Weekly Poll: Do You Believe Any Paranormal or Supernatural Claims?
Just because a person is an atheist doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in things like astrology, reincarnation, ghosts, psychics, and similar things. There are a lot of things supernatural and paranormal that a person could, in principle, believe without also believing in any gods even though such beliefs do tend to appear in combination with some sort of theism. Do you believe in any of these things and, if so, have you ever had any trouble being an atheist at the same time? As already noted, most of these beliefs tend to occur in the same contest as some sort of theism, so atheists who believe them probably aren’t very common at least not in the west. Add to this the fact that atheists in the west tend to have adopted some sort of naturalistic, scientific worldview in addition to their atheism and belief in anything supernatural or paranormal should be very uncommon. Nevertheless, it’s been my experience that they aren’t nearly so uncommon as one might assume. For atheists who are
