Various concepts of the supernatural have existed for as long as humans have been communicating ideas to each other about things they didn’t understand. Ghosts, gods, and goblins alike have been proposed as the explanation for countless natural phenomena right up until the point that we figured out what the hell it actually was.
We know now that lightning isn’t caused by Thor or Zeus, that crows aren’t omens of anything, and that the sun isn’t a god named Helios riding a golden chariot across the sky. Well, some of us know that. But we didn’t used to know that. People truly believed these—and other—odd things in varying cultures around the world for millennia. There are nearly as many assertions of supernatural beings as there are people on Earth. So, how might a neophyte like myself tell the difference between a real ghost, and what only seems to be a real ghost? Frankly, how can anyone tell?
The average person has far too low standards of evidence. Don’t believe me? Just listen to the average story someone will tell you about how they came to be convinced that ghosts are real. If you listen with even a shred of skepticism, you shouldn’t find their account to be even remotely compelling. Their stories might be interesting, but far from persuasive, and I’ll get into the reasons why in just a moment.
I have a personal dislike for how skeptics are often portrayed in popular depictions of the supernatural in modern media (i.e., horror films). We’re often portrayed as cynical, as deniers of good evidence even when it’s right in front of our eyes, but skepticism is not cynicism. As skeptics, we want sufficient evidence for every claim that we come across.
If you tell me you have a pet dog, I’ll believe you, but if you tell me you have a pet poltergeist, I’ll need a little bit more. Why? Because dogs are an established fact of life that everyone can accept; dogs clearly exist, we interact with them with all our various senses, people keep them as pets, we can verify quite easily that they’re really there. Can you provide anything like that for a ghost? Or is it all vague impressions of unease, unexplained sounds in the night, and unverifiable claims of supposed hauntings?
The fact of the matter is, there’s simply no hard evidence for the supernatural. I invite anyone who thinks there is to lay it out for me. You know where to find me, and I’ll believe anything that you can provide good evidence for. But before you try, read to the very end of this article so that you understand my position.
There is a monumental difference between evidence for a proposition, and evidence consistent with a proposition. Evidence for a proposition was summed up nicely by Mr. Aron Ra when he said that “evidence for a proposition is positively indicative of, and exclusively concordant with one particular theory or hypothesis.” This means your evidence has to point directly to your claim, not merely be consistent with competing claims, or have a lack of evidence against it because if your claim is not falsifiable, it should be rejected for that reason alone.
Suppose you and I find a broken window in your bedroom. What conclusions might we come to? Well, maybe someone threw a rock through it. Maybe a large bird flew into it. Or maybe a ghost broke it. Well, a broken window is certainly consistent with all these explanations, but what evidence might we look for?
Well, suppose we look down at your bedroom carpet, and see a large rock surrounded by broken glass from the window; maybe we even find shoe-prints outside the window where someone was moving around. That would certainly be evidence for someone using a rock to break it. Not to mention the preponderance of evidence we already have that people sometimes break windows for various reasons. This way, we begin to build a case for a rock-thrower being the culprit.
Or perhaps we find feathers on the windowsill, and some blood on the shards of glass from the broken window. We might take samples of the blood and feathers, ship them off to a lab, and receive the results that they’re both from a type of huge bird that’s known for living in your area. Not to mention the preponderance of evidence we already have that birds sometimes fly into windows, as they can’t distinguish glass from open space. This way, we begin to build a case for a bird being the culprit.
Now, what evidence might we find if a ghost is to blame for the window? Are there samples of something we can gather? What specific evidence can we point to that is positively indicative of a window-shattering spirit? It certainly helps our other two explanations that we can say with maximal certainty that birds and rock-throwing people actually exist, but there’s a severe lack of evidence for supernatural causation. At best, you might have an argument from ignorance (i.e., “we don’t know how this could’ve happened other than a supernatural cause"), but that’s a fallacy, and it gets you no closer to making your case. Correlation is not causation. Two things may appear to be linked, but there has to be a demonstration that they actually are.
