50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True
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More than anything, science is a method for figuring out and discovering things in our universe. It is also through science that we can best determine whether or not something is real. If something cannot be proven scientifically, it may still be real or true, but this would be a very good reason to have strong doubts until it is. We know science works because it has a record of success far superior to anything else. Even supernatural and paranormal believers rely on science and technology when they could try solutions more in line with their beliefs. People who need to communicate with someone far away don't use ESP, they pick up a phone. People who want to visit a place that is far away don't use astral projection, they board an airplane. Many believers in alternative medicine still turn to medical science when struck by a serious illness or injury. Why do most people who believe in a utopian afterlife fear death and avoid it at all costs?
A final point to keep in mind when thinking about paranormal, supernatural, and pseudoscientific beliefs is that letting go of them is not necessarily a sacrifice. Not only can thinking skeptically be safer and more economical over the course of a lifetime, it doesn't have to be any less fun, either. Whatever I may have lost by not believing in things like astrology and ghosts, I am confident that I more than make up for it by embracing reality with great enthusiasm. All scientific discoveries to date and all the mysteries still to be solved excite me, and I find plenty of reason for optimism and hope, even amid harsh realities. In my opinion, plenty of comfort and joy can be found in friends, family, romance, creative work, adventure, art, acts of kindness, nature, and fun in all its forms. I understand that it may feel comforting or stabilizing to believe that invisible forces influence us, but it can also be comforting and stabilizing to realize that as humans we are smart enough and strong enough to face up to the universe as it really is and get on with our lives.
GO DEEPER…
Books
Barker, Dan. Maybe Yes, Maybe No: A Guide for Young Skeptics. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990.
Buonomano, Dean. Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.
Carroll, Robert Todd, ed. The Skeptic's Dictionary. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2003.
Davis, Hank. Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009.
Dunning, Brian. Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena. Seattle, WA: CreateSpace, 2008.
Dunning, Brian. Skeptoid 2: More Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena. Seattle, WA: CreateSpace, 2008.
Dunning, Brian. Skeptoid 3: Pirates, Pyramids, and Papyrus. Seattle, WA: CreateSpace, 2011.
Frazier, Kendrick. Science under Siege: Defending Science, Exposing Pseudoscience. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009.
Hines, Terrence. Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003.
Kurtz, Paul, ed. Skeptical Odysseys. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2001.
Nickell, Joe. Adventures in Paranormal Investigation. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007.
Park, Robert. Voodoo Science: The Road from Fraud to Foolishness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Pigliucci, Massimo. Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Radford, Benjamin. Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve the Unexplained Mysteries. Corrales, NM: Rhombus, 2010.
Randi, James. An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995.
Ruchlis, Hy. How Do You Know It's True? Discovering the Difference between Science and Superstition. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991.
Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Random House, 1995.
Schick, Theodore, and Lewis Vaughn. How to Think about Weird Things. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.
Shermer, Michael. The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. New York: Times Books, 2011.
Shermer, Michael. The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things. New York: MJF Books, 1997.
Smith, Jonathan C. Pseudoscience and Extraordinary Claims of the Paranormal: A Critical Thinker's Toolkit. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Other Sources
Skeptic (magazine).
Skeptical Inquirer (magazine).
Skeptic (website), www.skeptic.com.
Skeptical Inquirer (website), www.csicop.org.
James Randi Educational Foundation, www.randi.org.
Point of Inquiry (podcast), www.pointofinquiry.org.
Skepticality (podcast), www.skepticality.com.
The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe (podcast), www.theskepticsguide.org.
Skeptoid (podcast), www.skeptoid.com.
Here Be Dragons: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (DVD), CreateSpace, 2008.
The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague.
Who shall say where one ends, and the other begins?
—Edgar Allan Poe
Frank Ward was dying. He had a leg infection that turned extremely nasty and spread to his bloodstream. Septic shock caused his blood pressure and heart rate to plummet. “I was basically in a coma,” Frank explained. “My heart was beating just four to six beats per minute. My brain wasn't getting enough oxygen to do anything or to perceive anything. I was dying—or already dead.”
Frank says that at some point during the process of dying, he left his body. Frank bases this on what he remembers seeing in the hospital room.
“I saw the doctor praying. He was bent over at the edge of the bed with his hands together. He wasn't on his knees, but he was bent over. I saw him from another place in the room. It was like I wasn't looking at him from the bed where [my body] was. I wasn't in my body. That's how it appeared to me, anyway.”
Frank recovered from what he calls a near-death experience and later discussed it with his doctor.
“When I came to later, I asked him if he had been praying for me in the room,” Frank said. “He turned about thirteen different colors. He couldn't believe that I knew. I saw things in the room, details that I couldn't possibly know. That tells me it wasn't just a hallucination.”
