Why there are no ghosts

An anonymous poster made this comment on an earlier post:


what dawkins is doing is to eschew all forms of inquiry that do not conform to the scientific method. if this isnt narrow-mindedness i don't know what it is.


angry doc asked the poster what exactly it was that Dawkins eschewed that the poster thought should not be subject to the scientific method, to which our poster replied:


How about ghosts for instance? I'm not saying for sure that they exist because honestly I haven't had any encounters with the supernatural. But there have been reported sightings. People have claimed to have seen them. To Dawkins, this wouldn't count as knowledge because you'd find it incredibly difficult to conduct experiments to investigate the veracity of the claim due to the inconsistency with which such sightings occur. But why should you disregard this claim simply because by scientific standards it fails to qualify as knowledge? Isn't there a possibility that the eyes of these witnesses were not playing tricks on them? Isn't there a possibility these people were not lying when they swore they had seen ghosts? Isn't there a possibility that there are indeed ghosts?


Of course it is possible.

By the same argument it is also possible that unicorns, leprechauns, and the chupacabra exist, and that Elvis lives. Everything is possible, except that the existence of all those things we’ve mentioned are unlikely and unproven.

Well, maybe not Elvis.

But what does Dawkins have to say about the subject of ghosts?

As it turns out he *had* heard a ghost as a child, and he touches briefly on the subject in his book The God Delusion, part of which is reposted here.

angry doc abstracts the relevant parts:


One of the cleverer and more mature of my undergraduate contemporaries, who was deeply religious, went camping in the Scottish isles. In the middle of the night he and his girlfriend were woken in their tent by the voice of the devil — Satan himself; there could be no possible doubt: the voice was in every sense diabolical. My friend would never forget this horrifying experience, and it was one of the factors that later drove him to be ordained. My youthful self was impressed by his story, and I recounted it to a gathering of zoologists relaxing in the Rose and Crown Inn, Oxford. Two of them happened to be experienced ornithologists, and they roared with laughter. "Manx shearwater!" they shouted in delighted chorus. One of them added that the diabolical shrieks and cackles of this species have earned it, in various parts of the world and various languages, the local nickname "Devil Bird".

The argument from personal experience is the one that is most convincing to those who claim to have had one. But it is the least convincing to anyone else, especially anyone knowledgeable about psychology. Many people believe in God because they believe they have seen a vision of him — or of an angel or a virgin in blue — with their own eyes. Or he speaks to them inside their heads.

You say you have experienced God directly? Well, some people have experienced a pink elephant, but that probably doesn't impress you.

…

[The formidable power of the brain's simulation software] is well capable of constructing "visions" and "visitations" of the utmost veridical power. To simulate a ghost or an angel or a Virgin Mary would be child's play to software of this sophistication.

Once, as a child, I heard a ghost: a male voice murmuring, as if in recitation or prayer. I could almost, but not quite, make out the words, which seemed to have a serious, solemn timbre. I had been told stories of priest holes in ancient houses, and I was a little frightened. But I got out of bed and crept up on the source of the sound. As I got closer, it grew louder, and then suddenly it "flipped" inside my head. I was now close enough to discern what it really was. The wind, gusting through the keyhole, was creating sounds which the simulation software in my brain had used to construct a model of male speech, solemnly intoned.

Had I been a more impressionable child, it is possible that I would have "heard" not just unintelligible speech but particular words and even sentences. And had I been both impressionable and religiously brought-up, I wonder what words the wind might have spoken.

…

That is really all that needs to be said about personal "experiences" of gods or other religious phenomena. If you've had such an experience, you may well find yourself believing firmly that it was real. But don't expect the rest of us to take your word for it, especially if we have the slightest familiarity with the brain and its powerful workings.


Well, angry doc has something to add to that:

We all require evidence of one sort or another to believe; we just happen to have less stringent criteria for accepting someone's claims as valid evidence when we want or wish for them to be true, and vice versa.