Superstition and religion

[Brother Hesekiel 2,236]

Man . . . four years of studying philosophy, just because I really desired so, and now I feel like this permeation prevents me from answering the initial question without getting lost in the universe.

Not sure why superstition and religion are being compared here, but I'll take the ball and run with it.

Superstition and religion have one thing in common: both are beliefs in a power whose source operates outside the scope of human conception and outside from what science can explain. We may witness events and credit those with said source, but that's as far as it goes. Religion often speaks from having faith, superstition warns about events that will take place by disobeying something.

Generalized, yes, superstition and religion are almost the same. Religion is based closer to scriptures, superstition to folk believes and powers of the darkness in a non-negative, yet more mysterious connotation.

Yet religion outreaches the cause-and-event structure of superstition in that it tries to explain the "why are we here" thingi. Law is based on religion and religion is based on ethics. Try to answer this: if there was no law prohibiting you to kill another human being, would you kill them, or, in case you wouldn't, wouldn't you do it because a religious scripture tells you it is sin or prohibited, or wouldn't you do it because you know, deep inside, that it would be wrong.

These issues were covered by Immanuel Kant in his categorical imperative (a "must read" for anyone on a certain intellectual level), which IMHO is still the nexus of morality.

Religion has a negative connotation among "reasonable" people, to a large extend because we think in term of organized religion which in today's form has been mutilated beyond belief. In terms of the Bible, just read up on the First Council of Nicaea (325AD) and the Second Council of Constantinople, and you'll understand why reincarnation has been eliminated from it, maliciously and purposely .

Yet religion goes further than that. The pure belief that we are not a product of chance is a religious belief. Or, in nihilistic terms, the belief that there's nothing to it, is religion as well. it's like trying to free the mind from everything and thinking about nothing, absolutely nothing. Good luck with that! Hence, anything transcending what science -- to this day -- can explain reaches into religion.

Don't mix this up with the term supernatural. I can believe that there's a God, and he, she, it, or, in case God is not a "Being" (which makes the most sense, really) the unspoken, would be part of nature nonetheless, nothing outside of it.

So show me a person who's not religious, and I'll prove to you he or she is.

Edited December 16, 2010 by Just Bob

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

So show me a person who's not religious, and I'll prove to you he or she is.

Is that like any man that watches porn, no matter how straight he thinks he is, must be at least a little gay?

[Captain Oates 911]

it's like trying to free the mind from everything and thinking about nothing, absolutely nothing. Good luck with that!

Having worked for the government for 3 years, I found this an essential skill to get through the 16 days out of 20 per month when I wasn't expected to do anything

[Captain Oates 911]

ok I will take that...

I don't believe that a non-belief in god is a religious belief any more than a non-belief that hippos can fly is religious belief

I don't see any evidence for it

Trouble with these egg head philosophers from Germany is that they are so boring that everyone forgets what they are on about and so accept it rather than argue

When I was going out with that German psychiatrist in NiederSachsen, she bought me Lichtenberger's scrap book and it did my skull. What a curtain twitcher he was - looking at people walking down the road and hating em.

Anyway I believe in a clean slate and my ideas are as good as theirs

The difference between my beliefs and religious beliefs is that I came up with em on my own and in a vacuum and against all I was being taught. I didn't accept someone's teachings to become a non believer. I thought about it by myself in a sea of believers and I had never read a non believers book or been lectured or persuaded by a non believer. The trouble with believers is that they didn't come up with it themselves - it was handed to them as a package by a person - and they swallowed it. Religious people get born and then get indoctrinated by PEOPLE and their books - they didn't come to it themselves

That is the difference and why my non belief is not religious but a balance of probabilities that is so skewed one way that I don't believe the alternative I am being offered

To put it another way, the default for humanity is non-belief even though the majority end up believing in everything from eating their ancestors brains to get cleverer - right through the spectrum to the more outlandish ideas like Christianity

Being in the majority is no proof of being right - park up outside Walmart for an hour and take a good look at the majority

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Being in the majority is no proof of being right - park up outside Walmart for an hour and take a good look at the majority

So, a consensus among scientists is worthless? I will take that with a shot and a chaser.

Classical Logic tells you that an appeal to authority is a fallacy, yet Modern Science relies on empirical proof. So, would that mean by its nature, science is illogical?

Edited December 16, 2010 by Some Old Guy

[mawilson 2,133]

If a religious person thinks to themselves that God wants them to pick up that hundred dollar bill they see on the street and spend it, they are suspending intellectual reasoning and mystery to insert certainty of God's will into their everyday existence. That's when so-called "religious" folk start acting freaky.

So it's reasonable to think that God saved you from a tornado, but freaky to think that God wants you to pick up a $100 bill?

