TruthBook Religious News Blog

By David Van Biema
Thursday, Sep. 18, 2008

More than half of all Americans believe they have been helped by a guardian angel in the course of their lives, according to a new poll by the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion. In a poll of 1700 respondents, 55% answered affirmatively to the statement, "I was protected from harm by a guardian angel." The responses defied standard class and denominational assumptions about religious belief; the majority held up regardless of denomination, region or education — though the figure was a little lower (37%) among respondents earning more than $150,000 a year.
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The guardian angel encounter figures were "the big shocker" in the report, says Christopher Bader, director of the Baylor survey that covered a range of religious issues, parts of which are being released Thursday in a book titled What Americans Really Believe. In the case of angels, however, the question is a little stronger than just belief. Says Bader, "If you ask whether people believe in guardian angels, a lot of people will say, 'sure.' But this is different. It's experiential. It means that lots of Americans are having these lived supernatural experiences."

What's interesting about the Baylor findings on guardian angel experiences is that they cross all boundaries. They have scriptural writ (in Psalm 91 and elsewhere). They are clearly experiential. And guardian angels are a prominent part of Catholic belief that happens to float freely outside of a sacrament. The cross-spectrum legitimacy of the notion of angelic interventions may free Americans to engage in the kind of folk faith that is part of almost any religious system but is not always officially acknowledged.

Randall Balmer, chairman of the religion department at New York's Barnard College, says that the Baylor angel figures are one in a periodic series of indications that "Americans live in an enchanted world," and engage in a kind of casual mysticism independent of established religious ritual, doctrine or theology. "There is," he says, a "much broader uncharted range of religious experience among the populace than we expect." Just possibly, Baylor has begun to chart it.

Labels: angels, Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion, David Van Biema, faith, religious experience, supernatural

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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Monsters, Ghosts and Gods: Why We Believe

Monday, 18 August 2008,

Monsters are everywhere these days, and belief in them is as strong as ever. What's harder to believe is why so many people buy into hazy evidence, shady schemes and downright false reports that perpetuate myths that often have just one ultimate truth: They put money in the pockets of their purveyors.

A related question: Does belief in the paranormal have anything to do with religious belief?

The answer to that question is decidedly nuanced, but studies point to an interesting conclusion: People who practice religion are typically encouraged not to believe in the paranormal, but rather to put their faith in one deity, whereas those who aren't particularly active in religion are more free to believe in Bigfoot or consult a psychic.

Tall tales

A tale last week by three men who said they have remains of Bigfoot in a freezer was reported by many Web sites as anywhere from final proof of the creature to at least a very compelling case to keep the fantasy ball rolling and cash registers ringing for Bigfoot trinkets and tourism (all three men involved make money off the belief in this creature). Even mainstream media treated a Friday press conference about the "finding" as news.

Reactions by the public ranged from skeptical curiosity to blind faith.

In a 2006 study, researchers found a surprising number of college students believe in psychics, witches, telepathy, channeling and a host of other questionable ideas. A full 40 percent said they believe houses can be haunted.

Why are people so eager to accept flimsy and fabricated evidence in support of unlikely and even outlandish creatures and ideas? Why is the paranormal realm, from psychic predictions to UFO sightings, so alluring to so many?

The gods must be crazy

Since people have been people, experts figure, they have believed in the supernatural, from gods to ghosts and now every sort of monster in between.

Figuring out why people are this way is a little trickier.

"It is an artifact of our brain's desire to find cause and effect," Cronk, the psychology professor, said in an email interview. "That ability to predict the future is what makes humans &39; but it also has side effects like superstitions [and] belief in the paranormal."

"Humans first started believing in the supernatural because they were trying to understand things they couldn't explain," says Benjamin Radford, a book author, paranormal investigator and managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. "It's basically the same process as mythology: At one point people didn't understand why the sun rose and set each day, so they suggested that a chariot pulled the sun across the heavens."

