A reader recently asked me if, with all the new TV shows exploring parapsychology and with so many normal people having supernatural experiences, have scientists finally gotten around to accepting spirits and testing for ghosts?
In a word...No. While it's true that there are now a plethora of programs dealing with things that go bump in the night, they bear about as much of a relationship to science as Donald Duck does to waterfowl. Seeing it on television, alas, doesn't make it so. And too, the fact that so many people believe in things like Angels and Devils proves nothing. There was a time when most "normal" individuals thought the world was flat and fire-breathing dragons lay in wait around every turn. But reality is not something upon which a vote is taken and the majority rules. When such was the case, during the Dark Ages, old women were burnt as witches and young girls were sacrificed to fertile fields. So much for the Jolly Days of Yore. And yet, despite all the lessons of history, humans still have terrible time admitting ignorance. Even though it's the first step toward acquiring knowledge, saying "I don't know" leaves them feeling insecure. There's nothing wrong with being entertained by a magician but believing in magic is quite another matter. Just because the elephant on stage seemed to disappear doesn't mean that it really did. Just because a TV minister says he talks to Jesus doesn't mean he really does.
But for the vast majority, emotion outweighs evidence every time. If you see it with your own eyes (whatever "it" happens to be) you believe it. Unfortunately, your emotional state will, often to an amazing degree, determine what your senses perceive. The woman who puts on too many pounds may stop seeing below her neck in full-length mirrors while the man who has just had a flat tire will suddenly notice two or three other vehicles by the side of the road with the same problem. An epidemic of flats? Hardly! It's simply a matter of selective perception. And when one feels a lack of purpose or control, it becomes essential to assign meaning even where none belongs. In short, all sorts of gobbledygook arise as a means of compensating for the objective reality of living in a universe that just doesn't care. You can find signs and meanings in the strangest places if you look hard enough.
When such things as the loss of a job or a change in marital status or the death of a loved one occur, humans can easily go off the deep end. Patients who report intense religious experiences such as being visited by spirits or who receive messages from God are frequently found to be suffering from a form of temporal lobe epilepsy. But even "normal" individuals can have hypnopompic hallucinations and swear they were visited by a ghost or perhaps a few space aliens the previous night. This usually occurs as we drift off and the superior parietal lobe ceases to function but the same kind of delusion can occur during periods of prolonged meditation. At such times, the portion of the brain that tells us where our bodies end and the rest of the world begins, will slowly shut down. A sense of floating and of being at one with the cosmos often follows. Anyone unfamiliar with the cause of such a state can easily come to believe they've had an Out of Body Experience. Interestingly enough, hypoxia (a lack of sufficient oxygen) will cause exactly same symptoms...leading to a classic Near Death Experience complete with celestial music and a light at the end of a tunnel.
So with 21st Century science able to explain most paranormal claims, why do the majority continue to embrace such nonsense? There are two reasons:
The first is that Mother Nature specifically designed our brains to interpret ambiguous stimuli as potentially threatening. To do so has survival value and primitive humans who didn't get with the program didn't last long. It's common enough to see faces in clouds so why not see a hungry predator in the shifting shadows of a dark cave. Imagining a presence, even where none exists, is our default position. Better to imagine a bear and run than to not imagine a bear...and run into one.
The second reason is that while our society goes to extremes trying to protect developing minds from sex and violence, we encourage magical thinking in kids at every turn. From the child's Santa Clause it's but a short step to the adult's Guardian Angel. Run enough pictures of the Virgin Mary on a pizza slice and the Devil in the smoke of the World Trade Center and is it any wonder you eventually wind up with a nation of Fantasy Prone Personalities?
Until we start to teach scientific thinking and stop pandering to make-believe, it's unlikely that logic and reason will catch up with faith and emotion anytime soon. And this is not a matter to be taken lightly. In a time of modern chemical, nuclear and biological weapons, such primitive notions can be hazardous to your health...and to the health of everyone on the planet.
