(September 20, 2019 at 6:14 pm)possibletarian Wrote: A few years ago i was walking home on a really nice summers evening and i saw orange light appearing from the horizon, they seemed to move fairly quickly,
At first i thought they were helicopters but made no sound, then after a few minutes there were too many of them (unless someone had a lot of helicopters), the really weird thing i noticed was that as they got overhead they seemed to just fade away and disappear, I don't mind confessing it was a really odd and slightly frightening experience. I got home and looked at the local news.. nothing. Then the next morning on a local forum they were talking about it, it was in fact an event where they released lots of Chinese lanterns miles away.
That of course explained everything, the colour, that they were silent, and vanished more or less at the same spot overhead (as the flame burnt out).
I recalled the feeling I had experienced when faced with something unfamiliar and the internal battle I had that although I believed there was a good rational explanation even while it was happening, that our minds always struggle when we can't identify something we are witnessing. To me it's easy to see how people who don't have a grounding in being critical, or minds that immediately run to the 'supernatural' as an explanation can get fooled very quickly and easy when having experiences they cannot explain.
Yeah and this is where I have gotten frustrated with people: in trying to explain to them that seeing something you do not understand does not mean you leap to the most fantastical explanation you can think of, i.e. aliens, ghosts, etc. I once had a coworker who was a hardcore conspiracy guy and was very much into the 9/11 truther movement and aliens and a bunch of other stuff.
Once, in a heated debate (I learned to not bring these subjects up after this) about 9/11, and he seriously quoted abovetopsecret.com as a legitimate news source. I shook my head in disbelief and basically ended the conversation there. One of our older coworkers looked on, also in disbelief, who was earlier in the day also trying to explain to him why the government probably had nothing to do with 9/11 (he was a Vietnam War vet) and our conspiratorial coworker dismissed him too.
I actually got along well with the guy outside of the topic of conspiracies. Oh well.
(September 20, 2019 at 6:14 pm)possibletarian Wrote: As a child i used to have spiritual experiences all the time ( I was raised a J.W.) , and later as a Christian i had what I thought were dreams and visions. Since being an atheist i still have dreams of course, but I can usually relate to them from bits of events thought the previous day or week, things I've seen on TV etc.
What i used to think were visions were in fact dreams and thoughts that I had in retrospect chained together manufactured in my own mind from what i knew or guessed to say what I wanted them to, or to make sense to me.
They are not god talking to me, they are me talking to me !!!
Totally! Earlier I took a nap and had a dream that a ghost dragged me to the end of my bed. In the dream, I wasn't scared, but I just sort of thought it was weird that something like that would happen because I don't believe in ghosts. When I woke up, I realized it was a dream, obviously. But if I were more inclined to believe in paranormal experiences I might have convinced myself that what happened really happened and that my house is haunted.
I really wish more people would watch QualiaSoup's video on open-mindedness. It explains the concept much better than I ever could.
If you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth.
