Do/can atheists believe in...

[OlderButWiser]

...things like ghosts, out of body experiences, ESP, extra-terrestrials, kharma, reincarnation etc?

[Warpy]

1. Some do, some don't

Why?

[New Dawn]

64. Bingo.

"Atheism" simply means not believing in a deity or deities.

"Materialists" are those who do not believe in anything supernatural.

[pocoloco]

2. Anything they want?

What a silly question.

[OlderButWiser]

11. It just seems to me that...

...believing in ghosts would be contradictory.

[Goblinmonger]

12. Ghosts = God?

Atheist just means there is no belief in any gods.

[OlderButWiser]

15. Proof of ghosts...

...would seem to indicate life after death.

Part of not believing in a god would seem to be not believing in an after life either.

[Speck Tater]

20. Not necessarily.

Belief in "life after death" is really an issue of information storage and processing. We know that cerebral wet ware can handle the information and processes that are consciousness, but do we also know that these same processes cannot be hosted in a different medium, such as, to pick a random example, a sub-quantum network of some kind.

There does not have to be a "creator" to hypothesize the existence of some other medium of consciousness, or even to hypothesize that consciousness itself is as fundamental and elementary as matter and energy. That would nicely match up the pairs energy:matter and information:consciousness. Nor would the discovery that consciousness could exist independent of biological function in any way imply the existence of any kind of "god".

[Warpy]

22. Not for Buddhists

who are atheists.

Seems like you need to do a little reading.

[RC]

3. extra-terrestrials, as in life on other worlds?

Well, most likley yah. The rest no.

[OlderButWiser]

8. I was just seeing if...

...people were paying attention on that one. :)

[GoneOffShore]

4. Not this one.

It's all pie in the sky nonsense until proven otherwise using scientific method.

[Poll_Blind]

7. Ya, same here. I DO believe in James Randi though. 8^) n/t

PB

[sam sarrha]

19. Randi is in it for Randi's ego, he is a cheat and a liar, charlatan..he rigged his contests, i douse

once on a job site the farm hand plowed under 46 stakes marking brass shut off valves buried 3 feet deep on 80 acres.

our boss took 14 of us over there and told us to dig 3' deep holes with a shovel till we found them.. when i quit laughing and got up off the ground.. i took 2 bronze welding rods.. the PVC pipes had water in them, i located and laid out the main line, the sub-mains and laid out and walked down them marking an x where the valves were.

i located all 46 valves 3' deep the first hole they dug, holes were about 10 inches diameter, the valves 3 inches diameter.

Randi had a dowsing contest but there were hidden lines/etc on the property... no real Dowser would would be seen with that piece of crap.

i also found lost keys 30 miles into the Olympic national forest, on a 5 mile hike.. they were about a mile from the car, we had a topographic map and i used a pendulum.. they were exactly at the turn of the trail 18' past the creek it crossed.. under some leaves.. just as i dowsed.
my Buddy's wife was a fundi- Christian, it freaked her out.. she mad my friend dump me out of the car on the way back when we got to the highway.. i had to hitch hike 120 miles home.. my girl friend got out with me.. the fundi wife was screaming it was the work of the devil, i told her if it was the work of the devil.. she'd still be walking 30 miles out of the woods in the rain...

i grew up in a family with a linage of clairvoyants over 150 years.

in 1980 my mother walked out with my friend and i to the car as we were leaving for the mountains. she got that "Look", she told my friend there was something wrong with the front of his car, and it could "roll over and kill" him. he said he was just going up and back then fix it, she said it would be ok but he couldn't make any other side trips.. he took off just before work with this drunk asshole i knew..to run an errand for him.. the car rolled over and crushed his head, killed him.

Randi has exposed some crooks.. but he goes too far, he is as dishonest as some of the crooks he exposes

[conscious evolution]

23. LOL!

I had something similar happen to me.

I have never dowsed for water but I know how to dowse for buried electrical conduits and wire.I was on a jobsite where we had to locate where an underground feed came out from under a building slab.The laborers thought it came out in a direct line from the buildings electrical panel and the power companys transformer.They dug about 6 feet down trying to locate it but with no success.Mean,while I had dowsed the location and preceeded to dig i for it and found it right where the dowse said it would be.
The laborers absolutely freaked out.They refused to work with me anymore and told the boss I was pssessed by satan.
Fortunately,even though he was a fundy talibornagain type, he had seen such dowsing before and did not freak over it.

[immoderate]

31. How can we be sure you're not possessed by Satan?

--IMM

[conscious evolution]

33. LOL!I may very well be

However,the dowsing i do has nothing to do with satan.It works off of electromagnetic principles.At one time I could have given you a detailed explanation of how it works but I have to admit that I would have to dig deep into memory and dust off a lot of cobwebs to remember it.

[TZ]

38. please explain how WOOD and WATER

has ANYTHING to do with electromagnetism. Dowsing is pseudoscience.

[John Gauger]

43. I can explain it.

He or she is joking. There's no way anybody could present that as a serious article of belief. It's all a joke.

[OlderButWiser]

51. Dowsing = Ouija Board

At least that is what I have come up with.

[sam sarrha]

37. because he votes Democratic.....

[sam sarrha]

53. ..

[sam sarrha]

54. k

k
http://www.photodump.com/passnthru2/untitled 300_R-318.html>http://my1.photodump.com/passnthru2/untitled 300_R-318-T.jpg

[trotsky]

34. Dowsing.. hehe

http://skepdic.com/dowsing.html

The testimonials of dowsers and those who observe them provide the main evidence for dowsing. The evidence is simple: dowsers find what they are dowsing for and they do this many times. What more proof of dowsing is needed? The fact that this pattern of dowsing and finding something occurs repeatedly leads many dowsers and their advocates to make the causal connection between dowsing and finding water, oil, minerals, golf balls, etc. This type of fallacious reasoning is known as post hoc reasoning and is a very common basis for belief in paranormal powers. It is essentially unscientific and invalid. Scientific thinking includes being constantly vigilant against self-deception and being careful not to rely upon insight or intuition in place of rigorous and precise empirical testing of theoretical and causal claims. Every controlled study of dowsers has shown that dowsers do no better than chance in finding what they are looking for.

[heidler1]

35. I agree. When I was a General Contractor and needed a well on

rural type property. I would look at the tree pattern plus the size of the trees and then layout the house location. Keeping in mind that there was room for the septic field along with the 100 foot separation of wells and the septic field. The well drillers I used always went through the motions of dowsing and in every case started out dowsing the same area that I thought looked the most promising. We always found water with a mutual agreement as to where to drill. This was in the foot hills East of Sacramento, CA where water is hit or miss. If there was no suitable tree pattern I didn't buy the property in the first place.

[sam sarrha]

36. how do you explain my finding 46 brass valves 3' deep first try on 80 acres? you just call me a liar

to suit your view of the world..?? if you were there would you still call me a liar.

i dont find water or what a lot od dowsers say they do, i am limited to certain things.. it is an individual skill.

certainly if you took any group at random i would agree with the odds, not all people can do it , not all people who say they can..can

i have no reason to lie, i was a research biologist for shell research development corporation, taxonomist and research tech..

just the other day i was at the video store, a guy was outside with an electronic pipe finder.. i told him those are interesting.. i used to dowse with wire rods... he said he got the job 16 years ago because he could use the rods till they bought the fancy wands... he then said he still had to on a regular basis cause the batteries were always going out.

guess you city boys dont get to see much of the real world

[trotsky]

42. Anecdotal evidence.

I have no idea whether what you described actually occurred as you describe it. Not calling you a liar, just saying I have no reason whatsoever to think you are telling the 100% truth.

Very telling, though, that you have to respond with an attack. "City boy" - heheh, if you only knew where I grew up.

[OlderButWiser]

52. Let's play a little game called...

...Last Liar Wins.

I found 50 brass valves 4' deep.

[John Gauger]

63. How are cities not the real world?

I could say that the cities are the real world and the backwater types are the provincialists, but so what?

[John Gauger]

44. John Steinbeck was of the opinion that dowsers,

spending so much time looking for water and digging wells, had through experience learned where water is (at the lowest point, and in certain kinds of porous rock, stuff like that.) There was nothing supernatural about it. Any idiot, after working thirty or so years on a farm, can tell you where the water is.

[cyborg_jim]

41. Huh?

Randi had a dowsing contest but there were hidden lines/etc on the property... no real Dowser would would be seen with that piece of crap.

Uh, isn't the point of dowsing that you can find what is "hidden"?

