What do believers and non-believers think about this?

[Renew Deal]

This is from a fellow DUer who has a parent that's not ready to "leave."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x9503243

How do you view this through various faiths, particularly Christianity? Did this person reach God's door and refuse to enter? Did they never actually leave? What do you think happens when someone isn't ready to pass on, or have they passed on completely?

[trotsky]

1. I think ghost stories are fun.

Provided you don't take them seriously.

[HereSince1628]

2. If you believe in God(s) why not believe in ghosts?

In for a mile in for an inch, I say.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. There are some teenagers down by the McDonalds who call themselves vampires..

I don't think they are, though.

[trotsky]

4. Do you see them there during the day, or only at night? n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. The day.

At night the werewolves drive them off.

[chaplainM]

6. I'm willing to help.

I can remotely banish all ghosts, spirits, and ectoplasmic entities for the reasonable fee, er, donation of $1000 cash.

[ZombieHorde]

7. Probably an old house. I lived in a house which several of my friends lived in before me.

They all swore the house was haunted, especially the basement. The house did make a lot of noises, but the noises just seemed like house settling noises to me.

[struggle4progress]

8. How about a multitude of contradictory answers?

I think we are obligated to try to understand the world, so we can act appropriately, but I also think the world is too big and complicated for us to really understand thoroughly, and so we are required to choose carefully how we focus our attention and thoughts in order to make progress. As a general rule, supernatural ideas do not seem to aid my understanding, and it is my distinct impression that when people over-indulge in supernatural thinking their thought-processes often become disoriented, with psychological confusion and distress as the result. So, for example, if I were to come into a room and have some strong impression that a now-dead person I had known was there, I think my own reaction would be something like sitting down and remembering that person a bit. As a social matter, I have found it largely pointless to discuss with other people whether or not their grandmother, thirty years gone, really just paid them a visit: if they want to talk about their grandmother, I might be interested in their memories of grandmother, but the alleged psychic phenomena don't interest me much

[cleanhippie]

15. An intelligent and rational response.

I agree. Well done.

[edhopper]

9. Most of the replies

on that thread unquestionably accepted that the ghost was real.
And this is on a site where we are suppose to be clear thinkers.
Is it any wonder why so many Republicans believe screwy things about things like Science or Obama
if we here can't get beyond this superstitious nonsense.

[Renew Deal]

11. There are 14 replies on a website with over 100K registered members

I think people try to be polite. There's a bigger variety of opinions in this thread.

[edhopper]

13. I get your point,

and am not trying to say most on DU believe in this fantasy. But many obviously do.
Just making a comparison with the things we mock the Right with believing like Creationism or Obama being a Muslim.

I must add that this is about things that do not exist, not a matter of opinion.

[Renew Deal]

14. There are people that will make a case that "things" do exist.

That person's experience is similar to others. There's also reason to believe that the world and life is more complicated than people can comprehend.

[edhopper]

17. No it's not and there is no reason to believe that.

saying it's beyond what we can comprehend is lazy and an excuse to fall back on old superstitions.
"You can't comprehend this, so just explain it through the flying spaghetti monster!"
We don't comprehend every thing yet, but we should continue trying using science and reason, the best tools we have ever developed to understand things.

[jeepnstein]

10. Personally...

I'm not sure. My Faith tells me there are spirits, even a Holy Ghost, so obviously there are things going on around me I don't see or understand. I do know that I wouldn't presume to be able to pray away such a ghost if one in fact exists in that house.

Since Halloween is around the corner and we all love to tell stories, I'll drop one on you....

I was working on our current house preparing to move in around the end of October. It's a large old brick home, quite stately. I would usually work until around midnight or so every night and then get up and go to work in the morning. I was beyond exhausted. One night while finishing ceilings upstairs I saw what I thought was my reflection in one of the doors that had beveled mirrors. After the third time or so I noticed that in the "reflection" I was wearing a white shirt but in fact I was wearing a red one. I stopped and stared at the image and immediately recognized who it was. At that point I decided I had gone nuts. The visits became fairly regular.

A couple of days before the big move my wife was hanging wallpaper in the kids' nursery. I was outside packing the dumpster. Through the open window I could see and hear her talking to someone. Since we had visitors drop in from time to time to pitch in I didn't give it much thought. She looked out and saw me waving at her smiling like an idiot as I rummaged in the dumpster. After she quit screaming I got her story. She was talking to someone standing out in the hallway in the same spot where I had my visit earlier. Since she was on a ladder she didn't see the whole person, just the lower half. Nobody was in the house at the time.

I didn't seem concerned and she found this odd. "You've been seeing him, too, haven't you?" I told her not to worry about it because I knew who it was and he was just checking up on our work. She never saw him again. I still get visits at night when I'm playing my guitar. Some times I just smell cigarette smoke, other times I get a glimpse.

Some times I think we carry our own spiritual baggage with us. The visitor we saw had no connection with the house, but a very strong one with me.

[Renew Deal]

12. That's a wild story

I have experienced a small amount of this sort of thing like lights flashing that used to always work after someone recently passed. My wife was in the apartment of a friend that recently (at the time) passed and the blinds fell. Lights would go on and off. Doors would open. The current residents say that they haven't had any issues. Weird!

[dmallind]

16. I think people look for patterns and meanings where none exist

Unless you are using the phrase as a common but meaningless euphemism for dying, "passing on" is begging the question in the first place, because it assumes that there is something which can "pass" and somewhere for it to pass to. Neither idea has any evidence for it beyond wishful thinking.

So I strongly suspect barring such evidence the person's dead father is simply dead, which is sad for those who loved him of course, but has no connection at all to any idea of spirits or an afterlife.