superstition

87:5.14It was not merely out of cu­rios­ity that the an­cients sought to know the fu­ture; they wanted to dodge ill luck. Div­ina­tion was sim­ply an at­tempt to avoid trou­ble. Dur­ing these times, dreams were re­garded as pro­phetic, while ev­ery­thing out of the or­di­nary was con­sid­ered an omen. And even to­day the civ­i­lized races are cursed with the be­lief in signs, to­kens, and other su­per­sti­tious rem­nants of the ad­vanc­ing ghost cult of old. Slow, very slow, is man to aban­don those meth­ods whereby he so grad­u­ally and painfully as­cended the evo­lu­tion­ary scale of life.

88:2.7In olden times the fe­tish word of au­thor­ity was a fear-in­spir­ing doc­trine, the most ter­ri­ble of all tyrants which en­slave men. A doc­tri­nal fe­tish will lead mor­tal man to be­tray him­self into the clutches of big­otry, fa­nati­cism, su­per­sti­tion, in­tol­er­ance, and the most atro­cious of bar­barous cru­el­ties. Mod­ern re­spect for wis­dom and truth is but the re­cent es­cape from the fe­tish-mak­ing ten­dency up to the higher lev­els of think­ing and rea­son­ing. Con­cern­ing the ac­cu­mu­lated fe­tish writ­ings which var­i­ous re­li­gion­ists hold as sa­cred books, it is not only be­lieved that what is in the book is true, but also that ev­ery truth is con­tained in the book. If one of these sa­cred books hap­pens to speak of the earth as be­ing flat, then, for long gen­er­a­tions, oth­er­wise sane men and women will refuse to ac­cept pos­i­tive ev­i­dence that the planet is round.

86:6.5Each pass­ing gen­er­a­tion smiles at the fool­ish su­per­sti­tions of its an­ces­tors while it goes on en­ter­tain­ing those fal­la­cies of thought and wor­ship which will give cause for fur­ther smil­ing on the part of en­light­ened pos­ter­ity.

103:9.4The mag­i­cal and mytho­log­i­cal parent­age of nat­u­ral re­li­gion does not in­val­i­date the re­al­ity and truth of the later rev­e­la­tional re­li­gions and the con­sum­mate sav­ing gospel of the re­li­gion of Je­sus. Je­sus’ life and teach­ings fi­nally di­vested re­li­gion of the su­per­sti­tions of magic, the il­lu­sions of mythol­ogy, and the bond­age of tra­di­tional dog­ma­tism. But this early magic and mythol­ogy very ef­fec­tively pre­pared the way for later and su­pe­rior re­li­gion by as­sum­ing the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of super­ma­te­rial val­ues and be­ings.

149:2.10As Je­sus min­gled with the peo­ple, they found him en­tirely free from the su­per­sti­tions of that day. He was free from re­li­gious prej­u­dices; he was never in­tol­er­ant. He had noth­ing in his heart re­sem­bling so­cial an­tag­o­nism. While he com­plied with the good in the re­li­gion of his fa­thers, he did not hes­i­tate to dis­re­gard man-made tra­di­tions of su­per­sti­tion and bond­age. He dared to teach that catas­tro­phes of na­ture, ac­ci­dents of time, and other calami­tous hap­pen­ings are not vis­i­ta­tions of di­vine judg­ments or mys­te­ri­ous dis­pen­sa­tions of Prov­i­dence. He de­nounced slav­ish de­vo­tion to mean­ing­less cer­e­mo­ni­als and ex­posed the fal­lacy of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic wor­ship. He boldly pro­claimed man’s spir­i­tual free­dom and dared to teach that mor­tals of the flesh are in­deed and in truth sons of the liv­ing God.

150:3.2Late that evening Je­sus gave the united group a mem­o­rable talk on “Magic and Su­per­sti­tion.” In those days the ap­pear­ance of a bright and sup­pos­edly new star was re­garded as a to­ken in­di­cat­ing that a great man had been born on earth. Such a star hav­ing then re­cently been ob­served, An­drew asked Je­sus if these be­liefs were well founded. In the long an­swer to An­drew’s ques­tion the Mas­ter en­tered upon a thor­ough­go­ing dis­cus­sion of the whole sub­ject of hu­man su­per­sti­tion. The state­ment which Je­sus made at this time may be sum­ma­rized in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy as fol­lows:

150:3.31. The courses of the stars in the heav­ens have noth­ing what­ever to do with the events of hu­man life on earth. As­tron­omy is a proper pur­suit of sci­ence, but as­trol­ogy is a mass of su­per­sti­tious er­ror which has no place in the gospel of the king­dom.

150:3.42. The ex­am­i­na­tion of the in­ter­nal or­gans of an an­i­mal re­cently killed can re­veal noth­ing about weather, fu­ture events, or the out­come of hu­man af­fairs.

150:3.53. The spir­its of the dead do not come back to com­mu­ni­cate with their fam­i­lies or their one­time friends among the liv­ing.

150:3.64. Charms and relics are im­po­tent to heal dis­ease, ward off dis­as­ter, or in­flu­ence evil spir­its; the be­lief in all such ma­te­rial means of in­flu­enc­ing the spir­i­tual world is noth­ing but gross su­per­sti­tion.

150:3.75. Cast­ing lots, while it may be a con­ve­nient way of set­tling many mi­nor dif­fi­cul­ties, is not a method de­signed to dis­close the di­vine will. Such out­comes are purely mat­ters of ma­te­rial chance. The only means of com­mu­nion with the spir­i­tual world is em­braced in the spirit en­dow­ment of man­kind, the in­dwelling spirit of the Fa­ther, to­gether with the out­poured spirit of the Son and the om­ni­pres­ent in­flu­ence of the In­fi­nite Spirit.

150:3.86. Div­ina­tion, sor­cery, and witch­craft are su­per­sti­tions of ig­no­rant minds, as also are the delu­sions of magic. The be­lief in magic num­bers, omens of good luck, and harbingers of bad luck, is pure and un­founded su­per­sti­tion.

150:3.97. The in­ter­pre­ta­tion of dreams is largely a su­per­sti­tious and ground­less sys­tem of ig­no­rant and fan­tas­tic spec­u­la­tion. The gospel of the king­dom must have noth­ing in com­mon with the sooth­sayer priests of prim­i­tive re­li­gion.

150:3.108. The spir­its of good or evil can­not dwell within ma­te­rial sym­bols of clay, wood, or metal; idols are noth­ing more than the ma­te­rial of which they are made.

150:3.119. The prac­tices of the en­chanters, the wiz­ards, the ma­gi­cians, and the sor­cer­ers, were de­rived from the su­per­sti­tions of the Egyp­tians, the As­syr­i­ans, the Baby­lo­ni­ans, and the an­cient Ca­naan­ites. Amulets and all sorts of in­can­ta­tions are fu­tile ei­ther to win the pro­tec­tion of good spir­its or to ward off sup­posed evil spir­its.

150:3.1210. He ex­posed and de­nounced their be­lief in spells, or­deals, be­witch­ing, curs­ing, signs, man­drakes, knot­ted cords, and all other forms of ig­no­rant and en­slav­ing su­per­sti­tion.

86:2.3The prim­i­tive mind was log­i­cal but con­tained few ideas for in­tel­li­gent as­so­ci­a­tion; the sav­age mind was un­e­d­u­cated, wholly un­so­phis­ti­cated. If one event fol­lowed an­other, the sav­age con­sid­ered them to be cause and ef­fect. What civ­i­lized man re­gards as su­per­sti­tion was just plain ig­no­rance in the sav­age. Man­kind has been slow to learn that there is not nec­es­sar­ily any re­la­tion­ship be­tween pur­poses and re­sults. Hu­man be­ings are only just be­gin­ning to re­al­ize that the re­ac­tions of ex­is­tence ap­pear be­tween acts and their con­se­quences. The sav­age strives to per­son­al­ize ev­ery­thing in­tan­gi­ble and ab­stract, and thus both na­ture and chance be­come per­son­al­ized as ghosts—spir­its—and later on as gods.

70:11.5Self-in­ter­est es­tab­lished the taboo on killing, so­ci­ety sanc­ti­fied it as tra­di­tional mores, while re­li­gion con­se­crated the cus­tom as moral law, and thus did all three con­spire in ren­der­ing hu­man life more safe and sa­cred. So­ci­ety could not have held to­gether dur­ing early times had not rights had the sanc­tion of re­li­gion; su­per­sti­tion was the moral and so­cial po­lice force of the long evo­lu­tion­ary ages. The an­cients all claimed that their olden laws, the taboos, had been given to their an­ces­tors by the gods.

12:9.5Your re­li­gion is be­com­ing real be­cause it is emerg­ing from the slav­ery of fear and the bond­age of su­per­sti­tion. Your phi­los­o­phy strug­gles for eman­ci­pa­tion from dogma and tra­di­tion. Your sci­ence is en­gaged in the age­long con­test be­tween truth and er­ror while it fights for de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of ab­strac­tion, the slav­ery of math­e­mat­ics, and the rel­a­tive blind­ness of mech­a­nis­tic ma­te­ri­al­ism.

81:6.10Sci­ence teaches man to speak the new lan­guage of math­e­mat­ics and trains his thoughts along lines of ex­act­ing pre­ci­sion. And sci­ence also sta­bi­lizes phi­los­o­phy through the elim­i­na­tion of er­ror, while it pu­ri­fies re­li­gion by the de­struc­tion of su­per­sti­tion.

195:7.1How fool­ish it is for ma­te­rial-minded man to al­low such vul­ner­a­ble the­o­ries as those of a mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse to de­prive him of the vast spir­i­tual re­sources of the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of true re­li­gion. Facts never quar­rel with real spir­i­tual faith; the­o­ries may. Bet­ter that sci­ence should be de­voted to the de­struc­tion of su­per­sti­tion rather than at­tempt­ing the over­throw of re­li­gious faith—hu­man be­lief in spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and di­vine val­ues.

90:4.9The Greeks were the first to evolve truly ra­tio­nal meth­ods of treat­ing the sick. Both the Greeks and the Egyp­tians re­ceived their med­i­cal knowl­edge from the Eu­phrates val­ley. Oil and wine was a very early med­i­cine for treat­ing wounds; cas­tor oil and opium were used by the Sume­ri­ans. Many of these an­cient and ef­fec­tive se­cret reme­dies lost their power when they be­came known; se­crecy has al­ways been es­sen­tial to the suc­cess­ful prac­tice of fraud and su­per­sti­tion. Only facts and truth court the full light of com­pre­hen­sion and re­joice in the il­lu­mi­na­tion and en­light­en­ment of sci­en­tific re­search.