The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won’t create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that’s not a conclusion to take on faith — it’s what the empirical data tell us.
“What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians. . . .
Surprisingly, while increased church attendance and membership in a conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal beliefs, higher education doesn’t. Two years ago two professors published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that, while less than one-quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches, the figure jumped to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students.
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Would Sarah Palin’s appeal for the people of Alaska to “get their hearts right with God” in exchange for an oil pipeline count as a superstitious belief?
All joking aside, you’re making it sound like belief in the paranormal is a bad thing. Mormons believe in all sorts of paranormal phenomena—healing by the laying on of hands, visitation from angels, personal revelation from God, the spirit world existing on Earth, and demonic possession (get thee hence!).
It’s interesting that you posted this because I’ve been thinking of writing a piece about how my interest in the mysteries of the universe keeps me close to Mormonism. That is, I’m not satisfied or fulfilled by empiricism alone—I feel like there are far too many things that we don’t (or possibly can’t) understand about existence. I feel like the church helps me explore those unknowns in a really compelling way. Plenty of other belief systems and mythologies have interesting takes as well. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with exploring any of them—with healthy skepticism.
Anyhow, this isn’t surprising to me. I can’t imagine that pure empiricism is ever going to satisfy people. Exploration of the supernatural be appealing as long as we encounter life’s mysteries.
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