Do Atheists Materialists and Rationalists believe in Ghosts?
Of course they do not believe in ghosts. And of course an experiment could be formulated to detect a ghost, for example by communicating with a ghost and testing its knowledge. A ghost pointing out the location of an unknown buried archeological site would be convincing for a start, if it can be made sure it isn’t a hoax.
Materialists and Rationalists, absent any contrary experiences, should not believe in Ghosts. How they behave having had an experience is far more telling. Professional scientists, upon witnessing physical phenomena in their sphere of specialization have had some profound changes in attitude. While they generally don’t change their thinking so radically as to accept metaphysical concepts, they do find themselves confronted with the idea that what they thought was true of reality is in fact apparently not so obvious. And that can lead to profound internal changes in these individuals. As far as experiments go, science has no model for a ghost. So it is unclear how to design an experiment or for that matter, build a device to detect one. This would suggest that the various technologies used by ghost hunters and paranormal investigators probably has no scientific basis at the end of the day. There is a class of apparition known as the “Experimental” apparition. This type of apparition is
Hi Mitchell. As you may be aware the word atheist means someone who does not believe in any God, and since a ghost is not precisely the same as “God” – it’s possible for atheists to believe in ghosts, but to be perfectly frank, I have only met a few who kept an open mind on such topics. For the most part the same criterion (i.e. a complete absence of evidence) which prevents most atheists from believing in any God, seems to preclude believing in most supernatural things. As for materialist or rationalists? They are not as specific in their scepticism as atheists so they most certainly do -not- believe in ghosts. However a thought has occurred to me when you asked about scientific evidence. Generally the kind of testing which is done is precisely as you suggest, an attempt to record video or audio, to check for electromagnetic anomalies or electrostatics and in a few cases to look for infra-sonic vibrations and chemical trace evidence… but I wonder if anyone has ever used literal “gui
The only thing all atheists agree on is that they don’t believe in any gods. In general atheists also tend to to be rationalists, and neither materialists or rationalists believe in anything supernatural. As an atheist I would be open to prof of any phenomena, but as Carl Sagan stated; “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” That means that I won’t accept testimonials without any further evidence to back it up.
