Paranormal believers and God believers - Richard Dawkins
19 July 2008 by StardustBelief in things like astrology, psychics, ghosts, tarot cards and reincarnation etc. remain as popular as religion. Recent surveys show that roughly 75% of the population in the US believes in the paranormal. Since the US is made up of about 86% who believe in supernatural magical gods, it makes sense that most would also believe in things paranormal. Several reasons given for belief in the paranormal can also be the reasons people believe in god:
They make people feel special or important in an otherwise chaotic and apparently random, uncaring universe.
They offer a sense of meaning or control over things that are otherwise beyond our understanding.
They offer a sense of comfort by ‘connecting the dots’ and creating a sense of order and structure in life.
Because believers don’t understand how to be skeptical and hold such claims up to basic standards of logic and reason.
Then there are those who blindly believe those things are obviously true and real.
This is a very good two-parter by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins emphasizes the point that while it is okay to mock those who believe in the paranormal, religion is protected from the same scrutiny and open skepticism.
Part One
Part Two
19 July 2008, on 12:11 pm
The analogy of Las Vegas being a “filter feeder” is right on.
19 July 2008, on 12:15 pm
The strangest thing I’ve found regarding this phenomenon are those Catholics like my mother. She takes absolutely to heart the dire warnings against the paranormal that the babble supposedly contains. So she believes that a god was born to a virgin and became a man, who was eventually murdered and resurrected and later, in spite of ascending whole into heaven, he became a holy ’spirit’.
So a clone or test tube baby became a zombie and then later, a ghost. But when it comes to belief in spirits of dead humans she’s got a problem with that.
You just have to laugh.
19 July 2008, on 12:51 pm
I have had this discussion with some of my fundie relatives a few times. I point out that ghosts and all this supernatural stuff is no different from their god beliefs. My sister has this kind of morbid belief that her late husband is “protecting” her and her now grown kids. Like one time my nephew put a pizza in the oven and forgot about it but when he ran downstairs in a panic an hour later the oven was turned off and the pizza wasn’t burnt…cooked and slightly warm still. They swear it was my dead brother-in-law who turned the oven off.
The believers in this stuff are the ones who are spookier than the idea of a dead guy still living and going in and out of dimensions and watching everything you do. My mother still thinks her mother watches what she does. I always hate that at funerals when people say the deceased is “in a better place” or “up in heaven now looking down on us”.
I say now to people that I thought the deceased would be too busy being in awe of the Sky Boss to notice us all here. Humans have such imaginative coping devices.
19 July 2008, on 1:57 pm
Religion is like a herd of sacred elephants wandering the public square, shitting wherever they like and, in general, taking up far too much space. Our job, is to find a use for every part of that elephant, like the Plains Indians did with the buffalo, and, then, hunt it too extinction.
19 July 2008, on 3:37 pm
I just read on a goofy Xian psychic website “being Christians we don’t insist that you be” and then it goes on to “we are all gobs children” so…they say they don’t “insist” that we are Christians because in their minds they have already made us Christians and one of Gob’s children. They have already made us what they want to be.
Several of my relatives say that we are born Gob’s child and we “fall away” from the fold because of evil or whatever. They make it up as they go instead of listening to us when we say we have no god beliefs. To them it doesn’t matter because they will see things the way they want to. Just the same way that folks who see ghosts of their dead relatives. You can’t tell them they didn’t see their dead relatives because they want to believe it so badly that they have made it real in their own minds. Can’t tell a crazy person they are crazy. They won’t believe you.
RDZ, love the sacred elephant herd analogy. That is exactly what religion is like.
19 July 2008, on 6:20 pm
I always enjoy the stories of people who have dreams about their dead relatives who start the story with “I was laying down” or some other way of saying I was asleep or trying to sleep, and then and always put something like this in there: It wasn’t a dream because it was so real!
Or: I know I wasn’t dreaming.
Because it’s impossible to fall asleep without realizing it, right? *shakes head*
19 July 2008, on 7:03 pm
It wasn’t a dream because it was so real!
AUM, My own relatives have used that same exact phrase!
19 July 2008, on 7:10 pm
Here is a quote from a crazy fundie who is a god believer and a ghost believer (another one for “Fundies say the Darndest Things!)
19 July 2008, on 8:35 pm
And Star, we’ve all had dreams that seemed real. Whenever I have a nightmare about a zombie outbreak it seems so real I wake up and am scared to go back to sleep.
And yes, a good zombie story scares the hell out of me. The writer of Walking Dead even called me Captain Sissy because of it. I wear that title like a badge of honor.
Anyway, by their logic, this MUST have happened because it was so real! (and, if alternate realities exist, actually DID! How scary a thought is that?!)
