Is Para Fascination Rooted in Religion?

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PsychoticEpisode

It is very dry in here today
Valued Senior Member
How much of parapsychology is dependent on or has roots in religion? Is parapsychology really pseudoreligion? Would mind reading, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, apparitions, life after death, souls, time manipulation, faith healing, miracles, etc., mean anything if it wasn't contained in religious text? If paranormal activity stories did not abound in religious text would there be as much interest?

Does one need to be a theist in order to accept the paranormal? In many ways I find arguments for religion quite similar to the argument to accept the paranormal. Somewhat along the lines that if you can't prove it 100% wrong then it is true. So much of religion depends on the written text of ancients. Granted, modern science has caused much re-editing, but the premis is the same....religious text is infallible and it is wrong to disbelieve it.

If you believe a deity knows your thoughts then are you predisposed to think that mind reading is possible? In fact, what Gods are recorded as doing is beyond our present capability or comprehension, in fact impossible for a human being to accomplish. Thus the fascination.
 
I see where youre coming from but it's a tenuous link to make.

You can certainly choose believe in certain paranormal phenomena without any degree of proof. But then you can just as easily believe in the paranormal with quite substantial proof(s) as well.
The problem you'll consistently find isnt that there is 'no proof atall', but that there is very little that's paranormal that will conform to repeatable experimentation.
You can read that as either a short coming in the method or an attestment to the non-existence of xyandz at your own discretion of course.

As to what motives the average paranormal enthusiast, i think this will be interpreted as either scientific curiosity or religious credulity depending on the Century you find yourself in.
Certainly we'd understand people interested in meteorites and fireballs in the present century as being scientifically inclined.
But if you go back to the 18th century this would have been seen as having far more in common with the occult than anything to do with empiricism.
It's also worth remembering that people would have been about as likely to take you seriously if you claimed burning rocks fell out of the sky back then as people generally would if you claimed you saw a 'ufo' right now.

I just as easy for paranormal phenomena to be genuine phenomena that exists on the fringes of scientific understanding as it is for it to be a form of neo-religious creative play. So i think you have to be very careful in making these kinds of generalisations.
 
Stories of paranormal activity abound in religious text and may provide some kind of justification or hope for the parapeople. Something like, if it's in a bible then it must be true. Is there a similarity between paranormalists and believers of religious text? I think very much so.

Crunchy: you have a point. It's like what came first? The paranormal or religion? I suppose in ancient times that limited scientific knowledge led to many strange beliefs or explanations for what is now considered natural phenomena.
 
I 'd have to agree, fascination with so-called paranormal activity provided fodder for religious leaders & scribes. But once it became religious text I believe it earned some credence in the minds of those who believe in paranormal activity. Religious text endorses the miraculous and the seemingly impossible as mere chickenfeed in the hands of deities. I would be interested to know the percentage of parapeople that are theists or atheists. My gut feeling is that most theists are parapeople in some respect, they'd almost have to be. An atheist has already discounted sky beings and along with that a lot of paranormal events.
 
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