The problem with ghosts

  • As I men­tioned to Steven Paul last week, I was dis­ap­pointed in the episode of “Penn & Teller’s [Horse-hockey]” (there! I’m get­ting closer to the real name) last Mon­day that dealt with ghost-hunters.

    Yes, they made them look like idiots. Yes, by exten­sion, they made a case that any­body that would take them seri­ously would be an idiot. It’s all the usual stuff for P&T, and they could punch the clock at the end of another hard week, know­ing they had done their bit to espouse the virtue of Real Sci­ence over the bom­bas­tic fak­ery of myth and super­sti­tion and Unreal Science.

    As far as it went, I sup­pose I couldn’t dis­agree with them, even if I do think that they must occupy a dif­fer­ent world where Real Sci­ence is always con­sis­tent, coher­ent and speaks with one voice. They ask me to have faith just as the para­nor­mal pro­po­nents do — they just don’t call it that.

    Which goes to the heart of the big­ger issue I have with doing a show that’s sup­posed to deal once and for all with the rise of spir­i­tu­al­ism among osten­si­bly intel­li­gent peo­ple, and that is that you can’t tackle that sub­ject with­out at least touch­ing on the sub­ject of faith. In a nut­shell, I don’t have a prob­lem with spir­i­tu­al­ism because it’s bad sci­ence; I have a prob­lem with it because it’s bad the­ol­ogy.

    Now, of course I should have known that P&T wouldn’t see want to take the argu­ment in this direc­tion. You’d have to be pretty obtuse not to have noticed just how much con­tempt they have for all That Sort of Thing. But what I thought they might be able to help me under­stand is if these ghost-hunters really believe this, or are they just con men. And if they do believe this — WHAT do they believe?

    This is where that Spir­i­tu­al­ists — ghost-hunters and ghost-believers — are infu­ri­at­ingly eva­sive. And it’s such a sim­ple thing. So you believe in ghosts. What do you believe?

    The mod­ern answer from the ghost-hunters includes a lot of pseudo-scientific pif­fle, and P&T were quite right to try and express how mean­ing­less almost every syl­la­ble of it is. But most Spir­i­tu­al­ists are not ghost-hunters, and even the ghost-hunters must be capa­ble of leav­ing off with the techno jar­gon. So again, what do they believe?

    I’ve never got­ten an answer or any­thing that sounds close. All the Spir­i­tu­al­ists I’ve met are vague and side­step any­thing that sounds too defin­i­tive. But here is what I infer the answer to be:

    Ghost-believer’s Man­i­festo

    • I believe that the spir­its of the departed come back and visit us in the world as ghosts.
    • I believe that ghosts are often the spir­its of peo­ple who have died so sud­denly or under such tragic cir­cum­stances that they “weren’t ready” to cross over to the Other Side yet. Or they could be peo­ple who just had too much unfin­ished busi­ness to leave quite yet.
    • When here, they will haunt places and things, which means that they are just … around. Some­times. If you encounter them, you may sense them by sight, sound or another sense. But you may also just “feel” them there. Or they may affect things — the tem­per­a­ture, the lights, doors or windows.

    Those seem like the things that any Spir­i­tu­al­ist would have to agree with. After that, I would think it breaks down. For instance, are all the ghosts good or are some bad? If a place is haunted, should you try to get the ghosts out or not?

    But even just stick­ing to the basics, what I have always wanted to ask a Spir­i­tu­al­ist if they wouldn’t just fly off the han­dle is, “Do you believe in a lov­ing, car­ing and intel­li­gent God Who has care and con­cern for the liv­ing and the dead?” If they do — and I think that most Spir­i­tu­al­ists do, “Why would such a God do this? What last­ing ben­e­fit comes to either the ghost or the one who wit­nesses it? The first one is con­demned to con­tinue act­ing out the worst moments of its life with­out respite or the hope of alter­ing the past. The wit­ness is con­founded (or tit­il­lated) by some­thing sad or scary or piti­ful that he or she can’t do any­thing about. They’re both pas­sive and the sit­u­a­tion seems point­less and end­less. Does that sound like some­thing God would do?”

    And since I’m being com­pletely self-indulgent, let’s put credulity on hold and imag­ine that I could say all that and get a log­i­cally con­sis­tent answer, which is “no.” What fol­lows from that is much more dif­fi­cult, and I have less cer­tain­ity that I even know the answer. “On the other hand, if you believe that there are good spir­its, isn’t it pos­si­ble there are bad spir­its? And isn’t it pre­cisely the kind of activ­ity that a bad spirit would be involved in — sim­ply putting out vague impres­sions, never being com­mit­ted exactly to any set of rules, prey­ing on the emo­tions of bereaved, bored or per­plexed peo­ple, occu­py­ing some place in a human’s heart that might belong to some­thing more worth­while, and always con­fus­ing, mud­dling, obfus­cat­ing the truths about life and death, sal­va­tion and con­dem­na­tion, heaven and hell?”

    The thing is — in case it’s not clear — I don’t say I absolutely know what’s going on. I have con­jec­ture, which is based on my life’s expe­ri­ence and the author­ity I give to things like church and the­ol­ogy that have no mean­ing to most Spir­i­tu­al­ists. With­out get­ting any closer to their expe­ri­ence, I’m only pre­pared to go so far. I’m just a lit­tle sorry that P&T did such a shoddy job, as I reckon it, of telling me what’s at the bot­tom of it.

    Oh well. Just so I don’t come off like I’m bash­ing, I’ll say that their show tonight is about the excesses of some envi­ron­men­tal­ists. Since that one doesn’t touch on any­thing the­o­log­i­cal, I might find it a bet­ter risk.


    Related posts:

    1. [Baloney] on ghosts
    2. Poi­son by trifles

    July 18th, 2005 | Grace | No Comments |

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required