19 July 2008, on 9:16 pm
AUM, this is probably where the writers got the idea for the Freddy Krueger’s Nightmare on Elm Street.
20 July 2008, on 3:32 am
I actually had a dream about Freddy Krueger once.
Woke up with a bad gash on my chest. Not sure if it means anything, but meh.
20 July 2008, on 6:58 am
It’s really a bad stupid choice to be an athiest: If there are lots of mistakes and nonesense in chrisianity or any other religion, that doesn’t say that God doesn’t exist, it just says that this religion is false..
How can you deny the existence of God while you daily face the incredible design in nature?? How can you deny the existence of god, while you are already exists??
20 July 2008, on 11:46 am
The Dawkins talk brings up the age old question…and perennial problem…regarding religious beliefs. In answering the question of just WHY its always been “off limits” to question the belief in some deity, and one’s personal ‘Cosmology’, if you will, seems to me rather obvious. Many of us, as Stardust has so often alluded to, have personally experienced an almost immediate tension, if not total shutting down, of any conversation which ventures into the questioning of the “sacred” territory of one’s personal belief. I certainly have plenty of indication that my somewhat recent “coming out” as an atheist has cooled, if not, indeed, totally shut down some old friendships; and even family relationships.
To understand why that is so prevalent, one only has to trace the long history of mankind’s troubles regarding ANY religion, and the motivations for its very existence in every society known to our species. As we all know, it exists in every tribe and civilization, going back, even BEYOND what we know of Ancient Egypt, etc.
To question the prevailing tribal beliefs meant that one was questioning the solidarity of the tribe; and of course, any hierarchical authority which had evolved in a particular…’successful’…functioning power structure. In essence, as ‘known’ atheists, we would all, most certainly, be considered anathema, and outcasts in many earlier cultures, with our lives threatened; certainly, in many cases, either put to death or driven out of the tribe as dangerous heretics.
I’ve often thought that the evolution of man’s settling in rather unbelievably harsh, hard to survive areas on the planet, was, besides gradual changes in environmental circumstances, partly due to just that. In other words, the outcasts, whether individually, or in, small, ‘heretical’ groups, started NEW tribes in the more…’challenging’ environments…like living in much colder, or even hotter, areas of the globe. Kinda like those “forbidden” zones of certain Sci-Fi movies, like “Planet of the Apes” f’r'nstance.
At any rate, I’ve never experienced before, in my own personal life, quite so dramatic a ’shut down’ in communication with old “friends”…and even amongst my dwindling number of family members…as I have since coming out of the closet as an atheist.
I’m sure my entering old age is one factor…like…Ummm…”They’re all dropping like flies!”…?
Aside from just “friends”, having no “kids”, of course, makes my situation somewhat less complicated than most people’s. I can only imagine how different it would be when subsequent generations are involved.
All I can say to y’all about that subject, is…what!…
“Good Luck!”?
Strangely…to me at least…there’s some rather odd-like comfort in the fact that, in a hundred years, we’ll ALL be…ummm…
“Long gone and totally forgotten”…the permanent…ultimate…
Earth Outcasts.
What’s that?…Did somebody…Was it you, Stardust?…ask:…
“Will we then be, (especially, all us Moms & Dads) possibly with George Carlin in the…ummm…”OORT cloud”…you know…
a bunch of disembodied, ultra-nosy voyeurs…in…
“That Great, Invisible…Floating Bleacher in the Sky”?
I just flashed on that previous Post’s picture of the gal sitting on the commode…looking skyward…saying something like:
“Get the fuck outa here, you totally perverted assholes!
Like…Go fuck each other? Oh…and while you’re at it…All a ya…IF you see them…PLEASE…kick those trouble making fuckheads, Moses, Jeebus and Mohammerd in the ass for me…REAL HARD!”
I’m kidding, of course!
Hey…it’s Sunday…?
20 July 2008, on 12:00 pm
Oops…Sorry…
I think the photo (”previous Post’s picture”) I was referring to, appeared in one of Austin Cline’s recent posts about the “Omni-present” Gob, constantly watching everybody…everywhere.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s an aerial shot of a gal on the toilet looking up, a bit…perplexed?
“You get the picture?”
20 July 2008, on 9:25 pm
How can you deny the existence of God while you daily face the incredible design in nature?? How can you deny the existence of god, while you are already exists??
believer (two comments above^^),
Something being incredible to view, such as nature, does not automatically say that a god designed it. Just because we exist doesn’t mean a god exists. That’s as silly as saying that since I had so much fun at Disneyland and everything there is so magically designed, Cinderella, Snow White, Mickey Mouse and Goofy & all must really exist. Think about it, if you can.
