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I commend you on occasionally bringing up this topic because it’s really quite important at the end of the day, and obviously the scientific idea of there being something ‘beyond’ science seems to be such a taboo idea that you can even do race science and get by, but if you posit something like ‘maybe remote viewing is a thing?’ you immediately get anathematized. This is despite the fact that most humans in history have had a deeply-held belief that the material reality we experience is not all-there-is, and many many many people in the past (and today) have had direct experiences not explainable by our current models of empirical reality or even our current ideations of psychological conditioning (e.g. UFO encounters by nuke-launchers).
Also, in my opinion, once you get deeper into the idea of this non-materialized phenomenon seemingly being even intelligent, then the topic of studying this thing and utilizing it seems to be an extremely hard process compared to simply doing repeatable experiments on dumb matter — it’s most like attempting to align an AGI on the first-try without having any test-cases rather than being able to measure the acceleration of a ball dropped from a constant height, for an example that would be appreciated by this community more than others.
I also personally find the arguments for God, or at least a necessitated intelligent prime-mover, to be extremely more powerful than the arguments against such a being’s existence, so I am probably much more open to non-physical phenomena existing, as at least one thing outside of material reality exists in my mind. My own personal experiences seem to corroborate this fact, as I have also had very powerful emotional experiences & physical changes occur due to the fact of my new-found faith and also my Christian conversion from atheism. You’re definitely not alone in this, and all I can say is that you shouldn’t ever think you are.
Yep, this comes down to the fact that while moderns like to believe we are free of myths and superstitions of the past, instead we believe in scientific materialism and constant progress as our societal myths. Now many argue that these myths are fundamentally different from those of our ancestors, and they're right of course. But they're still beliefs based on social consensus and assumption rather than deep thought and 'objectivity' like the vast majority presume.
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