Over the coming chapters, I will tell you unsavoury facts about individuals that will repulse you and make you feel queasy. Such negative reactions reveal that we behave and think as if we can connect with others at a physical level. This in turn produces feelings and emotions that have real consequences for behaviour. In some societies, we may force others to sit on different seats on a bus or keep a certain distance from contact. Segregation and apartheid have been the shameful attempts of some societies to instigate supernatural beliefs about the subjugated members of a group. Such thinking, however, also enables us to see ourselves as connected to our family and ancestors, giving a sense of origin and direction. It explains why heirlooms and birthplace are objects and locations that give us a deeper sense of connection with the past. I think that we do all these strange things because we are social animals bound together by our sense of physical connection. Our thoughts and behaviours extend our individual selves to the group because being a social animal requires reaching out to and connecting with others. Giving gifts, exchanging objects, owning possessions, and making pilgrimages are all examples of our need to make physical connections with others. These connections are not all permanent, but I believe that they are helped by supernatural thinking as we form new bonds and break others. This need is so basic that I am sceptical that rational reasoning could ever get us to abandon it.
Such thinking provides a fertile ground for belief in supernatural phenomena. If you willingly believe in the supernatural, then you are in good company. In a US Gallup poll conducted in June 2005, more than one thousand adults were asked whether they ‘believed, were not sure or did not believe’ in the ten phenomena listed here.13 The percentage of believers is reported in parentheses. Take a look at this list. Do you believe any of these phenomena are real?
Extrasensory perception (ESP) (41%)
Haunted houses (37%)
Ghosts (32%)
Telepathy (31%)
Clairvoyance (26%)
Astrology (25%)
Communication with the dead (21%)
Witches (21%)
Reincarnation (20%)
Spiritual possession (9%)
Taken together, most American adults (73 per cent) believed in at least one of the items, while only one quarter (27 per cent) did not believe in any of them. I know what you’re thinking: ‘Crazy Yanks, they’ll believe anything. We’re not so gullible here in Europe.’ Maybe you, the reader, don’t believe in any of these paranormal phenomena, but another Gallup poll conducted on 1,000 Brits at the same time as the US study revealed that we should not be so smug.14 We are just as likely to believe in haunted houses (40%), astrology (24%), communication with the dead (27%) and the possibility of witches (13%). As a nation, we have no right to point the mocking finger at our American cousins. Yes, they are more religious but we are no more rational. For those of you curious to see how highly you score on paranormal beliefs, there is a self-assessment questionnaire in the Reader’s Notes on page 274.
These figures have hardly changed over the last fifteen years and are more or less the same as those produced by the polls conducted in 1990, 1991, 1996, and 2001. Here’s my prediction. The figures will be much the same five years from now, and five years after that. I would happily place a large bet on that. I am not a psychic. People are just remarkably consistent and predictable.
To prove this, let me demonstrate my psychic power to read your mind. I bet that you, the reader, also believe in at least one of the items from the list. Go on, be honest. How do I know? First, there is a good chance that you are one of the 73 per cent of the general population who believe. Also, sceptics generally don’t bother to read books like this one. In contrast, believers and those who are not so sure want to know whether there is any truth to any of these notions. They understand that their beliefs are considered flaky, and they want to find out whether there is any evidence for things that seem so possible.
There are two reasons to read on. First, supersense is in us all, and I hope to prove that to you over the coming pages. Second, the idea that supernatural beliefs are a product of our own mind design makes it necessary to rethink the origin of beliefs. By examining the evidence mostly from developmental psychology, we can see how such beliefs could emerge in the growing child and how they could continue to influence our thinking as adults even when science tells us to ignore them. This is important, because the development of such notions has relevance to the claim that culture and religions are primarily responsible for creating supernatural belief in the first place.
But don’t worry. This book is not meant to make you feel foolish or to encourage you to abandon your supersense. Many facets of our behaviour and beliefs have no rational basis. Think of everything that makes us human, and you soon realize that there is much that calls into question our ability to be rational. Love, jealousy, humour, and obsession, for instance, are present in all of us, and even though we know that our beliefs and actions stemming from them can be unbalanced, we would still not want to lose our capacity to experience them. The same can be said for the supersense. So embrace it, learn where it comes from, and understand why it refuses to go away.
Oh, and if you are a sceptic reading this book, thanks for getting this far.
CHAPTER THREE
WHO CREATED CREATIONISM?
The essence of being human is an uncomfortable duality of ‘rational’ technology and ‘irrational’ belief. We are still a species in transition.
– DAVID LEWIS-WILLIAMS,
The Mind in the Cave (2004), p. 18
WHO TEACHES US about the ‘something there’? When do we start thinking that there is a hidden but real dimension to reality? Is it religion, or does religion simply recognize and fulfill that urge in the human psyche that is so great that we seek out those who explain why we feel the way we do and then take comfort in their stories, which make sense of the strange notion that there is something more to existence? To answer this we have to begin at the beginning.
Two summers ago, my wife Kim arranged for the family to visit the Niaux cave in the French Pyrenees. It is one of the last Neolithic caves still open to the public where you can see original prehistoric cave paintings. Most sites are now closed to protect them from the destructive moisture and other corrosive properties of human breath. We booked months in advance, as visits are strictly limited. It may not be on your list of things to do before you die, but if you want to get a true measure of the scale of your own life against where humankind has come from, there can hardly be a more moving experience than marvelling at prehistoric art deep inside the belly of a mountain.
The Niaux system of caves runs over half a mile from the entrance perched high on a Pyrenean cliff face. Outside the temperature was a humid 28 degrees centigrade, but inside it rapidly dropped to a constant 12 degrees. The path was uneven, wet, and slippery, but it was the absolute pitch-blackness that was the most unsettling feature of the caves. The journey varied from claustrophobic passages to wide expanses, created by ancient underground rivers that over the course of millions of years had carved out the inside of the range. Each member of the expedition (I felt like a Jules Verne explorer journeying to the centre of the earth) was given a hand-held flashlight that acted like a light sabre to cut through the ebony shroud. My five-year-old daughter wore those running shoes with lights built into the heels that flashed each time she took a step. She is the fearless type, and she set off with our French guide at the front of the group, picking her way through the tunnel with uncanny ease. The rest of us, unsure of our step, struggled to keep up with the blinking pink flashes that disappeared into the bowels of the earth.