50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True

by Harrison, Guy P.

  Experienced skeptics know to be on the lookout for postdictions. These are predictions that are discovered and lauded after an event occurs. Nostradamus believers love them. It's much harder, of course, to go on record predicting something before it happens. Drosnin tried it using his Bible-code method, and it didn't work out too well for him. He wrote in his 2002 follow-up book, Bible Code II, “The Bible Code clearly states the final danger in modern terms—’atomic holocaust' and ‘World War' are both encoded in the Bible. And both are encoded with the same year, 2006.”4 Clearly that was a miss. Drosnin's code-breaking efforts also came up with phrases in the Bible that seemed to describe the assassination of Yasser Arafat, the former leader of Palestine. “Assassin will assassinate,” “the ambushers will kill him” and “shooters of Yasir [sic] Arafat.”5 Missed again. Arafat died of illness at age seventy-five. Bible-code believers must ask themselves why a god would encode incorrect predictions.

  Jews and Christians who believe that the Bible code proves something significant about the Bible/Torah might give some thought as to why the Koran code doesn't prove that the claims of Islam are correct. Yes, that's right, there is a Koran code, and, according to many Muslims around the world, it proves once and for all that the Koran is divinely inspired and Islam is the one true religion.6 For some reason, however, Jews and Christians do not seem to be very impressed by the Koran code. It seems that they're just too skeptical to fall for something like that.

  GO DEEPER…

  Dunning, Brian. Skeptoid: A Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena. Laguna Niguel, CA: Skeptoid Media, 2007.

  Wheen, Francis. How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions. New York: Public Affairs, 2004.

  Within your aura is all the information needed for life, including your genetic and ancestral lineage, a record of your past lives, and the karmic contract and lessons that you intend to resolve in this lifetime.

  —James van Praagh, Heaven and Earth

  This would be a strange afternoon, even by my standards. A small group of transvestites surrounded me on a Mumbai sidewalk. They were an impressive sight in their colorful saris, each of them adorned with a pound or two of gleaming jewelry. The one who did most of the talking was a dead ringer for the late Charles Bronson, only she was slightly more masculine than the late Hollywood action star. Squinting in the afternoon sun, she politely explained that she and her friends felt that I was a “most handsome man” and that it would be “most wonderful” if I would spend the day with them. As she spoke, one of her comrades squeezed my arm and purred. Yes, I swear, she purred. I couldn't be sure if this encounter was a sincere grasp at a love connection or just another routine attempt to extract money from a stupid tourist. As interesting as a date with the Magnificent Seven may have been, I looked deep into the leader's yellow eyes and respectfully declined. I smiled and retreated back into the herd of pedestrians. And then the day became weird.

  India is the most intense, irritating, colorful, exhausting, stimulating, bizarre, and beautiful country I have ever experienced. During my time there I saw an amazing assortment of juxtaposed images. On one side of a street I see stunningly gorgeous women strutting, while on the other side my eyes find hideously deformed beggars scurrying about on crooked limbs and twisted spines. One moment I'm entranced by the breathtaking architecture of the Taj Mahal. A brief walk later, I'm staring at human corpses rotting in the mud of the adjacent riverbank. One of the biggest surprises for me during my visit was that India inspired me to think deeply about life, death, and even reincarnation. At times I even felt close to what many might describe as spiritual—minus the actual spirit, of course. Something about confronting extreme beauty and ugliness side by side led me to think of things other than what I would have for dinner later. One thing I allowed myself the freedom to wonder about was what it would be like to have lived previous lives and to experience more lives after this one ends. I don't remember anything from before my birth, but I do feel oddly comfortable when I wander through faraway lands for the first time. Could it be because I have been there before? I also seem to have a knack for getting along with people in societies very different from the one that spat me out. Could it be that I once lived in that culture long ago? I doubt it, but it is a fascinating idea. Hundreds of millions of people today, mostly Hindus and Buddhists, believe it is more than an idea. They think it is reality.

