Questions About Religion and Superstition. Superstitious Materialism

1. Is there a difference between religion and superstition, or is religion by its very nature superstitious? There seem to be two main views. One is that of skeptics and naturalists. For them, religion, apart perhaps from its ethical teaching, is superstitious in nature so that there could not be a religion free of superstition. Religion just is a tissue of superstitious beliefs and practices and has been exposed as such by the advance of natural science. The other view is that of those who take religion seriously as having a basis in reality. They do not deny that there are superstitious beliefs, practices, and people. Nor do they deny that religions are often interlarded with superstition. What they deny is that religion is in its essence superstitious.

Indeed, a philosophically sophisticated religion such as Roman Catholicism specifically prohibits superstitious beliefs and practices. One way it does this is via the prohibition of idolatry which derives from the First Commandment's prohibition on 'false gods.' It should be noted that a sophisticated religionist can turn the tables on the skeptic and naturalist by accusing the latter of idolatry. Some sceptics appear to worship Doubt Itself, or else the power of their minds to doubt everything — except of course the validity of their own skeptical ruminations. Others like Carl Sagan appear to worship science. Humanists often enthrone Humanity, as if there were such a thing as Humanity as opposed to just a lot of human beings. Futurists expect great things from the Future: does that not smack of idolatry? Our human past has been wretched; why should we think that our future will be any better? Especially now with the ready availability of weapons of mass destruction and the lack of will to prevent their proliferation? The quasi-religious and idolatrous nature of Communist belief has often been noted. Environmentalists often appear to make a god of nature. One thinks of Edward Abbey in this connection and the febrile Al Gore. Naturalists can be found who attribute divine attributes to nature such as necessity of existence and supreme value.

Superstition, in the form of idolatry, therefore, can be found in the opponents of religion as much as it can be found in its proponents.

2. If there is a difference between religion and superstition, what exactly is it?

3. Logically prior questions: What is religion? What is superstition?

4. Let's consider an example. A believer places a plastic Jesus icon on the dashboard of her car. It seems clear than anyone who believes that a piece of plastic has the power to ward off automotive danger is superstitious. A hunk of mere matter cannot have such magical properties. Superstition in this first sense seems to involve a failure to understand the causal structure of the world or the laws of probability. A flight attendant who attributes her years of flying without mishap to her wearing of a rabbit's foot or St. Christopher's medal is clearly superstitious in this first sense. Such objects have no causal bearing on an airplane's safety.

But no sophisticated believer attributes powers to the icon itself, or to a relic, or to any material thing qua material thing. The sophisticated believer distinguishes between the icon and the spiritual reality or person it represents.

Well, what about the belief that the person represented will ward off danger and protect the believer from physical mishap? That belief too is arguably, though not obviously, superstitious in a second and less crass sense. Why should the Second Person of the Trinity care about one's automotive adventures? Does one really expect, let alone deserve, divine intervention for the sake of one's petty concerns? How can religion, which is about metanoia — change of mind/heart — be justifiably hitched to the cart of the mundane ego?

But what if the icon serves to remind the believer of her faith commitment rather than to propitiate or influence a godlike person for egoistic ends? Here we approach a form of religious belief that is not superstitious. The believer is not attributing magical powers to a hunk of plastic or a piece of metal. Nor is she invoking a spiritual reality in an attempt to satisfy petty material needs. Her belief transcends the sphere of egoic concerns.

5. To round out today's ruminations, let us consider the materialist who ascribes to the grey stuff in our skulls the magical property of giving rise to consciousness, self-consciousness, conscience, and intentionality. Can we not tax such a materialist with superstition? Is he not ascribing magical powers to matter, powers that material objects cannot possess? In a slogan: To impute meaning to meat is magical! Mind means (intends) what is other than it. If you impute this power to mere matter, then you are arguably superstitious.

"But brains just are semantic engines; they have the intentional power!" If the materialist can get away with that little outburst, then the religionist can get away with imputing to a plastic icon on a dashboard the power of averting automotive mishap.

Brains exist and consciousness exists. (Dennett be damned; his eliminativism about consciousness, not the man himself.) It is natural to wax Searlean and say that brain activity causes consciousness. But if we have no idea HOW brain activity could cause consciousness, then how is saying that it does differ from saying that the St. Christopher medal causes safe passage through the friendly skies?

