I’d be interested in seeing some polling - preferably the US but even other countries would be fine - where people were questioned about their belief in the supernatural to some detail.
More specifically, I’d like to know how many people don’t believe in anything supernatural. You’ll often have people who will scoff at astrology or ghosts, but are deeply religious - or people who are atheists but believe in new age healing crystals. I’m curious to know what fraction of the population is firmly skeptical and does not believe in anything supernatural whatsoever.
But it’d also be interesting to know that x% of the population believes in astrology, Y% believes in reflexology - or even more in depth like “only X% people who are religious also believe in ghosts”.
Anyone know where I could go about finding out more about this?
But that survey does not ask about things like belief in God, or in some other deity or higher power. I’ll bet there are quite a lot of people in the US who adhere to a religion but who don’t believe in any of the supernatural stuff listed in that survey.
But here we have a literature survey: the full article is available by clicking a link on that page: Google Scholar
On page 13 of The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Jan 1993, the author reports that some studies show a relationship between paranormal beliefs and religion, while others do not. Specific religious affiliation doesn’t seem to matter. Other correlates are reported in the article.
So about 4% of all Americans are atheists. Separating out that group from the merely unreligious requires some care when evaluating other beliefs in the paranormal.
You’d need to think carefully about what exactly you are measuring here. I’m open to correction, but so far as I know adherents of reflexology do not assert any belief in the supernatural. They assert that reflexology is a natural art – i.e. it studies and exploits natural processes and natural bodily phenonoma, even if those processes and phenomena are not fully understood. No supernatural reality is asserted. The same would be true of something like ESP – we may not understand how consciousness can is transferred between individuals, but that does not mean that those who believe that it is transferred assert that this happens by supernatural means.
In other words, you need to distinguish between beliefs which – you may feel – are not adequately supported by the evidence and beliefs which assert the reality of the supernatural.
Yeah, I’m especially interested in the interrelation between religion and non-religious beliefs in the supernatural.
I’d be especially interested if the survey posted above accounted for any religious beliefs as a supernatural belief, and what that would reduce the number of people who didn’t subscribe to any of the listed supernatural beliefs to.
I can see where you’re coming from and I should’ve picked a better example than reflexology. Offhand, I thought reflexology was a form of vitalism - the manipulation of a (supernatural?) “life energy” - but that may be mistaken.
On the issue of ESP, the distinction becomes fuzzier. They may assert there’s some yet as unyet discovered biological or physical mechanism, but what they advocate is practically magic.
I’m especially interested in supernatural beliefs, but I’d also be interested in data in arguably non-supernatural, yet still pseudoscientific belief.
I don’t have an answer for the underlying question, but I think there is a continuum from something like Reiki (healing energy) through homeopathy (psuedoscientific jargon) to chiropractic (mechanism to do something, but not as much as the advocates claim).
I think any skeptic has a good sense of what qualifies as pseudoscience or supernatural - they all share a certain mentality among their practitioners - sort of the conspiracy theory mindset where any objections you have make you part of the conspiracy, they become immune to facts or evidence, etc. The stuff has no evidence for actually working and is presented to people in generally the same way.
Chiropractic is something of a weird case because it’s based on sublimation theory, which is vitalism - but not all practioners believe in it. Some feel more like they’re simply physical therapists for backs. But they don’t receive legitimate medical training or certification, and the evidence for their effect is dubious. Still, some end up actually managing to do some sort term good.
But homeopathy, any sort of healing energy (crystals, therapeutic touch, acupuncture, etc), ghosts, astrology, etc - they all come from the same sort of mental weakness, even if their exact purported mechanism can vary.
Correction: They’re not required to receive medical training or certification, but some do anyway. Really, what the profession needs is for the legitimate practitioners (and there are a few) to take a stand against the quacks amongst them.
Another caveat with surveys like this is that what constitutes “belief” can vary from person to person, or from idea to idea. Consider a pure Deist, for example, who believes that God exists and created the Universe, but that He has not meddled at all in it since its creation. Does such a belief qualify as “supernatural”? Or what about someone who thinks that leprechauns probably don’t exist, but hasn’t completely ruled out the possibility? Does that count as “belief”?
I’d be less than impressed with a sceptic who lumped “pseudoscience or supernatural” together as a single category. They are quite different – indeed, strictly speaking, mutually exclusive – categories. Science is the study of the natural universe, and pseudoscience makes the claim that what it studies is natural. Whereas the supernatural, as the name suggests, is something outside the natural.
I see no reason to expect any correlation, positive or negative, between belief in pseudoscience and belief in the supernatural.
I disagree entirely. First, often they overlap. Are those “ghost hunters” running around with magnetic field detectors people who believe in psuedoscience or the supernatural? They claim that using technological gadgets and talking about “energy fields” and such makes them scientists, but they’re chasing ghosts, which are clearly supernatural.
What’s astrology? Could it be pseudoscience because they attempt to describe a system of predictions which they falsely believe to be methodologically scientific? Or is it supernatural because there’s no scientific mechanism by which the things they measure could have any meaningful effect on people?
Are you seriously suggesting that the people who believe in bigfoot, UFOs, and free energy machines have no overlap between the people that believe in ghosts, psychics, and faith healing?
They all have the same cause - a credulous mind. Where the desire to believe in something fantastic, to see whatever hidden meaning you want in a chaotic existance, overrides your need for credible evidence for your beliefs.
It always amazes me to see this number. 4%. 1 out of 25 people. Just bizarre to me.
I wonder what the percentage of people is where religion plays pretty much no role in their life, but they’re afraid to admit that they’re atheists because they think it’s somehow a dirty word, or if they’re playing some sort of pascal’s wager where they don’t want to fully admit no belief in god just in case, even though that’s how they run their life.
I wonder, then, among atheists, how many don’t believe in the paranormal. It seems intuitive to me that anyone who’d rationally shrugged off religion would be more likely to shrug off any sort of claim without evidence - but personally I’ve seen lots of atheists who seem to fill the religion hole in their life with new agey stuff.
If 4% of is our starting point, I wonder how many of those are entirely and consistently skeptical. Half? A small fraction?
“Irreligious” can just mean that they don’t adhere to any organized religion. There’s still plenty of room there for disorganized belief and/or worship.
I remember the Wall Street Journal referencing such a study- it said that secular people are more likely to believe psuedoscience. The WSJ does have an agenda when it comes to religion, but I can see the logic of it: a defined belief system will exclude things outside the system, with no wiggle room. If Sally truely believes that when people die they go straight to the next world, then she will not believe in ghosts. Whereas someone with a more nebulous belief system would be open to anything.