[varkam]

5. Atheism doesn't necessitate materialism.

In other words, sure. I don't think many atheists do believe in those things, as atheists tend to be skeptics when it comes to metaphysical claims in general but I don't see it as a contradiction of terms.

ETA For the record, I don't personally believe in any of those things that you mentioned (with the exception of life on other planets, though I don't think they've come a-knockin').

[asthmaticeog]

6. I'm sure they can.

I'd think they'd tend not to - many atheists reject God on grounds of lack of evidence. Consistency would demand rejecting those other things too. But obviously not everyone's consistent in what they believe. :shrug:

[BadgerKid]

21. Well.....there is a difference....I think.

I think the atheists (in particular, the strong atheists) would argue that there are elements in deitous religions and spirituality that are inconsistent with the known physical laws. For example, it might be argued that there is no known force/particle/radiation consistent with "prayer".

On the other hand, scientists would argue for a probability of the existence of alien civilizations despite a lack of direct alien evidence because there is no violation of physical laws as they are currently understood. Experiments like Urey-Miller and detectable signatures of carbon compounds in space suggests that the building blocks of life as we know are "out there". The Drake equation was the earliest attempt I'm aware of that estimated the number of alien civilizations that may be out there. We may never detect them, nor they us, but there's a nonzero chance their out there given that we :hi: are here.

Or something like that.

[Demobrat]

9. Well I'm a religious agnostic

although I definitely lean towards atheist, and I'm agnostic about those things too.

[varkam]

13. Aren't we all agnostics, though?

If agnosticism is making a claim about knowledge, then I would submit we are.

[Demobrat]

24. Huh? An agnostic is a person who

suspends judgement, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. We want proof one way the other. So no, we are certainly not all agnostic. There are lots of people who believe in something that has never been proven to exist. God.

[varkam]

25. Going to the original greek:

a = without, gnosis = knowledge. As far as I understand the concept, an agnostic is one who simply does not know one way or the other. So far as I am aware, there aren't many people claiming knowledge of god one way or the other but rather belief, which is a separate cognitive function from knowledge.

The key is the notion of belief different from knowledge. One can believe in something but still lack knowledge of it's existence - it amounts to epistemological honesty.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

10. No, no, no, yes, no, and no. -nt

[DarleenMB]

14. I don't think it's a silly question at all.

I recently realized I am now an atheist. I no longer believe there is a "being" or "higher power" watching out for us. I believe we are out here on our own.

I also believe in reincarnation. I won't go into the why of that or the many experiences I've had I'll just say it's the ultimate recycling plan and let it go at that.

i do NOT believe in ghosts.

I've had many MANY OOB experiences.

ESP ... yes Would you like my take on that which came via quantum physics?

other intelligent life in the universe? Well of COURSE. Do you really think that in all this vastness and all this WONDER we are the only ones? Pfbbbt.

No longer believe in karma.

[BlueJazz]

16. I believe in Chocolate and not much else....

:)

[Juche]

17. yes

I'm an atheist who believes there is probably an afterlife, and thinks there is a reasonable chance of ESP.

Try this.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/experiments/bellcurve/

I believe there is a chance of the afterlife due to things like the book 'the afterlife experiments', which raise enough evidence to convince me it is possible. As to 'why', I don't think the metaphysical requires a god. I think it is human nature to think any phenomena that we can't explain is attributed to 'god'. It used to be that earthquakes, disease and famine were due to 'god'. Perhaps in 50 years if there is an afterlife it'll make as much sense as the life cycle of malaria.

http://www.amazon.com/Afterlife-Experiments-Breakthrough-Scientific-Evidence/dp/074343658X

FTR, I strongly disagree with the image of skeptics or atheists given by Randi or Penn Jillette. They are as dogmatic as the people they condemn. They act as if they are the philosophical desendents of Gaileo, but they are really the descendents of the catholic church. They are convinced they know the truth and the whole of revalation while anyone who diverges only does so due to moral failings.

Take the logical fallacy of 'appeal to popularity', replace popularity with propriety and materialism, and you have described the unifying mentality behind the curent leaders of atheism. no thanks.

[immoderate]

32. Can you back up your remarks about Randi?

That certainly is not what he says.

