Especially if one wants to have a good time.
I have. IMO, they make about as much sense as the incident.
Since someone could believe in ghosts and disbelieve your story, asking what exactly it was you were referring to not believing in was a question worth asking, for the purpose of clarification.
Anyway, an unexplained smell is not the smoking gun of ghost stories. Just as likely as a ghost is that some god played a prank on you. You really should weigh the likelihood of alternate explanations.
I have. IMO, they make about as much sense as the incident.Non believer in....ghosts? Y'know, the OP's topic.
Since someone could believe in ghosts and disbelieve your story, asking what exactly it was you were referring to not believing in was a question worth asking, for the purpose of clarification.
Anyway, an unexplained smell is not the smoking gun of ghost stories. Just as likely as a ghost is that some god played a prank on you. You really should weigh the likelihood of alternate explanations.
What? C'mon now. I might not have bad breath, but rose scented, or breath that activates a rose scent? Something like this should be easy to repeat if it's easy to occur in this manner. I since dealt with plenty of roses since then via girls and Valentines day and surprises, and I've yet to be in a place where suddenly, the flowers I had in the car beside me left a scent on my shirt that jumped up into my nose when I took a breath.
Apparently not. Aren't you the one who suggested that the better my sense of smell is, the more likely I'd hallucinate a smell? I gave examples which point out how much I rely on that particular sense, so if it's now irrelevant, then so is your initial claim which the example addresses
Scientific facts can definitely be disputed, or even refuted, for example what we've seen with aspects of dinosaur anatomy in just the past 30 years. I'm not saying "take my word for it - the science theory is bunk - THE END" but the implication that a science book is definitely the beginning and ending of the discussion here is something I'm not buyin'. And I DO want a scientific explanation - one that makes sense according to the situation and circumstance.
My friend was sitting in a chair and the pic flew off the wall into her lap. She actually yelled out when it happened. I was looking at her right when the incident occurred, and the 3rd person was sitting near her. The path of the fall was "circular."
Your right, I misread who that response was directed at.
The incident doesn't make sense.
I meant air was getting in and out of the house, not in and out of you.
I said that if anything, being more attuned to the sense of smell might make you more likely, not less, to fool yourself. These are two different things. In the former I'm talking about the brain function of smelling, in the latter I'm talking about the nose function. While almost always they work together, they can work separately, hence hallucination.
The implication is that you don't know much about how the brain works. I agree that scientific facts are always being disputed, but I'm talking here about very basic neurology with decades of solid and reproducible evidence to back it up, not some fringe or untested theory.
I'm not assuming that you are unfamiliar with all sciences. I am judging, based on the evidence in this thread, that you are unfamiliar with the specific brain science involved.
What drives you to choose these arbitrary percentages of probability? Do you have some data that shows that 30% of most hallucinations are auditory...or that 30% of sounds are hallucinations, while 5% of smells are olfactory hallucinations? These numbers are completely arbitrary to the reality of the situation, describing only how likely you are to agree with an explanation, not how likely an explanation is to be true.
I based those percentages on how I judge my own perception, and openness to what you and others have said, and past experience. I'm not claiming it's based on any data other than my own experience and how much I allow for alternate explanations based on how I confident I am on my perceptions. Example: My hearing is pretty good, but I've had experiences where I "heard something" but know it wasn't a "real" sound as recent as 5 days ago as I was trying to fall asleep. Was able to confirm it was not "real" as my dog didn't react to the loud sound I thought I heard. So most of the time I'm confident that what I hear is real sound, but due to some past experiences on "non-real" sounds, I'm totally open to the opinion I could image a sound.
The reason being they don't add up in the situation or the circumstance - hello? Just like everyone else, I've had countless experiences throughout my life, and the VAST majority don't require a second thought as to why they occurred or the science behind them. The 2 instances which I wrote about just don't add up with anything else. They are unique to me, hence my questioning WHY they were different from past events which, although may be fantastic, are certainly not unexplainable on any level.
The way I see it, "soul" is just a religious word to explain that living things may be driven to live via some inner, natural energy that keeps us going while we're physical. But when we die, would that (hypothetical) energy just disappear?
You do realize that this has no objective or scientific merit though, right? It is therefore not a good measure at all of reality.
But you're absolutely and completely wrong about this. That's what I'm trying to get across. The mind makes it seem as if the senses are perfect recorders of reality, but they are not. The brain works under this rule: Get it Mostly Right Most of the Time. Never get it all right all of the time. For example, did you know that you are blind for about 40 minutes each day? I bet you didn't, because your brain is very good at fooling you into thinking you're not. That's it's job.
But you're still operating on the false assumption that your perceptions of reality are accurate. They are not. No one's are. Here's an interesting blog post, and another, by Yale Neurologist and President of the New England Skeptic's Society, Dr. Steven Novella, touching on the subject. You don't have to take it from me, take it from him.
But there is no evidence that there is any sort of inner, natural energy. Here is an interesting article which touches upon how brain function fools us into thinking we have a soul.
I just call it Brain Farts. I'm sure that's an oversimplification, but I lump it in with "putting something down and not being able to find it five seconds later".
