Yes

Are you superstitious?

Who isn’t? How do you live your life without some superstition? Where is the joy in that? Being an empiricist from Monday to Monday. No room for some crazy is a sure way to live a boring life. I know you are dying to know some of my superstitious beliefs.

If you wear any item of clothing inside out, it means you are anticipating a good meal in the near foreseeable future. Whether this is true or not is immaterial.

Crossing someone’s shadow will lead to stunted growth. I don’t care how. Everyone believes it. I believe it. So it is true. Coming from a village with witchdoctors, if someone collects your shadow, they can cause you harm. Don’t ask me how they collect shadows. I don’t know. But we know it to be true.

I have been debating with myself whether I should believe in ghosts. Human life figures with goat legs and can go through walls. I am just waiting for some evidence to come through of a ghost spotting then I will include this in my beliefs.

Anyway, I kid. I know there could be some irrational beliefs that I have, bordering on the superstitious but I can’t think of any at the moment.

What are your superstitions?

1×1=1 Therefore god

View at Medium.com

I don’t know about you, but for me, this is the poorest kind of apologetics. I am aware men more intelligent that yours truly have used modal logic to try to demonstrate or proof the being of a god, this fellow right here is taking us for a really long ride. He tells us, with confidence, that until now, faith has not had evidence thorough enough to convince anyone that a deity has brought this universe into being. First, though, god can be anything- a computer program, a force, could be sentient being or maybe not- who knows.

How are we to get from 11111111² to the existence of a god, you ask? It’s through a specie of the argument from design. We are made to imagine a spire appearing somewhere in Mars. That several probes sent to observe this spire all arrive to the same conclusion that this spire must have been designed. This far, the same arguments that are fatal to the design argument apply here. But let’s hold here it for a moment.

Our interlocutor wants us to believe 1*1=1 because it was designed by some higher intelligence. I have used 1*1=1 instead of 11111111² to make the point that this argument is really weak. Am sure, Neil will agree, that as far as math is concerned, 1*1=1 regardless of the planet we are in. That 11111111² gives us 12345678987654321 is not different from the fact that we get 1 when 1*1. And if you find this beautiful, who am i to stop you, besides, beauty, they say depends on the beerholder.

Maybe I am missing something.

In other interesting news, this Nigerian has decided to tackle superstition in his home country head on. I do hope he manages to stay out of jail for much longer. He, really, is the mad man in the market who has killed god.

if only….

we had such men as Cassius, though of an ill temper, but critical, we would have made quite some strides against all superstition. In an address to Brutus, he had this to tell him

It is the opinion of our sect[ Epicurian philosophy] that not all that we feel or see is real and true;but that sense is a most slippery and deceitful thing, and the mind yet more quick and subtle to put the sense in motion and affect it with every kind of change upon no real occasion of fact; just as an impression is made upon wax; and the soul of man, which has itself both what imprints and what is imprinted on, may most easily, by its own operations, produce and assume every variety of shape and figure.

[..] It is its nature to to be ever in motion and its motion is fantasy or conception.

[…]But that there should be any such things as supernatural beings, or if there were, that they should have human shape or voice or power that can reach us, there is no reason for believing, though I confess I could wish that there were such beings, that we might not rely upon our arms only and our horses and our navy, all which are numerous and powerful, but might be confident of the assistance of gods also, in this our most sacred and honourable attempt.

Cassius to Brutus in Plutarch Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

When even the b…

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast doubt upon the validity of that superstition.

Observations by Mark Twain on the endurance of superstition in the ages and I agree with him.