--IMM

[Juche]

40. Sure

Here are examples, two from the author of the book I mentioned pointing out a litany of exaggerations.

http://survivalscience.50megs.com/torandi.htm

http://www.dailygrail.com/node/1311

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/exam/Prescott_Randi.htm

[immoderate]

47. So...

Do you think Uri Geller can bend keys with the power of his mind? And do you think that John Edward is really talking to dead people?

--IMM

[Juche]

49. Depends

If there is decent evidence of it then I am open to it. And if the evidence against it is a string of arrogant strawman arguments from people like Randi or Shermer then it doesn't help.

[Speck Tater]

18. Yes. To all of the above.

To posit that the universe was not created by an all powerful being does not have any bearing on other possible phenomena. For a long time reputable science thought the idea of meteors being rocks falling from space was just superstitious nonsense. If DU had been around back then perhaps someone might have asked if atheists do/can believe in meteors.

In particular, the question of extra-terrestrial life (I'm not talking about saucer-worshiping loonies here) seems more a scientific question than one relating to religious faith or lack thereof. Can a fundamentalist Christian believe in life on other worlds?

[and-justice-for-all]

26. The supernatural stuff? Not at all...

agnostics may, but Atheist should'nt be beliving in ghost, gawds, ESP...etc

ET's? I do think ET is out there. The Universe is to damn massive for us to be the only intelligent life in it. I do not 'believe' in ET's, but I do think they exist.

[RebelOne]

27. I'm an atheist and believe in ESP because I have experienced it.

I also believe in extra-terrestrials because I am sure there is life somewhere out in the huge expanse of space.

[edhopper]

28. I just want to point out

that there is a huge difference about the possibility or even the probability that life exist on other planets, and the idea that aliens have come to Earth in spaceships.
There is good data in terms of other life supporting planets and the chemical make up of other star systems to make the first concept highly tenable. There is absolutely no good evidence for the latter.

BTW I am an atheist and a skeptic about those things listed. I think they are connected for me, but are still separate areas.

[dmallind]

29. Can? Sure! Do? Less than most I'd guess

Remember atheism is not afidelism. Lacking faith in personal gods does not mean you HAVE to be a strict naturalist empiricist who accepts things only on evidence or sound inductive argument.

Now the same kind of approach that makes a lot of people atheistic would make them more likely to be skeptics of outré claims, and in my experience the overlap between atheists and critical thinking devotees is very large in both directions, but it's not definitive.

Personal anecdotes from a large number of atheist acquaintances of mine would suggest that we're talking in single digit percentages of anyone who would adopt a stance any more accepting than "Hmm interesting question - huge number of possible planets would suggest life somewhere else is not improbable, and life capable of interstellar travel is therefore certainly possible - so we just have to wait and see if any of them drop in for coffee" for example.

Personally - and therefore even less objective - I am a skeptic to all. I don't say that ANY of those are impossible (although some need to be defined to even allow an opinion) but all, with the exception of extra-terrestrials, assume some kind of metaphysical force or entity which is a tough hurdle to overcome. ET's are just a question of probability. How improbable is life compared to how many places some kind of life is possible. I'm far from an expert on either but with what I DO know I'd venture to say that the probability of some kind of life somewhere other than Earth is actually quite high. That doesn't mean I BELIEVE in it or have some kind of faith that they exist in any defineable way, it's like saying that the probability of, say, the Vikings winning the Superbowl at some point is actually quite high.

[edhopper]

30. Good points

I must also say that lost in this discussion is that accepting the chance of life on another planet is not the same as thinking there is intelligent life. After all life existed on Earth for billions of years before there was what we would define as intelligent life (no jokes please.)
I often get this silly argument with UFO advocates, when I tell them I don't see where we have been visited by aliens, they ask why I don't believe there could be life elsewhere in the Universe. I try to explain why one concept has nothing to do with the other. There is every chance life is out there, that does not lead to a visitation by aliens.

[TZ]

39. If you are asking if atheists

can believe in pseudoscientific crap. Sure. Plenty of evidence of that in this thread. Atheists aren't all educated and rational and intelligent. Else why would there be Red State atheists?

[John Gauger]

45. By definition, there is no reason why not.

However, if an atheist has come to the conclusion that there is no god by using proper and valid logic, then he or she should not fall into the traps of these unscientific beliefs. Some people are not atheists for this reason, and pick and choose whatever superstition and pseudoscience tickles their fancy. I myself am a naturalist, which means that I do not believe in any supernatural "forces" or entities.

