Is all religion and supersticion irrational?

[Davin]

If you lack a religious perspective can you be superstitious? Why not? If you "believe" that buying a lottery ticket every Tuesday and betting the same numbers will affect your life in a positive manner (either through a winning ticket or through the lack of negative occurrences BECAUSE you bought the ticket - OCD behavior - I must do this or a bad thing will happen) is that kind of superstition only limited to the religiously inclined?

Yes I agree, you can be superstitious without being religious.

Is "belief in something without absolute proof" an "irrational" state of mind?

No, if we waited for absolute proof then we would never get anywhere.

How would new attempts at anything be accomplished without the hope (read belief) that the outcome will be positive?

I'm a little confused with what you're saying. It doesn't take belief to ask "what if" it only takes an open creative mind. You don't have to commit in any way to the "what if" in order to test for it. You don't have to believe in something to get a positive result from a test, just as a belief that something is true doesn't guarantee that you'll get a positive result. So belief holds no value on testing out what is unknown.

Did Columbus sail off into the horizon under an irrational assumption that he would NOT fall off the edge? He had no absolute proof but he did know of stories of those who did not return as well as those who did.

Who was being irrational? Columbus for seeing if he could find a faster route to Asia by going where people thought the edge of the Earth was? Or the people believing it was the edge of the Earth without ever having seen an edge of the Earth? Exploring is almost always more rational than not exploring because you think you already know what's there (or not there in this case).

This feels like a teeter-totter equally weighted on both ends.

For the reasons I gave earlier in this thread and this response; I don't think that the weights are equal.

[elliebean]

If you hold a religious perspective then it is NOT superstition...

Why?

[Genesis]

Well, I'm a Pantheist and I also happen to be very spiritual.  I 'm also an eclectic pagan, but I'm not superstitious or irrational, I would say.  My studies and my meditations and my affirmations make life more enjoyable and I have a deep reverence for the universe.  But at the same time, I don't believe in an afterlife, or magick spells or anything of that nature.  Just symbols, symbols, and more symbols, and a practice that makes me feel closer to the universe and other living things.

/shrug