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The roles of religion, spirituality, and genetics in paranormal beliefs: recent studies indicate that people who are spiritual but do not participate in organized religion may have the strongest belief in psychic abilities. Also, emerging research indicates that genetic factors may have a role in spiritual and paranormal beliefs
Skeptical Inquirer, March-April, 2004 by James E. Kennedy
Recent articles by Erich Goode (2000) and Glenn Sparks (2001) discussed the relationship between religious and paranormal beliefs. Goode proposes that they share a common foundation of belief in phenomena that are outside conventional science. Sparks is less certain of a relationship between traditional religion and paranormal beliefs. However, both writers agree that there are multiple dimensions of both religious and paranormal belief and that these dimensions need further investigation.
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Recent research may provide insight into the dimensions of, and the relationships among, these beliefs. These findings bring into focus the fundamentally different views of paranormal phenomena found among followers of traditional religions compared to parapsychological writings, and the importance of distinguishing between religion and spirituality. Recent studies also suggest that genetic factors may have a role in both religious and paranormal beliefs.
Divine Miracles Versus Human Abilities
People with traditional religious beliefs may view psychic phenomena as miracles or divine interventions by God. Popular parapsychological writings, however, view psychic phenomena as widespread (if commonly undeveloped) human abilities. A religious person may believe that divine interventions can occur, but may not believe that people generally have psychic abilities.
Research questionnaires that do not explicitly address this distinction may find inconsistent or misleading results about belief in the paranormal. The results may depend on subtle differences in the wording of the questions and on the context of the surveys.
These distinctions can be seen in a 1995 representative national survey in Canada) For the question "Do you believe that miraculous healing can sometimes occur?" 74 percent of the respondents answered "Yes, definitely" or "Yes, I think so." Responses to this question were significantly correlated (r = .39, p<.0001) with a question on how important religion is to the respondent. On the other hand, questions about belief in ESP and that "some people have psychic powers" were both answered yes by 57 percent of the respondents. These beliefs were not significantly correlated with importance of religion.
These results suggest that very different outcomes can be obtained if the phenomena are framed as miracles rather than as human abilities.
Religion Versus Spirituality
The distinction between religion and spirituality is increasingly being recognized as important for research on religion. In a review of several recent studies, Marlar and Hadaway (2002) noted that people who are religious also consider themselves spiritual. However, a smaller group of people consider themselves spiritual but not religious. These people reject participation in organized religion and have a greater interest in direct personal sacred experience.
Belief in paranormal phenomena may be greatest among those who are spiritual but reject organized religion. In an analysis of the Canadian data noted above, Orenstein (2002) reported that belief in the paranormal is positively related to religious belief but negatively related to religious participation. For the respondents who had high religious belief but low church attendance, 78 percent scored high on six paranormal belief questions. For those who had high religious belief" and high church attendance, 24 percent scored high on paranormal beliefs. For those who had low religious belief and low church attendance, 11 percent scored high on paranormal belief's.
These results are consistent with reports on the after-effects of ostensible psychic experiences. Ring (1984) has long claimed that his study of near-death experiences indicated that these experiences strongly inspire a personal spirituality that is independent of institutionalized religion and that de-emphasizes formal religious practices. He also reported cases that suggest that experiences interpreted as ESP or other types of psychic phenomena can have the same effects. Other studies have found that psychic experiences seem to cause increased interest in spirituality (Kennedy and Kanthamani 1995; Palmer 1979).
These findings suggest that psychic experiences, belief in the paranormal, and spirituality may be mutually interacting and reinforcing. One way to examine this hypothesis is to look at the extreme believers and extreme skeptics. The Canadian data were divided into those who answered "Yes, definitely" to all three questions on belief in ESP, psychic powers, and miraculous healing and those who answered "No, definitely not" to the same questions. For the extreme believers, 86 percent indicated that spirituality was very or somewhat important to them. (2) For the extreme skeptics, 38 percent indicated that spirituality was important and 62 percent indicated that spirituality was nor important.
Genetics and Belief in the Paranormal
Research on twins separated at birth and human genetics demonstrate that personality characteristics have genetic components (Hamer and Copeland 1998). The long-standing controversy about the origins of human personality suggest that both genetics and environment have important roles. In fact, it is likely that humans have evolved genetically-based personality characteristics that are highly adaptive to environmental conditions (Plotkin 1998).
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