Happy Atheist Forum

It seems in general a lot of people in society, even if they're atheists, believe in things like fate, luck, meaningful coincidences etc... But is this still just as irrational as believing in a God? Btw I'm talking about supersticions, not paranormal. I don't always think it's irrational to believe in the paranormal, as I believe there's scientific explanations for a lot of it. But is it irrational to be religious and/or believe in supersticion? IMO both are irrational, being a pretty hardcore atheist... what are your thoughts? And I'd like to know, if you could name one, what do you think is the most irrational religion (most people say Christianity.. or wait.. maybe Scientology  )?

Humans are irrational.

Ironically, you can probably thank evolution for both superstitious beliefs and religion.

We're wired to notice patterns.  It's a survival mechanism.
If you notice that some predators hunt at night, but don't go into trees, then the trees are a good place to sleep.
If you notice that every time you eat a certain plant, you feel sick, you don't eat that plant... and maybe even avoid plants that look like it.
If you notice that people act strangely when there's a full moon... Ah!  There's the rub.

It's hard for us as individuals to see when a pattern may be faulty.
Our own experiences are much stronger of an influence on us than any scientific report.

... And religion?  Well, isn't being with a group safer in the wild?  Wouldn't want to be left on your own, yes/no?

When you look at it rationally, humans are just not...
JoeActor

^^ 100%

Good post.

Quote from: "jimmorrisonbabe"It seems in general a lot of people in society, even if they're atheists, believe in things like fate, luck, meaningful coincidences etc... But is this still just as irrational as believing in a God? Btw I'm talking about supersticions, not paranormal. I don't always think it's irrational to believe in the paranormal, as I believe there's scientific explanations for a lot of it. But is it irrational to be religious and/or believe in supersticion? IMO both are irrational, being a pretty hardcore atheist... what are your thoughts? And I'd like to know, if you could name one, what do you think is the most irrational religion (most people say Christianity.. or wait.. maybe Scientology  )?

I guess the key question is "What does it mean to be rational/irrational?"

ra·tion·al
â€"adjective
proceeding or derived from reason or based on reasoning: a rational explanation.


ir·ra·tion·al
â€"adjective
not in accordance with reason; utterly illogical: irrational arguments.

I used to think that I could control the weather.

It only took two times of asking it to rain, and rain coming, plus a pervasive culture of mysticism and "It won't work if you don't believe,"type thinking to convence me.
I'd say that's fairly supersititious, and yes, highly irrational. The media we feed our children is terrible in this regard... like, if you don't believe in fairies, they die

I like to think that I'm past that kind of thing now.  Haha.

Quote from: "joeactor"If you notice that people act strangely when there's a full moon... Ah!  There's the rub.

I always thought there was a scientific explanation for that one... the moon affects the tides and therefore affects water and we are made up of approx 60% water.

... don't laugh, I'm new  

I look at superstitions as a way of easing my mind.

When I was playing collegiate football, I had one undershirt that I always wore, from high school on. It was kind of ridiculous looking back, because when I wore it we won some and lost some. I played well and played poorly all the same. It obviously didn't change anything. But... it just calmed my mind to know that I had it on.

I know some guys on the team would only get their ankles taped by a certain person. They'd go through the same pre-game ritual, down to when they went to the bathroom, what order they put on their uniforms, where they sat on the bus or the plane, etc. None of this changes anything. Look at LeBron James and his throwing the powder in the air in front of the score table... doesn't change a thing, doesn't help anything, but it eases his mind, I'm sure.

Hismikeness

A couple of posts about the effectiveness of random reinforcement which relate to superstition.

Quote from: "Arthur Dent"Coolest ritual ever...

When put in a skinner box with random reward timing, pigeons will undertake superstitious rituals, consisting of rythmic headbobbing, walking in circles, jumping back and forth and even running into walls. The birds begin to associate their random meandering to a cause for the arrival of the food. Whenever the food comes, the bird hooks onto whatever motion it was doing and continues to do it until the next feeding, very much like that "lucky pair of socks" that we wore in the little league world series...

Quote from: "Tank"This question has cropped up a lot. Somebody mentioned superstition, if you look up Skinner Pigeons you'll find an interesting experiment in behavioural reinforcement. There are many examples of conditioned response behaviour, for example Pavlovs Dogs (bell = food = salivation eventually bell = salivation). Skinner use Pigeons and did a test he provided food for regular behaviour peck = grain, the control was peck = no grain, but the interesting one was peck = occasional grain. This third reinforcement proved the strongest in terms of leading to obsessive repetitive behaviour. He observed that the pigeons pecked at the food dispenser many times more in the third case (peck = occasional grain) than in the first case (peck = grain). In addition the pigeons in case three developed elaborate behaviours. If they got a grain by turning around and pecking they continued the behaviour and low and behold in due course they got another grain! So they continued to turn around before pecking and in due course this behaviour was reinforced. Does this remind anybody of the activity on preying? Sometimes you do get what you prey for so it must be working! Hence Skinner's superstitious pigeons.