Why, because saving your life is more important to God than making you happy for a day?

[mawilson 2,133]

In layman's terms Pascal's Wager basically says to act like you believe in God because the consequences are less severe if you're wrong. How is that an endorsement of faith in God?

So you have to pretend to believe in God to avoid going to hell? Wouldn't God see through all that BS? Read your mind and see that you didn't really mean it and send you to hell anyway?

[mawilson 2,133]

If I didn't know so many highly intelligent people that were also religious, I, too, would think that you had to be a little bit stupid to be a "believer". That said, I still don't really understand how they do it, believe, that is.

Religion is a neurological disorder - not necessarily stupidity (although stupidity certainly helps).

[mawilson 2,133]

Infinity as a mathematical term can be defined but not measured. There's nothing idiotic of defining the beginning and ending of all existence even though we can never quantify it.

Science has quantified the beginning of existence pretty damn accurately, using several

completely different methods, all of which produced the same result.

Infinity is not a real number, so there's no need to "measure" it. You can visualize

it quite easily though if you think of the number line as a circle rather than a line.

At one pole you have zero, at the other - infinity.

[Peikko 1,575]

A question for Steven. Is it true that you believe in ghosts? I get that impression and yet to me that is a highly superstitious belief. Nothing about ghosts in the bible, at least not the versions I've read.

[Peikko 1,575]

To suggest that there is no God is just as silly to suggest that there is a God. We have no way to know.

As has already been pointed out, that's simply not true. Postulating that something must exist despite the absence of anything but anecdotal and unverifiable witness evidence is much more silly than postulating that something doesn't exist based on current verifiable scientific theory and evidence. Much of current scientific thinking relies on one having an incredibly sophisticated understanding of theoretical physics and math so it's not really surprising there are few who can actually speak authoritatively on the subject but nonetheless, the science is there.

[Captain Oates 911]

So, a consensus among scientists is worthless? I will take that with a shot and a chaser.

Classical Logic tells you that an appeal to authority is a fallacy, yet Modern Science relies on empirical proof. So, would that mean by its nature, science is illogical?

Yet some propositions are so ludicrous that it is right and sensible and safe to dismiss them without needing proof

If I said that if I filled your car tank with sawdust, peed in it, said three hail Marys and then dropped a cigarette end in it - I believe it would do 1,000 mph for 6 weeks without refueling - nobody would believe that and they wouldn't need empirical evidence or a text book or a scientist or a PC to come to a very convinced opinion on that proposal. Some things are just plain obvious - and obvious to everyone.

That is why I say the lack of evidence either way is no barrier to coming to a safe verdict that a supernatural being who impregnates married virgins by thinking it so - and then deliberately executes their children to make a point - and lives on a cloud in a busy airway - and deliberately creates worms which eat children's eyes in the 3rd world - does not exist.

[mawilson 2,133]

It's interesting though how native Americans had their own spiritual beliefs while far separated from what was going on in Europe and Asia. Seems wherever you go in the world, people have supernatural or spiritual beliefs. Why would they stop being atheists in the first place?

Because once upon a time, people didn't know where babies came from -

they thought it was a "miracle" and God made it happen.

Now we know that sperm travels up the uterus into the Fallopian tubes,

fertilizing the egg and forming a zygote, which grows into a blastocyst

and eventually into a baby.

Once upon a time, people didn't know what lightning was - they saw it

come down and kill someone and concluded that it was God, or that God

threw the lightning down in order to teach someone a lesson.

Now we know that lightning is nothing but an atmospheric discharge of

electricity.

[Captain Oates 911]

Because once upon a time, people didn't know where babies came from -

they thought it was a "miracle" and God made it happen.

Now we know that sperm travels up the uterus into the Fallopian tubes,

fertilizing the egg and forming a zygote, which grows into a blastocyst

and eventually into a baby.

Do you mind, I am having my tea

[Peikko 1,575]

It's interesting though how native Americans had their own spiritual beliefs while far separated from what was going on in Europe and Asia. Seems wherever you go in the world, people have supernatural or spiritual beliefs. Why would they stop being atheists in the first place? Either their reasoning was seriously lacking(which to me, doesn't say much for reason=atheism), or there is actually something in humans that make them desire to figure out the unseen.

Of course we know where I stand on this issue. I am also trying to deal with my intellect being insulted here. I shouldn't care and usually do. I have reasoning skills and I believe in God. I don't want to be treated as stupid because of that. I find it unfortunate that people reject the idea of God.

Asking how and why is all too human. Understanding that why is irrelevant as it pertains to the existence of the universe takes practice. There is nothing surprising about human spirituality, what is surprising is that people currently reject the things we have learned about existence and the origins of ourselves, the earth and the universe in favour of explanations we thought made sense 2,000 years ago and more.