Considering all the monsters in the press recently, I guess it was inevitable: ‘So, why were we so willing to be into weird things?’
Monsters are everywhere these days, and belief in them is as strong as ever. What’s harder to believe is why so many people buy into hazy evidence, shady schemes and downright false reports that perpetuate myths that often have just one ultimate truth: They put money in the pockets of their purveyors.
The bottom line, according to several interviews with people who study these things: People want to believe, and most simply can’t help it.
“Many people quite simply just want to believe,” said Brian Cronk, a professor of psychology at Missouri Western State University. “The human brain is always trying to determine why things happen, and when the reason is not clear, we tend to make up some pretty bizarre explanations.”
...”Humans first started believing in the supernatural because they were trying to understand things they couldn’t explain,” says Benjamin Radford, a book author, paranormal investigator and managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. “It’s basically the same process as mythology: At one point people didn’t understand why the sun rose and set each day, so they suggested that a chariot pulled the sun across the heavens.”
There’s a little further about studies on religion and paranormal beliefs in the article, well worth checking out the different studies they profile:
Another study to published in December in the Review of Religious Research, shows that those who go to church “are much less likely to consult horoscopes, visit psychics, purchase New Age items,” and so on, Mencken said. “However, among those Christians who do not attend church, there is a much higher level of participation in these phenomena.”
Speaking of Ben Radford – have a check of the little feature on the page that he contributed to: “10 Unexplained Phenomena”!
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