Many occultist, including myself, are athiestic. you dont have to believe in a god or gods to believe in the paranormal.

It seems to me, that anyone that doesn't allow for the possibility of anything, including nothing, is closing their mind. jmo

Edit to add: To do otherwise would assume that you know, absolutely and irrefutably that something is. Belief and faith aside, good luck trying to do so.

From a scientific perspective, assuming if ghosts exist and are, or some are elements of dead people, my questions are this;

1) How do they see? or if they could see, how do they capture light rays without any light rays being intercepted?

2) Where do they store memory or what mechanism do they use to process thoughts?

Same questions as above apply to near death/out of body experiences but add a couple;

3) what mechanisms does the spirit use to drift around and record information that the person then wakes up and can remember? Does the spirit download directly to the brain or is it stored and then downloaded only when the brain is functioning again?

You cannot separate information from science and you cannot separate the spiritual from information!

My opinion: I require scientific proof.

Woudn't want to meet them, unless it's Casper and only if he brings chocolate chip cookies.

Science is great, was a science major, but not every tool fits every problem.

Science is a tool, and not useful for every question.

Hammers are great, screwdrivers are great, but each fail poorly when you need a wrench.

Ghosts are real.

If a hammer fails to solve any problem, your not hitting hard enough. ...unless your trying to use it to defend yourself from a ghost (even then you could hit yourself on the head and solve the problem that way)

Edit: I also forgot to mention - from a scientific perspective, if time is not an issue, you could use the hammer to craft the screwdriver into a wrench!!

Edit: sorry, it is a rubber hammer and a porcelain screwdriver !! Now craft it into a wrench?

Edit: yes, use the porcelain screwdriver to craft the rubber hammer into a rubber wrench!

ok then, a porcelain screwdriver and a stone hammer!

Yes heat the stone to lava and .....

Point taken :-)

Good material for fiction.
Other than that - nothing that ever happened to me came close to convincing me that there is any thruth in ghost stories.

Science is not a tool. Science is the entire toolbox with every tool ever.

its important to remember that there are severial things science can not explain. While I feel science will find a way to explain these in the future it is fool hardy to say something is impossible just because science cant fully explain it. I mean we all agree a yawn is not make believe correct? :)

Science is our toolbox but it doesn't have every tool ever. To think, in the year 2014, we have every tool ever is putting way too much faith in humanity and yourself. 1000 years from now, there is a chance, the humans living then will laugh at our science today.

The tools are all in there, we just haven't done a full inventory yet...