Banishing Superstition

Would the world be better off if we banished superstition?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/21/us-china-religion-idUSBRE93K02D20130421?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

Well I guess we can’t be surprised that communist China wants to banish superstition. And that they consider Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism superstition.

But China has been at this a long time, and still no complete success. So capitalism has come into China, and China has been booming. And with capitalism comes religion. In other words from freedom springs ‘superstition,’ or religion.

Still, with only 100 million out of 1.3 billion still religious China has done a good job against “the opiate of the masses.”

But seems with prosperity comes religion. What an oddity that religions that eschew financial quests should prosper along with financial prosperity.

Can China prosper without religion? Time will tell. They haven’t done very well with their social engineering of only one child. What makes them think they can social engineer religion?

Seems to me communism is a cult that can’t stand any semblance of competition.

Should governments be allowed to banish or promote religion?

I think banishing religion is so important in Marxism because basically The State is the new God. They don’t want any competitors, you see.

flannel----religion does not necessarily mean superstition…

If you banish superstition, no one will be able to believe anything at all.
Current quantum physics is entirely based upon literal superstition, the “Standard Model”.

What they actually want to do is merely make Secularism the new religion without calling it a religion and get rid of those that are called “religion”.

So quantum physics, or science, is the opiate of the masses?

Superstition is a part of imagination. What happens if that part is fully suppressed in a future generation? Can you squash just part or will it stop all or warp it? I think perhaps superstition is needed for the species to evolve.

China is more committed towards Capitalism than the US

V—What is your position on this question?

I was listening to physicist Lawrence Krauss on the radio this morning. He said, “I don’ t write things to attack God because I don’ t think God’ s important enough to attack, frankly. I think what is amazing is understanding reality. Then this need for belief in myths and superstition will go away. And that’ a good thing. The scriptures, the books of the world’ s great religions were written by people who didn’ t even know the Earth goes around the Sun. How can they know anything about the world that’ s sensible?” Seems he would applaud China’s goals.

I’m more sympathetic to the views of agnostic physicist, Marcelo Gleiser who when asked if he thought it was a spiritual position, to say that ultimately the universe is unknowable in some final sense, that there will always be a mystery to it?

ttbook.org/book/transcript/trans … ng-nothing

We are hardwired to be curious. Evolution has created insatiable curiosity to guarantee the prime directive: survival. We need to KNOW - everything. Early man’s curiosity was a necessity. He had to be aware of his surroundings constantly to survive. Obviously, we have gone far past that, and we use and abuse our curiosity badly. Superstition was the precursor of religion as we invented explanations for all that we could not know. For all the comfort brought by superstition and religion, it has also brought great evil and misery. Seeing either or both fade away would be good for humankind. But that leaves us with our built-in curiosity, and if there is anything that keeps us wanting and trying to know, it is that. Is that the foundation of spirituality? Perhaps. But seeing curiosity as our communion with the universe wouldn’t be a bad thing.

let anything happen! we/you dont have the right to tell others what to do or believe etc.

dont let it have power over others; because we/you dont have the right to tell others what to do or believe etc.

Hard to say. Banishing superstition isn’t a bad idea on its face. But methinks “superstition” in this case is a euphemism … as a cover to banish religion.

Let’s tell our kids the cold hard science as we know it. We tell them they work their asses off all their lives, get some happiness, some possessions then die peacefully if they are lucky, horrifically if they are not. Dictate to them what they are to do with their lives. School careers all nothing but usefull knowledge and work to benefit society.
Sounds good huh? Think it will work that way ever? Take away Santa and the afterlife you will have depressed sentient beings that can kill easily without remorse or guilt. Ethics and morals are essentially superstitions. Dreams , imagination, hope faith beliefs are all superstitions of sorts.

I think we need a definition of superstition.
And even if it would be good to not be superstitious as a species, this does not necessarily entail that banishing superstition would be positive.
But I don’t think it either can be banished or anyone is walking around without it.

Seems to be, certainly online.

I’m not quite certain what the actual premise is, but if the premise is to remove human spirituality; good luck with that.
Here’s your ice-pick, there’s 7 billion noses to jam it up and sever out the limbic system from being part of the human species’ neurological function; get to work.

But aside from this, I think it’s foolish to assert a wipe-out of such.
We don’t actually yet understand how human spirituality systemically functions physiologically yet.
The only thing we have, in the West, are assertions to be rid of any irrational system on the face of it without any interest in systemically understanding it.

We have a massive hole in our knowledge regarding how people imbue experiences with special meaning and reverence, and by that I mean specifically, not conceptually.

It’s one thing to be against political fusion with human spiritual motive, and that is typically the primary point of spite and frustration for proponents against human spiritual enterprise.
However, it is entirely another, as a result of these political occurrences, to demand that all humans everywhere stop being spiritual about how they experience life.

Am I saying that we should allow people to neglect public health for spiritual emotions?
Not really.

But what I am saying is that the call to banish all spirituality from humanity is incredibly unlikely on the face of our neurological markup, and furthermore rather short-sited because we don’t even yet understand whether or not the functions conducted by adherents of spiritual practices could yield objectively functional toolsets for people by observation of neurological reaction to practices.

We have some work being done, and those bodies of work continue to indicate that such is entirely possible.
This doesn’t mean that we have to accept the dogmatic metaphysical assertions that go along with many spiritual practices, but it does mean that there are practices which have observable neurological results that could be borrowed for their usefulness; as well as simply teach us more about how the human brain and body functions.

If, in some magical manner, you could flip a switch and turn off human spirituality world-wide, all of that possibility of learning and any gain possible from understanding the systemic function of these practices, would disappear forever.

I don’t think that sounds like a good trade off, especially since it wouldn’t remove much about the world’s problems.
The reason we have critical problems in the world has more to do with the nature of why we continually produce political systems as a species and how we are subject to imbuement of our limbic system to convictions - spiritual or not.

A patriot is just as much a problem as a religious adherent.

Jayson, how did banishing superstition turn into banishing spirituality? Are you equating the two?

Why should there be a ban on either superstition or religion? Superstition loses it’s power with education and critical thinking. Religion loses in the same way. There is no need for banishment. Let both wither away as humankind awakens to the lack of need for either. It has nothing to do with spirituality. How we will express spirituality in the future cannot be known but we’ll come up with something. Hopefully, that something will be a bit more benign than what we experience now.

Well, it’s like I said at the opening, I wasn’t really sure what was being pushed forward in the idea of “superstition”, but decided to respond to it assuming the somewhat pseudo-tangent the thread was heading about removing religion or spirituality (such as the post above me discusses).

If that’s not the discussion, then I retract and apologize; it’s rather confusing in the thread, reading through though.

Uhh…

What makes Capitalism synonymous with Freedom?

So the census’ may say

When the poor become rich they realize that wealth itself is not fufilling.

I don’t believe any Nation can.

Leftists naivitay, lets see how much longer they pretend to be Communists.

It can’t, it can’t stand reality either.

Thats up to the Govenments and their Citizens.