Category: Superstition
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Friday the 13th Cat Blogging!
In the foothills of the Superstition Mountains! Friday cat blogging is an ancient and venerable tradition in the blogosphere. We pioneers of the 'sphere aim to keep it going. To hell with all you change-for-the-sake-of change 'progressives.' I Ain't Superstitious, leastways no more than Howlin' Wolf, but two twin black tuxedo cats just crossed my path. All…
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“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”
This is another topic that it would have been great to discuss with Dale Tuggy during his visit thereby bringing my supposed 'gnosticism' into collision with his supposed 'spiritual materialism.' The problems are very difficult and I do not claim to have the answers. The first thing and the main thing, as it seems to…
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The Most Powerful Argument Against Religious Faith Ever?
Over at the The Philosopher's Stone, Robert Paul Wolff waxes enthusiastic over a quotation from Hobbes: "Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, RELIGION; not allowed, SUPERSTITION." Just think what Hobbes accomplishes in these eighteen words! The only distinction between religion and superstition is whether the tales that provoke…
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Friday the 13th Cat Blogging!
Friday the 13th of the 12th month of the 13th year of the third millennium. I ain't superstitious, leastways no more than Willie Dixon, but two twin black tuxedo cats just crossed my path. All dressed up with nowhere to go. Nine lives and dressed to the nines. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Superstition. Guitar solo starts…
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What is Religion? How Does it Differ from Superstition?
There is more to a religion than its beliefs and doctrines; there are also its practices. They, however, are informed and guided by certain constitutive beliefs. So the importance of the latter cannot be denied. Religion is not practice alone. It is not a mere form of life or language game. It rests, pace Wittgenstein,…
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Wittgenstein on Religious Faith and Superstition
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, tr. Peter Winch (University of Chicago Press, 1980), P. 72: Religious faith and superstition are quite different. One of them results from fear and is a sort of false science. The other is a trusting. Although Winch's translation is correct, I would translate ganz verschieden as 'entirely different.' For in American English…
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Some Putative Counterexamples to My Definition of ‘Superstitious Belief’
I hazarded the following definition: Belief B is superstitious =df (i) B is or entails erroneous beliefs about the causal structure of the natural world; (ii) B makes reference to one or more supernatural agents; (iii) B involves a corruption or distortion of a genuine religious belief. The conditions are supposed to be individually necessary…
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Defining ‘Superstitious Belief’
Superstition is a form of pseudo-religion, a degenerate or distorted form of religion. But what exactly is it and how does it differ from genuine religion? Let's start by asking what sorts of item are called superstitious. There are (at least) superstitious beliefs, practices, and people. Perhaps we should say that a person is superstitious…
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Superstition: More Examples
A reader comments: You write that “Superstition in this first sense seems to involve a failure to understand the causal structure of the world or the laws of probability” and that it is a “necessary (but not sufficient) condition of a belief's being superstitious is that it entail one or more erroneous beliefs about the…
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An Example of a Religion Without Superstition
John Pepple has written an excellent post in which he sketches a religion free of superstitious elements, thereby showing that there is nothing in the nature of religion — assuming that religion has a nature — that requires that every religion be wholly or even in part superstitious. Here is his sketch: 1. God exists.2.…
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Religion and Superstition
Julian Baggini asks: Can a religion survive being stripped of its superstitions? Baggini does not tell us explicitly what he understands by 'superstition,' but the context suggests that he takes the term to apply to any and all supernatural elements in a religion, whether these be beliefs, practices, or posits such as God and the soul. The supernatural,…