Paper short abstract:

Supernatural beliefs and their relationship to belief in science are investigated in a sample of science-oriented individuals. The results indicate the relevance of supernatural beliefs for some science-oriented Finns but also point towards the primary importance of secular beliefs.

Paper long abstract:

Previous work in the science of religion indicates that although science and supernatural belief are often seen as contradictory, people apply both scientific and supernatural explanations for the same events. Furthermore, some individuals integrate scientific and supernatural views into a singular explanation. However, few studies have investigated supernatural explanations and their coexistence with scientific knowledge in individuals who hold science in high regard.

In my research, I investigated the supernatural beliefs of science-oriented Finns, and how their supernatural beliefs are associated with belief in science. The data comprised structured and open-ended responses about domains of fundamental concern (origins, death, and suffering) from religious and non-religious Finns recruited via pro-science organisations (N = 387). The analysis applied a quantitative approach and mixed-method text coding. The results show that some science-oriented individuals also invoke supernatural causality in addition to natural explanations. Supernatural belief and belief in science are often applied as alternative sense-making strategies for phenomena such as death and what follows. However, a minority of science-oriented participants integrated their supernatural beliefs with scientific knowledge. Supernatural and scientific explanations were integrated in two ways: 1) supernatural causality was perceived as the ultimate cause and the scientific explanation as the proximate cause (e.g. God’s design in Big Bang), or 2) a similarity heuristic was applied, for instance by stating that immortality of the soul aligns with the law of conservation of energy. Despite the relevance of supernatural beliefs for some science-oriented individuals, the overall results point towards the primary importance of secular beliefs (and more particularly, belief in science) for individuals who hold science in high regard.