supernaturalI have been curious to know if I am the only person who has never seen things such as ghosts, demons and such (Not that I mind). But I wanted to know if stories of this is all made up or is there some truth to it.
Question sparked from a story I saw on CNN of a guy getting arrested for allegedly turning some kid into a zombie.
People with all kinds of beliefs perceive - or think they perceive - all kinds of unusual things. The mechanisms of human perception are fragile and easily fooled, and the cognitive processes by which we understand those perceptions are finely balanced and can go out of whack.
Case in point: A guy I know who very seriously disbelieves in the supernatural was on a medication that was causing him to gain weight. When his doctor switched him to an alternative medication, he had various unusual perceptions that some people might think were supernatural, including:
This all snuck up on him so gradually, and was so convincing, that someone who wasn’t quite so hard-headed a materialist might have actually believed it was really happening, and wound up in trouble or even dead. Fortunately, he knew it was all crazy, so he called me. I had a backup supply of his old medications, and after he’d taken them for a day, his perceptions were pretty much back to normal.
I think you’ll find that most people who have reasoned themselves into an atheist position have not had any supernatural experience of any kind.
People who claim to have had supernatural experiences have so far fallen into two categories:
For the first category, it’s usually the result of jumping to a conclusion; e.g. something unusual happens, and the person interprets it as supernatural, rejecting (or at least failing to consider) the more-likely explanations. When these claims are investigated, they invariably are explained by surprisingly mundane causes.
For the second category; well, there will always be charlatans.
Given the amount of investigation claims like ghosts and demons have received, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that ghosts or demons have ever really been observed by anyone. Therefore, the most reasonable position is to conclude that they probably don’t exist.
I guess it depends on what you define as ‘supernatural’ - I suppose there doesn’t have to be a higher being or god for there to be ghosts and such.
It also depends on whether the atheist is also a rational person - on being presented a (currently) inexplicable phenomena, would this hypothetical atheist assume there to be a rational explanation for said phenomena, or would they assume an irrational ‘paranormal’ activity.
Not all atheists are rational (and not all rational thinkers are atheists)
Of course. Experiments have been done on the human brain that can bring about such experiences almost at will. For example:
By 2002, he had performed the experiment on over 1,000 volunteers. 80% had some sort of supernatural experience. Many say that their experiences were “so profound they would be life-changing had they not understood the mechanistic underpinnings of what they had experienced.” About one in every 15 subjects reports an intensely meaningful experience. One saw a figure of Christ in the strobe light. Others, depending upon their cultural background, reported Elijah, the Virgin Mary, Mohammed, or the Sky Spirit. Some have reported out-of-body experiences, a sensation of floating, and a sensation of “great meaningfulness.”
Even outside scientific experiments, people who take drugs experience all sorts of weird things all the time.
A typical atheist would probably not interpret it as supernatural. There are easy ways of reconciling such experiences with an atheistic view of the world: The most common one is probably “my brain was probably just acting funny and giving me illusions”. However, the experience is the same (in terms of brain state). A theist with exactly the same experience would instantly jump to the conclusion that it was divine.
This is why I don’t like the label “supernatural experience”. It makes a presupposition about how to interpret an experience.
I think some people here protest too much. There is a distinction to be made between “supernatural” experiences, and supernatural events. As an atheist, I of course do not believe there is anything beyond nature. I find it even hard to imagine what such a thing would look like. There’s quite a few definitions of the word, but none satisfy me.
Most people can point to some experience which some would describe as supernatural. I certainly have had a few of those. Back in the day when I was more prone to believe these things, I did put some stock into the experiences. Now of course I explain them through the lens of my skepticism.
I would be surprised if anyone could not point to some experience of theirs which would seem supernatural at first, uncritical glance. The difference with a skeptic is that we don’t stop at the first, uncritical glance; we seek the explanation we strongly suspect is there to be found.
When I was 19, I was driving home (from Northern Virginia to Philadelphia) for the Christmas break in college. About an hour into my drive, I was heading north on Interstate 81 in West Virginia. At this point, I was sideswiped by a tractor trailer that I was passing. I lost control of my car and entered the grassy median separating the northbound and southbound lanes. As a mere 19-year-old, I didn’t have the presence of mind to try to stop my car and I did a near-180, entering the southbound lanes, facing roughly south, and doing about 15 mph. Shortly after I entered the southbound lanes, I was then rear-ended by a second tractor trailer before my car came to a stop off the side of the road.
I stepped out of the car with a broken fingernail.
To this day, I point to three things that, if they had been different, I would be dead right now:
I say this because, for lack of a better word, I was, well, lucky. I don’t ascribe any supernatural power to having helped me survive that day, but I do know quite a few people who do. The circumstances simply weren’t right for my having died that day. I can even add that:
So I fully recognize that I don’t consider this a supernatural occurrence. But I also acknowledge that others might.
I think we all have stories like this, sometimes involving phenomena that have no natural explanation. But just because something doesn’t have a natural explanation, that doesn’t mean that it must be supernatural.
This is an atheism site, not an agnostic site. I’d like to think that if any atheist saw any supernatural occurances they’d question their atheism. If some guy got arrested for turning someone else into a zombie, you’d think that the undead walking among us would raise an eyebrow or two. I suggest that you’ve been misled by the misinformed.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.