  A central belief in Hinduism, one of the world's oldest and most popular religions, is that we all experience many lives in succession. It varies depending on which Hindu you ask, but the general claim is that these lives are opportunities to learn and improve. Eventually, if all goes well, our soul attains perfection and we can finally relax. Belief in reincarnation is not exclusive to Hindus, of course. Many millions of non-Hindus around the world think it is true as well. This includes many Christians, which is interesting given the contradiction with Christian dogma. A 2005 Gallup poll found that 20 percent of Americans believe in “the rebirth of the soul into a new body after death.”1 That's at least fifty million American believers in reincarnation. One can certainly understand the attraction. Death is scary. Believing that it's not final and that we all get a few more turns at it can be comforting. But appeals to emotion aside, is there anything to it?

  Whenever I think of reincarnation, I recall a basic law from physics class: energy cannot be created nor can it be destroyed. It may change form or location, but it never vanishes. Certainly there is energy in my body and my brain. Many people think of that energy as the soul. So when I die my energy (soul?) may change form and relocate, but it won't vanish from the universe entirely. Interesting, but this is where we run into the critical problem with reincarnation belief. No one has ever been able to show that human energy equates to a soul with thoughts, personality, and memories. There simply is no good evidence to support the claim that something containing our thoughts and memories survives our physical death. This is the gigantic obstacle looming in front of reincarnation claims. Shouldn't the basic question of the existence of souls be answered first before we even consider accepting the claim that these souls leave dying or dead bodies and enter new bodies?

  Some who believe in multiple lives have told me that they think reincarnation is true because it “makes sense” or “feels right.” But every reincarnation believer I have ever spoken with brings up stories of people knowing things about their past lives, things they could not possibly have known if they had not been reincarnated. Strangely, however, believers never seem to know many key details, or if these stories were analyzed and verified by credible researchers. Nonetheless, they cite them as proof anyway. Is this good enough? Are vague stories enough to confirm reincarnation belief? Of course not.

  Another interesting aspect to this is that nobody seems curious or concerned about how souls maintain themselves through physical death or how they power their way through the air when seeking the next body to inhabit. Some reincarnation believers say that human souls only inhabit human bodies. If so, does one soul inhabit millions of bodies across millennia? Or do many souls share each body? I suppose they would have to share because it is estimated that more than one hundred billion people have lived, but there are only about seven billion people alive today.2 That's a lot of souls with relatively few bodies to accommodate them. In fairness, I suppose some believers would say that the animal kingdom accommodates those excess human souls. Or maybe the success rate for soul progression is high and all those extra souls have achieved nirvana and escaped the cycle.

  ANECDOTES ARE NOT SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

  If stories of past lives are the best evidence of reincarnation, then what are the best stories? Reports of children who “remember” past lives probably offer the most compelling evidence of reincarnation. The reason child stories are so appealing is that people don't think a child would know compelling details about some historical setting and they would be less likely to perpetrate a hoax. But why should anyone think that? Just like adults
, children can fantasize, misinterpret, perform as coached, and lie. They can also learn things and repeat them. Take the case of James Leininger, a boy some believe is a reincarnated pilot who was shot down over the Pacific during World War II. On the surface, the story seems like iron-clad proof of reincarnation. But is it?

  According to a Primetime report, James showed an interest in airplanes very early and knew things about them that most people are unaware of. For example, his mother said he knew the difference between a bomb and a drop tank. He also began having nightmares about a plane crash. The concerned parents sought help for the boy, not from a psychologist or psychiatrist, however, but from a “past-life therapist” who specializes in helping people “remember” their past lives. Not surprisingly, it was determined soon after his sessions began that James is indeed a reincarnated fighter pilot. According to the Primetime story, the boy also named a specific pilot and ship that he flew off of.3 Is this conclusive proof that reincarnation is real? Not even close.