Personally I have another view to add to this. Humans have developed their behaviours in part due to the survival advantages of being able to predict effect from cause. Snake = pain therefore Snake = run for it! Part of our nature is deeply affected by relating cause to effect and I would contend that where we see effect we attempt to ascribe cause. As we see cause => effect so often when we see effect = ? I.E. no cause we don't like it at a very deep level. So where does that leave us? Imagine some of our distant ancestors sitting watching the Sun go down. They would know from experience that the Sun will come back in due course. So they have knowledge but not understanding. They know the Sun will come back (the effect) but the don't understand why (the cause). Personally I think that the condition of not understanding 'why' would have caused our ancestors considerable psychological distress. Long story short I think they got over that distress by adding God into the equation to balance it. We see this behaviour in animist beliefs in isolated groups of humans that have not been exposed to missionaries of some 'better idea'.

Once you have God in the equation you have somebody who will exploit 'God' to their own advantage to achieve status within their group (I AM THE ALPHA MALE!). They will promote their concept of 'God' within their group and thus through their generations. Once one starts incorporating intent into the God figure you're on the slippery slope to religion and dogma and we all know where that goes.

Could be crap but it holds some sense for me.

Quote from: "jimmorrisonbabe"It seems in general a lot of people in society, even if they're atheists, believe in things like fate, luck, meaningful coincidences etc... But is this still just as irrational as believing in a God? Btw I'm talking about supersticions, not paranormal. I don't always think it's irrational to believe in the paranormal, as I believe there's scientific explanations for a lot of it. But is it irrational to be religious and/or believe in supersticion? IMO both are irrational, being a pretty hardcore atheist... what are your thoughts? And I'd like to know, if you could name one, what do you think is the most irrational religion (most people say Christianity.. or wait.. maybe Scientology  )?

I don't know which religion or superstition is the most irrational, but they're all irrational. For instance: most superstitions and many religious practices use the post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this), fallacy. "I prayed and he got better, so he must have gotten better from my prayer," "A black cat walked in front of me today before a ladder broke my leg, so the cat must have caused the ladder to break my leg."

The other thing with religion that makes them all irrational is that no matter what religion, one must commit at least one fallacy in order to believe in it. Fallacies are irrational. So religion is irrational. Now I'm not going off on some stupid Christian ideal that one lie makes you a liar thing here, I believe people can be rational and religious... because we're human, we aren't going to be rational all the time no matter what we try (I just don't see the point of intentionally allowing oneself to be irrational). What I'm talking about is that in order to accept a religion, the very core concept of that religion must be assumed true without sufficient evidence in order to be a follower of the religion. The thing that all theistic religions base their entire religion on is, "there is a god." Scientology is similar but without the god part, it's "there was a Xenu."

I think all other discussions about religion should be nixed until the first logical premise is confirmed: "There is a god" and then move on to the second premise more specific to the religion: "god is Yahweh," "god is Allah" or "god is the MCP." Then onto the many things that are attributed to the god, like healing the blind, killing gays with a hurricane... you know the normal "god" stuff. Until we complete the first premise, I think all that other crap is just bucket of red herrings.

Quote from: "KarmaKat"

Quote from: "joeactor"If you notice that people act strangely when there's a full moon... Ah!  There's the rub.

I always thought there was a scientific explanation for that one... the moon affects the tides and therefore affects water and we are made up of approx 60% water.
... don't laugh, I'm new  

... no laughing here (though I am allowed to snicker a bit ;-)

Here's a good article on the topic showing no correlation between the full moon and a number of things:
http://www.skepdic.com/fullmoon.html (http://www.skepdic.com/fullmoon.html)

It could be that you're just more likely to remember when something strange happens *and* there's a full moon.

As for the moon affecting us because of it's gravity, meh.
A person standing next to you has a greater gravitational pull than the moon would.

... so strange things happen when someone is standing next to you.
There!  All better,
JoeActor

very interesting article, thanks  

Is the Universe irrational? Lets take a look. Space is an ocean of many things which are in constant movements.Things that we see and things that we don't see. How are these things influences us in our lives can be stated in many ways. The different ways will depend on what that particular individual beliefs system is and or experiences. Lets say for example that you are a gambler, on the morning just as you came out of your house a cat passed by you. You bought a lottery ticket and missed the jot-pot by one number. You tell your friend it was the morning cat, it cut your luck. Your friend who is very religious tells you to go to church and light-up six candles. That will undo the passing of the morning cat and your luck will be restore once again. Another person will tell you that all you got to do is to mail some of those junk mails to restore your luck. How irrational or illogical is this? Some of those same junk mails may also bring you bad luck as well. The thing is that luck by itself is useless and so is supersticion.There are forces acting upon what you may think is luck and bad luck and it does not matter if you believe it or not. Nor can science have an explanation for it and as a matter of fact science will never have an explanation for it. All religions and supersticion are irrational due to its inherent ill-conceived nature, such as fears.

"Religion and superstition are irrational, but my beliefs aren't religious or superstitious, thus they are rational." See the logic?  

It's all "relative" or relevant :hmm:

Quote from: "CandyLiz2003"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.

Quote from: "CandyLiz2003"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.

Quote from: "CandyLiz2003"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.

Quote from: "CandyLiz2003"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).

Quote from: "CandyLiz2003"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.

Quote from: "CandyLiz2003"If you hold a religious perspective then it is NOT superstition...

Why?

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