Ronald Brak --

I was going to send you this in a private message, but my insult and my stupidity were very public so I think it only fair that my apology be equally so. On rereading your post I think that this morning I misinterpreted your intent... I am under a lot of deadline pressure for a release of our product and I have not had a lot of sleep.

There seems to be a lot of anger over the issue being discussed on this thread and it has surprised me. I apologize deeply for not taking a deep breath before posting my reply. I have asked others to practice this type of restraint in the past... I should try the same... I should know better and I expect better of myself...

Again... I am sorry...

No problem. I am very dense sometimes and frequently thoughtless. Let's forget all about it.

Perhaps you are misinterpreting the intent of some posts; or perhaps some of us are not communicating our intent as clearly as we should. I meant no disrespect and am certainly not angry about the issue. If I offended you, I apologize. I was just presenting some thoughts...



Oh, this is not what I'm suggesting at all. I live in the US and believe very strongly in the freedoms that we are granted in this country. I would never support creating a law that restricted any kind of freedom that does not actively hurt anyone else. Nor am I implying that anyone should have limitations, legally or socially, on what thoughts or beliefs they have as long as they are not a danger to others.

I noticed that you said this speaker was just coming in to tell some ghost stories and such. It seems that we read the intent of this speaker differently and that may be the source of our disagreement. If this is all the speaker is planning to do than I don't think there is a problem. Even if he wishes to show his evidence, as long as he does so reasonably, or admits that his conclusions are a matter of faith, that's not a problem either.

I think the problem many, including me, have is that we read the OP as though this presenter would use bad data to jump to conclusions and tell students that things were unequivocally real. While he is welcome to do this, I think it important that his methods be challenged if they are not scientifically valid. That was my only real point. Even well educated people are rarely experts outside their field and can believe some very unscientific things.

I would take this opportunity to point out that science does not preclude the possibility of ghosts, or any other religious beliefs. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The problem is only when one implies they have proof of such when they do not.

I agree that emotions and beliefs are an important part of what we are. However, I see the purpose of emotion only to set an end point, or goal. The process of reaching that goal within the confines of our ethic system is purely the place of science and logic. If pork rinds are yummy to you (blech), and you have decided that the enjoyment is worth any possible negative health effects of having them, then by all means enjoy.

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Nicholas Bostaph
http://NicholasBostaph.com
http://NightscapeCreations.com
http://FantasyMasterOnline.com

Wow, I hadn't anticipated this much of a reaction to this topic. My personal view is that this person is touting something that is (to me, at least) obviously untrue, and while yes, he should be allowed to express his beliefs, a college campus is clearly not the place. Just like although I am not a christian, I believe that a chuch would be an inappropriate place to advocate atheism. And yes, he is free to "inform" people to his opinions, but I believe that if he has a question and answer session at the end of his presentation, I should likewise be able to do a little bit of informing to the audience myself.

Interestingly, about a year ago we had a mentalist come and do a perfomance for us during an off campus event. He did alot of cool magic tricks and some spoon and fork bending. He did however, announce several times throughout the show that what he did was merely illusion and require no actual psychic or telekinetic powers. Of course, that didn't stop a handful of girls sitting next to me from whispering "That's the Devil's work!" to each other.

The point is that people can believe what they want, but I think that they should know that there is another explanation. I realize that this must sound like a creationist arguement, but if I can make people aware of both sides of the debate, they can at least make up their own minds.

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"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

-Calvin

I understand that you disagree with this because you don't think a college should support the use of bad data to jump to unscientific conclusions. However, you will find that in many spiritual paths there many individuals, Buddhists like myself, Christians, Jews, Muslims, who follow their paths because they believe the evidence supports their path. In this way, faith is not something that an individual on a spiritual path has, but rather a scientific observation concerning their beliefs.

Personally I am a Buddhist and a mystic... this comes from a number of experiences and observations that are personal to me. As a Buddhist I am certain of these experiences... as an Engineer I am aware that I do not have evidence or logic that will stand up to scientific scrutiny. I do present my experiences and beliefs as scientific evidence, and yet my beliefs are as real to me as any other aspect of my life.

Where I think that I have a difference with many who post on this thread is that, while I think science is a fine tool for the examination of the world around us, I and others do not wish to live our lives as exercises in scientific logic. We have no wish to tell others how to live, but we would wish for room to be made for all.

Science is a rigorous master that allows little room for fantasy and imagination... for a spiritual life that does not revolve around evidence and proof. It trains the mind along lines of rigorous, logical discipline. It is an extremely valuable tool and, as I have said, I would not wish for the tools that enhance my life, from antibiotics to computers and all that lies between, to be designed and built without aid of such rigorous discipline.

I do not want ghosts, religion, spiritualism, and many other things taught in school... In this case, however, this individual is going to come to an institution of higher education and present a short seminar on ghosts... I see no harm in a group of such students listening to what this individual has to say... Let the students listen... wonder... dream... then they can return to their text books and logical rigor.

If it should sway a few... there are those who devote their lives to religion, spiritualism, and other unscientific pursuits. This is the way of the world and would find life much impoverish if we did not let these people express themselves. I would go one step further and say that there is often, not always... but often, very little scientific thought in art, music, or fictional literature. These are all pursued in colleges and universities. How does one write a fictional ghost story if one is tethered to logic... how does one describe the longing of lost love if one is tethered to logic... how does move the heart in any art form is one is tethered to logic...

I see things in life that some posters here would laugh at as being completely unscientific... I would be presented with more mundane explanations and Occam's raisor would be used to show that the mundane explanation was more likely. I do not dispute the scientific soundness of this... but I do not accept it. As long as I understand the importance of science and logical rigor in my engineering field, what is the harm of exploring that which is not scientific in my personal life...

