Are we supposed to believe we are ghosts?

[T.G.G. Moogly]

That seems to be the central tenet of religions like christianity. We're told we have an immortal soul, that we're essentially some kind of ghost, that the body is just cover for that immortal ghost. The RCC takes the stupidity a bit further and tells us that our bodies are going to magically come back to life too at some magical time in the future. But we're just really a ghost that has a body too, that's the main idea. When our body dies the magic ghost flies away to see the big chief ghost in the sky. It's all about ghosts.

The last time the Church of Magic Underwear was at the door they really hammered on how I should be worried about my ghost. They were just a couple young dumb kids out collecting stupid points but I wish I'd thought more about the ghost idea at the time. I could have had a lot more fun with them.

I think I'll keep this in mind for the next religious salesmen that come my way. It will make the conversation much more interesting.

 

[steve_bank]

I believe Buddhists say something similar. The goal is over the course of multiple human lives learn to transcend the phyhsical when you die and stay in a spirit state.

One of the goals of yogic practce is to stay aware as you die and enter the spirt realm. If you are not capable enough and have enough good karma you lose consciousness and fall back into another incarnation and repeat the cyle. The end stae is not called heaven like Chisrtians. I don't know if the ortriginal teachings were meant as psychological metaphor or it was meant as truh.

Tibetans have the Bardo Thodol or the Book Of The Dead. It describes in detail the after death states and what you experience. It is probbaly online. It is read into the ear of one who is dyeing.

bardo theol - Google Search

he Bardo Thodol (Tibetan: བར་དོ་ཐོས་གྲོལ, Wylie: bar do thos grol, "Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State"), commonly known in the West as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a terma text from a larger corpus of teachings, the Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones,[1][note 1] revealed by Karma Lingpa (1326–1386). It is the best-known work of Nyingma literature.[3] In 1927 the text was one of the first examples of both Tibetan and Vajrayana literature to be translated into a European language and arguably continues to this day to be the best known.[4][5]

The Tibetan text describes, and is intended to guide one through, the experiences that the consciousness has after death, in the bardo, the interval between death and the next rebirth. The text also includes chapters on the signs of death and rituals to undertake when death is closing in or has taken place. The text can be used as either an advanced practice for trained meditators or to support the uninitiated during the death experience.

 

[Politesse]

So your idea is that if you say the same thing, but with a funnier term in place of the usual one, it will be less convincing?

 

[bilby]

Ahh, souls. Are souls our souls? Arseholes.

'Ghosts' isn't funnier. Both are ludicrous descriptions of something that exists only as a cognitive error.

 

[Politesse]

Ahh, souls. Are souls our souls? Arseholes.

'Ghosts' isn't funnier. Both are ludicrous descriptions of something that exists only as a cognitive error.

What's the point of the renaming, then? The OP has presented it as though it were some sort of clever argument to baffle evangelists with.

 

[abaddon]

That there's both spirit (or ghost if you prefer) and matter is extremely intuitive and FAR more obvious-seeming than either "there's nothing but bodies" or "there's nothing but spirit". When we take experience as presented... before applying a buttload of philosophical and scientific abstraction to it... the fact is that subjective experiencing doesn't feel material at all. Our everyday experience (before trying to negate the experience with philosophy) is as a kind of immaterial entity inside the head looking out through our eyes at a material world "out there".

So, no, you're not "supposed to believe we are ghosts". You just automatically feel like one, as a human being, until you've applied abstract thought and convinced yourself that the experience isn't correct.

 

[bilby]

That there's both spirit (or ghost if you prefer) and matter is extremely intuitive and FAR more obvious-seeming than either "there's nothing but bodies" or "there's nothing but spirit". When we take experience as presented... before applying a buttload of philosophical and scientific abstraction to it... the fact is that subjective experiencing doesn't feel material at all. Our everyday experience (before trying to negate the experience with philosophy) is as a kind of immaterial entity inside the head looking out through our eyes at a material world "out there".

So, no, you're not "supposed to believe we are ghosts". You just automatically feel like one, as a human being, until you've applied abstract thought and convinced yourself that the experience isn't correct.

