Hey, there are some... credulous people back here on the TFP!
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Originally Posted by Zeraph
Actually there are plenty of people who never remember having dreams. And there is plenty of people (just not as much in our western world) who believe/seen ghosts. I'll bet the numbers are closer than you might think when talking world population.
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No there are not. There are plenty of people who almost never remember their dreams of which I am one. However, I'm pretty sure everyone remembers having had dreams, even if they don't recall any details. There's a distinction...
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And dreams are no more better explained by science as ghosts are. We still don't know their purpose, we can only guess. They're just more easily experienced by a larger amount of people so its all assumed, because it's a "normal" thing.
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It depends on what you mean by "explained."
We have far more confidence in the existence of dreams than we do ghosts. Everyone claims to have dreams. We can see physical manifestations of dreams, like talking in ones sleep or waking up from nightmares. We can reliably correlate dreams to brain activity measured empirical by instruments. We have a realistic mechanism by which dreams may manifest. That is to say, there's nothing implausible about one's mind thinking up vivid thoughts during a period of sleep. All these things separate the reality of dreams from the fantasies of ghosts...
It's true that we don't know what dreams are for, if anything. Personally, I think they're a side effect of something else going on in the brain during sleep...
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IMO I think the root of your problem is that you're using "can't prove anything" logic, only to a certain controversial subject. In reality you can't truly prove much at all. Many philosophers would argue that you can only prove yourself, to yourself ("I think therefore I am").
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Most people don't use a strict meaning of "proof" in casual conversation of which I include web forums such as this one.
Even colloquially speaking, no one has ever proven that ghosts exist. No one has even shown that it is a reasonable thing to believe. You might as well throw salt over your shoulder if you spill any; it makes just as much sense!