Being superstitious is not limited to believing in the supernatural, but everyday things that most of us do not think about on a regular basis until we are confronted with a situation that has us remembering something, probably from childhood, that we were told we should never do. I can recall my mother telling me about walking beneath a ladder, or opening an umbrella indoors. To this day, I never do either. Not that I’m afraid of having something bad happen to me, it’s just become a practice.
Believers are enchanted somehow when they find a scientist that affirms their delusions. It’s not very common, as most scientists are not actually believers so finding someone that has become an apologist and uses the same old debunked arguments atheists have had to respond to for decades.
Why do people seem to need religion? I would call that a question of the ages. Of course, if we ask anyone who is a believer, whether they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc., they may have a variety of answers to the question. Overall, I think it’s more of a tradition. Their parents, grandparents, and even before were that religious and it is simply something they were taught as small children to accept.
As many current atheists, I used to be a person of faith. When I left that behind, I wondered what it was that ever made me into a beiever in the first place. I was never forced as a child to go to church, read the bible, or pray. My mother on ocassion used to go to church, but my father never, ever did. So what was it that caused me, and others I knew of like upbringing to suddenly decide that we were going to believe in something that wasn’t part of our experience to that point?
I recently read an article that caused me to pause. It is an essay in Quillette that tries to explain how and why people seem to be drawn to the spiritual even as we leave traditional religion behind. I don’t disagree that yes, more and more people are leaving the traditions of their parents and grandparents behind, and yes, there are people that want to believe in something, and gravitate to other forms of what I refer to as mumbo-jumbo, but it was one paragraph that specifically caught my attention.