Is there a correlation between religion and superstition? That is, do religious people place blind faith in things other than religion? And conversely, are all atheists pragmatic and devoid of faith in the unknown? Personally, my husband and I are both atheists, but my husband has some “lucky numbers” and some superstition attached to them. I tend not believe in anything that doesn’t have scientific evidence behind it. I have noticed more religious people believe in the supernatural than atheists do, but this is just my limited experience. What about bloopers? Are the religious ones more superstitious than the atheists/agnostics? Discuss.

I don't consider myself religious but do consider myself spiritual, in that I want to believe and 'feel' that there is more to life than the physical and material. Religion doesn't answer all the questions but neither does science (not yet anyway). I mean if you'd said to the common man 200 years ago that electricity could be used to power transportation and make communication possible across the atlantic ocean... well, they would have laughed and said that it was impossible. Who's to say that there are not things we have not yet discovered?

Whilst I think blind faith is dangerous, I believe complete unwillingness to accept that there might be more out there than what science has shown us.. is delusional. A comfortable delusion at times because it's far more comforting to tell ourselves that we know everything there is to know and that our world and ourselves as human beings are stable and predictable. I prefer to sit in the middle and keep an open mind...

I draw the lines at dragons, werewolves and vampires mind.

I can obviously only answer for myself, but I don't consider myself superstitious. I actually read in "Catholicism for Dummies" that believing in luck, fate, horoscopes etc., and having superstitions, is breaking the commandment to have no other God but God. If you believe in luck, or wishing on stars, or making a wish at 11:11, etc, you are giving something that isn't God power. I try to make a point to not knock on wood, to not make a wish at 11:11 and things like that because they are totally bogus. I believe in God, not whether or not I actually fit the profile of an Aries or whatever.

I am religious/spiritual (in that I was brought up Catholic and hold the general beliefs associated with that, but I don't go to church or anything), but not superstitious in the slightest!

I don't think anybody, regardless of religion, is more superstitious than someone who is not. It really depends on many variables; where you grew up, how you were raised, etc... I'm not religious but I believe in certain supernatural occurrances. I don't think you can lump a majority of people who are not superstitious as being religious vs. those who are atheist not being superstitious.

I was just thinking about this last night! Think it means something? :P

I'm a little superstitious, but only about certain things, which are very few and far between. For example, I usually feign disinterest in something I'm extremely excited about, so as not to jinx it. This has nothing to do with religion or the paranormal though; it's simply a psychological reaction to past rejections. >.>

Over the years, I've come to believe that the universe has a lot more influence in our lives than we think. Those of you that have ever worked in retail or service industries may have noticed this as well. Many people all seem to have the urge to do the same things at the same time. The tides are ruled by gravitational pull. Why can't animals (and thus, humans) be influenced by magnetic fields or other forces of nature that we can't see?

I place my faith in pagan religions, dominated by Wicca - this is what suits me best, what makes the universe easier for me to deal with (lest my mind explode...or implode). Things or happenings that we call paranormal are simply facets of science that we can't yet comprehend. Religion is a coping mechanism. All of the things that the masses deem entirely impossible (dragons, werewolves..sparkly vampires..) really ARE possible, sometime, someplace.

And while we're on the subject, my boyfriend just sent me this: Einstein's Insight into Human Nature. Life is all about perception. I prefer to keep as open a mind as possible. Humans have come a long way in the last thousand years. Who's to say where we'll go in the next thousand?

One thing I thought once was that if we are merely biological mammals and have no connection with a higher power or the universe... how do we explain the imagination? If there is no such things as UFO's and Vampires then our imaginations have created them... but what if imagination is merely a way of remembering or 'knowing' something that is not necessarily perceived by our physical senses but sort of accepted by another set of senses... thinking about life and its purpose really can make your mind explode at times... which always leaves me with the feeling that there is something bigger in me than my physical body can contain. Which I guess is the real reason I believe in spirituality, crazy as that sounds!

i don't think the urge to do things at the same time has to do with any magnetic pull, i think it has more to do with the retail industry telling people when to buy things [major holidays usually]. i've been in retail long enough to know people are sheep willing to go along with whatever is fed to them.

I'm more talking about the ebb and flow of customers during any given day. There are times when the rushes are obvious, like mealtimes in the food service industry, or during commute times at a gas station. But there are always those random rushes that leave you wondering why. Yesterday, for example, my store made 61 sales in 8 hours. It being a holiday, this is a normal type of busy. But what wasn't normal was the fact that 50 of these sales were made between 3pm and 4pm. I can see it being a pre-dinner rush, but why did those 50 customers feel the urge to buy their luggage and handbags at that hour and not any other point in the day?

probably because they wanted to get it out of the way and make it home in time for dinner? they may have been busy doing other things and remembered they still had to go by that store? most people have roughly the same routine. i wouldn't call that mystical.

I don't think there is a correlation between the two. Contrary to what some may say, following Christ does not require a faith that is blind; I believe that blind faith is foolish. God does give us evidence to base our faith upon.

There are Christians who do believe in lucky numbers, but in my opinion, those are the ones whose faith is not really based on anything. They're Christians without any serious study on their faith, leaving them vulnerable to error, such as superstitions, believing in "luck" and other things similar. The Christians I know who do truly know why they believe are not drawn into any of that.

I'd actually say most Christians (and probably also people of other religions) are not particularly superstitious. I know I'm not. But then I also don't consider religion to be "blind faith". It is faith, yes, but it is not blind.

It is not true that anything without evidence is untrue, nor is it true that everything that exists in this world has evidence for it. My career is based on science. I believe in science but I also believe in God, and I've seen things in my job that science cannot explain. There's SO much that science is yet to discover and so much that we cannot yet explain. I think to only believe in things for which there is currently evidence is very restrictive, and not very realistic.

