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Atheists more likely to believe in superstitions

S

Sniffles

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Well well well.....so much for the argument that religion is only for savage idiots!

Look Who's Irrational Now
By MOLLIE ZIEGLER HEMINGWAYArticle'


"You can't be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you're drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god," comedian and atheist Bill Maher said earlier this year on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien."

On the "Saturday Night Live" season debut last week, homeschooling families were portrayed as fundamentalists with bad haircuts who fear biology. Actor Matt Damon recently disparaged Sarah Palin by referring to a transparently fake email that claimed she believed that dinosaurs were Satan's lizards. And according to prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins, traditional religious belief is "dangerously irrational." From Hollywood to the academy, nonbelievers are convinced that a decline in traditional religious belief would lead to a smarter, more scientifically literate and even more civilized populace.

The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won't create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that's not a conclusion to take on faith -- it's what the empirical data tell us.

"What Americans Really Believe," a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.
....

....Surprisingly, while increased church attendance and membership in a conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal beliefs, higher education doesn't. Two years ago two professors published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that, while less than one-quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches, the figure jumped to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students.....

Read the entire article here:
Look Who's Irrational Now - WSJ.com

Of course numerous other sociological studies have shown this connection between irreligion and superstitions.
 

ajblaise

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If you count their belief in Christianity to be a superstition, they are much more superstitious.
 

Bella

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God out = junk in.

*waits for boulders to hit already fractured skull*
 
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Sniffles

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If you count their belief in Christianity to be a superstition, they are much more superstitious.

Of course to make such an argument exposes your utter ignorance on the matter of the nature of religions altogether.
 

ajblaise

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Of course to make such an argument exposes your utter ignorance on the matter of the nature of religions altogether.

How so? We are all aware of the supernatural nature of most religions.
 

ajblaise

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Belief in the supernatural isn't based on reason or knowledge, you have to have faith. Superstition is a belief not based on reason or knowledge.
 
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Sniffles

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In certain circumstances, yes they can seem very much alike. But that's still different than saying that superstition and religion are alike in their very natures.

That's just like saying that religion is simply about attributing everything to the mere will of God. That's not religion per se, but the perspective of Occasionalism - which is rejected in many religious traditions(like mine for example). Just like not all religions insist upon Fideism, nor embrace a literalist approach to holy texts, nor a miminalist approach to faith.

To do so means you're operating on a rather overly simplistic definition of religion - which exposes your unawareness of the vast complexity involved in the topic.
 

Bella

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Could you put it like this: Supernatural pertains to that which is not of the physical world while superstition too pertains to that which is not of the physical world but with fear added to it.
 

ajblaise

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Could you put it like this: Supernatural pertains to that which is not of the physical world while superstition too pertains to that which is not of the physical world but with fear added to it.

I guess. But superstition isn't always about fear.
 
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Sniffles

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Belief in the supernatural isn't based on reason or knowledge, you have to have faith. Superstition is a belief not based on reason or knowledge.

Faith is the first step, but one must ultimately seek to understand that faith better through reason. As St. Anslem of Canteburry famously remarked, "Credo ut intelligam"(I believe so that I may understand).

Pope Benedict XVI addresses this issue very well in Introduction to Christianity, that belief in the mystery of the supernatural does not mean one can embrace any nonsense made in the name of that mystery. If you do that, then faith and religion look like utter nonsense. Faith is the foundation from which a rational understanding of things must precede from.

This does not contradict logic at all, in fact logic itself is based upon faith as well. How can one adhere to the laws of non-contradiction without some form of faith.
 

ajblaise

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But isn't it usually believing/doing something to prevent something else from happening.
This is a question not an argument.

It's usually about believing/doing something to prevent something, but some times it's about wanting something to happen. Like having a lucky penny or rabbits foot for good luck.
 

Bella

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It's usually about believing/doing something to prevent something, but some times it's about wanting something to happen. Like having a lucky penny or rabbits foot for good luck.

Oh yes, I forgot about those.
But if I think about it, that almost is fear too, because you think that by not doing those things a certain something won't happen. Sort of reversed.
 

ajblaise

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Oh yes, I forgot about those.
But if I think about it, that almost is fear too, because you think that by not doing those things a certain something won't happen. Sort of reversed.

Yeah you could think about it like that. Most human actions can be related to fear in some way.
 

ajblaise

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Faith is the first step, but one must ultimately seek to understand that faith better through reason. As St. Anslem of Canteburry famously remarked, "Credo ut intelligam"(I believe so that I may understand).

Pope Benedict XVI addresses this issue very well in Introduction to Christianity, that belief in the mystery of the supernatural does not mean one can embrace any nonsense made in the name of that mystery. If you do that, then faith and religion look like utter nonsense. Faith is the foundation from which a rational understanding of things must precede from.

This does not contradict logic at all, in fact logic itself is based upon faith as well. How can one adhere to the laws of non-contradiction without some form of faith.

I'm going to paraphrase a quote I read a while ago from some Pope:

"With faith, one need not think"

There a really informative book on the subject, called: The Fall Of Reason. (I think that's what it's called)
 

Bella

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I'm going to paraphrase a quote I read a while ago from some Pope:

"With faith, one need not think"

There a really informative book on the subject, called: The Fall Of Reason. (I think that's what it's called)

ajblaise, I think that is what people think, true faith equals some state where the mind gets by-passed, and if that is the case I don't blame the world for looking at Christianity/faith/God with disgust. It's a pity though that people have put words in God's mouth.

Note to moderator: I'm not turning this into a God thread. For realz ;)
 
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