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 do not currently believe in any supernatural anything, for the exact same reasons I do not believe in gods.
It’s entirely possible for there to be supernatural stuff, but the time to believe it is when it is demonstrated.
One point that I don’t see raised a lot is that otherwise perfectly mentally healthy people can experience hallucinations. They may even find them comforting, and some even then do not believe the visions are real. I have a suspicion that a lot of ghost sightings, etc, might be such hallucinations. But I can’t demonstrate that, and I’m honestly not sure how we could, unless we can find a way to trigger such hallucinations on purpose.
Don’t forget carbon monoxide poisoning most likely contributed significantly to ghost stories before the risks of indoor fires for heat were known.
Most ghost sightings happen in low lighting when our brains are trying to fill the gaps of limited information. Evolution taught meat to think and it doesn’t do the best job at times.
Well it is better (for survival) to imagine a predator than to imagine an ice cream truck.
I suppose I’m more thinking about examples like one in this comment section where they see a ghost sober in the middle of the day.
Agreed. I had a ghost encounter in 2019, as an atheist with no supernatural beliefs since 2007. I knew in the moment that it was a hallucination, but accepted it as an emotional release for what it seemed to be at the time.