Red Fraggle: Isn't religious faith like the textbook example of "blind faith"? It's a faith based on no evidence, or even credible hearsay evidence. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or anything, but yes, it is absolutely considered blind faith.

...nor is it true that everything that exists in this world has evidence for it.

You might have to elaborate on this. Undiscovered evidence is not the same is "no evidence."

Undiscovered evidence is the same as there is currently no evidence, which is what I said. 'No evidence' can only ever mean undiscovered evidence because we cannot possibly know what evidence there may be in the future for anything. (I think that sentence makes sense...)

From the Oxford dictionary, the definition of faith: strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof

I guess the definition of 'blind faith' therefore depends on what you consider 'blind' to mean. I would argue that "blind" in that context means uneducated or uninformed, rather than lacking in evidence (because that is the definition of faith itself... that there is no proof/evidence). Therefore I think most Christians would not consider themselves to be blinded in their faith.

Undiscovered evidence is the same as there is currently no evidence, which is what I said.

I'm going to risk sounding condescending here, and I apologize for doing so, but surely you know the difference between something that's observable and tangible, vs. something that isn't. "Currently no evidence" for something that you can see, test, and interact with is not the same as "currently no evidence" for the existence of a God. Or unicorns for that matter. Or Santa Claus. Or anything. We're pretty close to a cliched "internet argument about religion" here, so I'll end it there.

To be fair, if the big JC decided to come back down to earth and offer to take us all on a guided tour of the heavens... well that'd be fairly tangible proof. Extreme example, but I guess its like going into the rainforest and finding a tribe that had never seen or interacted with western civilisation... somehow you manage to communicate and you tell them about the internet... just because it's beyond their capacity of understanding doesn't stop it existing.

Prometheus: You're right. I would convert to Christianity right there and then. Granted, I'd have to ask him to clarify a few things from the Bible, but you know.

Something to think about: If someone walked around in a rainforest and just happened to drop into heaven, and it allowed for more people to find it, I would be more willing to accept the existence of heaven, God, Jesus Christ, etc.

It is an extreme example, but some of the things Jesus did long ago were extreme, too, (raising people from the dead, miraculous healings, etc) and even then people around him chose not to believe. I think in most cases, we humans just believe what we want to believe. So even if that did happen, there would still be people who would close their eyes to it or find a way to explain it away.

Avonlea: A lot of the things that can't be explained by science were discovered to be outright fabrication, or situations ripped from earlier religious, spiritual, or mythical texts from all over the world. The people who were there, who "saw" it are the ones who wrote the books -- there's a pretty obvious bias there.

Had it been written, "the water transformed into wine, and nobody could explain this using any kind of common scientific investigation," (or however it would have been written in the typical vernacular) instead of, "he turned water into wine, because he's the son of God, and that's that," things would have been a whole lot different.

Of course it's the same thing. Evidence is evidence, and we never know what evidence there will be of something in the future.

You place things that "we can see, test and interact with" on one side of the argument and God, unicorns, and santa claus on the other. There's no good justification for placing God in that category except for your own bias in that you consider the second group to be mythical and hence can't understand why anyone else would believe in them (though I doubt many people would try and claim that unicorns or santa exist!). Things which we can see, test and interact with are things for which there is evidence already. So clearly that isn't what we're talking about. There was once a time when we couldn't test for gravity, and we definitely can't see or interact with gravity. These days few people would dispute that gravity exists. But they would once have done.

So you don't need to be able to test for something, see it or interact with it for it to exist. And there doesn't need to be evidence for something right now, for it to already exist. I think it would be incredibly arrogant to assume that if something exists then we human beings surely must have evidence of it already.

RF: I never said that we have evidence for everything that exists in the natural universe. I just said it exists, undiscovered or not. Things that we can observe, but have no tangible evidence for, is called a theory. Evolution is something that we can see happening, but scientists aren't 100% sure on how it works, yet. They have 950 pieces of a 1,000 piece puzzle. You can see the picture. You know what it is. But until it's finished, it's still considered a theory.

The existence of a God, especially the Christian God, is something nobody sees happening. You can't just make something up, and say, "it's arrogant to say it doesn't exist, because there's no contrasting evidence."

How do you propose we go about trying to find evidence of a God?

and we definitely can't see or interact with gravity.

You're interacting with gravity right now. Unless you're talking to me right now, floating somewhere in the skies of Scotland, you're "interacting" with gravity. We can see this happening, and we test it every time anything falls to the floor. We know it has to do with weight, and magnetic fields. Again, 950 pieces of the puzzle are in place.

@ anonymous: You say there is no way of interacting with (the Christian) God, yet millions of Christians do it on a daily basis through prayer, (I am going on the assumption that you do not believe he exists here so forgive me if I am completely wrong on that assumption) I understand that if you do not believe in his existence then miracles simply do not exist or occur but for Christians they do. so when we pray - and one occurs - or prayers or otherwise answered - or whether the answer is no and nothing happens. Even if its just a feeling of peace within our soul - it is an interaction between us and God. We feel it as much as we do gravity, or the wind in our face.

It is like saying conscience doesnt exist just because a psychopath does not have one, or after time ignoring it - it stops working...

* or prayers are otherwise answered - or whether the answer is no (sorry doing too many things at once)

MF: Please define "interacting," because speaking to a God with no response (or a response that can be explained by natural means) is not using the word in a way in which I'm familiar.

It is natural to a Christian. Just because it is not natural to you does not mean it is natural to you. Running around naked as an adult is natural to some people is perfectly "natural" to some people and not to others