And your comment that it is a “bad stupid choice to be an atheist” is quite childish. I presume you mean that because of the big evil threat you have been programmed to believe about hell and the devil and all those creepy things that you fear unnecessarily.
20 July 2008, on 11:11 pm
believer: “…while you are already exists??”
HUH?…Say what?
As to “incredible design”…let’s consider…ummm…
TEETH?…
Considering the trouble that so many people have in their lifetime…
First; born with genetically crooked teeth in childhood; amazingly cavity prone; only one replacement for an entire life…yada, yada.
And that’s just ONE item.
[That reminds me of how many wind instrument playing, private music students that I taught, who were struggling with (very expensive) braces!]
All Religions just offer, of course, variations on the old…”Blaming the victims” mantra…i.e. “us”!
What delusional bullshit!
OK…
Pardon a little repeat here of an excellent, very humorous commentary on the subject by Neil deGrasse Tyson:
“Neil deGrasse Tyson - Stupid Design”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1cKD93W3yg
20 July 2008, on 11:29 pm
As long as I’m linking YouTube stuff, here’ a nice little succinct summary RE the absolute “baloney” of Religion:
“Christopher Hitchens - The Absurdity of Religious Belief”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj_uv3tgrXM&NR=1
21 July 2008, on 3:26 am
*Replying from an undisclosed location in Escandido, CA while awaiting the start of Comic Con 2008*
Hey ChuckA, don’t forget about the appendix, which if designed that way was designed for no other reason than to cause potential death, along with much pain and need for surgery.
21 July 2008, on 10:11 am
Believer wrote:
What design? Everything in nature looks jury-rigged at best, and plain Heath Robinson at worst. This is not what we would expect of an omnipotent designer. It is, however, exactly what we would expect of an process with only very short-term direction. (Or perhaps an omnipotent designer locked up in a dungeon and consequently having access only to rather limited resources. But let’s stop before we give people ideas.)
21 July 2008, on 10:45 am
believer, what are the mistakes and nonsense in christianity? Because if you take out the supernatural, it’s not a religion, it’s a lecture series. Can you take some supernatural out of it but not all? How do you decide?
21 July 2008, on 11:58 am
AtheistUnderMask: “Hey ChuckA, don’t forget about the appendix…”
You just reminded me; I had a burst appendix when I was 2 years old (in 1942). In those days there was nothing much to do, medically, but let it drain…from the rectum; which, obviously “worked”.
(The old joke: “Rectum!…Hell…it nearly killed him!”)
My earliest memory is of some balloons tied to a ‘radiator’; and when I asked my mom about it, she informed/affirmed that it was at that instance.
I was told, also, that I was singing that old song: “You Are My Sunshine” to the nurses…the ummm…start of my illustrious musical “career”!
Indeed, AUM, the list goes on RE leftover evolutionary remnants of what might be described as, extremely dragged out…even somewhat sado-masochistic…intermediary stages of an “ever ongoing” trial and error genetic process…?
I also had my tonsils and adenoids removed when I was about seven.
Yeah…memories of the smell of ether. vague understandings of it all ; and…ala an old Bill Cosby routine…
“Ice cream!…I’m gonna get ice cream!”
Then, of course, speaking of teeth, there are those useless, ever-lurking…”Wisdom teeth”…ROIT!…
Some wisdom!
How ’bout: “Wise-ass teeth”?
And I still have my Gallbladder; which so commonly causes problems at ANY time of a person’s life…yada, yada.
That old:
“Well YOU’VE certainly gotta lotta Gall!”
“And the list goes on…”
21 July 2008, on 12:44 pm
Speaking of appendix, my son just had an emergency appendectomy this past Wednesday. He was in awful pain from that little useless piece of shit unintelligently-designed appendage.
22 July 2008, on 5:34 pm
Abandoning my belief in ghosts took a lot longer than abandoning my belief in god.
In fact, I still like the idea of ghosts, and would love for them to be real, but recognize that as nothing more than wish fulfillment.
Stardust- I hope your son feels better soon. My brother almost died because his little useless piece of shit unintelligently-designed appendage blew a gasket.
22 July 2008, on 10:41 pm
Steve, he is doing much better - thanks. I am glad your brother survived his ordeal. It’s amazing how something so tiny and useless can be so damned dangerous when it becomes infected.
23 July 2008, on 10:45 am
I loved my old Cosby albums! Remember “Snakes on the floor?”, and “A nut in every car?” Now that’s good stuff!
23 July 2008, on 11:08 am
We still have our old Cosby albums, too. I liked the Fat Albert gang stories. And remember the “Chicken Heart”?