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Gadgets For the Ghosthunter
Zothecula sent us a sad story about the gadgetry scammers use to take money from people who believe in the pretend: "In a survey conducted by CBS News in 2005, it was found that 48 percent of Americans believed in ghosts. Other surveys have put the number at anywhere from around 20 to over 50 percent. While such figures certainly don't imply that ghosts are real, they do suggest that belief in them is relatively common. When someone does suspect that a ghost is present in their home or business, they will sometimes call in "experts" to ascertain if that is, in fact, the case... and what sort of gear do these ghost hunters use to detect said spirits?"
I mean, duh. How else will you detect ghosts? Also make sure you have your proton pack and trap, to catch them once you find them!
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Ghosthunters don't need gadgets. The only thing they need is the desire and ability to separate idiots from their money.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
about the gadgetry scammers use to take money from people who believe in the pretend:
It's called a "collection plate."
Trolling is a art,
All religious people believe in ghosts.
I don't about that but you touched on an interesting point: why is this a scam? How is this any different than preachers asking for money to help you "soul" so that you don't end up in "damnation"?
They're both make believe.
Why is selling stuff to a ghost hunter "ripping stupid people off"; whereas, selling Bibles, crosses, mats, or whatever to help people get into Heaven not a rip-off?
If folks believe in ghosts and want to buy this stuff for their own brand of spirituality, I don't see any problem.
If we're going to protect people from being taken advantage of, then we need to go after Joel Osteen and that Rick Warren guy for selling hope and ways to get to the man in the sky - and every other preacher who preaches about God and every other myth.
I'll keep fast-forwarding through each episode, just in case they do stumble upon something.
If they do actually stumble upon something real and get real evidence you don't need to wait for it on the show - It will be front-page news on every newspaper and news site in the world.
Wow, love the image of a possible ghost.
Nothing about that says "possible ghost" to me, but "tombstone in background with light on it" -- these people seem to be really reaching.
The few times I've tried to watch any of those ghost hunter shows it always seems like it's dramatized, or a bunch of people sitting around convinced that everything around them is proof of a ghost. "Zomg, the floor creaked".
Hard to say if it's a hoax, or people looking too hard for something, and interpreting everything they see as 'proof'. It's hard not to cynically think that someone off camera who is part of it is scuffing their feet or something.
I remain unconvinced.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Many forms of Buddhism believe that the rebirth of those with especially bad karma leads to existence among the living as a ghost. In spite of some recent Western attempts to proclaim a "Buddhism without beliefs" (little more than an attempt to rewrite the whole religion so that it doesn't make us uncomfortable), the cycle of rebirths is essential across the many expressions of Buddhism.
I think the reason many people either "believe in ghosts" or, at a minimum, lean in that direction (I'm in the latter category) is most people seem to know someone they trust who has seen or experienced something weird. In my case, my sister and several friends have seen apparitions at a rustic old resort we go stay. They have no reason to make up stories. In my case I've never seen anything, but odd stuff happens from time to time in my old house. I'll turn out all the lights before going to bed, then I'll take the dog out for his business and come back to find all the lights turned on again. In the middle of the night, with everyone asleep, I'll hear footsteps in the house and get up to find the house empty. I'll put books away in then in the morning find them lying on the floor. Ghosts? I dunno. I trust the scientific method and they say there are no ghosts. But weird? For sure.
It was discovered that 48% of Americans are also fucking morons.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Buddhism has the concept of ghosts, but you're allowed to treat them as something you don't need to literally believe in.
Of course, reincarnation almost necessitates the existence of ghosts as the energy persists and is still in existence. Of course, the super-natural stuff can be taken as metaphor or as a concession to older superstitions and beliefs.
Oh, that and the fact that Buddhism isn't technically a religion in that there's no creator god and you don't need to believe in anything that doesn't make sense. It's more of a philosophy than a religion. (Though, in some places it still gets viewed like a religion.)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Apparently 48% of Americans would likely throw it over their shoulder.
