Christ's Reject

Has anyone here had supernatural experiences before, and if so how do you explain them rationally?

My mother told me a story about speaking on the phone to my great aunt one night (I was a little boy at the time, and I was in my bed). She, and my great aunt, heard this angelic music. She looked around the house to see where it was coming from, but couldnt find a source. Her conclusion was "I bed aunt *something* has died". Sure enough that aunt had fallen down some stairs and died at that point in time.

My girlfriends mother had a similar experience. She was waiting for her parents to return home one night, and was looking out the window. Her parents were hours late. She saw light rising from a house, and heard angelic music. Her parents came home, and told her they were visiting that house, because the lady was on her death bed, and died.

Being from Scotland, there are many ghost stories that fly around. I personally think most of them are hallucinations (one of my aunts sees alot of things), but angelic music at death...on 2 different occasions?

I understand I'm a stranger on a forum to you lot, but I trust what my mother said. She passed away a few years ago, so I cant ask her about it anymore. I've only been away from christianity for 4 months, but these things keep bugging me, and as I'm trying to be completely honest with myself I can't put them to the back of my mind.

So...any ideas?

Condraz23

Trust me, strange things can happen when a loved one dies.

Christ's Reject

The second instance wasnt a loved one - it was just a christian lady.

Stumpjumper

I would call them experiences that confirm that there is more to life and reality than what can be easily viewed and experienced on a daily basis...

Christ's Reject

Any atheist opinions on the subject? It's much easier to ignore things that dont agree with your beliefs (or lack of them), but to ignore things that might contradict your belief is to lie to yourself (what kept me in christianity!).

One thing I'm going to do is ask my lady to ask her mother if she's 100% sure about what she saw. She's on anti-depressants, so she could have a form of mental illness, which could allow for visual hallucinations. Its not the hallucinating that convinces me, however; its the timing...

Don Joe

I would've pointed you to an old formal debate with a lot of examples from neurology showing how many ways the brain can lie to itself, but it seems it isn't there anymore.

I could list some questions you should try to answer before you decide there's anything miraculous involved, but even then, not finding the answers to any of these still wouldn't mean there's such a thing as the supernatural. And this brings me to the fundamental problem with these things: we don't have complete scientific knowledge yet. Any object or phenomenon you come across that you can't explain scientifically right now might one day find a perfectly natural explanation. Does it seem like magic now? Sure, if you accept "magic" as "that which I can't yet understand". But is it necessarily "supernatural" (assuming the word means anything)? No, it isn't.

Since the timing is what's bothering you, I will still exemplify some of the questions I mentioned, but you have to remember the principle - labelling something as "supernatural" is just you giving up the attempt to explain it naturally, it's not the absence of an explanation.

"Did your mother and aunt listen to religious choir music often?" (You can have a song ringing in your head without your ears being involved at all.)

"Did they know «aunt *something*» to be especially old, vulnerable or ill at the time they were talking on the phone?" (If you think you're hearing angelic music, you can immediately think "death" and if you have a relative you think is close to dying, you can easily interpret the music as a sign regarding the relative.)

"Is there any precise confirmation that the time they were on the phone is the exact time aunt *something* was falling down the stairs?" (If it's just the same half of the same day, the coincidence loses some of its "magic".)

I'm sure you can think of other questions (and the neurology thread would've given you even more ideas). In the end it comes down to whether you want to believe in miracles more than you want to explain what actually happened (or believe there's an explanation even if at this time it's unobvious - history shows "miracle" after "miracle" being explained naturally as science advances).

bajan

I too do not believe in the supernatural. The limitations in our understanding of the natural world is no justification for supernature.

I recently had an experience that is relevant to this thread that I cannot get over. An ultrasound examination that I went for seemed to reveal some serious abnormalities. The examining doctor would not be drawn into giving me a conclusive interpretation, just to say that the referring specialist would deal with that as soon as he received the results, and that this should be done with urgency. He would only say "expect the worst and hope for the best." Needlesstosay I became quite troubled, thinking it must be cancer, and I immediately started planning how I would deal with it. I decided I would prefer not to divulge details of my condition to anybody if it was confirmed.

