Message #58205

[Sandra]

                    
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The Paranatural Paradigm and Life After Death
I wish to illustrate this by dealing with the intriguing question: What is the evidence for life after death? Can we communicate with the dead? That is, Are we able to be in touch with people who have died? Do they have some form of existence, perhaps as "discarnate spirits" or "disembodied souls"? This is an age-old question that is related to faith in immortality and a very deep hunger for it. Although it has been interpreted as "paranormal," it may more appropriately be considered to be "paranatural" because of its religious significance. Indeed, for the great supernatural religions of the world -- Christianity, Judaism, and Islam -- belief in an afterlife and the promise of heaven are central.

At present there is intense popular interest in these questions in the United States. It is stimulated by the mass media, at least as measured by the number of popular books, magazine articles, movies, and television and radio programs devoted to the theme. The films The Sixth Sense (with Bruce Willis and Haley Osment) and Frequency are examples of the prevailing interest, as are the best-selling books by James Van Praagh (Talking to Heaven, 1997; Reaching to Heaven, 1999), John Edward (One Last Time, 1998), Sylvia Browne (The Other Side and Back, 1999), and Rosemary Altea (You Own the Power, 1999). Dan Rather on CBS, the Fox TV network, Larry King Live, and other talk-show hosts have devoted many uncritical programs to these claims. For example, the HBO TV network did a special last year, "Life Afterlife," purporting to present the scientific examination of survival. It interviewed dozens of people, all of whom claim to have communicated with the dead, and several parapsychologists, all arguing the case for survival. Included in this special were critical comments by two skeptics -- one more than usual! This is supposed to constitute a "balanced" documentary, and it is typical of the state of American media when dealing with paranatural or paranormal claims. There are all too few objective programs examining such questions; most favor a spiritual-paranormal interpretation.

As a result of a massive media onslaught, polls in the last decade place the United States as number one in belief in life after death in the democratic world, and higher than virtually all European countries. Two cross-national surveys conducted for the International Social Survey Program in 1991 and 19931 indicate that the United States ranked highest, along with Ireland and the Philippines, for those who believe in heaven (63.17% of the population), highest for those who believe in hell (49.6%), and highest for those who believe in life after death (55%). The US was lowest of twenty-one nations on knowledge of human evolution (44.2%), lower than Poland and Russia. Recent polls have shown the level of credulity growing in the past decade. In 1996 a poll conducted by Goldhaber Associates (at the State University of New York at Buffalo) indicated that 90 percent of Americans were either "religious" or "somewhat religious."2 A recent poll conducted for Newsweek magazine by the Princeton Survey Research Associates, based on a sample of 752 adults interviewed indicated that 84 percent of Americans said that God performed miracles and 77 percent said saints or God can cure people otherwise medically incurable.3 Paradoxically, the US is allegedly the most advanced scientific-technological society in the world.

http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-11/paranatural.html
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