Spirits?

[Randi]

I've always wondered if/how atheists deal with the idea/belief of ghosts/spirits.
From what I've encountered in conversation with others, this is an topic of contention among some atheists I know, and I wondered what all of you thought.

[Kenny]

I'm down for some spirits

but seriously, no, ghosts do not exist. nothing happens when you die, period.

[Randi]

That first sentence was made of pure win.

[Bella]

I don't think spirits/ghosts exist in our world, but they do somewhere else.

[Vondell Swain]

No. I don't believe in any physical/supernatural manifestation of the human consciousness, which I think is in essence what "spirit" tries to describe, at least in the nonreligious sense.

Atheists, in my mind, are purveyors of logic at any level of thinking, and the idea of any sort of transcendent human spirit strikes me personally as entirely illogical.

[Talon Cox]

I personally don't believe in ghosts/spirits. I mean no one has actually come back from the dead to describe what it's like. How can we know?

[Kinz]

I don't believe in ghosts/spirits. Movies/TV shows with paranormal activity in them scare the heck out of me but I don't actually believe in them... kind of the way that kids know there isn't really a monster under the bed but that doesn't stop them from making sure that no part of their body is close to the edge of the bed.

But I really don't believe that they exist. I don't think anything happens after you die, beyond the obvious biological stuff (i.e. body decomposing).

[Panabag]

I don't believe in ghosts, but even if they are real who are we to say that they're directly related to humans? Just because we see them in human form that could just be a defense mechanism or something of that sort.

[Olivia]

I actually do believe in ghosts some of the time. It depends on whether or not I believe in souls at the moment (and I change my mind about it often). If we have souls, I figure they degrade after death the same as our bodies. Some stuff is more biodegradable than others. Ghosts are the souls that are slow to degrade.

[Carolyn Grahn]

I believe that there are ghosts and spirits because there is proof that people have souls (people who die continue to cognitively function despite the fact that their brain is dead).  However, I still don't believe there is a god ruling over them instead they become a part of space-time itself free to do what they wish.

[Raina]

I don't believe in them but in saying that I don't believe that it is absolutely imposable they exist.

I really find it hard(as in almost inconceivable) to believe that if they do exist they are us after we die.

I think that when we die we are dead and to be honest I have no problem with that.

[Ali M]

No, I don't believe in ghosts/spirits. This is for the same reason I'm an atheist - there's no real proof. I know people who claim to have had paranormal experiences but I've never had, so I just don't believe. If something happened to me to make me believe in ghosts then, yeah, I would but for now I think I'll just wait and see what happens.