  It turns out that the boy's father took him to an aviation museum when he was around two years old and that James was fascinated with the World War II planes on display there. Shortly after that museum visit, James began having nightmares about planes crashing. He also wanted to play with planes and look at books about them, an interest his parents indulged.4 It seems far more reasonable that the planes in the museum made an impression on James and this inspired his deep interest in aviation. Thinking a lot about military airplanes and then having nightmares about a plane crash is not so strange, nor is it odd for a child to pick up a lot of information about planes or anything else if he or she is deeply interested in them. I happen to have gone through a childhood phase of World War II-aviation obsession myself. I knew much more about WWII fighters and bombers than 99.9 percent of adults. Researching and retaining information can be effortless and fun when the subject fascinates you. Just like James, I knew the difference between a bomb and a drop tank when I was a child. As far as James naming a pilot and a ship, we can't be sure about that either because the name he gave was “James,” his own name and a common one at that. Naming the ship is interesting, but isn't it possible that he saw the name in a book, at the museum, or on TV? Kids pick stuff up everywhere. Maybe he simply said something out of the blue that the adults matched to a ship by chance. After all, there were many US Navy ships with many names in that war. However, when parents and a “past-life therapist” attach meaning to it, another reincarnation story is born.

  I have no reason to suspect that the Leiningers taught their son about WWII aviation in order to intentionally fool people, but that sort of thing is always a possibility with these kinds of stories. Reincarnation proponent J. Allen Danelek suggests in his book, The Case for Reincarnation, that children can't easily be coached to say and do things that might convince people they had past lives.5 Oh really? I saw a tiny child in China transform herself into a living pretzel while balancing spinning plates on three sticks. Have you ever seen one of those toddler beauty pageants on television? If parents want their children to do something badly enough, they will find a way to squeeze just about any desired performance out of a kid. Getting a child to describe a fictitious past life would be easy. There is also the possibility that parents or some other adult could innocently and unconsciously plant the idea of a past life and then supply supporting information to the child in order to make it seem real. All these possible explanations are much more likely to be true than the extraordinary claim that an old soul inhabits the body of a child.

  There are also interesting stories about people speaking a language they never learned. When you first hear this, it sounds like proof too. How could it be possible unless the person had a previous life? It turns out, however, that whenever somebody takes the time to investigate such claims, they always seem to fall apart. For example, a person who was said to be able to speak Bulgarian under hypnosis, despite not knowing Bulgarian, was not speaking that language at all. The person apparently just made up words with an accent that the hypnotherapist guessed was Bulgarian.6 Despite the stories, there are no confirmed cases of a person speaking a language unknown to him or her. Everyone, including skeptics, would sit up and pay attention if a four-year-old living in Detroit suddenly spoke a tribal New Guinea language that went extinct last century. But nothing like that has ever been confirmed by credible investigators.

  Whether I am feeling “spiritual” during a solo journey across India or reading about various claims of past lives, I always end up sensing an abundance of hope amid the absence of evidence. I cannot fault people for desiring more than one life. Optimism and dreams of something better are positive human traits. But hope alone is not proof.

  Reincarnation defender Danelek writes, “Reincarnation is the mechanism through which we may live the very life we've always wanted—or relive the one we've always loved—upon a stage from which we may act out a million possibilities, dream a billion dreams, and live on throughout eternity.”7

  I agree. The claim of reincarnation is exciting to imagine and a wonderful thing to hope for. Unfortunately, however, nothing suggests that it is true.

  GO DEEPER…

  Baker, Robert A. Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996.

  Edwards, Paul. Reincarnation: A Critical Examination. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996.

  Harris, Melvin. Investigating the Unexplained. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003.

  Numerous ESP studies conducted over the years point to one overriding conclusion. Studies supporting ESP consistently lack proper controls, and studies with proper controls consistently find no support for ESP.

