Candace

Talmadge

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October 29, 2007

What’s So Implausible About the Supernatural?

As Halloween approaches, our thoughts often turn to what we mistakenly label the “supernatural.”

As it turns out, nearly half of U.S. adults believe in extrasensory perception (ESP), while one-third believe in unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or in ghosts, according to an AP/Ipsos poll.

A mid-October survey of 1,103 people ages 18 and older found that 48 percent of them think ESP is real while 34 percent think the same about UFO and/or ghosts. The study’s margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percent.

“Look at the fall TV lineup,” says Dr. Michael Gross, associate vice president at Ipsos Public Affairs, the polling firm that conducted the study. “It’s full of aliens, ghosts, and people with ESP. It’s not surprising that people see it on TV and say, ‘I believe in it, too’.”

But does television move public opinion in a certain direction, or merely show us where it has gone already? What if – to borrow Marshall McLuhan’s famous and, in this context, highly appropriate observation – the medium is the message?

If that’s the case, then the public is way out in front of the pundits, the pols, and the intellectual elites, who scoff at the very notion of ESP, ghosts or UFOs. All that stuff is irrational nonsense, supposedly.

Might not what we consider “supernatural” simply be part of a wider and more accurate definition of reality and natural? Anyone even slightly conversant with the latest findings in quantum mechanics or particle physics knows that things are getting very bizarre on the frontiers of these sciences.

We can explore this issue, however, without an advanced degree. Other words for ESP are intuition, hunches or gut feelings. Since almost everyone experiences intuitive flashes, hunches or gut feelings, they really aren’t all that extraordinary. Instead, ESP should stand for extended sensory perception because it goes beyond the five physical senses to encompass nonphysical sensory abilities.

These abilities include seeing while our physical eyes are shut (while dreaming, for example), hearing words both within and outside of our heads even when no one else is around, picking up on emotions in an empty room, knowing who is calling before ever picking up the telephone yet without any physical indicator. These are all instances of extended sensory perception and they are commonplace, yet regarded as extraordinary or weird because our definition of reality is far too limited to be accurate or even very helpful.

Then there are ghosts, which are nothing more exotic or scary than energy fields that happen to comprise the mental, emotional and spiritual “remains” of souls that once also had physical bodies.

The demise of the physical body, in other words, does not and cannot destroy the mental, emotional and spiritual energies that form the essence of who we are as created souls. We’re as “dead” now as we’re ever going to be. And as alive. That could be food for life-altering thought instead of the ridicule it usually elicits in the media.

These supernatural poll results contrast sharply with the small sliver of the population dubbed “values voters” by pundits who went into hysteria over them after the 2004 presidential election. Those who cited values as their reasons for their voting patterns represented, at most, 12 percent of the entire adult U.S. population. That’s one-fourth of the numbers of those who believe in ESP and just over one-third of the numbers of those who believe in ghosts or UFOs.

© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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