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Spirits, ghosts, and the supernatural are the first explanations of reality and related phenomena- not material causes with mechanical or scientific reasons. Even obvious material phenomenon like rain, thunder, sunrise, moon phases, equinox, tides, etc. were explained and understood as spirit influence and interferences.
It appears that as science explains more of reality, humanity is distracted sufficiently to lose our dependence on the spirit world along with our superstitions. This, I think, is a very rare planetary reaction due to our loss of the influences of the Prince's staff and the later Garden of Eden where the reality of universal spirit forces was taught.
On most evolutionary worlds science and religion progress in partnership and not in isolation or competition. Superstitions are left behind by knowledge and experience but belief in the supernatural merely becomes more specific and accurate on normal worlds without the double loss Urantia suffered by rebellion and default.
We remain barbaric, superstitious, primitive, AND materialistic in our scientific progress we are told, as those who remain religious cling to fear based spiritualisms while the educated embrace materialism and shun the prmitivisms of the more religious primitives....the "absurd doctrines of twentieth century barbarians."
86:4.1 (952.7) The concept of a supermaterial phase of mortal personality was born of the unconscious and purely accidental association of the occurrences of everyday life plus the ghost dream. The simultaneous dreaming about a departed chief by several members of his tribe seemed to constitute convincing evidence that the old chief had really returned in some form. It was all very real to the savage who would awaken from such dreams reeking with sweat, trembling, and screaming.
86:4.2 (953.1) The dream origin of the belief in a future existence explains the tendency always to imagine unseen things in the terms of things seen. And presently this new dream-ghost-future-life concept began effectively to antidote the death fear associated with the biologic instinct of self-preservation.
86:4.3 (953.2) Early man was also much concerned about his breath, especially in cold climates, where it appeared as a cloud when exhaled. The breath of lifewas regarded as the one phenomenon which differentiated the living and the dead. He knew the breath could leave the body, and his dreams of doing all sorts of queer things while asleep convinced him that there was something immaterial about a human being. The most primitive idea of the human soul, the ghost, was derived from the breath-dream idea-system.
86:4.4 (953.3) Eventually the savage conceived of himself as a double—body and breath. The breath minus the body equaled a spirit, a ghost. While having a very definite human origin, ghosts, or spirits, were regarded as superhuman. And this belief in the existence of disembodied spirits seemed to explain the occurrence of the unusual, the extraordinary, the infrequent, and the inexplicable.
86:4.5 (953.4) The primitive doctrine of survival after death was not necessarily a belief in immortality. Beings who could not count over twenty could hardly conceive of infinity and eternity; they rather thought of recurring incarnations.
86:4.6 (953.5) The orange race was especially given to belief in transmigration and reincarnation. This idea of reincarnation originated in the observance of hereditary and trait resemblance of offspring to ancestors. The custom of naming children after grandparents and other ancestors was due to belief in reincarnation. Some later-day races believed that man died from three to seven times. This belief (residual from the teachings of Adam about the mansion worlds), and many other remnants of revealed religion, can be found among the otherwise absurd doctrines of twentieth-century barbarians.
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