At what age did you stop believing in ghosts?

[ninjashoes]

Stopped believing them when I was about 8.

Started believing in them again when I was 28.

I see a ghost whenever I look at my own reflection in a mirror.

Hard to shake, that one.

Mark S.

[Aeron]

probably early teens when I became an atheist and abandoned all belief in the supernatural but strangely made the fantasy of it my life's passion.

And I lived in a house from the age of 2 - 19 that my mother was convinced was haunted by a female ghost. One of the reasons was our pet dog would bark constantly at walls and a variety of other random events associated with very old houses. Ours was built around 1890 or earlier. In my mid teens we accidentally dug up an old photograph in our backyard, probably taken around the 1930's - 40's of a woman that was standing in the backyard of our house, with it as the backdrop. My mother was convinced she was the ghost.

[Russell Nash]

Who says that ghosts don't exist...?

Yes, I know. We live in a pure materialistic and atheist world where true Science is our religion and is always right making predictions, such as Higgs bosons (almost ruled out by now).

There is a very interesting article, old by now, published here:

--Documents

Others, posted here:

Supernatural brain activity | BETA lab | Brain & Technology Amsterdam

PLoS ONE: Decapitation in Rats: Latency to Unconsciousness and the ‘Wave of Death’

There is still brain activity, and consciousness, in certain cases even after 20 minutes the person died. I repeat, when the brain dies, there is still brain activity with no oxygen. Wasn't it (Science said) that after 6 minutes of stopping flow of oxygen to the brain a person dies...? Wrong again! As in the case with Higgs boson Science lovers tend to believe, as religious people do, in what Science predicts with almost no data. That's wrong.

Science stopped being Science when it became a religion full of believers.

Ghosts, as believed in olden times, do not exist, but we may probably survive death somehow. We (consciousness) may not even be generated by brain cells. Example: how come I still remember something that happened 40 years ago when my brain cells have changed every 7 years. What is it that keeps me from changing over time (if I'm just a collection of neurons)?

[Mr. D.]

Thank you Mr. Nash. Personally, I consider materialism as just another religion with fanatics and heretics like all of the others. To me the whole world is alive with powers and presences. Life is plastic and dynamic. People who live together long enough start to look like each other. People who keep dogs long enough start to look like their dogs. (!) These things are true. Most of us have seen them happen. If a dynamic human spends decades generating energy in a house isn't it likely that something remains behind?

[Robin Davies]

Quote Originally Posted by Russell Nash

We (consciousness) may not even be generated by brain cells. Example: how come I still remember something that happened 40 years ago when my brain cells have changed every 7 years. What is it that keeps me from changing over time (if I'm just a collection of neurons)?

I don't see any mystery there. What's to stop neurons passing on information to new ones, like copying information onto a backup hard drive?

[Robin Davies]

Quote Originally Posted by Mr. D.

Thank you Mr. Nash. Personally, I consider materialism as just another religion with fanatics and heretics like all of the others.

No, it's supported by evidence that is consistent and reproducible.

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To me the whole world is alive with powers and presences. Life is plastic and dynamic.

I would expect most scientist to agree with both of those sentences.

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People who live together long enough start to look like each other. People who keep dogs long enough start to look like their dogs. (!) These things are true.

I can't comment on that because I havent' noticed either...

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If a dynamic human spends decades generating energy in a house isn't it likely that something remains behind?

What "energy"? How is it stored? Of course one can speculate but consistently measurable, reproducible evidence is missing.

[Mr. D.]

I seem to be the only one among us who has actually seen a ghost. I've seen two in the same house. I also experienced a cold spot and a strange glow at night that made it impossible to bump into furniture in any of the ground floor rooms when the lights were turned off. I'm suggesting an area of study. I have no background in physics, so how would you think that the energy is stored? Is it stored physically in the building or is it somehow stored temporally? I've always been curious about my experiences in the old Neville House. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Russell Nash]

Quote Originally Posted by Robin Davies

Quote Originally Posted by Russell Nash We (consciousness) may not even be generated by brain cells. Example: how come I still remember something that happened 40 years ago when my brain cells have changed every 7 years. What is it that keeps me from changing over time (if I'm just a collection of neurons)? I don't see any mystery there. What's to stop neurons passing on information to new ones, like copying information onto a backup hard drive?

Robin, how nice it is to talk to you again.

There is a misconception on your side. There are basically two ways to store information (to memorize it, if you want). The old way, CDs, tapes, or a new modern variant, USBs. The theory is on the internet for you to read it. Data is stored as a whole. The second way is neural networks, where information is stored within neurons. Even if you grab a link between two neurons, it cannot tell you the whole information, which is distributed among all of them. Neurons die, but information still is kept by the other ones, none of them has all the data but fragments that integrated through certain algorithms make a whole. You will find that memories are not stored in a certain area but "distributed" in the brain. If we add that according to certain experiments vibration also is part of how neurons may store memory, then it looks impossible to reproduce a whole network of neurons, to duplicate it. How? Not only one has to duplicate electromagnetic impulses, but also mechanical, and chemical processes. How could we duplicate such complex process? Finally, if you think about how we memorize songs, how scientists see this, there is always sampling involved, and how this sampling process came to be by natural selection is not easy to understand. The only way to store songs seems to be to sample what we hear and store each sample individually by the same process that we memorize pictures. Too complex for an accidental process that appears by blind evolution. Other people believe that certain cells distributed in our entire body keep memories, of course no proof of it. And some believe that memories are stored on the same fabric of space-time, and neurons just take the information they need from it. Of course, no proof either. None of our theories explain how data is stored in our neurons. Aren't they? Science believe so, but lacks proof. Whether in ten years we'll know or not, how knows? I still have my doubts that memories are kept on the brain.

By the way, the problem is not that neurons die (since the rest can keep the information more or less intact), but that neurons change and still keep the same information among them. How do they do that? How do they keep values when their internal composition varies with time?

Regarding what Mr. D asks, Robin, we don't even know how gravitational energy is stored. Does anyone know where it is stored? In a field, yes? where is it? The same concept of energy is beyond human comprehension. Many people, honest, decent, educated, intelligent citizens, have reported having seen ghosts, in certain houses. Do we reject the idea because no proof was found (yet?), or since we spent 12 billion chasing a hypothetical Higgs boson that seems not to exist, we can afford 1/100 of the same amount to investigate these strange phenomena? By the way, no extra dimension, no black holes, no dark matter, no new stuff. Do we keep believing on theses things although no proof was found? Isn't that a religion? Science requires proof. Ultimate proof is always impossible but if you accept as I now do that consciousness is a property of being, like dimension, or time, the Universe as a whole makes more sense. I may be wrong but my "belief" doesn't amount to 12 billion in taxes to find nothing.

[Gray House]

I remember seeing a roundish white haze hovering above me in the dark when I was a child. I started reaching up to it but got scared and withdrew my hand. At the time I thought it was a ghost.

Looking at myself steadily in a mirror, like in the Bloody Mary game, I saw strange things.

I know of no good reasons to suppose either of those perceptions were anything but solely perceptions but even assuming for the sake of argument that those perceptions reflected something external, I think there are countless conceivable causes that are just as likely to be true as ghosts. Use your imagination! If one is willing to believe in ghosts, why not come up with something more interesting to believe in instead?