It should be noted that there is nothing supernatural about alien visitation. Carl Sagan pointed out that it is entirely within the realm of possibility for humans to make contact with species residing on other planets, but it would be really fucking difficult. You have to be almost touching a planet (in astronomical terms) before you can tell if a planet has life on it, and getting there is even harder. Sagan notes that since the average lifespan of a species on Earth is approximately eight million years and that the star nearest to the sun is two million light years away, it probably isn't going to happen for us.

[skepticscott]

56. Excuse me?

The closest star to the sun is 4.3 light years away. I'm guessing if I know that, Sagan did.

[John Gauger]

57. I can't find what he said he was going for,

but I remember that he said it was more than 16 million light years away, because he said it would take more than humanity's collective lifespan moving at half of light speed. It's somewhere near the end of "Pale Blue Dot."

[skepticscott]

59. 16 million light years

is out of our galaxy and even out of the local group of galaxies (the closest major galaxy is only 2.2 million light years away). Whatever he was talking about had nothing to do with any space travel that humans would be inclined to undertake.

[John Gauger]

62. I still can't find it.

But he said it was definitely something we wanted to do. Like a promising galaxy or something. 2.2 million light years away would take, at half light speed, 4.4 million years to get to, which is roughly half a species's estimated lifespan (if I'm even remembering that number correctly.) That may be what he was talking about. We're already about a million years in, but it doesn't logically follow that just because that's the average that's how long we'll last. If we're smart about how we handle ourselves, we could last until the universe finally dies from the exhaustion of all its heat (what's that called, again?) Sagan, however, was of the opinion that we would very likely annihilate ourselves with our shiny weapons that we kept building. He mentioned nuclear self-annihilation rather often. But I'm sure you knew all that already.

[smoogatz]

46. Not if they're intellectually consistent.

Generally, atheists by definition reject belief in the supernatural. If they're consistent, they're equally skeptical of the paranormal, UFOlogy, and other belief systems based in the unproven or the unprovable. Of all the phenomena you list, the least unlikely is probably the existence of "extraterrestrials;" it's pretty much a statistical given that there's life on other planets. The unlikely part would be the supposition that Earth is being visited by explorers from one or more advanced extraterrestrial cultures. I'll believe it when I see clear daylight video of the aliens themselves and/or their spacecraft from multiple eyewitnesses. In a world in which pretty much everyone has access to a video camera, that doesn't seem like asking too much.

[hyphenate]

48. I believe in some things

But others, no. Those related to parapsychology rather than magic, such as ESP, I am definitely interested. Ghosts mostly as residual energy.

As a science fiction fan, I can't help but believe we can't possibly be the only sign of "intelligence" in the universe. Reincarnation is an interesting subject, and it deserves more investigation.

Let's face it--there are many things in the world for which there is no explanation. We haven't learned all the wisdom and knowledge that exists, and the future will likely tell us more.

[frogmarch]

50. I'm an atheist. I don't believe in ghosts,

ESP, out of body experiences, kharma or reincarnation. I seriously doubt Earth is being visited by ETs, although I think life, even intelligent life, may exist outside our solar system. (I don't know why some people insist upon aligning belief in ETs with the supernatural.)

[skepticscott]

55. Possible, but unlikely

atheism is simply one facet of a skeptical, rationalist worldview, which tends to preclude belief in this sort of unsupported woo-woo.

[BurtWorm]

58. They can and some do.

Sam Harris, for example, believes in reincarnation.

[skepticscott]

60. One thing I've never been able to understand about Harris

is that while he (rightly) pegs the beliefs of the major Western religions as just so much imaginary bunk, he goes all in for the mystical woo-woo of Eastern religions, and seems to regard the similarity of experience by mystics and contemplatives in a variety of religious traditions as evidence that they're tapping into something real and outside themselves. He seems to have blinded himself to the parallels between the two.

[Unvanguard]

61. Sure. Why not?

I believe in free will and non-reductionist consciousness....

[Az]

65. The only thing the term atheist conveys is a lacks, of belief in god(s)

Beyond that you cannot tell anything about what a person believes from just the label atheist. They may believe in souls, ghosts, bigfoot, UFO's, and the flying Dutchman. But as long as they do not believe in any gods then they are still an atheist.