Is it weird to have an imaginary friend

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I think it’s perfectly fair.

Argumentum ad populum. Just because a lot of people believe in something doesn’t make it any more rational. A lot of people believe in flat earth nonsense, faith healing, bigfoot, etc. Yes, many who believe in such things have lower levels of education, but it doesn’t mean that the beliefs aren’t absurd and/or worthy of criticism since they are founded on insufficient evidence.

JWs have a ridiculous publication titled “You Can Be God’s Friend!” Thinking of God as an imaginary friend seems appropriate.

Everyone has a slightly different notion of God, so it’s typically more personal than some might think. My mom’s conception of God is a warm, loving creator. My sister-in-law’s is more judgmental and petty. They follow the same religion and the same holy book, but their imaginary friends are a bit different.

I did have imaginary friends when I was younger, but I stopped because 1. I outgrew it, 2. my sister made fun of me for it, and 3. my plushies kinda filled the void for it, making imaginary friends kind of redundant.

The only imaginary friend I really remember was a Protoceratops named Pedro. I did have other ones, though.

An imaginary friend won't betray you, turn against you, ghost you or try to control you.

I don't see how the second paragraph supports the first.

Yes, there's reasons for why people will try to differentiate between the two but functionally they sure seem to be the same. A shared imaginary friend is still an imaginary friend, no?

@Twighlight

I'm not sure equating "imaginary friends" with paranormal experience is necessarily legitimate? The latter are "real" experiences that erstwhile normal (and often) educated people have. Whether they are what they think they were perceiving/experiencing is another matter (and off topic).

Actually now that I remember, when my daughter was 5 she had delayed speech but was starting to string together formative sentences for basic things. Out of the blue one day she told us that she was scared when mum and dad went out at night (to catch a movie or go out to a restaurant) leaving my daughter with grandma in the house. She told us that she had an friend who came and visited and stayed with her on those nights till we got home.

I asked who this Imaginary friend was? she called him "Bim". I asked her who is "Bim", and she said (as a matter of fact) that Bim was a kalabom. We both thought was cute for a 5 year old, imaginary friend who was also a some type of mysterious creature called a kalabom. We surmised Bim was an imaginary friend who helped her cope at night time when she was scared of the dark.

One day we found drawing this weird face, I asked her what she was drawing. She said it's Bim!. I got a shock. a 5 year old who only watched sesame street and tellietubbies imaginary friend looked like this.



Needless to say I was shocked. However by the time she was 9-10 she turned around and claimed that Bim didn't exist and was just her imagination? Well for me it was a weird coincidence.

I think that's good advice when amongst more normal or judgemental people. Having an imaginary friend can cause older kids & adults to be excluded, bullied, or thought to be dangerous like having hallucinations telling them to harm others. However I've heard some older people refer to the idea of online friends & online relationships as being imaginary people due to potential catfishing & not knowing each other in person so I guess this may depend on the context & definition of an imaginary friend.

It’s perfectly legitimate. None of those sorts of experiences have been proven no matter what appeal to authority people try to use to make them seem real. You can’t know if they are “real” experiences. People make s**t up all the time. Besides that, when folks have what they assume is a paranormal experience, it’s probably often something they don’t know or can’t explain combined with imagination, so imagination would still have a strong role to play in the “experience.” I’ve seen this play out with people who think they’ve had demon experiences. Also, sometimes people hallucinate. As with the other likely possibilities, the mind plays the biggest role in their experience.

The probable reason for your daughter’s drawing of Bim was: imagination. Young children are usually exposed to pictures of aliens at some point. Sometimes they are on the covers of tabloids, magazines, and books wherever such things are sold. They are in TV commercials, on cereal boxes, in toy stores, or in their fathers’ cryptozoology stash. The possibilities are endless. Sometimes coincidences happen too. That’s life.

Until I see valid evidence that such things exist, I’m going with “imaginary.” You are free to think differently, just like I’m free to think that this stuff is utter nonsense. Of course, my stance will change if sufficient evidence turns up. That hasn’t happened yet.

Speaking of weird experiences, I’m feeling major déjà-vu right now. It’s almost like we’ve debated this very topic many times before. Weird.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 18 Feb 2024, 5:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It wasn't supposed to support the first. It was meant to be an explanation, not an argument for why some people believe things a certain way.



