Science doesn't disprove spirits and similar things. The actual official statement on the matter is "Inconclusive; not enough data to prove/disprove anything." Scientists off the record will of course say it isn't real because it can't be proven.
Scientists are people who look at irrefutable fact and claim that makes up reality. It isn't just what we perceive for ourselves, but what we perceive and can prove as a whole. So, on things such as religion, spirituality, and magick, scientists tend to disbelieve because just as none of it can be proven it can not be disproven either.
but, cant magic and spirits and things like this be proven "real"? I mean, you surly cannot disprove of something like the astral plane? many people have been there. but yet some scientist believe that it is just imagination.
Due to my habits of examination some would say that I am a scientist, but tell me, how can we prove something exists if we have to go there ourselves to see it? So many people fail in the attempts or never make it that far that most scientists aren't going to bother. Spirits can be dismissed as figment of imagination, people's claims of astral projection can be dismissed as also a figment of imagination, and it doesn't help that one person who wanted to prove levitation was possible did bunny hops across a carpet while sitting cross legged and called it magick...
While we can prove for ourselves these things exist, we can not very well prove it to others. Those of us that can would still be ridiculed by masses to the point where our proof is overridden by jokes and insults.
Albert Einstein never dismissed the spiritual. Many scientists do believe in something, even if they are just deist, agnostic, or "spiritual" with no religious affiliation. Most are not athiests. In fact, many scientists feel that learning and discovering the details of our world actually supports a "divine intelligence". The god particle is a big example of how faith has intermingled with science. Might I add, the god particle is, in my eyes, what magickal practioners always knew existed, the sound of the very energy we work with. =)
