Magical, Supernatural, Paranormal

MAGICAL, SUPERNATURAL, PARANORMAL

One of the most consistent things about people everywhere is belief in unusual things that probably are not real or true. It may not be universal, but it’s close. It’s as if we just can’t help ourselves. One can claim just about anything, and somebody somewhere will be willing to believe it. Over the last several thousand years, no matter where we were or what we were up to, you can be sure there was some heavy-duty believing going on. If you were to board a time machine, spin the dial, and land in any random society of the past, you can be certain that you would find many people who believe in things beyond the normal and natural world that we all see before us. The objects of our belief may vary tremendously, but this common susceptibility, urge or need to believe raises fascinating and important questions: Do we really live in a universe that is overflowing with ghosts, gods, and magical phenomena, as billions of believers declare every day? Or could there be a simpler explanation for most or all of these confident claims that people keep making generation after generation? Are believers describing the real universe or misinterpreting it? One thing is certain, our condition as a believing species remains strong, even in the age of science. According to the Gallup poll cited here, 75 percent of American adults say they believe in at least one of the common supernatural/paranormal beliefs such as ghosts, Atlantis, ESP, psychics, alien abductions, astrology, and so on.1 Are they reacting to reality or misreading it? Do we have a fundamental need to believe these extraordinary things, or is this just something we do out of tradition and habit? If for one hundred years no adults taught children (or influenced them by example) to believe in magic/paranormal/supernatural claims, would these things vanish? Or would they pop up independently, created anew over and over again? Finally, is it rude to ask these questions, to challenge unusual beliefs? I hope not, because I have been asking them all my life and the last thing I want to be is rude or mean to people. I am only curious, and I want to know as much as I can about my world and my universe. I don’t want to derail or distract from this by spending my time believing in and fashioning my life around things that aren’t real. What’s wrong with that? I would think that most people don’t want to believe in things that aren’t true. Most people who hold extraordinary beliefs think they are accurate and would want to know if they are not, right?

The intentions of skeptics are often misunderstood, so to be clear, I am not attacking or disparaging anyone when I promote science and encourage skepticism. I’m doing nothing more than suggesting to people that they think more critically for their own good. Nobody really wants to waste their time, their money, possibly their life on a bogus belief, right? If so, then I’m here to help. We’re all on the same side. It is also important for people to recognize that skepticism is not even necessarily antimagic, anti-UFO, anti-ESP, and so on. If unusual claims about magic, alien visits, or miracles are valid, then science and skepticism are not the enemy of those claims. In fact, they are just the opposite. They would be the ways through which to prove that extraordinary and unusual claims are valid.

If we want to know what is real and what is not, if we want to do our best to avoid squandering time and resources on things that are almost certainly not true, then we must make an effort to question everything and do our best to separate truth from fiction. We can’t just take someone’s word for it that a spaceship crashed at Roswell in 1947 or that the Bermuda Triangle is a paranormal zone of death that swallows up ships and planes because a bestselling book or television show says so. We need to test and verify. Fortunately, we have science, which does this very well. Don’t hesitate to utilize the scientific process when you bump up against weird things in everyday life. It includes the following steps:

Ask questions. This is critical. Don’t passively accept what you are told. It’s stunning how many people fail to simply ask questions when confronted by an unusual claim. Nothing more than a couple of key questions can derail most invalid claims.

Observe. Look and listen with deliberate effort. When someone says “prayer heals any and all illnesses,” for example, observe the world. If you see people get sick and die every day—even though they pray—then maybe there is a problem with this claim.

Research. If you look for it, it’s not difficult to find credible information about most claims. Do your own fact-checking. If someone tries to sell you magnetic underwear that cures constipation and adds that it’s been written up in scientific journals, check to see that it has.

Experiment. Can you think of an experiment to test a particular claim before accepting it? Has anyone else conducted an experiment to test it? If not, why not? If astrology is tempting you, for example, have a friend give you random horoscopes of various signs every day for a month without revealing their labels. Log how accurate each horoscope seems before learning which sign it belongs to. At the end of the month, see if the horoscopes based on your “real sign” were accurate more often than the others.

Share ideas and conclusions with others. This is a great way to get feedback from people who may know more than you about a given claim. The more good information, the better. Remember the goal is not to debunk or discredit. The goal is to get to the truth, whatever it may be.

