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Are you a believer in unexplained phenomenon?
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RPGDot Forums > Absolutely Off Topic

Are you a believer in unexplained phenomenon?
being critical/reserved
68%
 68%  [ 11 ]
No, it's nonsense
12%
 12%  [ 2 ]
Yes, i'm
18%
 18%  [ 3 ]
Total Votes : 16

Author Thread
Remus
Overgrown Cat
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Joined: 03 Jul 2002
Posts: 1657
Location: Fish bowl
Are you a believer in unexplained phenomenon?
   

Paranormal activity: phenomena or events, things that is impossible to explain or understood in terms of scientific knowledge.

For examples: Hauntings, ghosts, spirits, angels, alien/UFO, and maybe include parapsychological experiences such as telephaty/extrasensory.

Before commenting/give opinions you may interested in this sites to gather some ideas/thoughts:

http://www.tspr.org
http://www.angelfire.com/tx2/fbcparanormal/Dana.html
http://www.triparinvestigations.org/
http://www.haunted-places.com/current.htm
http://www.washingtonstateghostsociety.org/
http://www.network54.com/Browse/Society/Science_and_Technology/Extraterrestrial

Me?, i'm not superstitious, but as long as that particular unexplained events come with resonable & enough evidents (that it indeed happened), i'm ready to accept it.


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Last edited by Remus on Sat Jul 27, 2002 6:59 pm; edited 3 times in total
Post Sat Jul 27, 2002 8:56 am
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XeroX
The MasterCopy
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Joined: 13 Dec 2001
Posts: 7125
Location: The Netherlands
   

There can be something more then meets the eye.

The only have to prove that there is something ones, to get it accepted. (UFo)
The have to prove that it is wrong every time.
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Post Sat Jul 27, 2002 9:44 am
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Roach
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Joined: 20 Jan 2002
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I think there should be a third option on the vote. I think on a rare occasion some happens that could be considered paranormal, but the vast majority of the time the reports are a crock.
Post Sat Jul 27, 2002 2:34 pm
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Remus
Overgrown Cat
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Joined: 03 Jul 2002
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Location: Fish bowl
   

quote:
Originally posted by Suicidal Cockroach
I think there should be a third option on the vote. I think on a rare occasion some happens that could be considered paranormal, but the vast majority of the time the reports are a crock.


Hmm... how about the new one = "being critical/reserved?." Earlier i did consider third category but since "Yes. i'm" could aslo included people who believe in it BUT with some reservation, i discarded the idea. Anyhow with "being critical/reserved" category inserted there would be clearer choice and more specific option, so there it's.

Now back to the topic. IMO there is definitely many unexplained phenomena happened out there. Off course we always have to differentiate between phenomena cause by psychological effects (e.g something imaginged, false sense perception) or environmental factors (natural surrounding effects, or maybe wired effects cause by local geographical structures + gravity + sunlight + whatever) with some other cases that are more legitimate.

Nevertheless, it's undeniable that some people simply too skeptical or totally rejecting this kind of events. But even if science can't explain paranormal events, that do not mean its doesn't exist at all. Sciences as we know today has limited ability. There's so many things out there that scientist don't know, and sometimes science is not APPLICABLE to certain phenomena, especially something that abstract/nonconcrete. For examples how sciences gonna prove concept of "love" or "God" exist?. And sciences itself only based on certain theory or hypothesis, and hypothesis is just bunch of assumption, and assumptions could be both true or false. Furthermore, conclusion in sciences always based on certain amount of experiment, such as 2000 times of experiment too prove particular assumptions is true; but what if the next result of experiment will be different (or discrepancy, variation) and scientist never discover it, wouldn't that make the conclusion imferfect or faulty?.


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Last edited by Remus on Sat Jul 27, 2002 9:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
Post Sat Jul 27, 2002 7:13 pm
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TheLonePaladin
Mighty Warrior
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Joined: 27 Feb 2002
Posts: 1808
Location: San Francisco, CA
   

i voted for the critical thing because the bible says "with strength the size of a mustard seed, men can lift mountains." and that's pretty phenominal.

but crop circles don't fall into that category.

so really it depends on the context
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Post Sat Jul 27, 2002 7:21 pm
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Badger
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Stripey Forest Dweller




Joined: 18 Mar 2002
Posts: 924
Location: UK
   

Do I believe in the paranormal?