Posted

April 11, 2009

Intentionality, Mind, Religion

Bill Vallicella

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12 responses to “Questions About Religion and Superstition. Superstitious Materialism”

StMichael

April 11, 2009

I would agree with your claim in general, but am not sure that temporal affairs cannot be the object of pious prayer. The Divine Liturgy and the Western Mass both agree in including long prayers for civil leaders, good harvests and weather, etc. A person wearing a St. Christopher medal can hold that St. Christopher is praying for their safe travel, I think, without being superstitious. In fact, these are merely “symbolic” prayers for temporal goods. Of course, these goods are considered subordinate to eternal ones (salvation is always better than safe travel), but that doesn’t mean we cannot pray for temporal goods insofar as God’s will allows.

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Court

April 12, 2009

Great post, although I’m afraid I remain unconvinced.
To take issue with #1, if it is in fact the case that, say, Carl Sagan actually worships science (rather than “appearing” to – and I think this is a rather big “if”), then you may be right that he is engaging in idolatry. That does not therefore justify the idolatry of religionists, nor make either any more true. I think it is perfectly possible to be a reasonable, amiable skeptic, in the mode of Hume for instance, without engaging in idolatry or superstition oneself. If one takes as the basis for one’s understanding the empirical findings (insofar as one is capable of understanding them) of science along with the application of one’s own reason developed as highly as one is capable, then I think one can justly view religious people as superstitious, without being superstitious oneself. Which is not the same as being infallible, needless to say.
As for the RCC’s banning of idolatry, I suppose this is in the eye of the beholder. If all the statues, Rosaries, crucifixes, etc., are not instances of idolatry, then they are at least instances of fetishization, and this hardly seems an improvement to me.
#3 seems the crux of the matter to me. I admit my own thinking quickly grows confused on this point, which is to say, I find it hard to find the line where superstition ends and religion begins. I don’t suppose them to be logically identifiable, but they do seem to so similar that ferreting out the contrasts does seem to me to be something of an exercise in trivia. Perhaps a post on this, to straighten me out?

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James Chastek

April 12, 2009

Intentions might be helpful in another way towards solving the problem: if the woman looks that the statue on the dashboard and says a prayer to it, it’s pretty clear her intention does not terminate in the image, but in the one whom the image represents. If her intention terminated in the statue, this would be a clear case of superstition.
More generally, I suppose the boring answer is that religion, by everyone’s agreement, is due reverence to God, and so if you think God is due no reverence (for whatever reason) you think acts of religion ought not be done. Under such a supposition, religion becomes immoral act, although it would take another premise to say that it was the particular kind of immoral act called “superstition”. It seems impossible to me that one would call it that, since “superstition” can only be the name for an immoral act if religion is the name for a moral one. It would be better for those who think God is due no reverence to just say “religion is a vice” not the cheeky (but too vague) “religion is superstition”.

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James Chastek

April 12, 2009

And when I said “everyone agrees” about religion as due reverence to God, I meant it collectively, not distributively of each and every thinker. It’s a definition that can be common to theists and atheists; Christians and pagans; Jews and Gentiles; etc. The word “religion”, however, tends to a sort of floppiness and formlessness, and can frequently become so vague as to be of no real value in discourse.

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Spencer

April 12, 2009

Hi Bill,
Atheists can be superstitious, but religious believers are necessarily superstitious. It does not follow that all superstition is religion, however, nor would I make the claim. Religion is a particular broad and well-structured species of superstition. (If you want to throw the example of Buddhism, Confucianism or Taoism at me, I might be inclined to say that some versions of those ‘religions’ are not religions at all, but secular philosophies.)
Note that as soon as we have very good philosophical or scientific reasons to believe something it is no longer considered a religious belief. To call something a religious belief is to say that it is unjustifiable by anything other than a belief in magic. Beliefs in the virgin birth or the trinity are religious beliefs precisely because they cannot be justified. My belief that the earth is round, however, can be rooted in reason, so it’s not a religious truth, even if it happens that certain religious texts affirm this.
“Blessed are those who have not seen but yet have believed.”
Translation: blessed are those who hold unjustifiable beliefs.