The scientific process is not perfect, but nothing else comes close. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you are, or where you are. Age, gender, income, educational achievements, nationality, hair color, and shoe size are all irrelevant. The scientific process just works. If you want to be better than most at spotting nonsense and dodging delusions, then step number one is to think! Think like a scientist and become a good skeptic. Go on the offensive when someone tries to sell you a bizarre belief. This does not mean that you must reflexively jump into angry opposition of any claim that hints of magical, supernatural, or paranormal belief. Being a skeptic is not like joining a club or political party and vowing to forever uphold a list of agreed-upon beliefs and nonbeliefs. Good skeptics change their minds, according to the best evidence available. There is just one thing to be loyal to here: reality.

Some people argue that there must be something going on because every known society, without exception, has had high levels of belief in various things that can be described as supernatural or paranormal. How could so many people, today and throughout history, be so wrong about so much? With all this smoke, there must be a few fires somewhere, right? Maybe. But a good skeptic needs to see some actual flames. The smoke of belief is not enough. Who cares if a lot of people believe? We need something more than a majority vote before accepting an extraordinary claim. Popularity has never been a reliable measure of truth and reality. Look back on our shared past. How many times have most of the people been dead wrong about something important in a given society? Consider religion. From at least the earliest beginnings of civilization to the present, millions of unique and contradictory gods have come and gone. Based on their biographies alone, they cannot possibly all exist. Logic and basic math make it clear that, at the minimum, most people have been wrong about their gods for most of history. This simple observation alone shows that we are prone to creating the magical and the supernatural out of thin air and then believing in it with total conviction. Believing or not believing in something doesn’t make it true. There were times in our past when probably 100 percent of the people on Earth would have dismissed the idea of continental drift if it had been presented to them. Entire continents move around the Earth? You must be nuts! But our belief in immovable continents never stopped them from moving, not one inch and not for one second.

Reality, as we have seen over and over, operates independently of our beliefs. This alone should make everyone eager, if not desperate, to be a good skeptic. We know that good and smart people can be wrong no matter how confidently they believe in something, so shouldn’t it be common sense to constantly test and reconsider our beliefs? Try to remember always that merely being a human raised in a human society sets you up to believe many things that are probably not true. So always ask yourself the simple questions that matter: Is this real? Why should I believe it? Could all of these people be wrong? Those questions begin an inquiry; answering them requires evidence and a willingness to reconsider even a conclusion we prefer.

I travel to many countries and ask people about their various beliefs; in those conversations, I am constantly alerted to a severe misperception about what it means to be a good skeptic. Most people, it seems, think of skepticism as a dull, emotionless, and illogical position that requires one to believe in nothing and deny the presence of any mystery and all unanswered questions. They view it as tragic arrogance. This is all wrong. Any good skeptic who understands and appreciates science knows there is a vast universe around us that is bursting with mystery and endless questions. When a typical believer in supernatural/paranormal claims tells me that I don’t know everything so I can’t possibly know that something like ghosts or UFO visits won’t turn out to be true one day, I cringe and patiently explain that I would never claim such a thing in the first place. Of course weird things that seem unlikely or impossible today might become tomorrow’s well-established facts. This is one of the reasons I love science so much: It is the one thing that consistently leads us to stunning discoveries. But it makes sense to withhold belief until we get there.

What is this boundary between the natural/normal and the supernatural/paranormal anyway? Where is it and how can we even say there is such a border when we now have a very good understanding of just how weird and surprising nature can be? Nature already supplies mysteries worth investigating. Quantum entanglement is strange enough without treating speculation about parallel universes or extradimensional beings as an established discovery. Brain science also investigates links between neural activity, experience, and action, but that does not amount to unrestricted mind-reading or a dependable way to expose every lie. All supernatural/paranormal beliefs are one of two things: They are either wrong or simply have not been discovered and confirmed yet. No good skeptic is opposed to everything that may be described as supernatural/paranormal in an automatic sense because we know that some of them may well turn out to be true one day. Most are doubtful, some are about as close to impossible as is possible. But which ones might be right? Can we decide such a thing? Which is more likely to be true: demons or ghosts? Alien abductions or Atlantis? Most alternative medicines or most miracles? How can I possibly choose to believe in any of these things until the scientific process confirms them? I can’t see the future. It’s best to stay humble, keep an open mind, and withhold belief in weird, unusual, important, and extraordinary things until somebody proves them to be true.