Hi LindaLou

You seem to be suggesting that you will not accept the existence of something unless you experience it yourself.

No personal experience is not necessary but good evidence is. I have never experienced a black hole or a black swan but I have good evidence for both and neither break any well founded laws of physics so I believe in both. I have no equivalent good evidence for ghosts for example.

Yet we both have said here that while some things cannot be directly experienced, we can study the clues that point to their existence. There is an enormous anecdotal body of evidence, stretching back thousands of years, that ghosts exist. What they actually are, we don't really know, but how can you be so sure that all of these people are simply mistaken or deluded?

I can’t but I know that many people are deluded about all sorts of things every day. It’s not hard to accept that people are deluded or lie or confabulate, that doesn’t break any of the well established laws of physics, ghosts as described to me to date do which makes their existence an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof before we should accept them as real.

My husband and his entire family would be included on that list.

Without particulars I can’t comment and I don’t want to insult anyone so don’t give me any details unless you are prepared for negative comments.

Again, why are you so sure [that we are living souls]? What would your evidence for this statement be?

This is called the null hypothesis, in the absence of evidence for some claimed phenomenon it is reasonable to withhold belief. I have never seen any evidence to suggest that we are ‘living souls’ so I see no reason to believe that we are. I know that many people disagree but they too have, as far as I know, no evidence to support this belief at least none that they have ever been able to show me. If I did not hold this position how could I reject the beliefs of those who believe in the Easter bunny or Thor or any of the literally hundreds of thousands of other improbable and unsupported beliefs that some people hold.

All the best Linda

Russell