Do you believe in the Supernatural? - Ghosts, the fae, demons, Oswald was a lone shooter, and other such things

[ToroidalBoat]

I would like to, as I am severely necrophobic, and a belief in the supernatural would alleviate some of that fear.

I like this quote by Epicurus for if there's no afterlife:

If I am, death is not.
If death is, I am not.
Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?​

(in other words if there's no consciousness there's no way to experience the lack of experience)

 

[Sparkling Yuzu]

I believe in fae, mermaids, werewolves, vampires, devils, ghosts, gods and shapeshifers but I don't believe in Big Foot and skunk ape.

 

[skykiii]

IIRC I read somewhere the wat idea that autists are "anti-magic" - not only can the autist not experience the "supernatural", it can't even happen with an autist around.

Gee, thanks for essentially telling me I'll never experience paranormal stuff ever again.

(Although that I've experienced it before makes me wonder what you read was completely wrong).

Although admittedly I'm only "Autistic" in the "grown man who talks about cartoons" way, not in a "a doctor has officially diagnosed me" way. It's just that around here it feels like it makes more sense to take an Autistic-until-proven-innocent stance.

 

[krautkid]

I would like to, as I am severely necrophobic, and a belief in the supernatural would alleviate some of that fear.

Unfortunately I can't genuinely rationalise the supernatural, try as I might, which unfortunately means that said necrophobia continues to contribute to me being very unwell. (As for some reason stress causes me to deteriorate physically In an alarming manner.)

Same dude. I try very hard to consider that there is something beyond our reality because if not then why are we here? Things just feel too big. The universe and the centuries of life and death before us just...too big to grasp. You hear statistics that Germany lost 40k men in one week during the Great War and it doesn't feel real - like so many people just don't exist in an instant. It's just hard to correlate such loss as being pointless.

Sorry. That probably isn't helping.

The thing that did kinda alleviate some of my fear was realising that so many actual scientists believe in a higher power despite how much religion feels like a dirty word in these modern times. And thinking more on it, there had to be something that created us. That wanted us and the universe to exist...

But you're not the only one who has these fears. Just wanted you to know.

 

[Fools Idol]

If supernatural exists and can interact with the reality then wouldn't it be just another part of nature? Like you can't have something that is part of the Universe yet somehow separate from it.

 

[Tago Mago]

Not only believe in it, I'm almost sure all the shit going down today is caused, at least in part, by supernatural ritualistic activity

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

If supernatural exists and can interact with the reality then wouldn't it be just another part of nature? Like you can't have something that is part of the Universe yet somehow separate from it.

The common pattern you'll notice in stories is that the supernatural only reveals itself if it wants to be revealed or if it's specifically beckoned. I'd bet that ghosts probably are real and exist from thousands of years back, but they make themselves sparse, largely because they might not have living relatives they care about, Demons only show up if you beckon them and already believe and Fae are unpredictable and highly localized creatures that don't subscribe to human morality. Of course, it could all be bullshit.

 

[topsykrets]

8. What men call the “super natural” is actually the “natural” not yet understood or revealed.

 

[SouthernBitchBob]

Schizo thought from my decaffeinated brain. I'm skeptical about magical thinking as an explanation for things, but I have far too frequent "wouldn't it be funny" thoughts to dismiss them entirely. Wouldn't it be funny, after all, if there were some as-yet-undiscovered by modern science force that, as part of its fundamental nature, actively defied explanation? By that I mean, what if magic is real, but we've never seen it because it doesn't like being "found out", so it changes its own rules to troll anyone trying to catalog it?

 

[skykiii]

Schizo thought from my decaffeinated brain. I'm skeptical about magical thinking as an explanation for things, but I have far too frequent "wouldn't it be funny" thoughts to dismiss them entirely. Wouldn't it be funny, after all, if there were some as-yet-undiscovered by modern science force that, as part of its fundamental nature, actively defied explanation? By that I mean, what if magic is real, but we've never seen it because it doesn't like being "found out", so it changes its own rules to troll anyone trying to catalog it?

So the supernatural works on Roger Rabbit rules?

EDDIE: "You mean you could've done that at any time?
ROGER: "Not at any time, only when its funny."

 

[Jason Wynn]

I consider myself an open-minded skeptic. I do think there are events and things in the world that can’t be explained away with our current understanding of science, be that ghosts or cryptids or what have you. I think the possibility exists, I don’t completely deny the existence of supernatural phenomena, but I don’t jump in balls first believing everything either. I think people who believe that mass produced plastic toys are a gateway to the netherworld (ouija boards) are retarded as fuck for example

 

[SouthernBitchBob]

So the supernatural works on Roger Rabbit rules?

EDDIE: "You mean you could've done that at any time?
ROGER: "Not at any time, only when its funny."

"Someone managed a spell again!"
"God damn it. Flip the process backward or something. Now when she shows her friends nothing will happen! 'Figured out how it works', I'll show you little..."

 

[skykiii]

"Someone managed a spell again!"
"God damn it. Flip the process backward or something. Now when she shows her friends nothing will happen! 'Figured out how it works', I'll show you little..."

Sad thing is this would actually make a lot of sense.

Minor PL but I used to be into spellcasting and stuff and I did, in fact, have instances where a thing worked.... once. But then I just got failure if I ever tried it again.

 

[SouthernBitchBob]

Sad thing is this would actually make a lot of sense.

