Your own individual mind design determines how predisposed to belief you are, a possibility we return to at the end of this book when I discuss mechanisms that control thought processes. However, if there is one thing that both believers and nonbelievers are uncomfortable about it is the prospect that there is a mind design when it comes to choices in life. That’s because we like to think that when we make our decisions we are doing so on the basis of objective reason. We like to think that we are weighing up the evidence and making a balanced judgement. In truth, when we make decisions there are all sorts of biases operating that are independent of reason. We don’t necessarily have the free will to choose. That’s an idea that no one feels happy about. This is because, as the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer observed, ‘You must believe in free will; there is no choice.’49
EVERYDAY SUPERNATURALISM
Religion is just one form of supernaturalism. You may be a self-avowed, cross-burning, shrine-desecrating, grave-trampling atheist, but I bet that I could quickly uncover some supernatural skeletons in your mental closet. You may also not believe in any of the paranormal phenomena from the ten listed in the Gallup poll from the last chapter, but that list refers only to the ones that are recognized as supernatural. There are many more. For a start, there are the obvious customs like not walking under ladders, throwing salt over your shoulder, crossing your fingers, and so on. These clearly come from superstitious practices passed down through culture. Less obvious are the aspects of normal daily human interaction that arguably reflect beliefs in unseen properties operating in the world. For example, every culture has some form of ritual for greeting that demonstrates the extent to which people are prepared to touch each other physically.
Some cultures are explicit about the supernatural origins of their greeting rituals. The Maori of New Zealand press noses (Hongi) to exchange spiritual breath (ha), but all contact gestures can be interpreted according to the extent to which there is a perceived exchange of essence. For example, people do strange things in the presence of their idols. Fans go crazy when they get to physically touch their sports heroes or rock stars. Normal, rational people mob the famous simply to make contact. Every presidential candidate has to get used to sore wrists in an effort to satisfy the crowd’s desire to shake hands. The need to touch another person is a powerful human urge.
In the same way we are repulsed by psychological contamination from a murderer’s cardigan, we are also compelled to engage in acts that address intimate physical contact. Of course, we can always justify them in terms of following traditional customs, but the point is that they originate from supernatural thinking. As a child, did you ever make an oath with a friend in which you both spat on your hands and then slapped them together? You would only do that with someone to make a solemn oath, because touching someone else’s spit is so gross. This is because our willingness to make physical contact with others is a reflection of our essentialist beliefs.
Then there are the various beliefs about sacred objects and places. In 2007 John Lennon’s piano, the one on which he composed the anthem to humanity ‘Imagine’, left the United Kingdom to begin a tour of sites around the world. It’s not the beautiful white grand piano that we all remember, but a rather plain, brown upright one that you would find in many a school music room. The plan was to take the piano to places of violence and atrocity. It went to the grassy knoll in Dallas where John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It was taken to Memphis where Martin Luther King Jr was shot. It turned up in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. It appeared at Waco, Okalahoma City, and the Virginia Tech campus – the scenes of so many pointless deaths.
Lennon’s piano had become a sacred object to heal the wounds left in communities still coming to terms with grief. Anyone was allowed to touch it. Lori Blanc, a Virginia Tech avian biologist, told me that, even though she is a scientist and not sentimental, she found herself surprisingly drawn to the piano and comforted after playing a tune for a murdered friend. Libra LaGrone, whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, said, ‘It was like sleeping in your grandpa’s sweatshirt at night. Familiar, beautiful, and personal.’50
All societies have sacred possessions, places, and practices. They become sacred when we attribute special value and powers to them. We believe that they have properties that make them unique and irreplaceable and that no scientific instrument can measure, but most of us believe we can sense them. They are secular supernatural beliefs.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that you do not have any of the thoughts I have suggested. However, even the most rational among us can have emotional urges and feelings that run counter to reason. Like Lori Blanc, the scientist who played John Lennon’s piano, sometimes we can even surprise ourselves by our own feelings. Cynics too easily dismiss these thoughts and behaviours as simply emotional, as if somehow emotions are less important than reason. However, as my old colleague Dan Gilbert recently pointed out, feelings are the reason humans do anything.51 Feelings motivate us to go to work, to fall in love, to wonder at the universe, to enjoy life or not. Without feelings, there really would be no point in going on.
Scientists have feelings too. Despite its poor public perception, science can be intensely passionate and emotional. This often comes as a surprise to most nonscientists, but I can tell you that when ideas and reputations are challenged, it can really hurt to be wrong. So I challenge anyone out there to claim they have no emotions. Without emotion, none of us would consider ourselves human. And if you have emotion, I would argue, that emotion cannot be entirely ruled by reason, leaving the door open for the supernatural. We all vary in how much we are influenced by supernatural belief; while many of us can suppress this way of thinking, in the end it is a normal part of the human makeup to reason and behave this way.
Clearly some of us are more prone to this way of thinking than others, but maybe others cannot suppress what is a natural inclination in most of us. We all know what it is to be irrational. Humans are destined to make mistakes of rationality. This irrationality reflects supernatural assumptions that appeal to patterns, forces, and energies categorically denied by science. We don’t have our rational radar on all the time. Sometimes our behaviour and decisions are based on inferring the presence of things that science tells us do not exist. That’s because the idea of there being something more to reality is such a common ingredient in so much of our human behaviour, irrespective of whether we are religious or not. But I don’t want to keep bludgeoning you over the head with the supersense. I hope you will come to the same conclusion. By the end of this book, I want you to reject the idea that you are either a Super or a Bright. Rather, I think it is better to be SuperBright.
WHAT NEXT?
In this chapter, I have dealt with belief in science, religion, and the supernatural. They all depend on thinking about the unobservable, and that requires a mind designed to fill in the missing information. However, by now you should appreciate that this process is not infallible. The same intuitive processes that lead us to reason are the same ones that lead us to be unreasonable. Sometimes we infer the presence of things that do not really exist, and if they did, they would require a complete overhaul of our natural laws. That’s what makes them supernatural.
Religion and culture do play a role in the spread of supernaturalism, but I would argue that they simply provide a framework for what comes naturally to us all. We are primed for religious belief because our mind design is biased to supernatural reasoning as a by-product of rational thinking. This subtle distinction between how ideas spread may seem like pedantic hair-splitting but, depending on which is true, there are different implications for what culture can do, if anything, to change supernatural thinking.