Quote: "Quote: "You need to view this from an agnositc's point of view, not from an atheist's point of view."
Agnosticism is a form of atheism, technically.
"
I've seen this argument. 'Agnostic' literally means 'without knowledge', gnostic is 'with knowledge' atheism means 'non-belief in the existence of deities' and theism means 'belief in one or many deities'.
Agnostic is generally meant as a modifier (though we use it on its own), so "agnostic atheist" doesn't believe in the existence of any deities, but doesn't claim to 'know' that none exist. An "agnostic theist" is of course somebody who believes in a deity (or deities) but doesn't claim to 'know' that one (or many) exist.
Can you 'half believe' something? Can you believe 'in the middle'? But what's in the middle of "belief" and "non-belief"? Isn't belief just binary? If you're half-breathing you're still breathing (to use another verb to illustrate what I mean). You either believe Ghosts (as the topic is on ghosts and not deities, even though terms associated have been used) exist or don't believe the exist. Now, you may not
know whether they do or don't, but you'd still be able to take a stance of whether you do believe or not, the exception being would be if you don't know what you believe and I suppose then you could adopt 'agnostic'. Though people who don't care and feel its irrelevent may adopt the term 'ignostic'
You can still try to take an open minded and neutral (ish) stance if you believe (or don't believe) in ghosts.
For example:
I don't believe in the existence of ghosts, but I wouldn't go far as to claim they DON'T exist. It's very difficult to prove that something doesn't exist anyway...and yes, even Unicorns, the day somebody discovers either a skeleton of a horse-like creature with a horn or even a living one there's going to be some people in the world feeling very silly.
Quote: "But the difference is that a lot more than 1 person have reported some kind of "ghost" sighting, where you are the only one reporting an astronaut vomiting diamonds, which makes it less and less plausible for most people."
Yes, I know some very honest and lucid people who claim the exact same thing (ghosts, not diamond vomiting astronauts) but I am still incredibly skeptical, which some would consider weird because when I was a kid I thought I saw a ghost, I still have the memory and people recall me saying the next day that I saw one. And of course, eye witnesses aren't necessarily reliable - 70 people could see a strange airship flying in the sky and claim to have seen an alien spaceship...one video I saw was just an aeroplane, but the sun was reflecting off of its vapor trails causing a weird looking effect. So it's not necessarily what people may interpret it as.
I know that's aliens and not ghosts, but they both have a great number of eye-witness accounts, yet no evidence come to prove the existence of either. So both are unidentified phenomena, but as least 'UFO' has 'unidentified' in its name for when we want to be pedantic.
The problem is, taking what a 'ghost' is and suggesting that what we've seen fits the bill has in no way been accurately measured nor any of these phenomenon been proven to be ghosts. When I say that, I normally get a "well what is it then?" and I say "I don't know" to be faced with a "well there you go then" and just because we don't know doesn't mean just because you can make an answer and then it is the answer. It could be psychological, it could be a memory, it could be gas, it could be a shadow of an alternate dimension merging with our own because there's a rip in the space-time continuum. I think with a number of so-called witnesses that it merits investigation, but it's not proof.
At least this is my take on the topic.