The problem is Stupidity.... not capitalism, not socialism, not any "ism" just stupidity. Unfortunately, there are enough stupid people out there paired with people wishing to exploit others = our current society. Education represents the only true hope for America, unfortunately, we end up dumbing it down for the common idiot, then the effect is lost. . . Offtopic I know! Flamebait possibly sorry!
What's the point of Mod points over a long weekend?
Here's Penn & Teller's take on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09eBzjxlu1s
Ghost Hunters is just like Monster Hunters -- don't you think if they found concrete proof of the existence of something unusual that news of it would leak out BEFORE they aired the episode???
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If by Western attempts you mean well-known scholars like The Dalai Lama and Thicht Naht Hahn? Or Shunryu Suzuki or Pema Chodron?
Buddha was fairly clear about the fact that it's not intended to be a religion, and that he wasn't some supreme being. He was mortal, and expounded things that mortals should do. The pre-existing gods where Buddhism moved to didn't need to be purged wholesale, and have been incorporated/kept in many places.
Buddhism does not have a requirement in beliefe of a supernatural being, a creator god, or deification the the Buddha. Western Buddhists might differ from Buddhists from Thailand or Sri Lanka, but fundamentally, it hasn't been "rewritten" to appease us. It's fairly malleable to begin with, and if you step away from a specific cultural context, none of that is required for the rest of it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
>>Sweet Zombie Jesus!
Please, please, please learn the difference between Animate Dead (3rd level spell) and Resurrection (7th level spell).
If the word "Ghost" in the article were replaced by "god", the article would still be correct, but it would have never been posted.
If I say "Ghosts aren't real", I get moderated informative. If I post "That particular Ghost you call god isn't real", I get moderated troll.
Irrational, isn't it?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Islam views ghosts and ghost sightings as pre-Islamic superstition
It is a "corrupt belief to think we will become ghosts after death. After death what will happen, will be exactly what is told by Qur'an and Ahadith."
http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/showthread.php?26432-Muslim-view-on-ghosts
However they believe in Jinn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn
I don't really care if people believe in ghosts, but please stop making horrible TV shows about trying to "find" them.
The Dalai Lama is still held to be a rebirth of the boddhisatva Avalokiteshvara. The notion of the boddhisatva, remaining in the cycle of rebirths while assisting people out of it, is pretty superstitious.
The Mahayana scriptures suggest that the Buddha-nature is the supreme being. And although Buddhism inherited the Vedic pantheon, the Avatamsakasutra does have Buddha ascend to Mt Sumeru to display his superiority over them.
The teachings of the Mahayana sutras (and at least a few Theravada texts) assume the existence of supernatural forces. They simply consider these entities to be inferior to the Buddha-nature. This persists even into schools of Buddhism that appeal to the West. The Mahayana sutras continue to be chanted in Zen monasteries.
Because Buddhism and Hinduism includes all life forms, throughout the entire universe, for all time. Their cosmology included billions and billions of worlds, being created and destroyed endlessly. It's not just that God did a malloc() of N life-forms on Earth, and that's the whole thing. It takes into account a vast and (seemingly) limitless universe.
Birth as a human is just the best chance you have of getting out of Samsara because you can be aware of it and try to make changes.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I gather a whole lot of bugs have leads exemplary lives of late so as to be reborn as people?
And, truthfully, a lot of people don't get too bogged down in the literal nature of that. I understand what you're saying, but the Dalai Lama is pretty quick to say "unless you're doing something scholarly, you don't need to focus on that too much".
Yes, it did inherit the Vedic pantheon, because that would have been the background of Siddartha. However, he also says that those being are also stuck in Samsara, and mostly talks about how they'll have the same fate as us, just over a longer period of time. They don't mean "supreme being" in the sense that he is in control of everything, but that it's a "better" state.
Oh, I'm not saying that the sutras aren't used any more, or even that the imagery isn't there. But, a lot of it is aspirational/instructional, and there is room for interpretation if this is literal, or merely intended to not just come out and say "your religion is wrong". And, over the last 2500 years or so, there certainly has been some deification of the Buddha, that's for sure. But he was fairly clear on the fact that he wasn't some divine being. I tend to think of the mysticism as cultural than specific to/required for Buddhism.
