If there’s a problem
that’s hard to solve, economics usually provides the best chance of solving it.
How would economics help solve the problem of whether the supernatural exists?
Here’s a good way to think of the problem. Imagine two alternative realities -
a reality in which the supernatural does not exist (Reality 1), and a reality
in which the supernatural exists (Reality 2). Think what it would be like to
live in each of these two realities, and then think what it’s like to live in
the reality of today (Reality Now) that we currently experience. Here are the
three realities:
Reality 1 - The
supernatural does not exist:
Reality 2 - The
supernatural exists:
Reality Now - The reality
of today we know:
What we know of today’s
reality (Reality Now) is that a huge proportion of all the people who’ve ever
lived believe the supernatural does exist. The world is full of claims of
supernatural experiences: miracles, healings, communications with God, answers
to prayer, ghosts, prognostications, and countless other testimonies of where
people report a relationship with God as evidence that goes beyond natural
explanation. Not all these claims are credible, but whichever way we cut the
cloth, human history is absolutely replete with belief in the supernatural - and
people 'really' believe this stuff in a way that radically changes their life
like nothing else in creation.
Given the foregoing, how,
then, do we try to determine whether Reality Now is consistent with Reality 1
or Reality 2? An economist method would be to imagine what a Reality 1 and a
Reality 2 would be like if it did exist, and see which Reality seems most like
Reality Now. First off, then, what would a Reality 1 look like if it did exist
- a world in which the supernatural does not exist? I do not believe that it
would look anything like the Reality Now in which we live. If there was no such
thing as the supernatural, I feel fairly sure that we would not live in a world
like this, where claims of supernatural experience and insight have been so
prominent throughout history that they have this kind of overwhelming impact on
our lives.
If Reality 1 is the real
reality then it is not self-evident to me that the concept of the supernatural
would have been invented at all. Here's why; I know of no other type of human
invention that creates a metaphysical reality that isn’t true and then confuses
that invention with actual reality. It’s true that humans are immensely
creative with the truth when it comes to art and literature and poetry and
film, but no one is confusing the reality embedded in those disciplines with an
actual reality they think exists but doesn’t really.
It’s also true that people
get confused a lot about empirical matters, especially in politics and
economics - but we can’t count that as being anything like the same thing,
because it merely creates a metaphysical reality that isn’t true and then
confuses that invention with actual reality. These errors are actually cases of
poor reasoning and being unapprised of facts, and are easily corrected with
fewer emotional biases, better arguments and improved reasoning.
Next, what would a Reality
2 look like if it did exist - a world in which the supernatural does exist? I
think it would look exactly like the world in which we currently live, where
claims of supernatural experience and insight have been so prominent throughout
history that they have this kind of overwhelming impact on our lives.
I think it is only by
virtue of the supernatural existing that we would have such a world in which it
is so prominent. We simply do not make up a new reality that prominent, that
influential and that life-changing and confuse it with the truth. There is
nothing else in human existence that's even on the same playing field as the
significance of the supernatural in our lives.
And if the supernatural is
true, you would expect it to consist of an indefinite number of human claims
where a small fraction of them are based on the truth, and most of them are
either flatly false, or misleading distortions of the truth*. Because that is
what Reality Now is like. There are uncountable ways to be wrong, and far fewer
ways to be right - but like everything else, the mass falsehoods and the ubiquitous
delusions exist, not because everything is false, but because almost everything
is false, and the most important things are true.
If Reality 1 was the real
reality, there would be no supernatural claims - possibly ever (it may not have
ever been invented, although it's possible it might have) - and certainly not
anymore, as any claims from the ancients that bore no resemblance at all to the
truth would have died out before we ever got to find out they existed. Even with
my economist hat on, it is infinitely likely that the supernatural exists.
* Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and
many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to
life, and only a few find it.
Matthew
7:13-14
