Shared Delusions

[Matt85]

How do you guys explain events where people have shared the same delusion? my room mate was telling me about her whole family seeing "spirits" .

[Edwardo Piet]

I dunno. I've read about this sort of thing but I forget somewhat - I think it can often start with one person and move on. But sometimes optical illusions can affect their beliefs I think.

The most striking example I always remember is the instance Dawkins mentioned in The God Delusion about the instance of where 70,000 people in Portugal, Fatima all claimed to have seen the sun crash to the earth!

If you can explain that then the others would be relatively easier to explain I think!

But this is not evidence of any 'miracle' - it would certainly be interesting to know why so many people claimed this though!

I guess it could have been an optical illusion that made many believe, and maybe some just went along with it, I dunno.

Crazy tho.

EvF

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Another explanation is that people did indeed see the same thing and interpreted it the same way,which is wrong.

However I've actually seem mass hysteria, at a Pentacostal revival meeting. It was fascinating.


I've also heard stories about mass hallucinations,such as "The Angel Of Mons"and at Fatima. I have no doubt such things happen but I'm reasonably sure the explanation is rational,relatively simple,and not in the least paranormal.

[Kyuuketsuki]

I think they see something, one (possibly an authority figure) offers a whacky explanation and the others follow suit ... I believe it's a documented psychological trait of human groups or some such.

Kyu

[Demonaura]

Many of my family claim to have experiences multiple examples of ghosts or spirits, from my generation right up to my grandparents generation. Not just sightings though, times where things moved, pictured were all turned face down or the young children would come out of their room crying with black eyes saying something about a little boy that wanted to play with the but, they didn't want to play.

I wouldn't bet on any of it without seeing something myself though the variety of the stories told and the seriousness that they speak of it tells me that they at least believe it.

To be fair not all are my family, many were family friends and it isn't all in the past. Every now and then one of us has a new story.

That all said, if there is one superstition I would be more likely to beleive in it would be something like ghosts. I will never claim to know details nor bet even a penny to their existance. I'm only stating that ecause of my attachment to people that have these stories I'd be more inclined to beleive potential evidence or at worst create evidence in my own mind that never really existed.

[Eilonnwy]

People can experience shared hallucinations, especially if our culture is primed to do so. Multiple people can see Jesus in doors because a phenomenon of pareidolia. Also, in a world that largely believes in Ghosts and spirits, people can see a strange occurrence that is unexplained and claim it's a ghost.

I recently watched a fluff news piece on TV and it was about a security camera catching so white fuzzy "aura" wandering around a room. Of course they had the token "I was a skeptic, but now I believe" when in reality the most logical conclusion is that it was a speck of dust.

[Meatball]

Consensus != Proof

Though convincing on face value, you can't logically accept something as true simply because a number of people say so. The burden of proof still exists. This becomes especially damning to legitimacy in cases of mass delusions. 5000 people saw Jesus walk across a swimming pool and ascend to the heavens, but none of them took a picture, and no video footage exists? Doubtful, in this day and age of cellphone cameras and CCTV.

[Forrasis]

How do you guys explain events where people have shared the same delusion? my room mate was telling me about her whole family seeing "spirits" .

We should not underestimate the power of the mind to see what it wants to see. Our senses do not present the world to us unfiltered. Everything is processed prior to becoming a conscious experience. Our mind is pre-disposed see certain things -- human faces and forms, volitional movement -- these pre-dispositions help us survive in a world where we need to quickly identify freinds and foes. However, they can also lead us to seeing things that are not there. Combine this with the influence of group dynamics and it is easy to see how mass delusions occur.

It is most telling that groups never (or rarely) see something contrary to their belief system. Groups of Muslims see visions of Muhammed, Christians see Jesus or Mary, Hindus see Hindu gods, groups of atheists see nothing supernatural. We see what we want. This is why it is important to have independent, verifiable evidence that any event occured as described by eye witnessess. Eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. While we might be willing to accept certain, unimportant (in the larger scheme of things) events on the basis of witness statements, this is because such events do not claim the extra-ordinary-- they fit within our verified system. Miracles, however, do not and therefore require further evidence before they are to be believed.

[lrh9]

Peer influence and common inability.

1) Peer influence. When enough people support one position, some people will support that position even though it's false. For instance, a study showed that a person who watched six people (who knew they were lying) before him or her say an item was blue, he or she said the item was blue even though the item was in fact another color.

2) Common inability. This is the common inability of people to observe and understand what they perceive.

[josef rosenkranz]

The human mind is a most complex system where rational and irrational thinking are mixed up as are also reality and phantasy thoughts.
When we speak of seeing something, we generally understand the reflexion in our mind of a real object existing outside of our brain.
This is the common sense of the notion of seeing.
But it happens to a lot of people that when they think intense about a certain object then by force of their brain it "materializes" before their very eyes.
We call it sometimes to dream with open eyes.
We live in an era where rational thinking ,mostly promoted through education ,prevail ,which is far away from the situation existing in ancient ,and even not so ancient times.
In times when spiritual events where spread between people by means of oral tales,perpetuated through generations from father to son,the fantasy ,the supranatural, the irrational had a more powerfull influence on the minds then the close poor and not understandable reality.
That's the explanation why "miracles " of all religions happened most in the past and are rare,bur not totaly extinct even in our times.
I visited once Fatima and saw a women walking bent on four with a little child on her back and her husband holding the child so it wouldn't fall down ,advancing the 200 meters up the the icon of Maria.
It struck me by the thought of the child beeing perhaps deadly ill and the hope of the mother that by humiliating and torturing herself Jesus will help her.
It is only an example of how desperation might create intense thoughts in expectation of a miracle.

Now what concerns[/font] phenomenon of synchronized "miracles", the causes are so diversified that only from hearing of such an event as expressed in one sentence or told by "serious"
or "objective" people we coud hardly draw a conclusion of any kind.