  —Thomas Kida, Don't Believe Everything You Think

  You are reading this book right now thanks to the most magnificent and amazing three-pounds of matter in the known universe. Your brain is made up of about one hundred billion nerve cells called neurons that keep you alive by doing things like telling your body to breathe while making love and to duck when someone throws a brick at you. These tiny cells also work together to produce complex thoughts and new ideas. They can imagine both possible and impossible things. For example, my brain has taken me on journeys far beyond our galaxy, through a spectacular nebula, and even inside a terrifying black hole—and I didn't even have to drink or use drugs before departure. All I did was close my eyes and imagine.

  For all its flaws that often trip us up when trying to distinguish reality from make-believe, the human brain is undeniably special, very special. Obviously far apart in form and function from hearts, lungs, kidneys, and other organs, your brain is you—everything else is basically Tinker Toys™ and plumbing. Human brains are big too. You know those giant-headed aliens we see in old science-fiction movies? Well ours are more impressive than you might think because what we have is essentially a size-9 brain that evolutionary pressures over time have creased, folded, and layered in order to fit inside a size-3 skull. This is necessary because of restrictive birth-canal issues that come with bipedalism. If baby heads were any larger, I suspect very few women would be willing to get pregnant.

  Far more interesting and important than physical dimensions, however, is the brain's ability to think, to analyze difficult problems and come up with novel solutions, to dream in great detail of things we cannot touch or see. I certainly can't say I think that the human brain is beautiful because, after seeing one up close, I know better. But I am in awe of it and drawn to it nonetheless. I have a plastic model of a brain on my desk, and I often imagine my own brain humming away inside my skull, doing its thing. Yes, I think about my brain thinking.

  Measured by its creative potential, the human brain is larger than the universe itself. By that I mean we can imagine and think about the limits of our universe and beyond. Grand ideas, such as string theory and multiverses, come from our brains. Given the admiration and strong feelings I have for the brain, why don't I believe in extrasensory perception, or ESP? If the brain is so complex, so wond
erful, and capable of so much, isn't it possible that it could communicate with other minds without need of sight, touch, or sound, and perhaps even know the future?

  Yes, it is possible that the human mind is capable of feats that could only be thought of as magical or paranormal by today's standards. But ESP, or “psi” as researchers often call it, has been studied for many years now, and still no researchers have managed to produce an experiment that can be replicated by others and confirmed. A small body of enticing data is overshadowed by mountains of negative results. While this doesn't disprove ESP, it certainly means it remains unproven. We can't ignore the fact that mind readers, card readers, and every other kind of ESP practitioner has failed to survive scientific scrutiny.

  “Many parapsychologists have adopted a ‘heads I win, tails you lose' approach to their work, viewing positive results as supportive of the psi hypothesis while ensuring that null results do not count as evidence against it,” explains UK psychology professor Richard Wiseman.1 The lack of positive experiments and good evidence should trouble ESP believers deeply, for if there were something to this, how hard could it be to have somebody consistently identify cards they can't see at a better-than-chance rate? If ESP is real, then why can't test subjects consistently tell when people are staring at them or accurately report what another person is thinking? I'm willing to believe, but not until somebody proves it. Not everyone is as picky I am, however.

  A Gallup survey of Americans found that ESP is very popular, with 41 percent of adults professing to believe in it. ESP topped Gallup's list on that survey of paranormal beliefs that did not include traditional religious claims. Belief in haunted houses was second with 37 percent.2 The US government apparently believed as well, having spent many millions of dollars on efforts designed to exploit paranormal powers like telepathy and remote viewing during the Cold War to spy on the Soviet Union.3 Despite claims of success by some, nothing came of it and the project was cancelled after being reviewed by the American Institutes for Research in the 1990s. It was finally recognized to be a waste of time and money. “In no case had the information provided ever been used to guide intelligence operations,” states the report. “Thus, remote viewing failed to produce actionable intelligence.”4