What Do People Believe?
As a kid I always went camping with my grandparents, and of course we always had a camp fire. We would gather around the fire, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows. There was something about that fire that we loved, but it usually got us in trouble. We would get bored while we were sitting there so, we would start playing in the fire. We would do anything that would get us closer to the fire. As much as we loved playing in the fire, my grandma only had to say one thing to stop us. Her famous words to us were if you play with fire you are going to pee in the bed. When we would question her about it she would say that is what Granny Black said.
Granny Black was my great grandmother, the patriarch of our family, and she knew everything. So, we were not going to doubt what Granny Black said. Plus if it was really true about peeing in the bed I didn’t want my uncle to make fun of me. I knew he would run and tell everyone how I was a bed wetter. I trusted Granny Black, and if she said playing with fire was going to make me wet the bed I was not going to take the chance. To understand the influence of superstitions in our lives, we must have a clear meaning of the word, and how it is connected to religion as well as how it affects its believers.
Certainly there have been many disputes about religion and superstitions, is there a connection between the two? A system of beliefs, practices or values that someone lives by monitored by a spiritual leader could be classified as a religion. Irrational beliefs that the future is made by unrelated events or the trust in magic could be classified as a superstition. In both superstition and religion people are suppose to stay away from certain things, and perform other actions to ensure good luck or a place with a higher power. The difference with the two is that with religion cannot be disproved, because it makes deeper claims to meaning rather than temporal consequence. We...