I woke up one morning and I was a Badger!... What do you think?

Yours.. "The Stripe is out there"
Badger
Post Sat Jul 27, 2002 7:55 pm
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MoonDragon
High Emperor
High Emperor




Joined: 25 May 2002
Posts: 1254
Location: Waterloo, Canada
   

One of the strangest experiences in a while happened to me this weekend. I was trying to sleep inside a sail boat. There was a storm going on outside and a hatch (window) was right above me. At some point, lightning struck (not the boat). And I must've been facing it straight on. For that one second or so, the bright flash made me see my own eyelids from inside as well as the irises of my eyeballs. It was freaky.
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Post Mon Jul 29, 2002 1:13 am
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Kendrik
Thin Blue Line
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Re: Are you a believer in unexplained phenomenon?
   

quote:
Originally posted by goofy goldfish
Paranormal activity: phenomena or events, things that is impossible to explain or understood in terms of scientific knowledge.

For examples: Hauntings, ghosts, spirits, angels, alien/UFO, and maybe include parapsychological experiences such as telephaty/extrasensory.




Woah there Mr. Goldfish - I only just came across this thread and I couldn't let it go without comment. These things are not impossible to explain in terms of scientific knowledge. They are difficult to explain using current scientific knowledge. True science does not (or rather should not) preclude anything. The fact that these things exist as theories show some degree of scientific thinking, all that is lacking is the widely acceptable evidence. Scientific theories are always changing and I suspect that a suitable explaination for the paranormal will eventually be suggested. Then we can all set about disproving that theory and creating our own
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Post Mon Jul 29, 2002 12:24 pm
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mDrop
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Joined: 06 May 2002
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I agree with Kendrik here, to some extent. As a person who's trying to balance between hard sciences and humanist approach I think there may be things so complex and out of reach for human scientific understanding that they can never be fully explained with scientific accuracy.

But on the other hand, like A.C.Clarke wrote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
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Post Mon Jul 29, 2002 12:43 pm
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Gig
Southern Spirit
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Yes, I'm a believer in unexplained phenomena... but not unexplainable phenomena.
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Post Mon Jul 29, 2002 2:32 pm
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txiabxyooj
Fox Spirit
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i think that i am with kendrik & gig on this one. i think things happen that we are currently unable to explain (and in all likelyhood there are many things that we will never be able to explain. that is just life.) but this doesn't mean that they are supernatural. however, to say that supernatural phenomena don't exist might also be a mistake. who knows! it is a big world and are many things out there beyond my comprehension. so i this post neither includes nor exludes the possiblity of supernatural phenomena. however, i do believe that many people are taken in daily because they want to believe so badly.
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Post Mon Jul 29, 2002 5:21 pm
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Mattias Kreku
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I voted "No, it's nonsense" because although I believe that there will always be things we cannot explain with math/physics/chemistry (love for example), that is not a logical reason to start believing in fairy tales and myths like ghosts, Santa Claus, god, souls, extra-terrestrial aliens walking the earth, that Elvis is still alive and so on and so forth. I am quite happy with the world that exist around me, I don't need to fantasize about "extra features" to make my life easier to live. And if I do need a fantasy, I just play an RPG.
Post Mon Jul 29, 2002 8:48 pm
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Remus
Overgrown Cat
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Posts: 1657
Location: Fish bowl
Re: Are you a believer in unexplained phenomenon?
   

quote:
Originally posted by Kendrik
These things are not impossible to explain in terms of scientific knowledge. They are difficult to explain using current scientific knowledge. True science does not (or rather should not) preclude anything. The fact that these things exist as theories show some degree of scientific thinking, all that is lacking is the widely acceptable evidence.


Yes, that is true; i just wondering why some peoples as i read from online sources are too skeptical about paranormal events (i don't mean refer to Mattias ). Maybe they made assumption that in a technologically advanced age as today, we shouldn't take incidents such as ghost or hauntings seriously. But as you said there's scientist that doing research in this field, so that proves even persons who think scientifically (or true science) never reject anything without further investigations. That mean if peoples rejecting something without knowing WHAT their are rejecting is just plainly irrational.

