fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2902 ]

[ SECRET POST #2902 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2902 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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This kind of story always bugs me. One of my former favorite writers used to be an atheist. Then he saw angels and heard the voice of Jesus over the course of three days, and now he's a scary hardcore Christian who hates Muslims and feminists. That's because he had a goddamn stroke. Seeing may be believing, but you have to give some consideration to all the factors that can fool your senses. (Speaking personally, I got badly dehydrated once, and I had a hell of a time forcing myself not to believe in all the voices I was hearing.)

But having a stroke, or being severely dehydrated really isn't the same thing as something happening to you when you are completely lucid and not expecting it.

How many people having a stroke or some sort of hallucination caused by medical reasons are aware this is what's going on and expecting it to happen, though? Many of them don't realize they're not lucid and functioning normally. That's why it's such a mindfuck.

Shit happens. You stayed up too late, or you only saw part of it*, or there was something in that brownie you just ate. I'm all for paranormal research, because the important part of that phrase is research--seeing what's reproducible.

*Not paranormal, but I once looked out the window when someone rang the doorbell, and only looked briefly enough to catch a glimpse of the jeans they were wearing. My brain filled in the rest, and I later told my mother that someone who looked like a drug-addicted biker had come to the door. Turned out it was my brother.

Good example of how firsthand experience isn't always reliable. People tend to trust their own senses, but unfortunately, our senses can be fooled pretty easily. Sight is probably the easiest of all, that's why eyewitness testimony can vary so much in criminal cases. On top of all that, our memories tend to fill in details that we expected to see, so a little thing like feeling a cold draft in an old building can transform into something supernatural with no conscious effort at all.

DA from all of these anons

why do you care so much? believing in ghosties is relatively harmless, particularly if the believer doesn't spend money on it and just watches dumb paranormal shows. you seem really invested.

It's an interesting topic. Surely people can talk about it without being "really invested"?

someone threw out an occurrence that made them believe, but NO THAT IS WRONG. someone else (or maybe the same anon) is like "no but wait" and still NO THAT IS WRONG. why so interested in making people disbelieve? i realize believing in ghosts and god and all that is commonly thought of as naive and pretty dumb buuuut why can't the original anon just believe and that be that? idgi.

I can't speak for feotakahari, but personally, it's not about "making people disbelieve", it's about finding rational explanations for things that happen because rational explanations are generally good things to have.

There are a few different ways I could respond to that.

One would be to say that I greatly value research and study, and when research is flawed or incomplete, I feel more research, not just personal experience, is necessary to overturn it.

Another is that I hate scam artists, and I've seen how they exploit belief in the paranormal. I've mentioned before that my grandparents were pretty wealthy before they squandered their entire fortune on a): contests and b): psychic advisors who told them which contests to enter.

A third is that I think there's beauty and meaning to what people do with their limited lifetimes when death is inescapable. A belief in ghosts undermines that, turning death into something trivial. (Granted, this is assuming ghosts as sentient spirits, not ghosts as nonsentient echoes.)

But honestly, the real reason is that it bugs me when people only believe in something after it happens to them. If you were to believe in ghosts, there are gazillions of accounts of them from people who seem rational and have no reason to lie. It seems grandiose and self-important to tip the scales with just one account because that one account happens to be yours. (It reminds me of when people think suffering is part of God's plan, and then they personally suffer, and their faith falls into question. You didn't consider this at all after reading about the Holocaust?)

The "meaning of what people do in their limited lifetimes"

I FUCKING HATE THAT ARGUMENT! I'm sorry, but I just do. I've seen people argue for why they are *just plain BETTER and have more meaning in their lives!!!* than anyone who believes in say, a heaven.

People seem to think that "the afterlife" is the ONLY reason people believe in anything or that those that hope that their might be an afterlife don't enjoy their lives or something. Listen. Life is important. Back when I was in my Evangelical phase and went to a Southern Bapitist church *you know "scary Christian?" ... do you know what one of the sermons my sweet bald old man pastor gave? It as all about how THIS life, this EARTHLY life was MORE IMPORTANT than Heaven because THIS is the life we have to make hard decisions. Also, upon seeing bloggers and news article writers with similar view? I though "Pah, so that vacation I went on and enjoyed the heck out of didn't mean anything because I didn't expect to immediately have NO MORE EXPERIENCES EVER upon coming home from said trip?" Yes, vacations are meaningful because they are temporary, but they don't become MEANINGLESS because one expects to continue to exist after them!

