Extraterrestrials and Ghosts More Believeable Than God?

LiveScience editorial director Robert Roy Britt cautions that the survey questions weren’t published in the Daily Mail along with the results, and since the wording of questions can play into the survey results, these results may be inaccurate. Furthermore, the survey was conducted by a marketing firm in concert with the release of a paranormal X-Files film on DVD.

37 percent claimed “aliens and ghosts were the basis of their belief system.”

The results showed that only 54 percent of respondents believe in God, compared to 58 that believe in the “supernatural.” One wonders how those who account for the difference can believe in the supernatural without belief in God.

And 37 percent claimed “aliens and ghosts were the basis of their belief system,” though we would ask what this actually means—at least, beyond credulity when it comes to tales of the paranormal.

Britt makes an important point near the end of his study—one we hope more skeptics would take note of: “Religion and belief in the paranormal are not linked as one might imagine. A handful of surveys show just the opposite, in fact.” Britt quotes Baylor researcher Rodney Stark who explains that “Paranormal beliefs are very strongly negatively related to religious belief.” Britt also notes that “most devout practitioners of a religion have been shown to be the least likely to believe in Bigfoot, ghosts, or aliens.”

We reported on the Baylor study “What Americans Really Believe” in News to Note, September 27, 2008, item #6. That study found that 31 percent of the irreligious expressed “strong belief” in occult and the paranormal—compared to only 8 percent of those who attend church more than once a week. What’s clear is that acknowledging God and His orderly creation makes one less gullible when it comes to unfounded humanistic ideas—whether it’s ET or evolution! It seems that when individuals give up belief in God, they must find something else to put their faith in—and more often than not, it’s either aliens and the paranormal, or evolutionary science.

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