Does it make sense for a skeptic to have faith

[tnu]

I'm in something of a pickle. I lost a dear friend recently. I miss her so much and I have no idea where she is or if she's alright. It feels like everything in my life is screwing up and I can't do anything about it. I've fallen in to something of a deep depression and the only thing that even has a shot of keeping me remotely stable is telling myself that my friend is alright and I'll see her again despite the evidence being weighed against it. The probability that she's in a horrible place and I'll never see her again seems very high. Am I just lying to myself or is it OK to believe in spite of this that my friend is OK and I'll see her again soon?

[evensgrey]

I'm in something of a pickle. I lost a dear friend recently. I miss her so much and I have no idea where she is or if she's alright. It feels like everything in my life is screwing up and I can't do anything about it. I've fallen in to something of a deep depression and the only thing that even has a shot of keeping me remotely stable is telling myself that my friend is alright and I'll see her again despite the evidence being weighed against it. The probability that she's in a horrible place and I'll never see her again seems very high. Am I just lying to myself or is it OK to believe in spite of this that my friend is OK and I'll see her again soon?

The differentiation you are making at the end is a false one.  Whether or not something is true does not determine whether or not it is OK to believe it.  (Yes, evidence is good, but evidence is no guarantee of truth either.  Evidence can be fabricated, or misinterpreted, or coincidentally missing, or unobtainable due to circumstances.  In this instance, what you're referring to isn't evidence, but the absence of evidence, which isn't evidence of absence unless you can determine that there should be evidence present.)

[tnu]

She messaged me in a panic saying things were getting really bad, then a few days later she deleted her account. based on everything she already told me abot her sitaton I'm nervos.

[MrBogosity]

It sounds like she was reaching out to you. Do you have any other way of getting in touch with her?

[tnu]

Unfortunately no.

[evensgrey]

If you don't have any way of contacting her, and know of nobody who might, and have no information you could use to identify where she might be (to alert relevant emergency responders), then there doesn't appear to be any way to help her.

If you do have any such information, then try to get it to someone in a position to do something about it.  If you have reason to believe she's in life-threatening danger (including from herself, including illness), that's right up any Emergency Service's alley.  If it isn't an emergency sort of situation, try any sort of community outreach organization where she is.  Whatever sort of trouble she's got, it's almost certainly got somebody who covers it.

You could try the admins of whatever messaging system was involved, as they may have logs showing where she connected from.  (If it was plain old email, the originating IP address of the email is right in the headers, which will be the computer it was sent from if it wasn't web-based email.  If the source was web-based, they may still have the IP address she connected from in their logs.  If it was Facebook, they log and track where you connect from as part of their account security features.  Other services may have similar features.  In the scale of the data being tracked these days, it's pretty minor.)  If the evidence is significant, then they may be willing to locate her area, and they may have more information about her whereabouts than you do.

[tnu]

I know she lives in Michigan somewhere just outside Detroit.

[evensgrey]

I know she lives in Michigan somewhere just outside Detroit.

That's a start, and outside Detroit is definitely better than inside it (unless it's somewhere like Saginaw, which is, by all accounts, far nastier).

Anything that leads back to the specific internet connection she used would be helpful, and you can go to Emergency Services with what you already have if you have reason to believe she's in immediate danger.  If the danger is of a criminal nature, I'd suggest the Michigan state troopers, as they cover the whore area and already know how to work with the local police (or they should, anyway).

[MrBogosity]

So in a roundabout way, I think we've answered your question: No. We're giving you ideas for how you can check to find out if she's safe, and possibly even help her. If you just had "faith" that she'd be okay, you wouldn't have the desire to take these steps, and while I would never say that anyone is responsible due to inaction, I think you would very much hate yourself if you didn't at least try to help her when you had the chance.

Faith just makes us placid. Say a prayer, put it in God's hands, and you salve your conscience. And people get hurt when they don't have to.

[tnu]

Thanks. It's actually a case of her abusive and controlling boyfriend. I just wish I knew her last name that wold really help so who should I contact first? Also she deleted her account as far as I'm aware so I'm not srue what the site admins could give me.

[tnu]

Also, she seems to have deleted her account so I'm not srue if an admin can trace her.

[evensgrey]

If you have anything that constitutes her saying he's been violent to her, then you've got her telling you that she's been the victim if a crime.  You can definitely take that to the Michigan state police.  They do know how to go about tracing her connection.

You don't need to go to the admins yourself if you've got indications of an actual crime.  The state police will do that as part of any competently performed investigation.

In this case, the crap the SJW's have been spewing will work in your favor, since police will be likely to place a higher priority on such a report.

[BogosityForumUser]

In the case of stuff like this, you also need to keep in mind that when people flee it isn't uncommon for there to be silence from a person.  Any bit of information can be used to track someone down, so it is usually frowned upon to broadcast messages until they are actually in a safe enough place.  Suffice it to say, there are really too many variables to draw any conclusions as to what happened.  However, on the human level, I would suggest that you hope for the best but act as if the worst has happened, for if it did, complacency won't accomplish anything but attempts at change might.

[tnu]

So I called the Michigan state police, unfortunately I didn't have enough information for them to do anything.