Minor PL but I used to be into spellcasting and stuff and I did, in fact, have instances where a thing worked.... once. But then I just got failure if I ever tried it again.

Exactly. I think it would be incredibly funny if that were a fundamental property: actively evading understanding. The moment you "figured out how it works", it changes how it works to spite you. Scientific method? Pah! Repeatability? No way.

 

[skykiii]

Exactly. I think it would be incredibly funny if that were a fundamental property: actively evading understanding. The moment you "figured out how it works", it changes how it works to spite you. Scientific method? Pah! Repeatability? No way.

This would also explain why classical depictions of sorcerers and shit tend to describe them as people who like, commune with spirits and such. I recall a story (I think from either Water Margin or Three kingdoms) where someone got a new lease on life by asking a taoist friend to talk to the gods. The Taoist gave instructions saying to just be at a certain hill on a certain day, because somehow he knew the relevant gods would be playing Go in that place at that exact time.

It also gives me ideas about those things you see in fantasy novels where there's just this one crystal or something that would make you really powerful (the crests in Demon's Crest, the Kaiburr Crystal in that one Star Wars novel, etc.)... maybe the deal isn't so much they give you a straight stat boost but just actually make it so you can literally cast magic on demand, without having to jump through all these hoops.

 

[SouthernBitchBob]

This would also explain why classical depictions of sorcerers and shit tend to describe them as people who like, commune with spirits and such. I recall a story (I think from either Water Margin or Three kingdoms) where someone got a new lease on life by asking a taoist friend to talk to the gods. The Taoist gave instructions saying to just be at a certain hill on a certain day, because somehow he knew the relevant gods would be playing Go in that place at that exact time.

It also gives me ideas about those things you see in fantasy novels where there's just this one crystal or something that would make you really powerful (the crests in Demon's Crest, the Kaiburr Crystal in that one Star Wars novel, etc.)... maybe the deal isn't so much they give you a straight stat boost but just actually make it so you can literally cast magic on demand, without having to jump through all these hoops.

I'm of course careful about applying the Rule of Funny to real life, as leaning too hard on it ends poorly. But yes, I also like the wellspring of ideas that come from the particular view of how the supernatural works

 

[TomServo]

I've seen some weird stuff over the years but nothing that couldn't be explained by drugs, alcohol or exhaustion. I'm open to the idea of the "supernatural" but I have yet to see concrete evidence.

 

[Anonitolia]

>Supernatural monster shit like Sasquatch, Werewolves, etc
absolutely not lol. These make for great stories and inspiration for countless fictional creatures, but I refuse to believe these actually exist or ever did. Usually they're either hallucination, an undiscovered animal (or a sickly/abnormal existing one), or total bullshit spun by storytellers to keep people afraid/paying to go somewhere.
>Supernatural phenomena like out-of-body experiences, genuinely inexplicable combustion, other weird shit
I'm a lot more kind to this kind of stuff because I do actually believe there's some "other" out there who's fucking with us. I'm not sure it's a singular 'god', per-se, nor is it something that's 'in all of us' or whatever. I think it might be some sort of strange manifestation, unexplainable in human terms, that causes a bunch of this stuff that we just don't understand and never might. I call it God (because what else can it be described as) but I highly highly doubt it's anything nearly as simple as the Christian definition nor as communicative or contained as the Jewish one.
Whatever it is, though, it's got a good sense of humor. I'd invite it over for dinner if I could.

As for ayylmaos, I'm pretty sure they're out there. I don't like thinking about it much, because if you think about aliens in any terms for even a little bit too long it becomes very morbid very fast, but I refuse to be so cynical as to write off the entire existing universe for dead simply because we can't see all of it. It's far more likely that we're just the most advanced creatures in our galaxy and that's warping our perceptions greatly (as is our standard-issue human egos).

 

[Otterly]

The thing is, we haven't seen anything like that. There are no reliable records to indicate that anything like this has ever happened on Earth. That's why if there is anything "supernatural" if it exists must be so far away from Earth that we haven't seen it.

Pl, but… I have, more than once had something happen to me that was basically me suddenly getting this very intense feeling that a specific and quite odd thing would happen. It sort of played out on my head. A bit like deja vu, but longer. The thing then happened about ninety seconds later.
The thing wasn’t anything that I could have been triggered into thinking about by something like a song on the radio connecting it in my head etc. nor was it something that was ‘going to happen anyway’. It was peculiar and unique and then it happened. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years and I can’t figure it out still. Very strange experience. I’ve run through every single thing that could have triggered such a thought and come up blank. It happened and this there is an explanation somewhere but I can’t see what it was
I personally think we know almost nothing about the universe or the way our perceptions of it work, nor do we understand consciousness. We don’t understand our perception of time as conscious beings.
If I had a pound for every time I’ve called my mum or vice Versa and she will laugh and say I was literally ringing you, I’d have a lot of pounds.
There’s a book by roger Penrose that talks about the insides of micro tubules being a mechanism for interacting with the wave function. Perhaps we are entangled in ways we don’t really understand? I’m not one for believing in Nessie or ghosts but I do think there’s a lot more than we understand about how our minds interact with the world. I used to be a very reductionist scientist but I dunno - the older I get the more things you see that break down the tendency to see things so simply, that’s how I can explain it

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Not only believe in it, I'm almost sure all the shit going down today is caused, at least in part, by supernatural ritualistic activity

In any case this new millennium has so far been a disturbing one for sure, starting with the Y2K scare and especially 9/11.