Before modern scientific explanations of germ theory, explained Radford, who writes the "Bad Science" column for LiveScience, people didn't understand how diseases could travel from one person to another. "They didn't understand why a child was stillborn, or why a drought occurred, so they came to believe that such events had supernatural causes," he said.

"All societies have invoked the supernatural to explain things beyond their control and understanding, especially good and bad events," Radford said. "In many places - even today - people believe that disasters or bad luck is caused by witches or curses."

Which raises the bigger question: With science having answered so many questions in the past couple centuries, why do paranormal beliefs remain so strong?

Related to religion?

Sometimes the belief in curses crosses paths with religion, as was the case in 2005 when televangelist John Hagee (whose endorsement was solicited and received by presidential hopeful John McCain) blamed Hurricane Katrina on God's wrath for a gay parade that had been scheduled for the Monday of the storm's arrival.

That might lead one to assume religion and paranormal beliefs are intertwined.

But in a 2004 survey, at the researchers at Baylor found just the opposite.

"Paranormal beliefs are very strongly negatively related to religious belief," study team member Rod Stark said this week.

Another study, of 391 U.S. college students done in 2000, found that participants who did not believe in Protestant doctrine were most likely to believe in reincarnation, contact with the dead, UFOs, telepathy, prophecy, psychokinesis, or healing. Believers were the least likely to buy into the paranormal. "This may partly reflect opinions of Christians in the samples who take biblical sanctions against many &39; activities seriously," the Wheaton College researchers wrote.

Cronk, the psychologist, did a small survey of 80 college students and found no connection between religiosity and paranormal belief.

But a 2002 study in Canada did find a correlation between religious beliefs and paranormal beliefs, Cronk notes. He figures that among other explanations, Canadians may not have the same belief systems as U.S. residents.

Religion vs. paranormal

Mencken, the Baylor sociologist, says sacrifice and stigma (for holding ideas outside the group norm) keep the paranormal at bay among the highly religious. He has two papers forthcoming that are based on a national survey of 1,700 people.

The first, to be published in the journal Sociology of Religion in 2009, reveals this:

"Among Christians, those who attend church very often (and are exposed to stigma and sacrifice within their congregations) are least likely to believe in the paranormal," Mencken told LiveScience. "Conversely, those Christians who do not attend church very often (maybe once or twice a year) are the most likely to hold paranormal beliefs."

A third group, which he calls naturalists, do not hold supernatural views, Christian or paranormal.

Another study to published in December in the Review of Religious Research, shows that those who go to church "are much less likely to consult horoscopes, visit psychics, purchase New Age items," and so on, Mencken said. "However, among those Christians who do not attend church, there is a much higher level of participation in these phenomena."

Educated to believe

Belief in the paranormal - from astrology to communicating with the dead - increases during college, rising from 23 percent among freshmen to 31 percent in seniors and 34 percent among graduate students.

Bader, the sociologist at Baylor, and his colleagues teamed up with the Gallup organization to conduct a national survey of 1,721 people in 2005 and found nearly 30 percent think it is possible to influence the physical world through the mind alone (another 30 percent were undecided on that point). More than 20 percent figure it's possible to communicate with the dead. Nearly 40 percent believe in haunted houses.

Media madness

Today's ubiquitous and often one-sided, promotional coverage of the paranormal, both on the Internet and TV, perpetuate myths and folklore as well or better than any ancient storyteller. Fiction and belief masquerade as fact and news, feeding the 24/7 appetite of the easily swayed.

Scientists are left with an impossible task: proving something does not exist. You can prove a rock is there. You can't prove that Bigfoot or a ghost or the god of thunder is not there. Bigfoot paraphernalia purveyors and cash-cow psychics know this well.

"Many paranormalists claim that their powers only work sometimes, or that they don't work if there is a &39; in the room," Cronk points out.