Exactly. It's obvious. The same way that it's obvious that the world is flat, that nature abhors a vacuum, and that an object in motion will come to rest unless acted upon by an external force.

The world is full of obvious things.

 

[steve_bank]

I don't think being in haven or hell means you are a ghost.

Where did spirit become ghost?

Holy Spirit in Christianity - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

For the majority of Christian denominations, the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, is believed to be the third person of the Trinity,[1] a Triune God manifested as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, each entity itself being God.[2][3][4] Nontrinitarian Christians, who reject the doctrine of the Trinity, differ significantly from mainstream Christianity in their beliefs about the Holy Spirit. In Christian theology, pneumatology is the study of the Holy Spirit. Due to Christianity's historical relationship with Judaism, theologians often identify the Holy Spirit with the concept of the Ruach Hakodesh in Jewish scripture, on the theory that Jesus (who was Jewish) was expanding upon these Jewish concepts. Similar names, and ideas, include the Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God), Ruach YHWH (Spirit of Yahweh), and the Ruach Hakodesh (Holy Spirit).[5][6] In the New Testament it is identified with the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete and the Holy Spirit.[7][8][9]

The New Testament details a close relationship between the Holy Spirit and Jesus during his earthly life and ministry.[10] The Gospels of Matthew and Luke and the Nicene Creed state that Jesus was "conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary".[11] The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove during his baptism, and in his Farewell Discourse after the Last Supper Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to his disciples after his departure.[12][13]

The Holy Spirit is referred to as "the Lord, the Giver of Life" in the Nicene Creed, which summarises several key beliefs held by many Christian denominations. The participation of the Holy Spirit in the tripartite nature of conversion is apparent in Jesus' final post-resurrection instruction to his disciples at the end of the Gospel of Matthew,[14] "Make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."[15] Since the first century, Christians have also called upon God with the trinitarian formula "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" in prayer, absolution and benediction.[16][17] In the book of the Acts of the Apostles the arrival of the Holy Spirit happens fifty days after the resurrection of the Christ, and is celebrated in Christendom with the feast of Pentecost.[18]

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Ahh, souls. Are souls our souls? Arseholes.

'Ghosts' isn't funnier. Both are ludicrous descriptions of something that exists only as a cognitive error.

What's the point of the renaming, then? The OP has presented it as though it were some sort of clever argument to baffle evangelists with.

Evangelists don't need any help being baffled. I'm just reducing all their religious pseudo-knowledge to what it is in everyday parlance. Without special words for things that are clearly not real - like ghosts - religions like christianity are hollow. A good argument can be made that religions like christianity aren't anything but language.

 

[skepticalbip]

I don't think being in haven or hell means you are a ghost.

Where did spirit become ghost?

The RCC equates the two words, spirit and ghost. The godhead is called the "holy ghost" and/or the "holy spirit". I guess it depends on the priest's mood at the time. The adjective "holy" is apparently added to distinguish the head of the afterlife feudal system imagined by Christians from the peon spirits or ghosts who are allowed in.

 

[skepticalbip]

...

 

[Politesse]

I'm just reducing all their religious pseudo-knowledge to what it is in everyday parlance.

Why?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I'm just reducing all their religious pseudo-knowledge to what it is in everyday parlance.

Why?

Why not?

 

[Politesse]

I'm just reducing all their religious pseudo-knowledge to what it is in everyday parlance.

Why?

Why not?

 

[Jarhyn]

Ok so if you want the perspective on this discussion of an esoteric materialist...

Ghosts and souls are NOT the same thing.

I'm going to define "soul" as "the sum total of information necessary to reproduce a person's momentary thought process across all neural infrastructure in a secondary instance".

There are other contexts of "soul" that are more in terms of "sale of soul" but I'm going with the one I gave, the "graph identity soul" in discussion of the OP.

If we are to momentarily accept the entirely unfounded notion that there is a host universe and this is a simulation, which would be the only feasible way for a "creator god" or "heaven" to exist at all, the instantiation you would get in "heaven" would be as a duplication of this "graph identity soul".

