Why is it easier for skeptics to believe in coincidence than spirits?

Question

I mean, when something happens out of the ordinary (and what are the odds), skeptics will shrug it off and say "Oh what a coincedince" and never attribute the incident to spirit? why?

Answer 1

Because coincidences happen regularly in everyday life and offer a much simpler explanation than alleged 'spirits.'  If you are going to attribute something to a spirit, why not just attibute it to elves or an invisible purple platypus.  You have as much evidence for one as for the others.

Answer 2

Wushu;

the lack of evidence for certain subjects open the door to attacking the question or the question asker.

If I said all birds were dead, you could see one bird and prove me wrong.

If I said all yellow marbles with green spots were suddenly missing, it would be very difficult to prove it one way or another.

Some places you are innocent  til proven guilty and other places you are guilty til proven innocent.

Then some places they just kill you and be done with it.

Answer 3

I think you can ask yourself the same question in reverse.  Why do you find it easier to believe in spirits than it be coincidence.  Truth be told, a great many things that are truly coincidence are given paranormal explanations because there are the other half of the crowd that like certain random things to be special.  

My take is that if you know it was a spirit and they believe it's coincidence, neither of you are harming one another with your belief and so both are okay.

Answer 4

because the things you are claiming are out of the ordinary are not really out of the ordinary, its just that you personally cant explain or understand it.

Some of us have enough experience to know that lights sometimes flicker, cold spots can occur in houses, and changing temperatures can cause houses to make all kinds of noises.

The believers are creating evidence where perfectly natural events are happening.

Show me something thats truely unexplainable, or outside the realm of statistical chance and you will make your case.

Answer 5

I think "believers" have to get over the skeptics not believing. I used to wish things would happen to me. I didn't go out "looking" for them (except when I messed with a Ouija board for fun). I believed there were angels and saints..but that I wasn't good enough for them to appear to. Then everything happened all at once. ..and I went along with it. If only I hadn't let it happen. If only I had had someone to guide me (on earth) about spirits etc. People just kept saying to "let it happen". I went to just about everybody to try to find out what was happening to me. I just made a fool of myself. I wish I'd kept my mouth shut !!!!!! I think the skeptics have a lot more peace than I do. People shouldn't mess with things they don't know that much about. There were too many "coincidences" for me to deny that something was happening. I think the skeptics should just leave it alone. I think their answers should be scientific etc. answers showing other possible good  reasons that things happen.

Answer 6

I'm just going to guess at this since I'm not a debunker which is what I suspect you mean when you ask about YA skeptics.

When a person accepts all the underlying assumptions of conventional science (which real skeptics do not do) despite their flaws and contradictions and choose to think in conventional ways then that person will go to great lengths to fit unusual happenings into the conventional view. For instance there were very sophisticated and complicated models (and mathematical equations) used to explain how the planets reversed orbit (starting going backwards for certain times of the year) in order to fit this observed activity into the then current understanding of the solar system. This is described by some psychologist as small scale creativity. Almost any article published in a peer reviewed science journal meets this criteria building on known principles and adding a very very small idea.

Large scale creativity is an example of Einstein's work on Relativity which overturned the foundational understandings of physics.

Thus, a debunker can easily accept an amazing coincidence (1 out 10 million chance being demonstrated 85 times out of 100 in a controlled experiment) much easier than they can even entertain what theory would be required for something that defies conventional science to be true. They think in "why this can't happen" terms and not in "what would make this possible terms"

I also think with your question in particular there are assumptions to what spirit means and can and can not be rather than looking for a cause (even say undiscovered wave lengths of energy that people might attribute to spirit causes) they instead dismiss the idea (because in their belief system spirits can't exist) and choose not to investigate.

Answer 7

hi kimberlee.....

from reading most of their answers to a paranormal situation...(skeptics)... most of them wanted to believe in the paranormal...(ghosts) and they tryed real hard to experience and see a ghost...but when nothing happened over and over, they came to the conclusion that it just doesnt exist.....but the truth is the same experiences just dont happen for every single person on this planet.....thats why they shrug it off as a coincidence...and the fact that they just dont have hard evidence...specially with spirits existing, and until they actually experience something BIG, then they might think differently.......

Answer 8

Well, proof, for one.  Remember what you asked the next time someone says something completely ridiculous to you and/or you suspect they are lying to you.  Do not ask for proof ... just simply believe in them and have faith in what they are saying.  You can't do that, though.  It'd be foolish.  You'd need proof, evidence, precedent, anything!  

However, if you like math, read the article I linked to below.  It basically says that no matter how ludicrous something may seem, it is neither mysterious or coincidental.

--From the article--

The mathematician will answer that even in the most unbelievable situations, the odds are actually very good. The law of large numbers says that with a large enough denominator -- in other words, in a big wide world -- stuff will happen, even very weird stuff. ''The really unusual day would be one where nothing unusual happens,'' explains Persi Diaconis, a Stanford statistician who has spent his career collecting and studying examples of coincidence. Given that there are 280 million people in the United States, he says, ''280 times a day, a one-in-a-million shot is going to occur.''

Answer 9

MOST ARE IN DENIAL , THEY STILL THINK THEY ARE THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

Answer 10

Probability and reason.

Millions of events happen to you.  Every now and then two of those events will seem unusual or somehow connected.  You are much more likely to remember such events.  Even though they rarely happen, because you remember them it seems like they happen all the time.  Because there is no way to falsify or verify any paranormal claims, you can make anything *seem* unusual if you believe it strongly enough.

