Polls: Believers winning over Skeptics? I can’t believe it!

By Viviana Gomez-March 02, 2012

"Science without religion is lame,

religion without science is blind."

- Albert Einstein

In 1633, the Church condemnation of Galileo Galilei, was one of the most dramatic incidents in the long history of the relations between science and religion. Galileo had published a year before that the sun-centered system was the physical truth and was convicted of grave suspicion of heresy for "following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture.” Galileo was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

But beginning the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment began to erode the position of authority held by religion. A new willingness to confront religious authority and a new respect for reason and its accomplishments began to counter established ways of thinking based on revealed religious truth.

As a result, modern philosophy began to separate from theology, and new philosophers began constructing a universal, human rationality independent of faith. For the first time in human history, it had become possible to not simply ponder faith and its forms of expression, but to challenge it as a fundamental truth—and to even question the very existence of God.

The western culture can be facing a deep religion crisis and God might not be as popular as used to be, but it doesn’t mean that believers are a specie in danger of extinction. They not only survived, they are even more than the skeptics and growing in number.

Thousands of stories relating to paranormal phenomena are found in popular culture, folklore, and the recollections of individual subjects. In contrast, the scientific community, as referenced in statements made by organizations such as the United States National Science Foundation, maintains that scientific evidence does not support a variety of beliefs that have been characterized as paranormal

Polls were conducted by Bryan Farha at Oklahoma City University and Gary Steward of the University of Central Oklahoma in 2006, and compared to the results of a Gallup poll in 2001 They found fairly consistent results.

Percentage of US citizens polled
	belief	not sure	belief	not sure
	Farha-Steward		Gallup
psychic/spiritual healing	56	26	54	19
ESP	28	39	50	20
haunted houses	40	25	42	16
demonic possession	40	28	41	16
ghosts/spirits of the dead	39	27	38	17
telepathy	24	34	36	26
extraterrestrials visited Earth in the past	17	34	33	27
clairvoyance and prophecy	24	33	32	23
communication with the dead	16	29	28	26
astrology	17	26	28	18
witches	26	19	26	15
reincarnation	15	28	25	20
channeling	10	29	15	21

Gallup poll revealed a clear increase in belief in just about everything from haunted houses and communication with the dead to psychic healing and reincarnation.

Other surveys by different organizations at different times have found very similar results. More than two-thirds of Americans have paranormal beliefs, sociologists Christopher Bader and F. Carson Mencken of Baylor University and Joseph Baker of East Tennessee State University report in their new book Paranormal America from New York University Press. The 2005 Baylor Religion Survey found that women are twice as likely as men to believe in astrology, that people can communicate with the dead  and that at least some psychics can foresee the future. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to believe in UFOs.

Bader, Mencken and Baker find in their research is that both individuals with no religious beliefs and the most committed individuals -- those who attend services weekly -- are among the least likely to hold paranormal beliefs. Those who believe the Bible is the literal word of God are also highly unlikely to hold paranormal beliefs.

In May 2006 a new poll commissioned by Reader’s Digest in which more than 1,000 adults were questioned about their paranormal beliefs. This revealed remarkably high levels of belief in such matters as knowing when somebody you can’t see is staring at you (68%) and knowing who is calling you before you pick up the phone (62%). More than half (52%) reported instances of premonition, often in dreams, while nearly a fifth (19%) claimed to have seen a ghost.

Worst of all for the skeptics was CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal)’s own poll published in the Skeptical Inquirer (SI) (Jan./Feb 2006 issue). This focused on college students - 439 of them - because, the authors explained, ‘We assumed that higher education, as one of the few remaining bastions of critical thinking, would provide little room for pseudoscientific or paranormal beliefs’. The results clearly showed that there was still plenty of room for ‘paranormal belief’ at higher education level; belief levels for some questions being almost exactly the same as they were in the Gallup poll.

Going out on their own limb, Bader, Mencken and Baker predict that by 2050 nearly three-quarters of Americans will report at least one paranormal belief.

Today Galileo Gallilei won’t be arrested for showing evidences of the movement of the earth around the sun, but I wonder if he wouldn’t have a hard time refuting the claimed evidences of UFOs.

Are you a skeptic or a believer?

Bibliography

Albert Einstein supported the compatibility of some interpretations of religion with science. In an article originally appearing in the New York Times Magazine in 1930.

Blackwell, Richard J. Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible. Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1991.

Fantoli, Annibale. Galileo: For Copernicanism and for the Church, 2nd edition. Rome: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1996.

Finocchiaro, Maurice A. The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Magic - Thought, Logic, And Rationality In Magic - Systems, Pritchard, Azande, and Bruhl - JRank Articles http://science.jrank.org/pages/10050/Magic-Thought-Logic-Rationality-in-Magic.html#ixzz1nVmpxDuW

Investigating Skeptics - The Skeptical Observer - Has CSICOP Lost the Thirty Years War? - Part IV: CSICOP Loses the Thirty Years War

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/Observeskeptics/CSICOP/30yearswar_4.html

 Gallup poll shows that Americans' belief in the paranormal persists

Skeptical Inquirer, accessed October 28, 2006

 Spooky survey' gets big response David Briggs.Writer, Association of Religion Data Archives
The Complicated Connection Between Religion and the Paranormal
David Briggs writes the Ahead of the Trend column for the Association of Religion Data Archives
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-briggs/paranormal-is-the-new-nor_b_818614.html

ABC Science Online, 17 November 2006

Smart People See Ghosts, Brad Steiger, Fate Magazine, April 2006 Issue, p. 52-56; the unusual thing found by Farha and Steward was that belief in the supernatural increased with education level, contrary to many other surveys. However, that aspect of their study is not being used here.

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranormal