A Hindu or a Jew, a kid or an adult, catholic or a protestant, a farmer or an executive everyone is fettered with credulities. Superstition is a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge. The word is often used pejoratively to refer to supposedly irrational beliefs of others, and its precise meaning is therefore subjective. It is commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, prophecy and spiritual beings, particularly the irrational belief that future events can be influenced or foretold by specific, unrelated behaviors or occurrences. A well educated man might scorn pejoratively the idea of tagging on a superstition but he still has some of ‘em buried in him. We are bred in an atmos loaded with superstitions. And such intense are its effects that we’ve got them etched in our minds even now……..it’s the upshot of such things that we are petrified if, say, a black cat crosses our way. It is a common sight nowadays to see opulent people spending their every spare dime on ‘pundits’ for some rite b’coz they saw themselves sleeping on the pavement in a dream….or something preposterous like that.
Our world has many superstition embedded in it.
Exempla gratia:
According to legend, during the time of a plague, Saint Gregory I the Great ordered that people say "God bless you" when somebody sneezed, to prevent the spread of the disease. In Western folklore, superstitions associated with bad luck include Friday the 13th and walking under a ladder. It is also believed that if you were to step on a crack, your mother would then break her back. Often people will throw salt over their shoulder after they spill it, in order to blind the devil, who sits at your left shoulder. Breaking a mirror is considered to cause 7 years of bad luck. In
It is not bad to have superstitions. A human mind, when sees a particular out of the ordinary thing occur, it ties it to something which you did somewhere in the past and thus emerges a new superstition. You then tenaciously believe in it and pass it to others (directly or indirectly) spreading it geometrically in all directions. Each one of us develops some superstition or rather naïveté…remember Dhoni unstrap and strap his gloves before every delivery.
Do these superstitions really have some effect and are they logical in any bearing? Are they rational? Considering the rhetorical aspect of the question the consensus would be a “YES”. Greek and Roman pagans, who modeled their relations with the gods on political and social terms, scorned the man who constantly trembled with fear at the thought of the gods, as a slave feared a cruel and capricious master. "Such fear of the gods (deisidaimonia) was what the Romans meant by 'superstition'. The Roman Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful in the sense that it denotes a lack of trust in the divine providence of God and, as such, is a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states superstition "in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion".
Discussing further….take the example of probably the most famous superstition that if a black cat crosses your way bad luck’s gonna come to you. So if a black cat passes thus you stop there waiting for someone else to cross it and take away the jinx with him. One such person happens to pass and then you joyfully move on; but God is watching you and He is angry because you did bad with that man and would curse you…..thus bad luck’ll come to you. But then again if you would have passed through that cursed area God would have been happy with you because you saved any other man from the curse and would relieve you from the evil eye. So we see that whatsoever, superstitions ultimately have no effect, how a belief goes wrong just by changing your point of reference!!!
The above discussion puts a big question mark on many other superstitions. Man is very logical in his approach owing to his rational mind then what is it that forces him to make irrational conclusions?? You could see many such beliefs entrenched around you and such beautifully camouflaged that sometimes we give in to them without us being aware of doing so. I would be reiterating to say that we have some unique credulities of our own and limited to us. But there are some widespread ones too and I know it would be too bold to say but have you ever given a thought of GOD also being a superstition!!!
It is certainly possible that somewhere in the past when many men were seeing the ‘out of the ordinary’ things happen, unexpected goings-on they would have taken the shelter of some ‘Superhuman’-God, who was making all this happen….or it is also possible that (in the past) some crazy, maverick philosopher would have given his theory of God and the petty sapiens (flabbergasted and unable to interpret these outlandish things) surrendered to it (which explained all things). And this theory became so popular that it is extant even now and is certainly going to be redolent many centuries ahead. Just like those men took the shelter of God, we too take the shelter of superstitions (like eating curd before going and doing some important task insuring that it finishes properly), and then we also have a major superstition (GOD) with us and within seconds our morale is soaring. When you seriously contemplate on this theory you may find many unexplained things as explained.
This is what I thought…..you can refute if you want to on this proposition…….
