Hallucinations are commonplace.
Optical illusions are commonplace.
Human brains are prone to "see" faces, and people, and animals, when in fact there is no face, person or animal present.
If two people (or a thousand) report a ghost, hallucinations are a possible explanation; Optical illusion is a more likely explanation; And
pareidolia is an even more likely explanation still.
Frustrated with re-editing mistakes on a tiny small screen. I left some details out. The couple who experienced the encounter were so intrigued they mentioned it to the hotel manager in which he told them: other people have seen the same thing before.
In the absence of high quality and convincing evidence that a given report is not one of these three things, it might be reasonable to speculate about ghosts, but at best this is wild speculation.
Wild speculation is fun, but it's not rational, reasonable, or justifiable.
The appearance of the woman according to this gentleman, being a strong atheist against religion, often repeating the same "cruel god" and "magic" mantra lines as atheist do here, was quite sure of his mental analysis.
Life after death is less plausible than perpetual motion machines, or rocks that fall upwards. If ghosts are your go-to explanation for witness reports of people who are visible, but aren't really there, then you are a gullible fool.
Which puts you in good company, as very few (if any) humans are not gullible fools.
I didn't say this man or I believed the appearance of the woman was a '
wandering spirit'. Like
the conventional, conceptual view we see in movies where the ghost
is aware of you, interacting with humans, which is chillingly exciting in horror films etc..
The atheist gentleman saw the
image of a woman which was '
detailed and clear enough' that he was able to describe what she was wearing (although I can't remember now exactly what he described the ghost seemed to wear).
As I say, we believed there was a natural/scientific explanation. Even though by the atheists own description and wording... he said he saw a ghost.
You appear to be labouring under the misapprehension that a repetition of the anecdote, with added detail, makes it more interesting, or a better example of something inexplicable.
Misapprehension & repetition? Hearing about 'more than one' person claiming to see a ghost in the same hotel
makes it more interesting indeed. People who are curious enough to look into the details, even merely just to
dispell the notion are interested. It ain't for you, fair enough, but for those who are inquisitive about such claims, it's quite a normal and natural thing.
We do not, and cannot, know what this person experienced; But no matter how convinced he was that what he saw was a ghost, it remains reasonable to assume that he was mistaken, and unreasonable to assume that he was not.At this point, I am prepared to entertain as plausible the claim that there was a man, who was an atheist, who claimed to have seen a ghost. Despite the only evidence being a single anecdote from a generally unreliable source, these things are sufficiently banal as to be unremarkable.
Thank you for at least being prepared to entertain the plausibility that someone did make that claim.
That's all I was doing myself. Entertaining the idea!
To entertain the idea that this hypothetical and unnamed person actually did see a ghost, or to conclude from your anecdote that ghosts exist would be ridiculous.
It doesn't matter if the person is unnamed. As I said previously, there is a well-known member on the forum, whom you know quite well, who says he has also seen a similar event (He's not been around for a while, I hope he's well).
The main point I
was underlining initially was that...
..Atheists have claimed to have seen ghosts!
That you clearly find this poor evidence for an extraordinary claim to be compelling, and that you expect it to also convince others, speaks poorly of human reasoning abilities.
It is precisely to avoid this kind of sloppy and unreliable thinking that the scientific method was devised.
As above:
It is you who seems to be under some misapprehension; as if I was 'promoting" the belief of
ghosts (in terms as conceptually understood by common convention).
Whether the evidence is poor or not, is irrelevant to
my position and the bit that's ignored. That bit is the idea that it was atheists who made those claims,seeing ghosts!
