Hi Bill Nye.
My name is Marsalina.
This is my son Ohenu.
And we have a question about your perspective
on ghosts and also what do you think happens
to your life energy that ceases after you
die?
Is it just pushing daisies?
Thank you.
Marsha.
Greetings.
People have wondered about life after death
since there have been people.
It goes way, way back.
We started with ghosts.
I’ll tell you I don’t think there’s
any such thing.
I don’t think there’s anything to be afraid
of when it comes to ghosts.
I’m a member of both the skeptics and the
counsel for scientific inquiry and we have
looked and looked for haunted houses, for
ghosts in cemeteries, for psychics who believe
they’re in touch with people who are dead.
And there’s absolutely no credible evidence.
There’s no reason to believe that there
are ghosts or life after death.
People have tried and tried.
And you may know that Houdini the famous magician
said if anybody can come back from the dead
it’s me man.
I’m coming.
And he never got in touch with anyone.
No one ever heard from him.
He had a secret word between he and his mother
that he said I’ll give you the secret word
when I come back.
And do you know what the secret word is?
Nobody knows, it was secret and he never came
back.
But what happens to humans our brains are
so active.
We imagine so many things and we’re always
looking for cause and effect.
That is to say when you hear a bump in the
night you want to know what caused it.
You want to know what brought it on.
And the first thing you might imagine is that
there’s somebody or some entity out there
causing this effect, the bump but you can’t
see it.
So then we intuitively or instinctively for
ancient reasons put a pattern on it.
We imagine it has an agent as we call it but
there’s something out there, some agent
is causing this.
But it could be the wind blew and knocked
the candle over and there’s no ghost and
just get over it.
Don’t be afraid of that.
Now when it comes to life after death I’ve
thought about this quite a bit and what happens,
what are you like when you’re dead?
If you watch people age like my grandmother,
my beloved grandmother.
She was so smart when I was a little kid.
She collected wildflowers.
She was very skilled as an artist.
She could draw landscapes and she was like
a naturalist.
Traditionally she would draw detailed pictures
of flowers depicting their very detailed parts,
petals, stamen, pistols and so on.
But as she got older she got dementia.
She could not remember things.
She didn’t recognize me.
And so she eventually died of old age.
And I just don’t see any evidence that she
would suddenly be a young person as an after
dead ghost entity.
It looks like to me this life is all you get.
This is it.
There’s nothing afterwards.
So what you’ve got to do is live this life
as best you can.
That’s the way to go.
And if it does turn out there’s an afterlife
and we all turn young again and can play rugby
or whatever it is we want to do so much the
better.
But I see no evidence for it.
And for your son there are no ghosts, sorry.
And your friends who believe in ghosts you
can outwit them.
You’ll be ahead of them because you will
not waste energy running around looking for
ghosts.
Instead you’ll close the window to keep
the candle from blowing over or whatever made
your friend believe in a ghost.
Carry on.
I’m sorry but it seems to be apparently
this is all you get.