Unlike many near-death experiences, Frank's did not include a tunnel of light, seeing loved ones, or catching a glimpse of heaven or hell. “I didn't see fire and brimstone—that's a good sign. But I didn't see pearly gates or angels either. Let's face it, when we die we want something to be on the other side. I just can't subscribe to the theory that there's nothing. As human beings we don't want to end up just being a bunch of bones in a box for maggots to eat. I saw the doctor praying and he says he was. But did I have some otherworldly experience beyond that? No. I wish I had, but I didn't. The way I see it, neither science nor religion can answer everything. I don't know what to say; I just know that something happened to me in that hospital.”1
Frank is hardly alone. He is a bright, thoughtful, and honest person who experienced a very strange event at a time when his life was in jeopardy. Variations of Frank's story have been reported by many people around the world. As many as eighteen million Americans may have had a near-death experience.2 Even more common are so-called out-of-body experiences that are very similar to near-death experiences. Something as simple and non-life-threatening as fainting can cause them. There is no doubt that people really do have these strange experiences. It's just not reasonable to suspect that millions of people are lying. The key questions, of course, are what causes the events and do they really prove that there is a soul and afterlife as many claim.
I learned firsthand in childhood that sometimes weird things happen when your body is in crisis. Pain and panic make perfect sense to an injured kid, but peace and tranquility? That I didn't expect. One day during my childhood,
I was out emulating Huckleberry Finn or whatever and slipped off of a large, elevated sewer pipe that spanned a canal. My head slammed into the metal pipe, and a protruding bolt left a deep gash on my shin. Fortunately I landed on the bank of the canal and not in the water. It was a semiserious accident by any standard, but from a child's perspective, it qualified as downright catastrophic.
A funny thing happened on the way to my suffering and doom, however. I felt no pain. There was no screaming and no tears. I just lay there in the dirt, feeling nothing but extraordinary peace and calm. It was more than the absence of pain. I felt incredibly good. It seemed like I was detached from everything. I can't say that I felt like I left my body or hovered high above the scene, but I did experience a strange detached feeling. It wasn't quite flying, but it felt like I was floating and had lost contact with the ground. Weird, to say the least. Eventually my brain rebooted and I got back on my feet. Then the pain came, and I faced a long limp home.
Today I don't think of that childhood accident as a near-death experience or even an out-of-body experience. It just doesn't seem quite dramatic enough, in my view. But it did feel great. If I could push a button and get that feeling anytime, I'd never leave my house. What is significant about the event is that it gave me a tiny taste of what people likely feel when they go through out-of-body or near-death experiences. I should have felt terrible and been screaming in agony, but instead I felt wonderful and at peace with the universe. As a result of that event, I find it easy to understand when people say they were profoundly happy or calm at the brink of death or even that they think they floated above their own bodies. It is also not difficult for me to accept claims of powerful visions, seeing long-lost relatives or friends, and even visiting heaven. After all, the mind can take us anywhere. I once dreamed that I was somewhere far away in outer space. It was all very realistic at the time, but I'm pretty sure I never left Earth. Scientists know well that the human brain is better than a Hollywood studio when it comes to producing images and stories. CGI (computer-generated imagery) is all the rage in moviemaking now, but it's nothing compared to mind-generated images. The dreaming mind; the stressed-out, tired mind; and the dying mind can conjure up virtually anything and make it convincing. This is not proof of life after death, the existence of heaven, or souls, not when the same experiences happen to people who black out in high-speed jets or during g-force testing in centrifuges. Maybe those things are real, but near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences have alternative explanations that are far more down-to-earth and more likely to be true.
The strange sensation of leaving one's body is not, it turns out, all that strange. Nothing supernatural is required to explain it. A confused brain can even do the trick. It's not the same as a dying brain, but it does show how this sort of thing can happen by natural means. The feeling of separation from one's body has been induced by simple experiments with mirrors. Brain researchers have achieved out-of-body experiences in 75 percent of subjects in one experiment that involves a person sitting at a desk with a large mirror in front of them and only their upper body visible. A second person then walks toward the seated person. That second person would in most cases experience a brief out-of-body sensation.3 By replicating another similar experiment with myself as the test subject, I induced what could be called an out-of-hand experience. With my left hand hidden behind a mirror, I could only see my right hand and its reflection, I was able to confuse my mind (even though I knew what was going on) to the point where my left hand felt dead and vaguely detached from my body. Weird as it was, however, I saw no reason to believe that the left hand of my soul had vacated my body.
