16Sep/117
What makes people believe in things like psychics and paranormal things?
Is it because those people are simply uneducated, or could some kind of mental illness be behind it, or what? Because I really am in awe how someone can believe such things, or worse, spend money on them. And how can you convice such a person that they are delusional (cuz thats what it pretty much comes down to....)?
September 16th, 2011 - 00:31
Well you can’t know weather its real or not, or weather god is real or not, you just don’t know! you go with your guts, but it could be something mental in some cases but just sheer paranoia in other.
September 16th, 2011 - 00:33
These people are looking for some kind of hope or are just bored.
September 16th, 2011 - 01:14
My theory is because thy want their world to have some kind of mystery to it. The world as it is stinks; it is full of suffering and is utterly pointless. Both of these facts make the world a dreary place to inhabit, so lots of people latch onto ideas that make the world seem more structured according to human relationships or that make human life the main point of the universe – for example, horoscopes and ghosts.
@Radtech – I’m not sure everyone DOES know that a person consists more than a body. This is another example of what I was writing about – people don’t like the fact that we’re just a collection of chemicals in a meat casing and invent the “spiritual” to populate a bleak world of logic with the fairies of make-believe. Your casual use of the word “energy” is terrifying – what energy? Is that another nonexistent force that you would rather think exists? Energy! Closed box mind being sad! Yes, it is sad living in the real world. You are very fortunate to be able to fool yourself through convenience, believe me, but do not talk down to people who can’t help seeing through the facade of the world.
@Thewitch – You spoke of documentation… presumably you are referring to the bible? Yet the OP was asking about superstition generally and I think he probably meant things like ghosts, “spirits” and people claiming to be psychics. There is no documentation for this, except the bank balances of the charlatan practitioners of it, which speaks more for the mass gullibility of the world than their ability to chat to a corpse. I was also amused by your reference to a “black and white understanding”, which is a perfect example of people shunning logic because it is not gilded with magic colours and wonderful mysteries. If you can show me some “documentation” of astrology beng in any way valid, I would love to see it.
September 16th, 2011 - 02:02
Mind only believes.
September 16th, 2011 - 02:51
Experience, observation, thousands of years of documentation, these are all good reasons. Your assumption that someone must be uneducated to believe in something simply because YOU personally do not understand it is rather egotistical is it not? Your lack of experience, lack of knowledge, lack of tolerance, and failure to comprehend the world beyond a rudimentary black & white understanding is not a reflection on others… it is a reflection on you. Perhaps when you are well educated and experienced in such matters you may have something useful to say, until then your speculation is baseless and insulting.
September 16th, 2011 - 03:11
Everyone knows that a persons total being consists of more than just a body. There is also a spirit and energy that allows us all to exist. The mind can be a very powerful tool and the will even more powerful..The world itself also has a natural environment, which allows both positive and negative energy to flow. I have been to many seminars and have had medium readings as well as Tarot card readings. Many things we cannot control, but the tool of these readings is to assist the known and try to change the bad that could possibly come our way. I do not mean to insult you, but the closed box that your mind exists in is very sad. I hope that someday you never call upon someone for help that you cannot see in the physical form because according to you he does not exist because you cannot see. Get a larger box!
September 16th, 2011 - 03:56
Let’s see,I have a bachelor’s degree and am quite educated and I know that things that cannot be explained exist. For those of us who are not quite so close-minded there are many things to be experienced. I have been sensing and having encounters with spirits since I was a child, the only way for someone to believe is often for them to experience it. Maybe you need to go on a ghost tour and have an open-mind instead of one so horribly closed.
Take a look at some of the things written about it here:
http://jesadab.hubpages.com/hub/Paranormal-Happenings-personal-happenings