[TimTheTinker]

2 is only weirder if you don't already accept non-material reality, i.e. the proposition There exist real things that are not themselves composed of matter and/or energy.

That's crossing into metaphysics, which isn't usually a welcome topic here, but the fact remains that more than 80% of the current and prior world population believes/believed in a non-material reality.

The persistence and stickiness of that belief throughout history ought to at least make us sit up and pay attention. Something's going on, and it's not a mere historic lack of scientific rigor, notwithstanding science's penchant for filling gaps people previously attributed to spiritual causes. That near-universal reflex to attribute things to spiritual causes in the first place is what's interesting - why do people not merely say the cause is "something physical we don't understand"?

[mcphage]

Tiger got to hunt,

Bird got to fly;

Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"

Tiger got to sleep,

Bird got to land;

Man got to tell himself he understand.

—Kurt Vonnegut