No. It’s unreasonable. Tell your friend that I specifically said he’s a twat

Can a person with reasonable beliefs have an irrational one? Certainly.

Can someone reasonably believe ghosts exist? No, it is a unreasonable belief.

no, its unreasonable

I think it’s fine if people believe in ghosts and spiritual stuff. My wife believes in ghosts, genuinely and fervently. I don’t really care to battle her on this because regardless of what she believes and what I believe we ultimately end up doing the same thing in the end - nothing. I think it’s a bit childish, but it’s no more or less unreasonable than faith in a god or a higher power and people will fight you over that.

I think the delineating factor is how much belief in ghosts or the supernatural play into your decision making and your worldview.

If a person believes ghosts are real, but never really act on that belief, it’s harmless.

if a person believes ghosts are real and alter their behavior in meaningful ways as a result, it’s maladaptive.

For example, say you hear a creaking noise in the middle of the night that startles you awake. Person A, Person B and Person C each check to ensure there’s no intruder in the house and determine that all the doors and windows are still locked and there are no signs of forced entry.

Person A comes to the conclusion that it was just the sound of the wood joists expanding or contracting as the temperature fluctuates and goes back to bed.

Person B comes to the conclusion that the sound could have only been produced by a ghost and therefore their house must be haunted, and so they call an emergency priest to come exorcise the house with holy water and they stay up all night clutching charms and wards to fend off spirits.

Person C comes to the conclusion that the sound could have only been produced by a ghost, says a quick (10 second) prayer for protection/guidance for the lost spirit and then goes back to sleep.

You can see how Person A and Person C have conflicting views about the origin of the sound, one which relates to scientific explanations for real phenomena and the other that delves into spirituality and faith to explain it. Regardless, they are both able to resume their normal behaviors (sleeping) afterward, while Person B shares the same view of the origin of the sound as person C, but their view is extremely disruptive and illogical. Their belief in ghosts requires them to take extreme measures to feel protected against them, but there is no evidence that anything bad would have happened as a result if they had chosen to do nothing instead. Nor would there have been a guarantee that something bad would not have happened anyway if they did all of the “proper” things to remain safe from ghosts.

Man, the downvote ratio really goes to show how many people vote without reading a post. I imagine a lot of them would agree with you, but they just saw the meme and thought, “That’s stupid.” Which is ironically a vote in your favor.

The question’s a little weird.

Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts? Yes, obviously, people do and many of them would be considered generally reasonable. They manage their lives okay, they make good decisions most of the time, they’re not gibbering maniacs, they’re reasonable people.

But: is it reasonable (meaning, grounded in good evidence) to believe in ghosts? I’d say it depends on what you and your friend specifically mean by “ghosts”, but in general no. If ghosts were real, they’d be more observable.

And “Hitchens said so” is pretty weak sauce, so I hope that’s an uncharitable summary of your argument.

Do I believe in ghosts in the literal sense of an actual spirit hanging around in the physical world haunting places and people? No.

Do I think it’s fascinating to see how the idea of “ghosts” are used in a cultural sense usually representing an individual or group’s desires, thoughts, feelings, etc. after they’ve passed on and usually storytelling around respecting their wishes or finishing what they started so they can finally be “at peace”? Yes.

I also find it fascinating in a tragic way how people who’ve gone through extreme grief and loss can cling to the idea of ghosts, particularly of loved ones. Perhaps the pyschie doesn’t want to let go of that person so much that it can manifest as audio-visual hallucinations that feel incredibly real to the individual.

After all, we all perceive the world through our brain: it is the filter for everything.

I’ve experienced some strange stuff personally, but I don’t think I’ve seen an actual ghost. I remember having a dream about a close relative the night they died suddenly and we all found out in the morning. But that could be my memory post-rationalising something.

I’ve seen a milk bottle fly out from the back of the fridge but I swear I remember that the fridge wasn’t rocking unstably and that the milk was definitely at the back of the fridge. But I could have seen incorrectly because who pays attention to the precise location of a milk bottle when opening the fridge.

And I’ve encountered machines that appeared to be haunted. An ex-gf’s iPod classic she kept because it is a time capsule of her music would randomly turn itself on, play 10 seconds of a random song, then turn itself off again.

I can feel how a ghost story would fit all of these and feel like it would make emotional sense to me. Like there’s some deep part of our evolutionary psychology that supports feeling this way. Why?

Now in that sense I believe people genuinely experienced “ghosts” that aren’t actually there but are a part of their perceived reality and I find that fascinating.

Depending on where you live, your friend might be eligible for using public transportation completely for free with a special id. It is also possible that their job security is going through the roof. One needs to be tested first, though and from what you wrote about them, I’d suggest that you or another person close to them escort them to a clinic. This way they don’t get lost and can get help speaking with the personell when the instructions or other information get too complicated for them.

He says there’s “convincing “ evidence for its existence.

Big if true. He should send that to you instead of making memes.

If ghosts were real, then I can think of a few people throughout history who would have been swarmed by them. Adolf Hitler would have approximately 13 million spirits haunting him by the end. Something like 100,000,000,000 humans have ever lived, and somehow all the ghosts are from culturally relevant time frames? For all the US civil war ghosts people have seen, you’d think there’d be orders of magnitude more native Americans haunting this place. Did the European colonists just make sure to let the Indigenous peoples finish all their business before hunting them to near extinction?

The bar for “convincing” is very low when you want to believe.

Ghosts are fun to think about and make good stories, but there’s never been one bit of reliable evidence. So no it’s not reasonable to believe in something that isn’t real.

There is no reliable scientific proof. Thread/post end.

Nope. All “evidence” is fake. For example pretty much all UFO vids disappeared once 4k cameras got invented

If you ever watch the video of Karl Sagan describing what the fourth dimension is, that is a slight possibility for explaining poltergeist ghosts, possibly even alien abductions.