One might suppose that science chases away ghosts. The opposite happens for some believers. An American study published in Social Forces reveals that people who prize reason and critical thinking the most, while maintaining a connection to religion, are also those who believe most in curses and spirits.
- A study of 1,812 American adults shows that 40% of God-believers who strongly embrace “secular rationalism” also believe in magic, compared with 19% among others.
- This secular rationalism, which blends trust in science with personal spirituality, reduces belief in miracles but strengthens belief in magic and superstitions.
- This phenomenon affects only people who maintain a link with religion, with the effect disappearing among those without religious affiliation or who do not believe in God.
- When believing in science aligns with believing in ghosts
- The surprising profile of adherents of modern magic
- Why miracles recede while curses advance
When Believing in Science Aligns with Belief in Ghosts
The starting point of this research rests on a simple question: does the decline of religious institutions signal the end of supernatural beliefs? Researchers Paul Froese, Isaiah King, and Ruiqian Li, affiliated respectively with Baylor University, Carson-Newman University, and American University, sought to verify whether science and reason truly diminish belief in ghosts and curses.
To do this, they relied on data from the Baylor Religion Survey, a survey conducted with 1,812 American adults surveyed by Gallup at the start of the year. The responses were weighted to faithfully reflect the U.S. adult population.
The results challenge a deeply ingrained assumption. One might intuitively think that the more one trusts science, the less one believes in spirits haunting houses or curses cast by an adversary. The figures, however, tell a quite different story, provided one looks a bit more closely at who these believers of a particular kind actually are.
The Surprising Profile of Modern Magic Believers
The study’s authors coined a concept to describe this particular profile: secular rationalism. It denotes a worldview that blends several ingredients—a trust in science as the sole key to understanding reality, the importance placed on reason and human experience to judge right from wrong, and a personalized form of spiritual interpretation, far from established religious dogmas.
What stands out is that this stance does not necessarily push people away from magic. On the contrary, it sometimes leads there, but only among a very specific audience: those who still maintain a connection to religion, whether through belief in God, membership in a community, or regular practice.
The numbers speak for themselves. Among people who believe in God, 40% of those who strongly adhere to secular rationalism also lean toward belief in magic, compared with only 19% among those who reject this stance. The gap, according to the researchers, can be explained by a distinction between personal faith and institutional authority. A church can easily validate the idea of divine miracles while firmly condemning divination or communication with the dead. But an individual who prioritizes their own spiritual judgment over the rules of their community may no longer feel bound by that boundary. They may freely draw from reason, faith, and belief in ghosts, without perceiving a contradiction.
Why Miracles Recede While Curses Advance
The study carefully distinguishes three categories of supernatural beliefs. Miracles, which refer to direct divine intervention. Magic, which encompasses ghosts, curses, spirits, communication with the dead, or even predicting the future. And finally everyday superstitions, such as avoiding certain words deemed unlucky to say.
Yet secular rationalism does not act the same way across these three categories. The higher its score, the less people believe in miracles, which is unsurprising for a worldview that places science at the center. In contrast, the same score is accompanied by a stronger endorsement of magic and superstitions, a result that is decidedly more counterintuitive.
This shift is not found in everyone. Among those with no religious affiliation or who do not believe in God, the association between secular rationalism and belief in magic disappears, or becomes much less clear. The phenomenon therefore appears to be specific to those who keep one foot in religion while claiming intellectual independence, a middle ground that would foster the emergence of hybrid beliefs, halfway between reason and the supernatural.
This study invites us to nuance a too-simple narrative, that of a modernity that would mechanically erase the supernatural in favor of reason. Reality is subtler. When religious institutions lose authority, they do not merely open space for science; they also create room for individuals to recombine their own beliefs, sometimes the most rational as well as the most mysterious, depending on their mood at the moment.