Answer 11

Fear of the unknown is normal. Admitting to it is another story.It's easy to just shrug something off without examining it or being able to explain it. They don't want to face the possibility of another power.

Answer 12

I can only answer for myself. For any given event that needs some kind of explanation, I start brainstorming what the possible explanations could be, as I bet many people would likewise do. "Spirits" is not an explanation that pops first thing into my head, but I am willing to put it on my list. The next thing I do is rank the possibilities according to how likely I think each one is, and then I start with the most likely explanation and try to systematically rule each one out, in order from most likely to least likely. Pretty reasonable approach, I'd say.

What happens is that before I ever get to the "spirits" explanation, I've found that I can't rule out some more likely explanations that I've come up with. Since that's the case, I don't have a logical reason for assuming the spirit explanation and dismissing the rest.  

You might be saying to yourself right now, "hey, who are you to judge what is likely and what isn't?"  Good point. We all make those judgments personally, unless we are scientists and then we have to defend our judgments scientifically. But here on Yahoo Answers, you're free to believe the way you want.

EDIT: Kinda interesting to see how bitter some people are against their imagined antagonists who dare to think differently from them! So much for "open-minded".

Answer 13

I think you're being a bit hard on those who call themselves skeptics.  Everyone - skeptics and believers alike - should use logical thought (and, where necessary, basic mathematical principles).

For example, if you roll a dice, and 3 comes up 22 times out 100, this is quite within the normal range expected by chance.  If it comes up 42 times out of 100, then this is beyond reasonable chance, and the reason should be investigated.

I don't know of *any* phenomenon that occurs beyond what chance would predict that hasn't been investigated.  So do you have a particular "coincidence" in mind?  If so, please post details.

.

Answer 14

A simple reason is rhetoric. If you look at each answer from a bad skeptic, you will find at least two poor uses of rhetoric.

Trying to be flippant, they will almost always twist the question or even reverse it completely so they put you on defense.

Another bad skeptic move is to write an answer and purposely not get the point you were making. That is intended to get you to an emotional state where you lose your cool and make mistakes. Those are only two uses of rhetoric.

The people who are being condescending, rude, using science and now even math(lol) as a shield to hide,  pretend to be wanting evidence of some scientific kind,  but that is a lie. They are only insecure internet flamers that have found a topic, or home where they can mount their little attacks, with plenty of questions to play off of, This topic is perfect for them.

It is a very personal fulfillment for tiny little people that may want you to know they have an education so they will make a great effort to use larger words and confusing wording they are writing only to make you see them as more intelligent than you. I think we all know there are children in grade school here as well as doctors, so who are they trying to impress?

I think we all recognize who they are and so do they.

A real skeptic, is actually a very simple good person, who is not challenging anyone’s beliefs or theories.

A real skeptic is just a person who has not yet had any personal experience that would allow him to believe in the subject they are unsure of.

They feel no need to attack others.

They feel no need to give false impressions of themselves. They just await this personal experience and will allow that experience that is unexplainable to make up their mind.

The other people I will call “bad” skeptics and they are all over the internet looking for people to ambush. Once they learn a few tricks of rhetoric, they can just keep repeating themselves into oblivion.

The bad skeptic in this section, who runs out of rhetoric will always fall back on  " this is the science and mathematics" category so I will answer this scientifically.

They fail to say why they make the extra two clicks to get themselves into the clearly marked paranormal section.

I check out the Science and Mathematics section daily and never see any of these people showing any attention to that category but they are here answering every question and asking a few loaded questions in an attempt to be clever.

The last time I made this statement, instantly science questions appeared in the paranormal section and guess who all of the answerers were? That was an obvious setup so I guess my point was taken.

Answer 15

I love reading the responses telling skeptics what they think.Why they think it,and what they should think.One of them actually thinks what he says influences other people.How arrogant of him, don't you agree?He thinks he's smart enough to have it all figured out.To answer your question.I think it's silly to believe in ghosts and spirits.I believe it to be superstitious nonsense.I don't say that to insult you or anyone else.You're welcome to believe anything you want.If you didn't ask I wouldn't tell you.You asked that's the only reason I write it.It's an honest answer,that's all.Now go back and let the other guy tell you what I mean.He'll even throw in a few unkind comments while he's at it.Or,maybe he'll change his answer to make himself look smarter.He's real good at doing everything he accuses others of.

Answer 16

Because they want to fight the inevitable...they dont want to accept it.

Answer 17

The universe is unfolding as a single act.

Everything is happening out...once...

Since the evidence for anything other than coincidence is absolutely zero, we simply cannot believe in spirits.  How can we?

And the word spirit is too strongly related to the word magic for some of us.  We know there is no such thing as magic...already (?).

Not too late to catch up...

WWWWOOOOPPPPPP     WWWWWOOOOOPPP

PESSIMIST ALERT!!!!!   WWWOOOPPP  WWWOOOPPP

Hit the bad rating button--try to shut up the guy who is right!!

Won't work.

Answer 18

I think nobody believes me when I say the polar guys are moving my stuff because it isn't their stuff that goes missing.

If they had a polar guy in their house taking there keys and pencils then it would be hard to say it is some kind of coincedince or you just misplaced it yourself.

Answer 19

because coincidence is not out of their realm of understanding and the spirit world is.

Answer 20

What do you mean by spirit?

A spirit made it happen or the whole world is spirit?....

Don't understand....