What is your Red Line in regards to the paranormal?

originally posted by: Xtrozero
As to the supernatural I need to see something defy the laws of physics in person....Or something we would say is impossible.

Even if you or I see that...remember this...

A scientist gave a TED talk which started with a story about a UFO he saw as a boy, that defied the laws of physics.
Now that he's an adult scientist and is aware of human illusions and misperceptions, he asks himself the question:

"What's more likely, that I saw a UFO defying the laws of physics, or that my brain somehow misinterpreted the information sent by my eyes?"

Primitive cave-dwellers would lean toward the first option, having little awareness of the latter, but modern science is now well aware that people are more than capable of misinterpreting many different things, so a modern scientist would lean toward the latter option.

If anybody needs convincing of that, look at how many people describe alien motherships when they see man-made debris re-entering Earth's atmosphere. It's happened many times already, most recently last month in Hawaii:

Satellite Reentry Fireball Swarms -- Widely Misperceived by Startled Witnesses

That long report documents many, many false perceptions by witnesses, and we can confirm their perceptions are false by watching the same videos they made and see that they are not interpreting the video correctly. Probably all of us, you and me included, might have a tendency to "connect the dots" when we see a bunch of "dots", it's part of the pattern recognition feature of our mental processing, but such brain functions can lead us astray and cause us to draw false conclusions.

I agree, but I also think it's fair that the mind will often try to rationalize things that are unnatural, and that the more knowledge a person has the easier it is to rationalize a weird phenomenon into something rational, but that a person should be careful not to be dismissive too quickly.

Vampires. If they existed, I'm sure I would have met some by now, met lots of other weird people/entities, never met a Vampire.

originally posted by: PBL666
Vampires. If they existed, I'm sure I would have met some by now, met lots of other weird people/entities, never met a Vampire.

I've met a few. God rest the men's souls they're with now.

That reminds me. I remember as a kid there was guy in my class who really thought mummies exist. Like the kind that walk around with their arms stretched out.

My worst nightmares are about zombies.

Except for that one where I get thrown out of the boat by a huge wave.

But mostly zombie dreams are the worst.

Arrgh.

I don't believe the Earth is flat but I keep an open mind on everything else.

the earth is flat. i can prove it with a spirit box ( or with an ox) or by throwing phage off a boat.
causing phage harm i think would be the better option.(sorry phage).

originally posted by: Rikku

I don't believe the Earth is flat but I keep an open mind on everything else.

the earth is flat. i can prove it with a spirit box ( or with an ox) or by throwing phage off a boat.
causing phage harm i think would be the better option.(sorry phage).

It would only work if you had a control Phage and repeat the experiment.

originally posted by: AaarghZombies
This is a question for people who believe in the paranormal and the supernatural: What is your "Red Line"?

What is the line in the sand that separates the things that you believe in and the things that you think are just nonsense?

For example, you fully accept that UFOs are nuts and bolts alien spacecrafts, but you think that people claiming to have been abducted for a hybrid program are crazy?

Or you accept that ghosts are the spirits of the dead, but think that people who believe in shadow people are just jumping at actual shadows?

Earth isn't flat. But beyond that, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

If we threw an iPhone back in time to even 100 years ago, people would have no alternative but to say it's a form of magic. So I have no doubt that at least some of what we think of as magic in 2020 will one day be understood and perfectly explainable.

People will think certain things like Ghosts, Aliens, Time Travel, ESP are crazy and impossible. And people will be called crazy for thinking they know what these phenomenon are and how they work; most of those people are undoubtedly wrong, but one day, someone will be right. We just need the right combination of crazy and genius to figure it out, it'll happen over time, for so many of the things we all think are 'impossible'.

Air Travel:

“Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible,” physicist and Director of the US Naval Observatory, Simon Newcomb, said in 1902.

All these experts only know what they know, they don't know what they don't know.

originally posted by: PBL666

originally posted by: Rikku

I don't believe the Earth is flat but I keep an open mind on everything else.

the earth is flat. i can prove it with a spirit box ( or with an ox) or by throwing phage off a boat.
causing phage harm i think would be the better option.(sorry phage).

It would only work if you had a control Phage and repeat the experiment.

I almost suggested that we could clone Phage, but I think the world can only handle one Phage.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: Xtrozero
As to the supernatural I need to see something defy the laws of physics in person....Or something we would say is impossible.

Even if you or I see that...remember this...

A scientist gave a TED talk which started with a story about a UFO he saw as a boy, that defied the laws of physics.
Now that he's an adult scientist and is aware of human illusions and misperceptions, he asks himself the question:

"What's more likely, that I saw a UFO defying the laws of physics, or that my brain somehow misinterpreted the information sent by my eyes?"

I agree 100%, read the book Invisible Gorilla and you will get an idea just how bad our senses are and how much our brains fake us out. Saying that I can think of 100s of things that would defy laws of the universe as we know them. How about a person rising up and floating above a bed, objects start flying around a room, or they start speaking some ancient language, or they tell you things about your life no one should know? There are many things that could border on the impossibility, and that is the part I'm suggesting.