Individual senses are not perfect and sometimes wrongly interpreted or impaired and therefor we cannot consider anecdotal information as real but only that which is observed or experienced in general. Gravity is real, an empirical fact, because we can observe it and experience it, even if we don’t know what it actually is, it exists and is part of our reality.
What am I trying to get at? To prove that something is true and real we must demand empirical evidence to accept it. There is no other way. Philosophy and Logic can lead to a great discovery but they are only suggestions or guesses until we can confirm it by empirical means. Some of these suggestions and logical conclusions have been empirically proven and are then accepted as fact, but many are disproven or are still waiting.
Emperical is an adjective, it is not a verb or a noun, it cannot be false or imperfect by itself, it indicates the method by which knowledge is obtained, through the only senses by which we are connected to the reality of the environment we live in. These senses have been cleverly extended and given us a greater capacity to observe and experience to extend our knowledge.
Some people, such as psychics and parapsychologist insist that some people have ESP, extra sensory perception. Many have been researching and investigating for more than a century but none have been able to provide convincing empirical evidence that it exists. Many claims have been made. They have been investigated by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and found wanted or debunked. No evidence of a so-called 6th sense exists. In itself that is not proof that it doesn’t exist, perhaps it does, but until it is proven to exist one cannot use it to advance true knowledge. It is still a speculation.
The same is the case with religion, which frustrates many theists. Religious philosophy and logic, often very well put together, all start with the premise that a supernatural realm exists and then take it from there. We must however insist that they first provide empirical evidence that it does. The only method we have, to arrive at the truth, is through our well known existing senses. Things like “look around you” and “ the universe is finely tuned, therefor…….” do not do it and are also easily dismissed by applying logical arguments. Other attempts to use new scientific discoveries, such as in particle physics, by misinterpreting or misunderstanding the principles behind it, have also failed so far.
The conclusion we must make that ESP, Parapsychology, Supernaturalism, Numerologism, Religions (all of them), Ghosts, Spirits, Souls, Goblins, Superstitions, Aliens and so on, although they could be existing, must be put on the shelf until any of them are empirically, scientifically proven to exist, before we continue to believe in them.