Faith and the Paranormal - What Makes You Believe?

For many years, I have been reading ATS, mostly as a source of entertainment, but sometimes a particular topic will be thought-provoking enough to change the way I view the world. I consider myself to be a rational and introspective person with a good grip on reality. I'm a skeptic through-and-through, and although I have experienced a few strange events throughout my life, it's nothing that can't be explained away with a bit of logic. That's just a little about me, so you can understand where I'm coming from on this.

Now, the question I'd like to bring up to anybody who believes in something "else," be it alien, divine, demonic, ghostly, etc. is this: What is it that makes you believe?

Throughout history, and even in modern days, people have attributed the unknown to gods or spirits. What makes it rain? Well, the God of Rain, of course. And as science progressed and people became more educated and began to think more critically, they began to understand what REALLY caused the rain. It wasn't a spirit up in the sky after all.

Now, this process of learning and understanding and thinking about things continued until most of the old religions and beliefs were disproven and now we laugh at such nonsense. However, many people still hold beliefs that might seem equally as ridiculous. Ghosts coming back from the dead to deliver a message to their loved ones? Little gray alien men coming from outer space to probe us while we sleep? I'm not here to ridicule or disprove anybody, but just pointing out the similarities between these things and antequated religious beliefs. How is an angry god who makes it rain any less rational than these more modern beliefs?

The problem I may have here is that, as I said before, I've never experienced anything spiritual or paranormal that I wasn't able to rationalize. I know there are some people who have experienced things that they find to be, without a doubt, proof of the other-worldly. But I can't relate to this, and so I'm just going by what I know to be true here. I'm not doubting that people have these experiences, but rather suggesting that maybe, like the rain-god, these are mundane things that science hasn't yet been able to explain.

On ATS I've noticed, besides the people who have something unnatural and unexplainable happen to them, there are also those who experience something slightly strange, and in their own mind they sensationalize it until it's something altogether, magnificently out-of-this-world. So many times I've read stories on here that have started with "I had just woken up when..." I, too, have witnessed strange things when in that strange realm between wakefullness and dreams. But then I realized, in my mental state, these things were surely all in my head. There are those, however, who deny the rational explanations at all cost. And so, again I ask, "What makes you believe?"

What is it that makes you refuse to really analyze your experiences and your beliefs? What is it that makes you ignore the natural, rational cause and choose the supernatural? And I think that, deep down, as is the case with any sort of faith in anything, it's just a basic desire to find something more to life, some greater purpose to it all. I work a crappy day job just like most other people, and sure, I'd like to find out that there is more than meets the eye to this world. That there's magic somewhere out there, or a greater purpose. But I refuse to blind myself to reality in order to find it.

What I'm asking is not for you to be like me, a cynical skeptic with little faith. I'm just asking that you take a second look at what you've experienced, and think through all the posibilities before you jump to conclusions.

And now, to anybody reading this, be you skeptic or believer, I ask you, what is it that makes you believe (or not believe)?

The desire to believe in something greater than myself.I can only speak from my own experience.I also think as human beings having the power to ask questions about our origins in that we open up our minds to all kinds of questions.I'm a believer that science and spiritual matters are two sides of the same coin.Imo science can explain how somethings are made and what they are made of.The spiritual side can perhaps explain why things are made and who or what made them.We as humans have always asked and will always ask why?That's one of the things that makes us so special.

after studying metaphysics for years i come across info that validates info because the info comes from such disparate sources...for example, the apache description of judgement day, the eerie stillness, is similar to time distortions that occur during close encounters with alien craft...I've already figured out that a UFO phase-shifting is a miniature supernova and a supernova is what causes judgemet day events.

Also the absurd size and intricacy of crop circles...

I've also experienced psychometry, prophetic dreams...

A UFO was spotted directly over my house, we didn't believe the witness until we saw the local paper that day which reported it was seen all over the county.

quite frankly, and shortly, until you can prove something isn't there i'll believe it could be there. but i guess you always have to be somewhat skeptical until one thing is proven or disproven.