Hi everyone, not only am I new to this Republic, I am new to atheism on the whole. My name is Scot and I have just (about five months ago) abandoned my "christian faith" to embrace a more naturalistic/rationalistic worldview. I am very excited about being a part of this free-thinking community, and I look forward to meeting new friends through my interaction here.
I live in the small island of Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago, WI. and come from a culture that is very religious/superstitious.
What I would like to be the point of discussion in this forum has to do with something I experienced tonight,something that is sort of perplexing and I need some help in explaining.
I will just state what I saw, along with my wife, my kids and my neighbors, and ask for your thoughts on it. I do this because my wife, still holding to her belief in god, attributes this to the "spirit world."
What we saw was a ball of fire, flying through the sky in close proximity to us. It went from left to right, seemed to have landed some distance from us,and then from right to left, then left to right again; this last time at an even closer range.
This type of sighting is not uncommon in our islands. There is what I, even as a believer in the spiritual realm, was an ardent disbeliever in- called in our country, the "soucouyant." I heard stories about this in my childhood, spoke to individuals who claimed to have seen and encountered it in some way, but, never seeing or experiencing it for myself, I was skeptical about. Now I, with my new atheistic belief, have seen for myself (along with others) and need to address.
I believe that there must be some scientific explanation for this, but I don't know what. My wife is now even more convinced of my wrongness in my disbelief in the spiritual world and I am at a loss of words to answer her.
Does anyone here know how to deal with such an issue? Can anyone give a rational/probable explanation?
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Perhaps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire
or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning
or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the-wisp
If you are scientific about it, then you must first admit to yourself that there are things you don't know about.
Just because something is unknown to us yet, it does not mean it is not real.
To give you an example, in the past people that were sick could get other people sick that are close to them.
This was considered a curse and the work of the devil, nowadays we learned that there are micro organisms and bacteria we could not see with the naked eye, and that they could transmit a disease.
So you should not find an issue in finding something you do not know what it is yet,
There are a lot of things like that in the real world.
I saw something like this in the Arizona desert once. It was a bright light that traveled along a length of power line. If I had not been close enough to see the wires it would have been unexplainable. "Unexplainable" does not equal an illogical leap to the supernatural. Atheists might not all be scientists but we all can use critical thinking and logic.