Or, in the case of the unsupportive DNA testing on Bigfoot last week, the top proponent, Tom Biscardi (who recently produced a film about Bigfoot and might be said to have an interest in garnering press coverage), simply dodged the mythbusting bullet by claiming the DNA samples might have been contaminated.

Labels: belief, Bigfoot, faith, paranormal, religion, supernatural

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Sunday, June 01, 2008

In Japan, 72% irreligious; 56% believe in supernatural

The Yomiuri Shimbun Survey

Seventy-two percent of Japanese do not have any specific religious affiliation, but many still believe in supernatural forces, according to a recent Yomiuri Shimbun survey.

According to the survey, 26 percent of respondents said they believed in a religion, virtually unchanged from a similar survey conducted three years ago. Only 37 percent said religion was important for living a happy life.

Views of people's religious sentiment were split, with 45 percent of respondents saying Japanese had little religious faith while 49 percent thought otherwise.

However, 94 percent of respondents said they respected their ancestors, and 56 percent claimed to have had some form of supernatural experience.

The results suggested that many Japanese feel little affinity to a particular religion, but many do harbor feelings of respect for things that are scientifically unproven.

The Yomiuri Shimbun interviewed 3,000 randomly selected people across the country face-to-face on May 17-18, of whom 1,837 gave valid answers.

Asked about what happens to people's spirits after they die, 30 percent said they believed they would be reincarnated, 24 percent said they would go to another world and 18 percent answered they would vanish.

The recent popularity of new forms of spirituality and other new age-related beliefs, such as an interest in previous lives and guardian angels, was particularly prominent among female respondents. Although 21 percent of all respondents said they were interested in such thinking--far below the 75 percent who were not--27 percent of women saw the appeal of such beliefs, whereas only 13 percent of men said they felt this way.

To the question about what should be taught as religious education at school, 71 percent said students should be taught about "respect for life and nature," 31 percent said "histories of major religions," and 21 percent selected "the meaning of religion" and "tolerance for people of other faiths." Only 7 percent preferred not to have religion taught at school.

Respondents were allowed to give more than one answer to this question.

Views on religious groups were somewhat standoffish, with 47 percent saying these groups' activities were unclear, and 43 percent believing they use fear-mongering and other aggressive approaches to disseminate their beliefs. Thirty-six percent said they felt these groups were good at raising large amounts of money.

These three answers occupied the top three slots to the same question in Yomiuri surveys in May 1998 and August 2005.
(May. 31, 2008)

Labels: ancestors, Japan, religion, spirituality, supernatural, Yomiuri Shimbun

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Sunday, December 16, 2007

It's no Mickey Mouse course - prof looks at religion in Disney World

Ken Meaney, CanWest News Service
Published: Saturday, December 15, 2007

It wasn't exactly Saul on the road to Damascus, but Jennifer Porter had an epiphany, of sorts, when she visited Disney World in May.

Porter, who teaches religious studies at Memorial University in St. John's, was struck by the religious overtones at the Orlando, Fla. theme park - so much so that she's starting a course on it in January, with the tongue-in-cheek title Religion and Disney: Not Just Another Mickey Mouse Course.

"The theme park productions, fireworks displays and so on always involve a morality tale and a requirement of the audience to believe in the power of good, and believe in the power of wishes," she said.

"So I'm interested in that - does that affect Disney audiences? Does that affect how they see the world?"

Films "speak about religion on a number of levels," Porter says.

Porter started out studying contemporary religions, later combining that with a yen for science fiction. She teaches and has published books and scholarly papers on the portrayal of religion in Star Trek, Star Wars and even Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who she says is shown as "a feminist Christ figure."

Porter began thinking about Disney -_the man and the corporation he founded - after discussing the Chronicles of Narnia in one of her courses. The interest took off at Disney World when she discovered Star Wars-Disney crossover fans debating whether Disney toys like Mickey Mouse dressed as a Jedi knight should be considered canonical - as officially part of the Star Wars universe.

