can of beans! I meant to say “a can of beans”. :smack:
More than that, I think we want things to make sense, narrative-wise. It’s more than, or maybe just a larger, all encompassing version of our pattern recognition engine noted by Superfluous. We want actions to have consequences, and be consequences of others. And we want the whole of it to fit neatly. It’s not really about answers to our questions, I think, because we don’t really care whether the answer’s the right one (consider religion. “God did it” isn’t really intellectualy satisfying an answer, is it ?)
I don’t think it’s our base state though - I reckon we are that way, because stories form the basis of our education, whether it’s the oral story of the tribe, the myths of our culture, or simply fairy tales and stories before bedtime. In a way, we’re programmed to think in story terms.
But since the world doesn’t really work that way, there’s bound to be a clash between what we expect, and what happens. Sometimes, the princess packs her bags in the middle of the night, the innocent takes a brick in the face, and the third brother fails miserably.
Since “it’s not supposed to be that way !”, we can either grow out of stories alltogether, no easy feat ; or we try to create a bigger, wider story where it is. The princess left your sorry ass because God was testing you, the innocent caught a brick because he walked under a ladder and you simply *must *have lost that one-in-a-million craps bet because you didn’t blow on the dice first this one time.
That’s also the instinct behind science: wanting to understand why things happen, and to be able to have some control over them.
I wonder if it isn’t the case that the origin of at least some superstition is the scientific instinct minus the scientific method. You do A, and subsequently B happens, and you think, “A caused B.”
I disagree: I think there’s a real distinction between superstition and religion, even a religion one believes to be false.
The difference between religion and superstition was the subject of this old thread: What distinguishes religions from standard superstitions? I don’t think I can put my thoughts on the matter better than I did in Post #32 of that thread.
Certainly, some of the denunciations of superstition that I have heard have come from religious people.
Skepticism, rationality, and a love of truth are characteristics that can be present, or absent, in both religious believers and atheists. Although, in our culture, many who are atheists came to their atheism through skepticism. If atheism/irreligion were more of a “default” belief, I suspect we’d see many people who grew up without a belief in God but with some superstitions.
I think some of the posts in this thread are conflating behavior and belief.
If I say “good luck” to someone, it’s not because I think my blessing will tip the wheel of fortune in their favor. It’s because it’s the traditional, polite, and considerate thing to do. And it’s not considerate because I think *they *believe that I can magically change their destiny, but because it may give them comfort to know that someone else is on their side, even if I’m unable to directly affect the outcome.
If I cross my fingers, it’s just another way of saying “good luck” or, in a different context, “I’ve done what I can, now it’s up to chance.”
Occasionally, but not too often, I’ll pause in conversation to knock wood, not to appeal to a nature spirit but to signify humility to the person I’m talking to. (For a lame example, someone tells me they’ve had two flat tires in the past year. I blurt out that I’ve never had a flat tire. I could be boasting about my safe driving skills or my superior automotive maintenance skills. But by knocking on wood, I signify that it’s purely by happenstance that one of us has had flat tires and the other hasn’t, without wasting all those words.)
It’s very bad luck to be superstitious.
Don’t worry - I saw what you were trying to do there 
I suppose I can understand you feeling that way after Gabriel and Hackett left, but they actually still existed as a meaningful entity for a short while after that.
Harmless behaviors like refusing to walk under ladders never hurt anyone–not even yourself, so go for it. As far as I know, there has never been a powerful Never-Walk-Under-Ladders Cult that has influenced other people or subjugated them to the point of finding it necessary to kill them (or even just bugging them by ringing their doorbells at supper-time). So go for it! Who gives a fuck?
It is a very interesting topic because there may be some measurable benefit to crossing one’s fingers sometimes vis-a-vis the amount of comfort or hope gained. This is similar to the positive effect a hug from another human can have during times of acute stress.
I am an atheist and not a finger-crosser, but I suppose there may be some irrational superstition-like behaviors that I may employ from time-to-time… though I can’t think of any right now. The interesting thing to me is— can superstition be comforting and therefore have a positive effect that can help relieve distressing feelings? And if so, can’t religion also serve that purpose? I think the short answer is yes.
