I couldn't agree with dabbler any more. He's nailed it!
When people accept any idea as true, they're rarely accepting of credible evidence and logic which demonstrates the idea to be false. Instead they employ something akin to religious faith, which, upon examination, is little more than the practice of dismissing logic, reason and evidence the moment they fail to support your desired beliefs.
Ghosts have as much potential to exist as do gremlins, goblins, Leprechauns, gods, unicorns, mermaids, angels, spirits, demons or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. No one can absolutely rule out any of these things, yet the likelihood that any actually exist is so minuscule as to present zero reasonable potential.
Unfortunately, because many WANT to believe in angels, ghosts and spirits, they'll quickly turn their back on the same lack of supporting evidence which convinces them that Leprechauns, mermaids and the tooth-fairy don't exist. It's an obvious double-standard designed to server their desires rather than their grasp of reality.
So rather than take the evidence to heart, they turn to the imagination and impressionable minds of children as their escape route. When we want to know the distance to the sun, we turn to the evidence. We don't ask a child. When we want to know the density of water relative to air, we turn to evidence gathered via measuring instruments, we don't turn to children. When we want to know any truth about reality, we should look to the evidence provided by that reality rather than the highly subjective, impressionable and imaginative minds of children. Many research projects, wrongful prosecutions and psychological studies have shown that children will more likely accept what they're told than what their senses actually tell them. They should be learning from us and we should be teaching them to trust the evidence over authority, logic over superstition and reason above faith practices.
