Does education fuel paranormal beliefs ?

An entire universe created by a deity in 7 days, white winged beings flying through the air, devils and demons, human males being created out of clay, human females being fashioned out of ribs, Old men parting bodies of water with a staff, people being transformed into pillars of salt, chariots of fire, giants, superhuman strong men, immaculated conceptions, dead people rising from tombs and the drug induced ramblings found in the book of Revelations ?(talk about smoking the kush or ergot poisoning) Why would all that has been mentioned above not seem paranormal ? Why would accounts of ghosts ... [More]

Well now, nobody said these people were believing blindly, though. Perhaps they're also plagued with the neverending supply of dorm room ghosts. Or maybe it's as Evilution said, that as you mature, you feel more comfortable expressing your beliefs. Anyone that grows older and learns as they age does realize they know less and less than they previously thought they did. Everything you learn just leads to more and more questions. Anyone with any sort of analytical mind will confirm this, lol. That being said, I don't think it's so much blind belief, as the willingness to believe, rather than den... [More]

This does not surprise me. I have spent over 30 years exploring the issue of life after death. After all that time, and with the vast accumulation of reports and evidence the topic needs serious consideration. Too many sceptics have just not done their homework and need to step back and look at the masses of credible evidence in this sphere. Dr Malcolm Lewis Fleetwood, UK See Ancient Astronaut Theory.

See Ancient Astronaut Theory. As what, evidence for misconception?

As what, evidence for misconception? "Too many sceptics have just not done their homework and need to step back and look at the masses of credible evidence in this sphere." I'm guessing here he means "sceptics" are those who do not believe in the paranormal and he claims they need to do their homework. This is the very thing Ancient Astronaut Theorists claim. They claim people need to look at the evidence themselves and then they would come to the obvious conclusion. Turns out the facts are there is no evidence and they didn't do their own homework, rather looked at a few statues and looked at... [More]

Too many sceptics have just not done their homework and need to step back and look at the masses of credible evidence in this sphere. It's not up to the skeptics to "do their homework". The skeptics are still skeptics because the believers have not yet provided evidence that is objective, replicable or credible in any way. This article does surprise me. Perhaps the change over time is related to increasing exposure to the influence of "open-minded" professors and classmates.

Well most belief in the paranormal is blind belief, if not it is often link with the human brains amazing ability to ignore the most reasonable answer and to accept something quite fanciful. An unusual, but well documented, feature of the human brain. Yes people will realise they know less and less as they get older, however, very few people are analytical and most people are highly suggestible. But a realisation that we don't know anything is no reason to disregard what we do know for something that is without evidence. Well, I don't think people get educated and then just blindly believe. I ... [More]

Well, I don't think people get educated and then just blindly believe. I think they accept it's always a possiblity, because again, the more you learn, the more you realize there is to learn. This wasn't really a very detailed article. I would have liked to see the study break the responses down by major, as I suspect there would have been huge differences between those studying the sciences and psychology, which encourage skepticism and confer knowledge of how fallible the human mind really is in terms of biases, memory, perceptual errors, etc., versus those majoring in anthropology, history ... [More]

This is a contradiction. All I ever hear/see educated people say is "FAKE!" They then proceed to list 5,000 reasons why. So, has the definition of "open minded" changed?

The more educated a person is, the less likely they are to believe in fantasy. The less educated a person is the more likely they are to believe in fantasy. That is why as mankind grows and matures, fantasy(religion, paranormal) is taking the back burner to science. People who attempt to mix science and fantasy get things like scientology. Course that doesn't mean a highly educated person wouldn't believe in fantasy, they'd just be a lot less likely. So the article is complete BS. I consider myself highly educated. I spent 10 years studying the beliefs of the world(religions, magic, paranormal... [More]