Within a couple of days my mother, who lives 4000 miles away and who hardly ever uses the telephone because of her worsening hearing, phoned to ask me if I was alright. She said she had had a feeling there was something wrong.

She has never done this before. I would not say we are particularly close. She, like me, I think would reject supernatural explanations.

I assured her things were fine and changed the subject. I am still awaiting an appointment with the specialist.

Christ's Reject

1 - My mum wasn't even a christian at the time! I doubt that she'd listen to that kind of music very much. We did, however, attend church, where hymns were sung. I wouldnt describe this churchs' singing as "angelic" though, as apparently this singing was really beautiful.

2 - No idea. She was in an old folks home (I think - its been a while since I was told it), so possibly.

3 - Yep, someone (cant remember who now) phoned my mum and told her the time, which was when she heard the music.

The main argument against this, I suppose, is exaggeration. People have a habit of twisting their story to prove their point. Another strange thing - why is it all women that see and hear these things!? :huh:

I look forward to the day when science can explain ghosts and the supernatural!

As for my girlfriends mum, I bet she knew that lady was ill, and subconciously knew that thats where her parents would be...

abaddon

Music in dreams and in memory often seems much more ethereal than when it was originally heard. That's because it's incomplete when heard mentally rather than physically, so the imagination embellishes.

It's likely they knew her time was near, so they guessed she'd died, and by a not very narrow chance they were correct.

Even if they got the time of the death right, it doesn't mean she remembered the time of the music right. Knowing how wildly inaccurate memories are, it's almost certain none of these people are remembering things accurately. We don't have video recorders in our heads that will just replay an event stored in the brain somewhere; remembering is an act of imagination. The word itself, "re-member," means "to put the pieces back together again" -- the pieces are some fragments of the actual event mixed with some pieces of other memories that the imagination uses as "filler" to flesh out a more coherent picture. If two persons imagine that they had heard the same music at the same time, it could be that one had some music in mind, or heard some sounds in the background (of the phone or elsewhere), then when she later mentioned hearing music then the other person confirmed... "Oh yes, I heard music too!"

Yes, they "twist" the events to make it a more interesting story. Why would they recount things that seemed dramatic to them except to entertain? That sounds like dishonesty, but it's a typical unconscious habit of people. You said ghost stories are commonplace in your region, so it makes sense that ghosts would be the first thing they'd jump to to put the pieces of the confusing events into a coherent story or "explanation."

I don't know why it seems mostly women seeing and hearing ghosts. Many of them were lied to about having "women's intuition", which is just another way of saying that some women prefer "feeling around" for explanations to thinking them through more rigorously.

I don't think there's very much to explain. Everytime I hear about these things, it's always a simple little anecdote: a lone person or two had some experiences that confused them... Given that our imaginations jump quickly to easy and dramatic explanations, and that our memories are poor witnesses, and so many people prefer an entertaining story to a mundane explanation, I don't know of any ghost stories or any tales of the supernatural that aren't just entertaining fiction.

Even if the events you recount were ESP, that's not necessarily supernatural (I don't believe in either). Even if they were supernatural, it tells you nothing about the afterlife, Jesus, God or other.

Now there's a good skeptic!

Carin Nel

I'm a Christian. I've had supernatural experiences. Because I believe in a supernatural God, it's not hard for me to accept that these things do happen, and that there does not have to be a logic explanation for them. It happens al the time in the Scriptures, so for Christians it's not a strange phenominan, or rather it should not be. However, post-modern man really battles to submit the intellect to the above-normal occurrances in life. Man always wants an explanation, or be in control, and that is not always possible. Christians find it easier to accept.

Regards,
Carin Nel