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Prof. Brian Cox On Ghosts

Personally, I find hardline dismissive pontificating scientists as knobby as zealous religious nutbags. I'm a Christian but find anti-abortion rethoric as disgusting as Prof. Dawkins' recent statement that it was "immoral" to give birth to a baby with Down syndrome. Both as bloody fundamentalist as each other!

If Coxy had said something along the lines of "I don't believe people are seeing ghosts, but something even more interesting! then that's fine. Calling people "knobbers" is just lazy. But then so is having an untested 'belief' in ghosts!
 
This is one of the main problems with celebrity scientists. When speaking on subjects outside of their narrow specialisation they are unqualified to do so and their opinions are no more valid than those of any random person on the street.
Maybe but they're better than celebrities who have no other discernible skill, qualification or talent at all, telling what we should be doing.
 
Philomena Cunk, in the 2016 Screenwipe, asking him "Can you imagine what it must feel like to be sucked off through a hole?" made me laugh.
 
Personally, I find hardline dismissive pontificating scientists as knobby as zealous religious nutbags. I'm a Christian but find anti-abortion rethoric as disgusting as Prof. Dawkins' recent statement that it was "immoral" to give birth to a baby with Down syndrome. Both as bloody fundamentalist as each other!

Quite. Fundamentalists are fundamentalists.
 
Maybe but they're better than celebrities who have no other discernible skill, qualification or talent at all, telling what we should be doing.
Umph, there was an astronomy programme on a wee while ago with BC and Dara O' Briain where for once we actually WANTED to hear what Cox had to say since that is his area. But O'Briain would not let him get a word in edgeways. :mad:
 
Umph, there was an astronomy programme on a wee while ago with BC and Dara O' Briain where for once we actually WANTED to hear what Cox had to say since that is his area. But O'Briain would not let him get a word in edgeways. :mad:

I can't believe I'm about the same age as Dara O'Briain, I thought he was pushing about 60.
 
We have a friend who went to school with Brian Cox and he is VERY bitter and twisted! :evil:
He does always seem to have a very fake and forced smile in the way of only someone who's never spontaneously laughed at another person's loud fart .. perhaps that's a problem for Brian Cox ? .. he's not a bad bloke but he never seems relaxed bless him..
 
People see ghosts. And always have. That's fact.


Now...what is a ghost?

Exactly something is happening, how can you deny that? However we don't know what and surely any scientist worth their salt should be interested in why people see things? What's making it happen? Is it internal or external? Not just say it doesn't happen.
 
He does always seem to have a very fake and forced smile in the way of only someone who's never spontaneously laughed at another person's loud fart .. perhaps that's a problem for Brian Cox ? .. he's not a bad bloke but he never seems relaxed bless him..


I've met a few people who regularly talk to groups and are very good at it but find it horribly stressful. There are numerous accounts of actors vomiting before going on stage.

Maybe he's just really stressed by it?

Not a big fan of his. Anyone that is so dismissive, like Dawkins, Izzard can fuck off these days.
 
I've met a few people who regularly talk to groups and are very good at it but find it horribly stressful. There are numerous accounts of actors vomiting before going on stage.

Maybe he's just really stressed by it?

Not a big fan of his. Anyone that is so dismissive, like Dawkins, Izzard can fuck off these days.
Of the stuff of his I've seen, he seems genuinely into what he's into but not a 'natural' in front of the camera which is fair enough ..
 
Note that the modern church of 'yoof science' permits countenancing a whole range of once-fringe Fortean staples. Alien life, Check. Time travel, Check. Artificial Intelligence becoming sentient, Check.

Ghosts.....absolutely not, and anyone who wonders as to their confirmable presence is certifiably insane. Whyis this a totemic step-change too far?
Aliens, time travel and sentient A.I don't require us to revise the laws of physics as we currently understand them. Ghosts do.
 
Aliens, time travel and sentient A.I don't require us to revise the laws of physics as we currently understand them. Ghosts do.
Interesting. So: because there have not been (so far) any repeatable physical measurements made, or indisputable records captured, your conclusion is that ghosts in any sense other than multiple mass perceptual delusions cannot exist?

And therefore you have an absolute certainty that my statement:
And I'm not convinced that a superior sniggering certainty, predicated upon the shaky reductionist perspective that absence of evididence constitutes an absolute, universal and eternal evidence of their absence in any and every context..
...is misguided?

I appreciate that probably you're setting this up as a deliberate straw-man argument (in order to generate spirited debate !-) ....unless: you do take a personal antithesis / non-agnostic perspective on ghosts. If so, is that fully for the same reasons as Prof Cox?
 
I'm not saying ghosts don't exist. Just that they require us to adjust our scientific theories of the universe in a way that aliens don't.

Firstly you have the problem of a soul existing seperately from a body. Then you have the problem of what kind of matter ghosts are composed of.

They're material enough to be seen, yet non material enough to walk through walls and apparently flicker in and out of existence.

Personally I favour John Keel's Ultraterrestrial theory, which at least has the advantage of being a grand unifying theory of all paranormal manifestations. But as yet there's no real scientific grounding to it.
 
Firstly you have the problem of a soul existing seperately from a body.

Which right away surmises that ghosts are souls. Which they might well not be.

Personally I favour John Keel's Ultraterrestrial theory, which at least has the advantage of being a grand unifying theory of all paranormal manifestations. But as yet there's no real scientific grounding to it.

Yup- me too. Definitely. And there never will be any scientific "grounding" of it. That's the point. Which to me makes it no less valid. In fact infinitely more valid.
 
I've met a few people who regularly talk to groups and are very good at it but find it horribly stressful. There are numerous accounts of actors vomiting before going on stage.

Maybe he's just really stressed by it?
I wonder if that is why I find him so unbearable on the radio but much less so on the TV? He is relaxed away from the TV cameras and just lets it all out?
 
Why more valid?

Because, and valid may not be the right word- if not then apologies, if you're arguing that something is beyond scientific "proof" then for it to be so is presumably more valid.
 
Aliens, time travel and sentient A.I don't require us to revise the laws of physics as we currently understand them. Ghosts do.

But we could well not have them fully grasped anyway. What about nothing goes faster than the speed of light idea (The one Cox thing I watched at Christmas with Noel Fielding on a bicycle as Einstein -liked it 'cos they took the pee) , I believe CERN had something that didn't play along with that.

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Well the beauty of science is that it constantly evolves as new discoveries are made. It's a work in progress rather than a body of knowledge set in stone. That being the case, Cox should know better than to scoff at paranormal phenomena simply because they're currently unexplained.
 
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