What Is Superstition?

[Cletus]

Good example.

[jigglepete]

"Step on a crack, break your Mother's back."

When I was in the fourth grade, I got mad at my Mom, so when I walked to school that morning, I stepped on every crack I saw...didn't work...

Hindsight? I don't know what I would have done had it worked LOL

[Standing Wolf]

Never thought of it as religious but simply the belief that a unrelated event could cause a future event to take place. No linked cause and effect.

Given that definition, it's easy then to look on most religions as "organized superstition". These are the rules, this what you're supposed to do and believe, and if you follow this path you will receive blessings in this life and spend eternity with God (or some other-Faith equivalent) in the next. Get together enough individuals with a shared superstition (or set of them) and you have a religion.

[Peter1469]

"Step on a crack, break your Mother's back."

When I was in the fourth grade, I got mad at my Mom, so when I walked to school that morning, I stepped on every crack I saw...didn't work...

Hindsight? I don't know what I would have done had it worked LOL

Me too! Except I did it in front of her.

[Chris]

Never thought of it as religious but simply the belief that a unrelated event could cause a future event to take place. No linked cause and effect.

Good way to put it, superstition is seeing cause and effect where there is none. It's nothing to do with religion.

A modern-day example of superstition would be CRT.

[Mister D]

Given that definition, it's easy then to look on most religions as "organized superstition". These are the rules, this what you're supposed to do and believe, and if you follow this path you will receive blessings in this life and spend eternity with God (or some other-Faith equivalent) in the next. Get together enough individuals with a shared superstition (or set of them) and you have a religion.

You're not just stretching things a bit. You're torturing it on the rack and leaving it for dead. lol

[Chris]

"Step on a crack, break your Mother's back."

When I was in the fourth grade, I got mad at my Mom, so when I walked to school that morning, I stepped on every crack I saw...didn't work...

Hindsight? I don't know what I would have done had it worked LOL

[Standing Wolf]

"My faith in an invisible God makes me religious. Your faith in invisible fairies and elves makes you a pagan. His faith in the invisible entities that speak to him in his head makes him insane."

Nope, no confirmation bias there.

[Mister D]

"My faith in an invisible God makes me religious. Your faith in invisible fairies and elves makes you a pagan. His faith in the invisible entities that speak to him in his head makes him insane."

Nope, no confirmation bias there.

No point either, apparently. lol

[RMNIXON]

I think the OP definition is far to narrow in a modern context. Many people who do not at all consider themselves religious can believe in crackpot causation for things they don't understand and buy into a great deal of New Age nonsense.

How many progressives believe Earth is a conscious entity "Gaia" that is punishing man for the evils of environmental destruction as just one example. How is that different than believing Lightning or Drought is caused by the Gods?