The problem is that organized superstitious rituals (i.e. some religion superstitious activities) can be practiced in such a way that unjustly and negatively affect other people’s lives. When it comes to powerful, organized, mass-religious superstitions influencing non-religious people’s lives that occurs far too often, I believe. With finger-crossing etc., it’s not so much of a problem.
I’m atheist. Superstitions? Well, there’s still sports!
I find myself ordering different drinks while watching football if the Eagles are losing. I also blame TBS for cursing every team during baseball playoffs by flashing statistics on screen about a player’s attributes and then the opposite happens. Grrr…
But religion and superstition still go hand in hand. I remember learning music composition in Boston and learning about the Armonica. This instrument is still described as having a “ghostly” sound. It was banned in a German town after a child allegedly rose during a performance then keeled over dead.
Of course, there’s always the tritone, or “devil’s tone” where if a composer used a tritone, they could be executed. (!) Shit, that means that Danny Elfman would be killed just for the first two notes on “The Simpsons” theme. 
All of this is entirely superstition.
How about “Skeptic”?
Skeptics are not necessarily Athiests, and vice versa.
Many Athiests came to their position through skepticism (as already mentioned by Thudlow Boink), but it is also possible to conclude that there is no Supreme Being(s) using non-rational arguments. The term “Athiest” only applies to the position, not the means of reaching the position.
OTOH, Skeptics may believe in a Supreme Being and still be allowed to call themselves Skeptics. As long as they are satisfied that they have a rational reason for believing, they are still “Skeptics”. The term “Skeptic” applies to the means of reaching the eventual conclusion, not to the conclusion itself.
I have opened a can of beans the wrong way, and it did not lead to bad luck, but it was really hard to get the beans out.
I think people like rituals, even if they are atheists, and superstitions are a subset of rituals.
Not true. In fact, Christians are routinely criticized for saying that there are certain things that we don’t know, and that some of them are beyond our understanding.
I am a nonbeliever and I find it hard to believe that there are people with zero superstitions. They are a necessary part of our thought process. We can’t rationally figure out every single thing that goes on in the world. At some point we have to make choices based on the information at hand and that involves what I would call superstitions.
When I get dressed for a game, I wear the same socks every time - I even put them on in the same way. Do I believe that there are socks gods? No. Do I believe that my socks have some sort of effect on the game that I don’t understand. Maybe and that is why I try to repeat the same process as the last time my team won. This process is repeated by all of us thousands of times a day. Otherwise we would be paralyzed by indecision.
So, I know it is possible to not believe in gods and still be superstitious, even irrationally so. My superstitions become religion when I convince others that I have special knowledge about how socks affect sports. It becomes a real religion when I start charging for my special socks.
And yet they exist. I own no lucky charms or amulets, step on cracks in the sidewalk, there are no rituals I perform to bring myself good luck.
No, that’s magic, which is different. One of the fundamental advances in human thought was to make the distinction between magic, which is a semi-scientific approach to life based on some false assumptions (that acting on an object associated with another will act on the associated object, etc.). Religion begins when we realize that God/the gods are different - the sort of “wholly other” that (IIRC) Rudulf Otto talked about.
As long as you think you can force the divine to do what you want, you are doing magic. (No, that isn’t prayer.) Magicians charge for doing magic.
Regards,
Shodan
You will get nowhere pretending that there is any fundamental difference between “magic” or “superstition” and religion as the basis for a belief that a non-rational source interferes with otherwise uniform natural processes.
The atheist accepts naturalized epistemology for evaluating the existence of any deity which interferes with the functioning of the universe.
The person who believes the universe behaves without interference and behaves consistently is called a scientist–perhaps more accurately: someone who believes in science. Science is the process of discovering what those consistent behaviours are, and it is essentially based on a underlying presumption that they are not capricious. Things happen for a reason and the Reason is never arbitrary. In short, natural law is not violated. The person who believes the universe behaves inconsistently is called superstitious.