This is not what I would describe as a ghost.

Ghosts, if they are to be believed as existing at all, I expect can only exist as exactly the sum total of memories, observations, conceptions and ideations surrounding the life or supposed life of a person as implemented by living human minds.

We are haunted by nothing more than our memories of a person, and the associations we make between those pieces of their stories that they left behind as a part of us, not as spectres of physical form but as entities projected of our own neural architecture trying to emulate the experience of the person we miss or fear or think about in that place.

Again, I don't think it's wise to discount the reality of intrusive neural processes upon one's experience. It is better to medicate and/or dissipate such things. To dissipate would be to recognize it's nature as "a hallucination provoked by uncontrolled or uncontrollable neural process interacting with the immediate stimulus inputs of the conscious mind" and systematically stop feeding attention and consent and mental resources towards the continued intrusion.

Similar events are, I suspect, in play for any such "supernatural entity" classification... though ghosts are specifically the effect with respect to those presumed deceased.

Which means that while it is a hallucination, it is a very, formulaic, common kind of hallucination that is generated specifically by the absence of a person.

This is not their "graph identity soul" but a kind of remembrance held by livings, not some actual entity that exist even if there was nobody left to haunt.

This is clearly not the person but rather a shadow of them created by the holes they leave behind. The "soul" as in the "graph identity soul" would be as much a recipe for throwing "a complete person" into a system of some kind.

 

[steve_bank]

If we are to momentarily accept the entirely unfounded notion that there is a host universe and this is a simulation, which would be the only feasible way for a "creator god" or "heaven" to exist at all, the instantiation you would get in "heaven" would be as a duplication of this "graph identity soul".

Not a ghost of a chance.

 

[Jarhyn]

If we are to momentarily accept the entirely unfounded notion that there is a host universe and this is a simulation, which would be the only feasible way for a "creator god" or "heaven" to exist at all, the instantiation you would get in "heaven" would be as a duplication of this "graph identity soul".

Not a ghost of a chance.

Well, we have to accept it in the hypothetical for the question of the OP to make any sense at all.

It's not a declaration that such is necessary or true, merely as a true statement of "if this, then that"

 

[steve_bank]

The OP is clear to me. It is not a hypothetical question. It is a question of the magical aspect in religion. Mormons where magic underwear thout to some kind og magical protection.

t's not a declaration that such is necessary or true, merely as a true statement of "if this, then that"

Jive.

 

[rousseau]

That there's both spirit (or ghost if you prefer) and matter is extremely intuitive and FAR more obvious-seeming than either "there's nothing but bodies" or "there's nothing but spirit". When we take experience as presented... before applying a buttload of philosophical and scientific abstraction to it... the fact is that subjective experiencing doesn't feel material at all. Our everyday experience (before trying to negate the experience with philosophy) is as a kind of immaterial entity inside the head looking out through our eyes at a material world "out there".

So, no, you're not "supposed to believe we are ghosts". You just automatically feel like one, as a human being, until you've applied abstract thought and convinced yourself that the experience isn't correct.

Which raises the (great) question: why does poetry, art, music and the like emerge in almost every culture? If we're just a conglomeration of atoms without free-will, why don't even Atheists act this way?

 

[Hermit]

That there's both spirit (or ghost if you prefer) and matter is extremely intuitive and FAR more obvious-seeming than either "there's nothing but bodies" or "there's nothing but spirit". When we take experience as presented... before applying a buttload of philosophical and scientific abstraction to it... the fact is that subjective experiencing doesn't feel material at all. Our everyday experience (before trying to negate the experience with philosophy) is as a kind of immaterial entity inside the head looking out through our eyes at a material world "out there".

So, no, you're not "supposed to believe we are ghosts". You just automatically feel like one, as a human being, until you've applied abstract thought and convinced yourself that the experience isn't correct.

Which raises the (great) question: why does poetry, art, music and the like emerge in almost every culture? If we're just a conglomeration of atoms without free-will, why don't even Atheists act this way?

The answer is emergence. Emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviours which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. The process requires no pre-existing immaterial components.