Even reading some of the older Buddhist stuff, the supernatural stuff is there to explain to the target audience and is as much parable as it is literal. If you just sort of gloss over that stuff and read what they're actually telling you that you should be doing, there isn't really a requirement that you literally believe in it. It's not incompatible with believing in it, but it's not required either.
It may well be that someone might view Western Buddhists as having "stripped out the religion" ... however, reading the texts and what they're saying, there really isn't an requirement you believe in it. It's just that the language and culture of the people who were expounding it was also rooted in Hinduism and that context.
For me, I don't have any problem being both an atheist and a Buddhist. And, really, if anybody does have a problem ... well, that's their attachment not mine. If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, you apparently believe that, but it doesn't make sense.
IR camera's can detect heat flows but a heat flow that randomly appears lasts for 5 seconds and disappears is unusual.
I just had some beans. Give me an IR camera and I'll show you a randomly appearing heat flow. Might last longer than 5 seconds in some cases.
You might need to open a window when it appears though. Which would cause a - guess what? ANOTHER HEAT FLOW!
Only that one may not have the "aroma" of the ones I produce.
And you know what all those "haunted" places have in common?
Lots of holes (in walls, floors, door frames, ceilings...) and decomposing organic matter (wood, rugs, wallpaper, dead rodents in the walls...).
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
That joke reached its peak when it was spoken and both the teller and audience had the subtlety to notice the difference between light a fire and light afire.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
As a rational person, I appreciated Art Bell's seeming patronization of his callers. His replacement (George Noorey) seems less patronizing and more coddling. Plus, I always dug Bell's voice. It just felt like the kind of voice I was supposed to be listening to in the middle of the night and early morning over the radio when the rest of the world was sleeping.
Plus, I actually befriended the famous hacker John Draper (Cap'n Crunch) thanks to learning of him on Art Bell's show when I was a teenager (he was a guest, once or twice). I've always been grateful of that, because that small change in my life gave me the extra little nudge I needed to pursue the career I wanted to have as an adult.
The "free market" did exist when you had a large number of farmers selling to a large number of consumers; each player in the market makes an infinitesimally small contribution, thus no one player is able to affect the market as a whole. Unfortunately, once you introduce massive corporation producing and distributing goods as well as lobbying for legislation in their favor, this model no longer holds true. So while a free market may have existed in the time of Adam Smith, to say that what we have now is in any sense "free" is erroneous.
As far as your other examples, you are correct -- people believe in some crazy shit!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
For starters, I get it, far more than you do. So please, spare me your tripe. It's insulting!
You *must* understand that there are two primary groups (with some shades of gray) in which people are poor.
1. The disabled and/or politically and socially oppressed. These are the people that need help. These are the people that have the capacity to want the assistance to help them help themselves out of poverty and into prosperity. Public services and assistance provides where the free market does not. But when possible, the free market is a much more dynamic path to choose. Such examples include rural China and India. Oppression by the Chine government, and oppression by the social caste system of India culture.
2. Those that have all the western assistance possible, but remain poor because of CULTURE. The culture of victim-hood, the culture of entitlements, the culture of anti-enlightenment. A culture that pro-actively seeks a rebellious lifestyle that's self-destructive to themselves and the people around them. A culture of being lazy. Such a culture wields a vast amount of political power and influence for what little effort is put into maintaining its perpetuity.
For reason #2, those people can rot in hell. In fact, they out-right piss me off and deserve to be poor. Good riddance. Bunch of parasites! They will NOT be getting any cake from me.
Life is not for the lazy.
prion to virus, virus to bacterium, bacterium to laywer, lawyer to protozoa, protozoa to tapeworm, tapeworm to.....
A proper trial of the EVP equipment would be too test it in a haunted Faraday cage. There must be plenty of those around!
I'm always thankful for folk's like you who considerately add an apostrophe to plural word's to warn me an 's' is coming up.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.