eat right, whats wrong?") ..his car will be fine, good luck!
ReplyDeleteAs to your question Beth I think that was Hben, Socrates and Apatriot's point but I'm glad BB chimed in, I didn't quite expect a lengthy and scholarly post on ectoplasm so I kind of guessed his position already. I fall in the half that does believe in the occasional ghostly presence probably partly due to my own personal experience. I knew or worked with a woman who took her own life and I would say there was quite a bit of phenomenon you could call it going on after. Some might not call it conclusive but for me it was. Anyway don't have a lot of time left on my session so I'll check the other threads real quick.
ReplyDeleteSorry I hijacked the conversation to pinewood derby races, but from what I hear that our district races have kids with parents who work at NASA so the kids in our pack stopped going to the district races because hell, you couldn't compete!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, maybe I am jealous that no ghost has ever found me worthy of attention, but I do think that people such as yourself who have had experiences have had real encounters, and you shouldn't care what anyone else tells you.
Well from what I read in a paranormal book once and I usually don't read the stuff but after this I was curious to say the least, seems the paranormal consensus is that the suicide is bound to the earth for the duration of what would have been his or her natural lifespan, their purgatory so to speak and so they need our prayers. Hardly empirical though, I mean how do you prove this stuff?
ReplyDelete" I just can't accept the notion that we are our brain and if there's not outright evidence that there's life after death I think God at least drops us strong hints. Geez you'd think this thread would be hotter than it is." OK. Questioning faith should make it stronger. You study harder, learn more, see examples.
ReplyDeleteThe science/religion thing makes it hard; most of us rationalize the two and some uf us reject one or the other. I am most comfortable with the agnostic approach, accepting that things I don't know..I don't know. A far better agnostic writer sums this:
"The mystery of mind still eludes the formulas of psychology, and in physics the same astonishing order of nature that makes science possible may reasonably sustain the religious faith in a cosmic intelligence. Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance. Now life is rarely agnostic; it assumes either a natural or supernatural source for any unexplained phenomenon, and acts on the one assumption or the other; only a small minority of minds can persistently suspend judgment in the face of contradictory evidence. The great majority of mankind feel compelled to ascribe mysterious entities or events to supernatural beings raised above “natural law”. "
-Durant, Vol VI The Reformation
..taken from the fuller article on the subject on a blog. Durant, like many agnostics/atheists was very much a humanist. So much so, that he termed the agnostic philosopher
Spinoza the 'God-intoxicated man'.
Just wanted to '..make this thread hotter than it is'...:)
The way I see it the study of the paranormal was never a respectable field and continues that way. I think properly done without the phony psychics and the hucksters it should be more respectable as an intellectual field of endeavour. I'm gonna get back to this as Lista inspired me with her own blogging about blogging to do my own blog about blogging if you get what I'm saying.
ReplyDeleteI remember when I went to Mt. St. Michael in the Bronx and the religion workbook made the point say you're walking along the beach one day and you see a television set you don't conclude the wind just blew it together, point being the order and design in the universe points to a Creative Intelligence. So I accept the existence of God and for me it would make no sense to have you so dependent on your brain for your continued existence in some form. Now the God particle is all the rage so I guess everything comes full circle eventually.
ReplyDeleteThat God Particle is interesting.
ReplyDeleteOf course it is still only a theoretical sub-atomic Higgs Boson; but the big super-conducting
super-collider at CERN is trying to find it. My son in law was assigned as a Navy Lt commander and
Battelle scientist to work over there awhile. Part of the program was a monitoring instrument array in a tunnel a mile below an Italian mountain where stray gamma radiation and neutrons were very scarce and where the Italian scientists stored their wine...:)
I've heard the criticism about the huge cost of those super-colliders, it was a letter-to-the-editor I read a week ago that it's money that could be better spent on curing diseases kind of on a par with why send a man to the moon and we haven't even cured cancer yet. I find it interesting though that the whole universe may have evolved out of light, kind of coincides with early Genesis.
ReplyDeleteGood point. The cost/benefit of discovering another sub-atomic particle is awful. ..and then, they may find that IT consists of even smaller miracle particles.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the old biology poem, which is conceptualised better here..
"They [CERN scientists] would identify another lacuna in our knowledge which would require even bigger and better facilities to decide whether it could or could not be explained. ‘Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, and little fleas have lesser fleas and so ad infinitum.’
[2001 Times 22 Dec. 19] ..I guess as long as there are questions, someone will be digging for answers. We need keep in mind that in some of these advanced studies of basic research, unexpected spin-offs occur..what the heck, maybe a 'stargate' or something. :)