Lets take a little break from politics and have us a real atheist conversation.
Personally, I’m open to the idea of the existence of supernatural phenomena, and I believe mainstream religions are actually complicated incomplete stories full of misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and half-truths.
Basically, I think that these stories are not as simple and straightforward as they seem to be to religious people. I feel like there is a lot more to them. Concluding that all these stories are just made up or came out of nowhere is kind of hard for me.
I think there may be some scientific explanation for a variety of things that are attributed to the supernatural; and not necessarily just mundane things like knocks and creaks in your house, paradolia causing images of faces in image noise and shit like that. For example, with how places that have unusual geomagnetic activity tend to also have higher than average ghost sightings, I think some people may just be extra sensitive to magnetic fields which causes them to hallucinate.
So many myths and monsters are basically caused by misunderstandings, not seeing something clearly enough to identify it, or even exaggerating a story that’s been passed down verbally over a long time. Not to mention things caused by mental illness in times before advanced medicine and psychology. Many alien abduction stories and succubus sightings are almost certainly the result of hallucinations induced by sleep paralysis.
I have a “theory” that in these places where there are higher than normal “ghost sightings” and “encounters” that the spaces between our universe (think of the string theory of the universes) and another are even closer than “normal”, and that these “sightings” and “encounters” are a part of that crossover, and we just don’t currently have a way to measure it or interact in a meaningful way.
I also don’t really understand string theory all that well, I mostly just have a half-baked idea of what it is and how it works, so be gentle, please!
I think the vast majority of people who are even aware of the term “string theory” only have a half-baked idea of what it is. You’re in good company!
I know that some physicists think that the force of gravity is inexplicably weak, and that gravity isn’t as powerful as it “should” be. There’s a theory out there (or maybe it’s part of a larger theory, I don’t remember) that what we perceive as gravity is just “leaking” from another dimension. That dovetails nicely with your own perspective.
Lets have a fun conversation.
What is a hallucination?
A phantom sense of something that isn’t actually there. Be it feeling a touch, seeing something, hearing something, smelling something, etc. As real as it may seem to the brain experiencing it, it’s entirely a product of that brain and can be caused by all sorts of things from illness and physical trauma to chemicals, lack of sleep, or even simply being deprived of stimulation.
I’m nit the person you asked, but is no “fun” if you intend to be educated by each of your interlocutors without even attempting to investigate anything yourself. It’s lazy and disrespectful, and reeks of sealioning.