I would argue that God isn't supposed to be an individual entity and thus cannot be compared to an individual, imaginary friend.

Also, the scale of God as an idea is different from a typical imaginary friend that a person might have, in that shared reality is invoked when thinking about or discussing the concept of God, whilst imaginary friends on an individual level are more like people - people who don't exist.

God as a concept for some people means being the creator/designer of DNA, or quantum mechanics and possibly the universe in general and all that it contains.

An imaginary friend is just a personality projected by an individual.

If a person thinks of God as a male, oversized human with a flowy beard, sitting on the clouds, as is often popularly depicted, then sure, maybe a comparison could be drawn.

But I don't think most people who believe in God, at least in the current day, think of God as a concept, that way.

“Imaginary” means something that exists in people’s minds rather than reality. I’ve not seen compelling evidence that a deity exists. When I prayed to God back when I was a believer, I was having a one-sided conversation with an imaginary friend. It doesn’t really matter if lots of people believe in him or just one person. I’m sure many people have a well-known character like Frodo as an imaginary friend. I’ve gone on adventures with him myself. I didn’t create him, and I’m almost certainly not the only person who imagined him.

Scale doesn’t matter either. Imaginary friends can be of any magnitude and can possess any power - whatever fantasy people, including ancient Bible writers, can…imagine. Most people do not believe in every god that’s out there. Most would say that all gods are imaginary except for their own. I go one god further than them. Some people legitimately believe in fantasies - mermaids, fairies, and gods. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t imaginary and can’t be imaginary friends on an individual basis. People can have one-sided conversations with whomever they want to.

As I mentioned before, everyone’s conception of God is slightly different even if they belong to the same religion, so there’s that too. To me, the Biblical God always seemed like a cold-hearted as*hole, so we were never close. My other friends were more pleasant, so I mostly hung out/conversed with them.

But you can't make a blanket generalisation. There are people who have had paranormal experiences have been psychiatrically assessed and found to be completely without any type of pathology. One simple example are US military staff in charge of nuclear launch sites who have testified seeing UFOs. You would think if they are having some type of hallucinatory event that they shouldn't be having access to launch codes for nuclear warheads.

She herself doesn't want to acknowledge it anymore

I am free to use my critical thinking skills to think whatever I damn well please based on the current evidence we have with a dash of logic and common sense thrown into the mix. People can imagine stuff for various reasons with no pathologies whatsoever. Once again, an appeal to authority is NOT proof.

To prove that paranormal experiences are real you need…sufficient evidence. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” You are free to believe what you want to, but until paranormal stuff has been proven, MY stance is disbelief. The most likely culprits are fraud, imagination, misinterpretation (which involves imagination), and mental states related to drugs, alcohol, sleep deprivation/disorders, epilepsy, or mental illness. All of that stuff is good enough for me until appropriate evidence comes along which proves that paranormal experiences occur in factual reality.

We’ve covered this many times before. If you are curious about my position, you could read back through previous debates.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 18 Feb 2024, 10:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Whatever floats your boat. As long as you know your friend is imaginary, who cares if others approve.

Yeah I know your position quite well. My point is simple. That having an imaginary friend is a voluntarily choice to use one's imagination to construct a make believe friend/companion. Typical of little girls having a tea party with their dolls/teddies and invite an imaginary friend along.

Having a paranormal experience is for many people (including educated folk) an involuntary experience that is out of their control and they are unable to process resulting in ontological shock.

Imaginary:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/diction ... ert%20isle

Maybe this comes down to semantics, but I don’t think that an “imaginary friend” has to be voluntary. I used to believe in God, but I would still say that God was an “imaginary friend.” You are free to think differently, but I tend not to hold those who’ve had paranormal experiences above children with imaginary friends. I don’t believe in hierarchies like that anyway. Adults aren’t more worthy of respect and dignity than children.

Some are able to rely on evidence and think critically even when they’ve had unusual experiences. I’ve been there. Given the nature of human fallibility, I strive to place greater credence on objective evidence than subjective experience.

I think in modern psychology both are now valid. The proof of the pudding is a reversal in how qualitative studies of individual subjective experience is now considered both a reliable and valid science.