Every human culture to date has developed superstitions, although they are all inconsistent with one another and none have ever withstood rigorous testing for consistency. Not only are superstitions inconsistent; they are mutually exclusive for the most part. This suggests that if one set is wrong, they are all wrong, although with religion it’s a common approach for a given religion to assert that it is right and all other religions have it wrong.
I suspect that holding superstitions, or, at least behaving as if superstitions might create true cause-and-effect, is adaptive (another thread, perhaps). It’s such a universal compulsion, and it is so satisfying to see a hoped-for effect happen that is consistent with the superstition’s hypothesis.
In many ways, a scientific approach belies what we observe in our personal lives because the confirmation bias of a given superstitiously-predicted event is so strong. We cling to the superstition even when it can be shown that a particular consequence was a completely random result.
Whether you prayed for a successful lotto win or found happiness after saluting a magpie, for you personally the superstition had a powerful positive intuitive feedback in making you believe there “might be something to it.” And it is very difficult to dissuade someone from their personal experience.
For this reason, I suspect nearly all atheists behave as if various superstitions were (scientifically) real, although a much smaller percentage would ever actually defend their defend them as being anything but a convenient indulgence for fun and culture.
If religious people read James Frazer’s The Golden Bough as diligently as they read their “holy books”, they’d realise that “touching wood” for good luck is simply religion at it’s most basic form.
Anyone who bases their day to day lives around these superstitions, is just as deluded as the person who believes they are in spiritual contact with some divine creator.
I think everybody has superstitions, most of the time we just don’t realize they are there. It’s simple things we just do, and never questioned why we do them.
Superstitions are easy, and seductive. I’m an atheist, the point is I don’t believe in anything supernatural or fundamentally unexplainable by science, and I know perfectly well there is no evidence for most superstitions at all (some might just be memes that had actual use centuries ago). I know it’s irrational to believe in any of that - but even then its sometimes very hard to resist thoughts like that.
Whenever I play games that involve chance - rolling dice, drawing cards - I recognize patterns in my thoughts that basically come down to things like “okay, concentrate now, you can do this, just draw that particular card/chip/token… come on… it just worked…” - it’s very hard to resist it. We’re hardwired to do this. Whenever there’s a pattern to be found, we will find it - even if it was just chance. Friends of mine believe they can (sort of) influence dice rolls with various rituals. Shaking them in a special way. Blowing on them. Never use a die twice without a pause. Things like that. Whenever I question them how that’s supposed to work, they become sort of defensive (it’s all good fun, though), and it’s clear they - as educated, intelligent people - are in some sort of conflict there. The urge to give in and accept this intuitions is very strong.
Confirmation bias, selective memory, and an overly active pattern recognition can do the strangest things.
You are making a distinction between “acting” and “interfering” that doesn’t exist. Superstition and magic are not irrational systems; they are logically based, only on premises that are false.
If it were really the case that objects long associated with other things created links, then sympathetic magic and so forth would follow logically. Then I really could steal the hair trimmings from my enemy and put them into a doll and then burn the doll, and that would cause harm to my enemy. But that is no more “interfering” with the natural universe than turning a light switch is “interfering” - it is merely the case that sympathetic magic doesn’t work.
Somewhat the same thing with numinous religion. Superstition and magical religion believe that there are ways to compel the dieties to act on your behalf, thru ritual or by sacrificing and thereby creating an obligation for the diety to act. The next step away from magic and towards the next stage of understanding is to believe that sacrifice doesn’t necessarily force the spirits to do what you want, but is part of a process to get on their good side so they will do it anyway. The next step, and the step that the modern interpretations of the Abrahamic religions have taken, is to recognize that God/the gods are not that sort at all. You can’t bargain with God, as Jesus teaches in Matthew 4:7. C.S.Lewis expresses it by saying that the belief that you can force God to do what you want is like looking at the ocean and immediately thinking about making it into cups of tea.
You can’t make bargains with God.
Certainly that kind of thinking is still a temptation, with things like the prosperity gospel and Bible codes/divination and so on. And the continued inclusion of the Old Testament in the canon is often a source of that temptation. But modern religion of the sort I am thinking of does not believe that one can compel God to do miracles on command.
Regards,
Shodan