Many Christian churchgoers are superstitious, research reveals
Is it me or is this "research" stating the obvious?
And what is "Implicit Religion"? Does it oppose or compliment explicit religion?The research, presented at the annual conference of the Network for the Study of Implicit Religion, was carried out by the University of Wales, Bangor.
Mr Pycroft: Wonderful what we can do nowadays. Ah! I see you<br />have the machine that goes 'Ping'. This is my favourite. You<br />see we lease this back to the company we sold it to. That<br />way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the<br />capital account. [They all applaud.]
no it isn't. what they mean by superstition is the various folk beliefs of touching wood, throwing salt over your shoulder etc. which the judeo-christian tradition insists is complete bollocks.Originally Posted by Mr Pycroft
although many people call belief in a god superstition, that doesn't fit with the definition: "A Superstition is the irrational belief that future events are influenced by specific behaviors, without having a causal relationship." (from wikipedia)
And you define prayer how?
There was going to be some blurb here, but some bastard nicked it!
prayer would be appealing to a higher force to intercede for you and do something.
if that higher force existed, that would make sense.
the definition of superstition is "the irrational belief that future events are influenced by specific behaviors, without having a causal relationship."
belief in a higher power may well be irrational, but it's not superstition.
There is no evidence that prayer has any influence on future events, in fact I believe there have been studies done which show that it doesn't. Therefore there is no causal relationship between prayer and influence of future events. So believing that prayer will affect future events is, by definition, an irrational belief that future events will be influenced by a specific behavior (i.e., prayer), without any causal relationship. It thus fits the above definition of superstition.
There was going to be some blurb here, but some bastard nicked it!
the definition of superstition has nothing to do with whether it actually happens or not.
superstitious people believe that there is no causal relationship to what happens. not they believe it despite there being no causal relationship.
people who pray believe that their prayers definately affect what happens (via higher powers). superstitious people believe that if they do something it will give them luck in general, not that doing it will make them win the lottery.
I refuse to consider the views of anyone who cannot spell definitely. Particularly when that person has already used definition in the same post and a spell checking tool is provided, free of charge. :P
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