Must every individual apply scientific reasoning to each and every aspect of their lives??

Must our institutions of higher education sponsor only those presentations that pass the rigors of scientific scrutiny??

Personally I would not wish to live in such a sterile society.

And I ask if we have reached a point in our society where every statement that is not or cannot be supported by a a significant amount of scientific evidence must be presented with a caveat that alternative explanations exist?? Since when does rationalism have to be forced down the throast of people even in an academic environment.

I am not suggesting that we teach religion in colleges, I am suggesting that rational does not need to be forced on an academic institution as a sort of political correctness. There is a great deal about the human animal that is not rational...how does one study and understand this animal and its relationship to its environment if one does not take this irrational-ism into account. gods people... we are not discussing a establishing a curriculum in metaphysics here... we are not even discussing teaching a semester course in basic wicca... we are talking about presentation about ghosts...

When I was a young boy, my father was a professor at Purdue University. He took me to a magic show at the Hall of Music on campus. The gentleman insisted that he could perform magic, and then proceeded to dazzle the audience with his magic. I am now a PhD in computer science with a very respectible resume. I have a personal life that is not based on scientific discipline, but a professional life that has little patience for lapses in logic and rigerous analysis...

To me there is room for both... for others there is not.... let all of us live together in peace... if you do not wish to believe in magic for a while, stick to the books... but some of us do not see an issue with a magic show that is presented as real even in an academic setting... it makes life a bit more sweet.

Sorry, Lurker. I'm with the others on this one. I'm not real big on academic funding being spent on non-student-produced entertainment in any case (there's almost certainly other places that need the funding more), but this one is just flat out a bad idea. The man is a charlatan. Just because people believe in an afterlife (I myself am unsure what I believe), it doesn't mean that college funding should be spent on someone talking about one.

Besides, in this case, it's not that it isn't supported by scientific evidence, it's that it's unsupportable by objective evidence. So-called "ghost hunters" interpret things with completely rational causes as "proof" of ghosts without bothering to look at the rational.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Academic funding is another issue. This is almost certainly funding that is part of the student activities budget supported by student activities fees. We are also talking about such a small amount of money that cheaper toilet paper in the bathrooms on campus would probably free up more funding than cutting the whole student activities budget.

I really hate this political correctness that seems to creeps into these activities these days. I saw Emmanuel, The Joys of a Woman, Deep Throat, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as part of a file cinema series at Purdue when I was a freshman. I really don't see that letting this individual come and talk in going to have a "corrupting effect" any more than the movies that were presented when I was a freshman.


And this is just the ugly intellectual tyranny that I think has no place on campus. Not all intellectual pursuits are as tethered to "objective, scientific" evidence as the sciences. There is great literature and poetry, art, schools of diviniy that thrive on fantasy, imagination and illusion.

As I have said in previous posts... science as a tool is a wonderful thing, but some of us see it as a very sterile way to live our life. We do not ask others to live this way, but see no harm in it as a personal choice. I see no harm in living in a world where ghosts and magic live for an afternoon for a student who working hard over a long semester.

I think this gives a false support to such issues. As I have said the Purdue Activities Committee supported a magic act, presented as real, when I was a child. Purdue's reputation seems to have survived and I doubt that any of us who saw it sustained damage. Of course it was presented as real... that was the fun of it. we wanted to spend an afternoon deluded into thinking that elephants could disappear... if the presentation is on ghosts... I want to believe for a few hours... just as I believed Fantasia and Cinderella when I first saw they when I was a little boy... The boy grew up and realized that they were not real, but even when I saw the movie Everafter, for a couple of hours... the story was as real to me as the bug I am now chasing in my software...

I think it is a find way to live life... I do not ask others to live this way... I ask that we not ban those who would make their living deceiving us for a few hours...

It's a difference of intent. If it's intended to be entertaining, I hold it to different standards than I do things claimed to be factual.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

You're confusing "not a science discipline" with "mystical". I don't deny the reality of my emotions, nor do I deny the reality of the effect music has on my brain. While neither psychology nor music are science disciplines there are plenty of us who believe that these, and everything else, must ultimately have a naturalistic explanation. Ghosts don't.

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There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand ternary, those who don't, and those waiting for a bus.
If logic doesn't work, then surely it does.

Ask him if when he/they see a ghost does Schrodinger's probability wave collapse ?
Is that ‘cat’ dead or alive.....

Vernon Alabama is Dunwich. I can tell you a few tales about that place. My late Uncle swore he was awakened by his dog--to see his mom on the road flying back and forth. Yikes!

Will be end of civilization!!

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So descredo no incrivel

Beauty I’d always missed
With these eyes before,
Just what the truth is
I can’t say anymore.

-- Moody Blues

I don't mind being "deceived" by fiction...fact is I enjoy it...

But when fiction is presented "as if" it were fact, then it is not "intellectual tyranny" to point that out.

Are there collegiate fields whose intellectual pursuits are improved by lack of critical thinking skills?

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Well, the presentaion is going to be on the 16th, so any more really good questions would be much appreceated.

Since I often have access to the projectionists booth in the Theatre where this is being held, I did consider making the lights flicker and die while playing some eery sounds on the sound system. Maybe a, "Woo-o-o-o-o! John Zaffis! You have torrmented the spirit realm for too long! Be gone with your pseudo-scientific giberish being passed off as fact! Be gone, we say! BE GONE!".
Or better yet, "John Zaffis! This night you will be visited by three ghosts..."

I decided that this might be taking it to far, plus I don't exactly need to get kicked out for getting caught fiddling with the equipment.

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"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

-Calvin