However, neither we should become too eager to believe nor become a superstitious persons. I have visited http://paranormal.about.com/ and they listing all the strange events happened last year (2001); as you can see some cases definitely worth serious thinking, but some others, well, it's just hilarious ( ). There are several cases that looks interesting, includes report on haunting at Edinburgh Castle - which a group of scientist with 250 members of the public personally looking for "them" inside vaults and tunnels around that old fortress. Other cases includes the infamous "crop circle," and in case you don't know in US last year their found the biggest "crop cricle" ever. This could be cause by some nature phenomena that still unknown to scientist, but who know?. Below i leave some interesting excerpt for you all (note that the article would somehow implied that "paranormal activity" did exist, but it's also "natural/normal powers we already have without our knowledge = so nothing "paranormal?"):"

"The PEAR lab at Princeton, under the direction of Professor Robert Jahn, uses a random event generator (REG) to conduct their trials. The REG is, essentially, a kind of electronic coin flipper that, if left alone, would generate as many heads as tails over a number of coin flips. However, PEAR's volunteers - normal people who do not claim to have any ESP powers whatever - are able to influence the REG to come up with more heads than tails, or vice versa. Certainly, they cannot make it come up heads every time, but the data shows that the influence is statistically relevant and much greater than chance. This is done without the benefit of electrodes attached to the head or any other kind of connection. More remarkable still, the volunteers do not even have to be in the same room with the REG. The lab in Princeton has produced results from volunteers as far away as Hungary and Brazil that are the same as those who are sitting just a few feet from the machine. Distance is irrelevant.Jahn, Dunne, and their colleagues at PEAR don't know how or why people are able to influence their machines, they just know that they are. What's more, they have demonstrated that when using two volunteers who have an emotional attachment, the effects on the REG are even greater. The emotion of love seems to have a more powerful effect. This fact has prompted Dunne to theorize that the conscious human mind creates some kind of "resonance" with the surrounding world that lessens some of its randomness. "One form of this resonance," Dunne told Wired magazine, "is what we know as love. This emotional bond - the 'being on the same wavelength' - somehow reduces the entropy in the world a little bit. And random processes seem to reflect this reduction by showing a more organized physical reality."

Tricks with Chicks

This conscious or unconscious influence on the world isn't just a hidden power of the human mind either. Animals have also been shown to have an effect on machinery. In an experiment set up by René Peoc'h and the Swiss Fondation Marcel et Monique Odier de Psycho-Physique, a cage of chicks was able to influence the meanderings of a robot better than people were. The robot, a self-propelled little device called a Tychoscope, was programmed to wander in a random manner around an enclosed room. When the cage of chicks was added to the room, however, the robot's behavior changed dramatically, spending much more time in the half of the room where the chicks were.

Did the chicks will the robot to stay near them? Possibly, because the chicks had a motive. One group of chicks in the experiment had been "imprinted" with the sight of the Tychoscope - in other words, it was the first thing they saw when they hatched. So it could be that they just wanted "mommy" near. For another group of chicks, the room was darkened and a candle was placed on the Tychoscope. Bringing the robot to their side of the room also brought light to the chicks.

A Quantum Effect

These are just two of the more dramatic experiments that are bearing out the reality of consciousness over matter. And it's interesting that these findings are being made at the same time that scientific research is proving the bizarre nature of quantum mechanics, which is showing that the mere observation of subatomic particles can affect how they behave. Are the Princeton experiments demonstrating some kind of biological quantum effect that we do not yet understand? Is the human brain - and the brain of each living creature, for that matter - a quantum device? Is the collective
unconscious proposed by analytical psychologist Carl Jung and others actually a quantum effect?

That the conscious minds of living things can influence our reality has, of course, fantastic implications: Perhaps this is how evolution, in conjunction with natural selection, is actually directed.
It may explain the "power of prayer."
It may explain how animal instinct and group behavior works. (ESP in humans may be a dormant form of instinct that we can sometimes tune in to.)
That we do, even in some small degree, create our own reality. Our destiny is literally in our own minds.
Our minds, under certain circumstances, could create the effects attributed to poltergeists, ghosts, and a host of other so-called paranormal phenomena.
That love is stronger than evil.
That we are, in scientific fact, one with the universe.
Of course, all those mystics, yogi masters, religious nuts, paranormal junkies, and New Age thinkers have known all this is true for quite some time. It's just that now science is proving it. And once this truth is widely known and accepted by human beings, then we will have a powerful tool with which to change our world. This is just the beginning."
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Post Mon Jul 29, 2002 10:23 pm
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