That's how I feel about the idea of the afterlife, even of ghosts. I'm not sure of anything. I don't know if when I die I will see visions or haunt relatives (I hope not, I don't want to do something that seems so boring), or reincarnate or just dissolve into darkness. However, if some aspect of my essence does continue on, I don't think I'll see my life as a waste or meaningless because I'm still existing in some way. At least not anymore than a person's life is "diminished" because their bones or their ashes continue on. I'm pretty sure that even if someone is a ghost and sapient as one, that it's a fundamentally different kind of existence.

In fact, if I went on vacation with the full and hardcore expectation that I would cease to exist at the end of said temporary happy fun time, I wouldn't enjoy it, or be able to find much meaning in it. You see, like it or not, some of us have brains wired, by nature, THAT way instead of YOUR way.

So you're being a douchebag atheist, the kind of fellow atheist I despise, because someone you liked became a dickbag.

Way to go.

I may not have much in the way of dignity or self-respect, but I feel like there's some value in at least pretending like I have the guts to stand up for what I believe in. It's not like I'm calling OR names or trying to speak over them--I'm just responding with my own thoughts, like they responded to the thoughts of the OP.

You're still a douchebag about it. You basically believe these people delusional because they don't believe the same thing as you.

Then what's the alternative? If you believe the world was made in seven days, and I believe it was made in six, I'm not gonna say "Maybe it was made in six and a half days" or "Maybe the concept of 'day' is irrelevant to how God created the world." I'm gonna believe it was made in six days, and that means disagreeing with you. I don't think that automatically means judging or looking down on anyone, but people sometimes tell me it does, and if that's true, I'd rather be judgmental than lack the conviction to hold to my beliefs.

P.S. I kinda suspect that when people say that disagreeing with someone means looking down on them, what they mean is "I, personally, look down on anyone I disagree with." Bully for you.

P.P.S. Of course, if someone comes up with a really great argument for why the world was made in eight days, then we both have to at least consider it . . .

I don't think you're being a douche, the other person is a douche and I believe in ghosts. And I'm sorry about your favorite author. It seems to me that if he can be swayed from things he experienced during a stroke, maybe he wasn't really worth your admiration in the first place. Or his brain has been so scrambled that he's really not the same person any more.

He was always kind of a fanatic. It was a big thing in one of his stories that complex AIs given the same information would always come to the same moral judgments, because they would be able to logically evaluate the input and determine which moral beliefs were superior to others. (Coincidentally, they were moral beliefs he shared . . .) Still, he was very creative, and he could be surprisingly insightful at times. It's painful to read his blog now and see him rant about how women are ruining science fiction.

Thanks for the support. I do appreciate it.

Your welcome. One thing I find annoying about both a lot of religious people and atheists is this idea that belief or non belief some how makes you a better, or even smarter, person by virtue of that qualifier alone. It's like no it doesn't, people are jerks because they're jerks. Accepting science as true or praying to the flying spaghetti monster doesn't make you not an asshole.
For the record I have an animistic view on spirituality. I could actually look into paganism stuff but I'm lazy :P.

That's not quite how I'd phrase it, but I can see where you're coming from. I believe there's a lot of value in evaluating and testing your beliefs, and the scientific method is one way of approaching that. At the same time, I've seen some people who think they're totally logical, and use that to dismiss anyone who disagrees with them as illogical, and it makes them virtually impossible to reason with. You can't just set yourself up as better and think that keeps you better. (And I guess studying a lot of different religious viewpoints would be another way to enlightenment--see what's the same and what's different, and figure out what makes sense to you.)

Hopefully, they'll mellow out. That kind of reaction seems like what a lot of people go through when they first convert to a thing, especially if they are listening to certain powerful people/preachers/authors. It probably has less to do with "having a vision" than with whom he is listening to in regards to Bible interpretation and the like. I've seen it cut both ways, too, with people getting hate-happy with their newfound atheism. Don't No True Scotsman and pretend it doesn't happen.

I am a person who don't know who had an Evangelical phase in my teens. No paranormal experiences, just seeking "42." I was an obnoxious twat to yaoi fans in my former fandoms for a while. I got better. If you know the guy and it's not too forward, you could ask him if he actually got these ideas about hating people from the vision itself or if he's just going with what other people are telling him. Various forms of Progressive Christianity exist - and serious pursuit of a religious identity doesn't need to rely on visions. In fact, for most, it doesn't.

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[ SECRET POST #2902 ]

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