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Paranormal Activity || 1
Introduction
“I only created Jinn and man to worship Me”, Allah said in Holy Qur’an. (Sura Adh-Dhariat,56).As Jinns are made out of fire; they are invisible to human but they share the same world. If any person encounters any activity of jinn, it would seem like a paranormal activity to him. There areso many other ways to define paranormal activity from religious views. According to parapsychologists, the term paranormal describes, “any phenomenon that in one or more respectsexceeds the limits of what is deemed physically possible according to current scientificassumptions. This includes extra-sensory perception,
, and survival of consciousness after death; parapsychologists call these phenomena
, a neutral term non-suggestive of what causes the phenomena or experiences” (Thouless, 1942). Parapsychologistsare also involving qualitative and quantitative methodologies to prove their presence. However, by conventional theory of science paranormal phenomenon is still beyond and unexplained.
Stories relating to paranormal phenomena are found in popular culture and folklore, but the scientificcommunity, as referenced in statements made by organization such as the United States National ScienceFoundation, contends that scientific evidence does not support paranormal beliefs.
Paranormal phenomena are .those, which, if genuine, would violate basic limiting principles of science. (Tobacyk, 1988, p. 3), and paranormal belief is belief in paranormal phenomena. Theresearch on paranormal belief can be traced back to the interest on investigating the concept of superstition. For example, Scheibe and Sarbin (1965) tried to conceptualize superstitiontheoretically, and the variables correlated with superstition/supernatural belief such asconservatism (Boshier, 1973), gender (Bhushan & Bhushan, 1986; Blum, 1976), surgical stress
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(Shrimali & Broota, 1987), and locus of control (Randall & Desrosiers, 1980; Scheidt, 1973) hadalso been studied.One of the correlates with paranormal belief that attracts much attention is religiosity or religious belief; since religion is; an important part of human culture and the presence of God have yet to be proved scientifically. A number of studies have shown that paranormal belief correlated withreligiosity (e.g., Buhrmann & Zaugg, 1983; Orenstein, 2002; Thalbourne & Hensley, 2001).However, other studies did not support this association (e.g., Ellis, 1988; Rice, 2003). The firstgoal of the present investigation therefore was to replicate previous findings. Furthermore, therelationship between paranormal belief and religiosity has not been explored.In the recent decade, although there have been studies in finding the personality or psychopathology variables correlating with paranormal belief (e.g., Dag, 1999; Rattet & Bursik,2001; Wiseman, Greening & Smith, 2003; Wolfradt, 1997), many studies showed an inconsistentresult. For example, empirical studies have shown extraversion to have a high association between paranormal belief and alleged paranormal experience (Honorton, Ferrari & Bem, 1992;Schmeidler, 1982). However, some studies indicated extraversion was not associated with paranormal belief (Rattet & Bursik, 2001; Windholz & Diamant, 1974).Therefore, our attempt in this study is to find whether people in our society believe in the paranormal activity in relation with the religion, gender and age.
Background of the research
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In background of my research I am highlighting my secondary resources. I found very useful aswell as important data on paranormal activity around the world in religious books and articles of different websites. For the convenience, I have divided the data into several parts.
RELIGIOUS VIEW
From the very beginning of the world people felt the presence of others around them. Theonly thing was they did not know or they couldn’t explain the phenomena with their sense andlogic. After that religions gave them a better understanding about those beyond their knowledge.Every religion such as Islam, Christianity, Judaism,
, Hinduism and Buddhismaffirms the presence of angels and demons. In addition all the religious books have given theappropriate definition following their own beliefs.
ISLAM AND QURAN
The belief in angels is central to the religion of Islam, which articles of faith includesBelief in God, Belief in Angels, Belief in Books (Holy Scripture), Belief in Prophets andMessengers, Belief in Qiyamah (Resurrection) and finally Belief in Qada and Qadar (predestination) beginning with the belief that the Qur'an was dictated to Muhammad by thechief of all angels, the archangel Jibril (Gabriel). Angels are thus the ministers of God, as well asthe agents of revelation in Islam. Angels are benevolent beings created from light and they donot possess free will. Islam followers are thus bound to believe in angels, jinns and demons.
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