Are there things we don’t know about our universe? Absolutely, yes. Are there huge gaps in our knowledge of the world around us? Undeniably, yes. But does that mean that we just get to insert an explanation that feels right whenever we don’t have another explanation? Fuck no. That’s fallacious, and unreliable at best. That’s how previous humans erroneously reasoned their way to fictitious lightning gods, bullshit witch trials, and pointless exorcisms. Not only is it fallacious, it can be dangerous when these ideas become radicalized, as is shown in my allusion to the witch trials as a primary example.
As far as I can tell, there’s seemingly no existing method by which we can test for the supernatural because we’re limited to testing only the natural. This could change down the line, as it has before. Before we had microscopes, it was a hell of a lot more difficult to investigate things that were microscopic. Until such a time that we have a reliable method to falsify supernatural propositions, those ideas have not earned a place at the table. Come back when you have something to show us, and it’ll need to be better than some anecdotes.
Personal anecdotes and speculative correlations don’t rise to the level of good evidence; the burden of proof rests upon the ones making the assertion that the supernatural exists, it isn’t up to me to prove that ghosts and goblins don’t exist because that’s not my position. I don’t accept their existence, but I’m not necessarily saying that those things definitely aren’t there, though some would make that claim. But positive claims require a demonstration, and if the claim is not falsifiable, asserting that you’ve proved it wrong is just as ludicrous as saying you’ve proved it correct. (However, science doesn’t prove things in a positive sense, but that’s an entirely different subject that I won’t get into right now.)
For clarity, again, I’m not claiming that the supernatural definitely doesn’t exist. I’m merely unconvinced that it does exist. An example could be of use here to clear up any confusion about what I mean, and I’ll use what’s known as the “gum-ball analogy” (first employed by Matt Dillahunty, a prominent skeptic). Personally, I don’t really like gum-balls, so I’ll use jellybeans in my example.
Imagine for a moment that you come over to my house, and I have a sealed jar of jellybeans on my kitchen table. I tell you that the number of jellybeans inside the jar is an odd number. You could just take my word for it, it’s not that big of a deal, but suppose that you remain skeptical. After all, the jar is sealed, so how could I know? Now, in this scenario, I tell you the number of jellybeans is an odd number, and you don’t take my word for it. Does that mean that you’re claiming the number of jellybeans is even? No, of course not. You’re reserving judgement until you have better evidence than just my claim about the number.
By the same token, when someone tells me ghosts exist, and I don’t take their word for it, that doesn’t mean I’m claiming ghosts don’t exist. I’m reserving judgement until I have better evidence than just their claim about ghosts. In the case of the jellybeans, we could open the jar, and simply count the pieces of candy, thereby demonstrating whether the number was even or odd. That would be our method of investigation. In the case of ghosts, I don’t see any method of investigation that we could use to demonstrate whether ghosts exist or don’t exist. It seems we’re only able to investigate natural causation, and supernatural causation isn’t on the table until someone figures out how to investigate it reliably. That’s not the fault of our methods, that’s the fault of the supernatural claims being unfalsifiable.
Occam’s Razor (“entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”), and Hitchen’s Razor (“what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”) are useful tools to keep in your toolbox (i.e., your mental toolbox for evaluating claims). If you’re unfamiliar with Occam’s Razor, Hitchen’s Razor, and the general tools associated with epistemology (“epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion”), I highly recommend looking into these things. Not only will you learn a great deal about different schools of thought, but you’ll learn loads of information about good methods for knowing what’s true; it can protect you from bad ideas, protect you from con artists, help the accuracy of your worldview, and a whole host of other valuable things.
In conclusion, that’s why I don’t believe in ghosts, gods, goblins, and other supernatural ideas that people tell me about. The evidence that has been presented to me has not been anywhere near good enough to accept. I’m not closed off to the idea, but I will absolutely not accept the supernatural claims people make until their burden of proof has been attained. And with that, I invite you believers out there to send your evidence to me. I’ll evaluate it carefully, and let you know what I think.
Please keep comments constructive, have an awesome day, and stay skeptical.
Comments