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StMichael

April 12, 2009

Spencer,
This seems to be a tendentious definition of “religion.” Many, if not most, major religions and, as Dr. Vallicella calls them, “sophisticated believers” hold at least two related positions: first, that there are many things connected and ancillary to faith which are probably able to be proven by reason without revelation (such as the existence of God), and, second, that none of their religious beliefs are rationally unjustified. You shift from “religions lack philosophical or scientific reasons to believe” to “unjustified belief.” In order to make my point, you’d need to draw at least one other distinction between qualitative levels of “reasons.” The sophisticated believer would likely claim that they possess justified belief while not having “demonstratively certain” scientific or philosophical reasons. So, clearly, an argument from miracles is a variety of empirical and even arguably “scientific” reason to believe in some religious doctrine. But this is very different from a deductive proof – it is a variety of “strong induction,” if we want to use that terminology.
Lastly, your interpretation of the Gospel seems to similarly self-serving. One need only look to the Greek Christians who call St. Thomas “Doubting Thomas” by way of compliment to refute this theory. Then, this passage takes on a very different meaning – one, I need not relate in detail, that most of the Church Fathers held.

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Bill Vallicella

April 12, 2009

Spencer writes, “religious believers are necessarily superstitious.” But that is precisely the question. You are not entitled to start with that assertion, though you are entitled to argue for it.
StMichael speaks of what Thomists call the “preambles of faith” such as the existence of God. You will have a hard time showing that the the claim that God exists is a superstitious claim. You could say it is not a specifically religious claim, but then we would need to know how you use ‘religion.’

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M_Frank

April 12, 2009

Spencer:
Note that as soon as we have very good philosophical or scientific reasons to believe something it is no longer considered a religious belief.
Why not?
Scientific reasons can only provide knowledge of a limited class of objects, most of which are irrelevant to religious beliefs. (For example, that the world is round.)
Perhaps you are unwittingly using a definition of “religious” that amounts to assuming your conclusion? If we accept your assertion, then if the beliefs of a particular religion are all eventually demonstrated [somehow] as philosophically or scientifically “true” then the religion will cease to be a religion at all. It is ultimately discredited in the course of being completely vindicated. That sounds a bit like ‘heads-I-win, tails-you-lose.’

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Edward

April 12, 2009

I still do not think an adequate definition of superstition has been given. Obviously, the Roman Catholic Church cannot both condemn superstition and hold that superstition means the belief in claims that cannot be scientifically validated. How, then, did they and do they properly define it?
So far, it looks like superstition has been defined in these comments as the belief that physical and inanimate objects can display providence over the course of the world. So superstition, maybe, can be defined as some sort of inordinate faith in the power of the material world. Perhaps, then, Dawkins is the most superstitious man alive.

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StMichael

April 13, 2009

Superstition is often understood as improper worship or veneration of divinity. Its etymology is from Latin, super-stitio, meaning essentially “standing over” as in “gazing in awe” at something. Superstition is “excessive” worship of God/gods, understood as improper or deviating worship. If we take this definition, then I think it is quite true that atheists cannot be “superstitious” if they truly don’t acknowledge any divinities or supernatural powers. However, they could fall under the definition by at least two other means: “lucky charms” and improper veneration of nature, science, or some other object as a “god.” Both of these latter behaviors both usually fall under superstition and I think could apply, practically speaking, to those who claim to be atheists. It would be inordinate faith in the material world, but it would be a subset of proper devotion to God/gods (as in that case you are essentially ascribing divinity to nature).

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James Chastek

April 14, 2009

Spencer says:
“Blessed are those who have not seen but yet have believed.”
Translation: blessed are those who hold unjustifiable beliefs.
So the testimony of others reckoned able to know can’t justify a belief? Are you saying this to get out of jury duty?

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Spencer

April 15, 2009

It seems like I’ve got a lot of critical responses and accusitions of making premises into conclusions. Perhaps I should clarify.
My belief that religious beliefs are necessarily superstitious is not a bald assumption, but a conclusion I have come to based on my Mormon upbringing and my interactions with religious people since that time.
Suppose I am presented with a series of arguments that lead me to the conclusion that every item of Mormon doctrine is true–or the doctine of any religion you prefer. I conclude that it is rational to practice that religion and do so. Am I at this point a religious believer? Every believer I have yet talked to has answered in the negative. Ideas arrived at rationally are not religious beliefs, regardless of how important they may be to religious belief. Otherwise my belief that the Romans occupied Judea at the time of Jesus would be a religious belief. It isn’t. It’s a historical one. Religion becomes religion at the point where it departs from reason.
Now, I understand that non-rationality isn’t necessarily irrationality, but when non-rational claims conflict with rational claims, the burden of proof lies on the person making the non-rational claim to show that it is not an irrational claim. Were it otherwise I could make any number of absurd claims and justify myself by an appeal to some non-rational process.

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