"What I was struck by was the strangeness, to me, that someone would argue Disney products should be canonical," she said.

In her course, students will learn about the life and faith of creator Walt Disney, first and foremost a businessman, but also a talented artist. Raised in a religious household, she said, he made a conscious effort to exclude organized Christianity from his films - replacing it with supernatural elements like fairy godmothers, songs instead of prayers.

Still, "there is this overarching message (in the movies) of a good power that will look out for you if you believe, if you have faith," she said.

"At the same time, there has been a change in Disney films and theme parks since the death of Disney himself (in 1966), and one of the things that's interesting to explore is how religions and the supernatural and morality might have shifted from the time of Walt Disney himself to more recent Disney entertainment products," she said.

The Southern Baptist Convention boycotted Disney for eight years - initially because the company had extended benefits to same-sex couples. They later accused Disney of being too liberal. Other critics called the company too conservative.

What would Disney himself think of the fuss?

"Would it bring more people to his theme park?" she said, laughing. "His concern was always for the bottom line."

Porter said she wants to find out if there is an identifiable religion in Disney and whether Disney fandom can be considered a religion. Enrollment for her new course filled up quickly.

"There's a lot of interest. People are really engaged by popular culture. To me, it seems a wonderful way to get people interested in the impact of religion in the world, which is wonderful."

Labels: Jennifer Porter, Ken Meaney, morality, religion, supernatural, Walt Disney

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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Are young intellectuals 'possessed'?

Monday, November 12, 2007
By Joe Hung, Special to The China Post

Page 1 of 2 - click on "external source" for complete article

Let me first define who Chinese intellectuals are. In imperial China, they were -- for lack of a better English equivalent -- literati, most of them serving as government officials at one time or another. There were others who never passed the civil service examination and couldn't join the civil service. But they were all educated and intelligent because they learned much from Confucian books. They were the elite. Nowadays, people who have college degrees are considered intellectuals. Therefore, it follows that college students are young intellectuals.

Confucianism is an existentialistic and activist religion, albeit many prefer to call it a philosophy or a way of life, with most monotheist Western scholars convinced that it isn't a religion. Chinese literati were activist when they were young. As they grew older, they almost invariably turned to Taoism -- usually not religious Taoism -- for they came to know that their desire to put society in good order wasn't easily fulfilled, or they gave it up altogether to let everything taking its natural course. When they were nearing death, they took to Buddhism, hoping to reach enlightenment (or achieve "satori," in Japanese Zen Buddhist thought). Incidentally, neo-Confucianism after the Sung period (960-1278) had Buddhism superimposed on it. But one thing was certain: Literati never got depressed.

That's why I was shocked to learn that in Taiwan at least one out of every four university students, or young intellectuals who should belong to the class of literati in imperial China, is "depressed enough to benefit from assistance" of one kind or the other. That information was found, among other things, by a John Tung Foundation survey conducted between last May and June. An even more shocking finding was that the kinds of assistance these depressed young intellectuals are seeking include "divination" and "exorcism."

The survey shows at least 1.8 percent and a slightly lower 1.7 percent of the 6,960 respondents rely on divination and exorcism, respectively, for help in dealing with depression. Those who wish to seek counseling from school counselors account for a mere 2.3 percent, much fewer than another 3.3 percent of the students chanting sutras and/or praying for divine help. Still another 2.8 percent believe their folklore religion -- animism, or more often than not, outright superstition -- can cure their depression. Altogether, 11.9 percent of Taiwan's young intellectuals want supernatural powers to get rid of their psychiatric disorder.

These statistics indicate more than one tenth of young intellectuals in Taiwan are sick, not of depression but of superstitious fantasy. For divination, one has to see a Taoist priest, a geomancer, or even a fortune teller or palm reader. Divination, however, can't cure disease or maladies.

Labels: China, Confucianism, divination, intellectuals, Joe Hung, John Tung Foundation, religion, supernatural