| Shadow1980 said: Ghosts? As in the souls of dead people roaming the physical world? Probably not. There's no good evidence for them. I'd file them under "unproven" at best. Funny enough, atheists and I think most Christians would both say "no" because the former think souls don't exist in the first place and the latter think the soul either goes to Heaven or Hell (at least all the ones I know believe that). As for other supernatural phenomenon, they range from "unproven/unprovable" to "demonstrably false." Essentially every known physical phenomena once ascribed to supernatural forces like deities, demons, witches, magic, fairies, goblins, etc., was eventually demonstrated to be the result of natural forces. For example, illnesses aren't the result of curses but rather the result microorganisms or dysfunctions of the body (e.g., genetic illnesses, cancers, autoimmune disorders). Horoscopes are utter nonsense, as not only are they inconsistent and generally just plain don't work, but they have no plausible mechanism to explain why the positions of the stars and planets at the time of your birth influence your life. Every human that has claimed to have supernatural or paranormal powers (e.g., faith healing, telepathy, telekinesis) has been demonstrated to be a fraud and generally have never been demonstrated in controlled conditions. Basically, whenever some claim of the supernatural or paranormal lends itself to some actual test of some kind, they always seem to fail the test or otherwise come up short. Now, some things may simply be unable to be conclusively answered one way or the other by science: Do sentient beings have souls, and consequently does an afterlife of some kind exist? Does a god of some kind exist? Arguably, the only way to find out the answer is to die, and regardless of what if anything happens to us after we die, death is clearly an event horizon of sorts where nothing can be communicated back to the living by the dead. But the universe clearly operates on the basis of natural law, as if there is no actively guiding intelligence (meaning a deity of some kind that actively meddles with and is responsible for the day-to-day goings-on of the universe, as opposed to deistic conceptions of a hands-off God), so if someone assumes that supernatural things just don't exist, I can't blame them. Personally, I hope there's some sort of afterlife, some sort of higher purpose to everything, because otherwise our existence is hopeless and bleak, devoid of any intrinsic value, with no real point to anything, intelligent life only deluding itself into believing that our lives have any meaning, that free will and thus culpability and accountability don't really exist. But, given the track record of the world's various religious and spiritual belief systems, I can't bring myself to actively believe in any sort of supernatural realm beyond our own. So, I try my best not to really worry about it. As I get older I may start to sing a different tune, but my default stance is "I don't know." |
Why do you need your life to have some kind of higher purpose for it not to be hopeless and bleak? I'd rather think it's quite the opposite. The fact that we have only one life makes it precious and beautiful and we should make the most of it. The point is to find our own meaning and perhaps help others find theirs.
If I found out that my life was just a part of some grand plan orchestrated from upstairs and that it would go on forever in various forms would be absolute horror for me.
