Atheism

While James Randi was alive, he offered $1,000,000 for proof of the supernatural. He never got that proof. I think that's pretty telling.

Paraphrasing I believe — Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

No nothing is “supernatural “. We may not yet know what we’re seeing or exactly what happened… we simply don’t understand it yet.

Yet is relevant point there IMHO. We will.

Supernatural phenomena do not actually exist as far as I can tell. There's no actual evidence to my knowledge, and plenty of evidence that humans are not particularly good at perceiving or interpreting the universe around us as it actually is. Our brains are not a reliable narrator, supernatural phenomena are most likely a consequence of this rather than anything genuinely supernatural.

• 60% the person experiencing it misunderstood or misinterpreted what they were looking at because they were stupid and gullible, but not maliciously making things up.

• 35% completely fabricated and never happened and created to legitimately defraud or troll others.

• 5% something scientific that we simply don't understand yet.

• 0% actual supernatural occurrences.

I do not currently believe in any supernatural anything, for the exact same reasons I do not believe in gods.

1. There is no persuasive evidence of anything supernatural
2. Many supernatural phenomena were discovered to have naturalistic explanations
3. The only evidence provided for supernatural phenomena is anecdotal

It's entirely possible for there to be supernatural stuff, but the time to believe it is when it is demonstrated.

One point that I don't see raised a lot is that otherwise perfectly mentally healthy people can experience hallucinations. They may even find them comforting, and some even then do not believe the visions are real. I have a suspicion that a lot of ghost sightings, etc, might be such hallucinations. But I can't demonstrate that, and I'm honestly not sure how we could, unless we can find a way to trigger such hallucinations on purpose.

I’m a strict naturalist - I believe that supernatural phenomena do not exist. I do not believe in the unknown.

“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there were`t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”

― Peter Watts, Echopraxia

I think it's hard to find "true experiences with the supernatural" credible because even if the person believes it happened: humans make for awful sensors. They might feel warm when they're cold or vice versa. They regularly see things that don't exist. More than half of us appear to be some kind of moron.

And why would a ghost be unmeasurable? Why could something be truly ethereal when everything ever measured or recorded is not? Plus, the seemingly random limitations on any sort of fairy, ghost, or deity make it pretty much dead in the water as far as theories go. Imagine this, you're some kind of land-god of wealth and/or stealing and potentially eating babies. But you go years or decades without fulfilling your own theme or being seen by humans? And you can't leave your territory as defined by human maps like you need permission from city councilmen?

All of this on top of the belief I hold that life is a culmination of billions of tiny mechanisms that, upon systemic failure, result in something akin to gears no longer turning in a clock means: either machinery and electronics all have "souls" or humans don't. Where would you draw the line? Do waterfalls have souls? The grand canyon? Dogs?

So pretty unlikely, all things considered.

There hasn't been any proof in all of history that any supernatural phenomenon was real.
Until there is, my thoughts on it are: not real, never happened.

“Supernatural” is just unexplained, or misunderstood, natural phenomena.

I’ve spent years working in supposedly haunted buildings (as security.)

the guy who loves sharing his ghost story really didn’t appreciate being told that the “fleeting man” he saw apparitions of, were his own reflection (specifically in a corner window of a conference room, or in certain circumstances, in double-paned windows.)

Nor did he appreciate being told the ghost “walking” down the stairwell was really just the fire sprinkler standpipe clunking against the stairs as the building cooled off. (And the reason it happened around the same time every night was the building’s hvac being set to a lower temp to save energy.)

He most certainly didn’t enjoy being told that the doors closing in his face were caused by shorts in the magnetic door holders and that he really should have put that in his report (he was written up for not reporting a maintenance issue.)

He also got written up when we found out that he was leaving windows cracked in the space above him, but he wrote them off as ghosts screaming instead of the wind whistling through a slightly cracked window.

Our understanding of the universe is imperfect- and it probably always will be. The point of science is to improve that understanding using evidence and experimentation.

I’ll take science any day of the week.

I think it's highly unlikely and the universe is amazing and bizarre enough without us imagining outside forces acting on it.

It’s entirely possible that supernatural phenomena exist. It’s also possible that what we call “supernatural” is merely science we don’t understand yet. After all, things like lightning and disease used to be attributed to gods, evil spirits, witchcraft, etc. I guess I’d call myself an open-minded skeptic, if that makes any sense.

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/718/

Basically, it's not that hard to believe there are so many stories.

If it can be oberved and explained then it isn't supernatural. Therefore nothing can be supernatural.

A ton of real things would fit in with all the supernatural stereotypes if we didn't already accept them due to science.

I don't believe in "supernatural phenomena" either. If they'd exist, we'd actually have prove of their existence. There's about 8 billion people on this planet and for some reason all the "recorded" phenomena date back to before everyone had an easy to record device in their pockets. They've all gone down to 0 for some odd reason, even though it is as easy as ever to actually provide literal proof - if they existed in the first place.

People who experience supernatural phenomena are experiencing either natural phenomena they are too stupid to understand, are fooled by man made things, or are hallucinating for whatever reason.

I fully believe there's ~something~ beyond our 3 spatial dimensions we call reality. What that is, I don't know. Does it have sentience, I doubt. I also think these things fall into unknowables, things each individual will develop a different feel for, and should be deeply personal.

Our Brains are a meat pudding that runs on less electricity than a light bulb. I don't think it's unreasonable to get some hallucinations and signal interference. Especially when the pudding is stressed or poisoned . Plus we straight up know there are senses and ranges of senses we do not perceive. Reality is another thing all together through the eyes of a mantis shrimp. Our perception is incredibly biased and limited, so miracles (magic) are an easy explanation when our senses fail us.

Asking if the supernatural exists is not a scientific question whose answer can be derived empirically. Which to me means the question isn't even worth asking until a bunch of other questions can be asked / answered enough that this question becomes a scientific one, belief really has nothing to do with it (not sure I'm even capable of belief like that).

Concluding that all these stories are made up IS the simplest and most logical explanation. But, they almost certainly do not come from nothing. We as a species are kinda hardwired to understand things, and when we encounter something we don't, we have a tendency to either make shit up or seek things that satisfy that understanding (even if its not really understanding). The result is that we have all these fantastic stories and myths that are only distantly related to reality.

I'm fully atheist, but I have seen ghosts in front of me, clear as day, while completely sober, during the daylight.

Wait, is this a depiction of the flat earth dome cutting someone in half?