Those who are convinced that near-death experiences prove supernatural claims often point to the fact that they are reported by people in different cultures. This, they say, means it can't just be some specific belief-centered or culturally derived quirk. If it happens to all kinds of people in all sorts of places, then these events must be real as described, right? Well, no. More likely these events are of a similar nature because people in Japan, Nairobi, Damascus, and New York City, and everywhere else, all have one important thing in common: they have human brains that function in the same way. Tunnel vision, for example, is common in near-death experiences. Sure, it might be the road to heaven, as many say, but a simpler explanation is that vision is restricted during oxygen deprivation and tunnel vision results. “When not enough blood is pumped to the head,” explains neurologist Kevin Nelson, “the eyes fail first, causing tunnel vision before the brain fails and unconsciousness occurs.”4 It's as simple as that.
As for the sensation of leaving one's body and floating around above it, it may seem like an exceptional and rare event, but it is surprisingly common. One study of more than thirteen thousand Europeans found that nearly six percent of them said they have had an out-of-body experience. Many millions of Americans have as well.5 While many people believe this is evidence or even proof of something supernatural, such as “astral projection,” the existence of souls, or heaven, there is a much more simple explanation available once again.
Scientists have induced out-of-body experiences in people by stimulating a specific region of the brain with electricity, casting doubt on the need to invoke supernatural explanations. “It takes just a small trickle of electrical current to induce such an experience,” explains neurologist Nelson. “Other factors, such as a temporary lack of blood or oxygen to the brain, may also interfere with sensory integration in the temporoparietal region and cause out-of-body experiences.”6 And, of course, many people have induced out-of-body experiences by taking drugs. Drugs that do this are not “magical soul-extraction potions”; they are merely hallucinogens that cause hallucinations. The point is that if we can induce these experiences by tinkering with brain biology, then isn't it likely that all such experiences can be attributed to brain biology rather than supernatural causes?
UK psychologist Susan Blackmore had a dramatic out-of-body event that motivated her to research near-death experiences. Although she had hoped and expected to confirm that something paranormal or supernatural was going on, Blackmore eventually concluded that evidence for the dying brain, or at least the oxygen-starved brain, as the cause of these events is “overwhelming.”7
There is also the challenge of addressing very basic questions about how a soul, whatever that is, maintains its structure and moves around. How does it retain thoughts, memories, and personality? What is it made of? California Institute of Technology physicist Sean M. Carroll says we cannot just conveniently forget hard-won knowledge about how reality works when we think about souls and life after death:
Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there's no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. If you claim that some form of soul persists beyond death, what particles is that soul made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?
Everything we know about quantum field theory says that there aren't any sensible answers to these questions. Of course, everything we know about quantum field theory could be wrong. Also, the Moon could be made of green cheese.
Among advocates for life after death, nobody even tries to sit down and do the hard work of explaining how the basic physics of atoms and electrons would have to be altered in order for this to be true. If we tried, the fundamental absurdity of the task would quickly become evident.8
The bottom line here is that we know beyond any doubt that natural events occurring inside one's skull can cause all the sensations repeatedly associated with out-of-body and near-death experiences. Human minds often see and hear things that are not real. They also frequently misremember events. And this is under the best of conditions. During extremely stressful situations—such as dying—our minds are even more likely to distort reali
ty. Knowing this, how can we justify taking the gigantic leap necessary to involve souls, heaven, and other supernatural causes for these events?
Neurologist Nelson adds:
People like to say that these experiences are proof that consciousness can exist outside the brain, like a soul that lives after death. I hope that is true, but it is a matter of faith; there is no evidence for that. People who claim otherwise are using false science to engender false hope and I think that is misleading and ultimately cruel.9
Frank Ward, the man who had the near-death experience described at the beginning of the chapter, contacted me a few weeks after our discussion. He told me that sharing his story prompted him to think more deeply about it and do some research. As a result, he said he has changed his mind about what likely occurred that day. “Now I'm convinced it can be explained by the natural dying process,” he said. “My brain was starved of oxygen, and it made me hallucinate. It was an amazing experience, but after doing some reading about it, I think the scientific explanation makes the most sense.”
GO DEEPER…
Blackmore, Susan. Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1993.
Woerlee, G. M. Mortal Minds: The Biology of Near-Death Experiences. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005.
Zimmer, Carl. Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain—and How It Changed the World. New York: Free Press, 2005.
I know, as much as I know anything, that there are no psychic powers or spiritual realms. Anyone who performs psychic or divination tricks is lying, either to themselves or to their clients.
—Tauriq Moosa, former psychic
“Look into my eyes,” I say. “Pull back the curtain that hides your thoughts. Let me in.…Yes, I'm starting to feel your thoughts. You are doing great. Just relax.”
She's definitely unsure about this, but she hasn't laughed or protested yet, so I'll keep going.
“You have a strong mind. I'm beginning to sense some of the things that are troubling you. I can help.”