Superstitious Beliefs & Faith

While I have always been aware of my superstitious “beliefs,” I have never felt compelled to contend with them, or to even give them more than a fleeting thought. To be sure, I do not really believe any of them to bear any correlation to reality, so that the term “superstitious belief” is actually a misnomer in my case. However, though I do not believe any of them to be true, I continue to hold on to them.

I was a church-goer for a while, but, of course, my reasons for going to church were far from benign. I went, variously, because I didn’t want to upset the temporal powers-that-be, because I had forged friendships, and even an intimate relationship I was unwilling to relinquish, and because I was simply a veritable hypocrite. I call myself a hypocrite because I pretended to accept Christianity when I was at odds with its major tenets.

The question is this: Are my obstinately-held superstitious beliefs that much different from my past Christian pretentions, and especially that thing called faith? Don’t both superstition and faith have the same basic configuration (at least, for me, in the sense that I have misgivings about the truth and/or validity of both, but yet pretend(ed) to believe them? Doesn't faith, like superstition, call us to believe things, even in the face of contradictory evidence? Isn’t faith akin to superstition in the end?

It is instructive to note that the beliefs that are now branded superstitious were once religious.

Postscript:

On a much lighter note, let me tell you some of my superstitious belief. I relay the superstition first, and then tell you the rationale—what they say. I know, I know, they are all oh so laughable.

• Scenario: I am sitting on the living room floor with my leg(s) stretched-out in front of me.

  If I see someone walking in my direction as if they might walk across my outstretched leg(s), I quickly retract my legs. If the person happens to walk across my leg(s) before I am able to tuck them way, I usually either politely request (or strongly insist, depending on the circumstance), that they walk across the other way (to counter the effect of walking across my leg(s) in the first place).

  The Rationale (What they say): If someone walks across your legs, your (presumably yet-to-be-born) child will look like them. And, of course, you don’t want your child to look like someone else.

• When cutting my nails, I meticulously account of each piece of cut nail. I always strive to cut a single piece from every nail and ensure that no piece flies off. In the end I must have ten pieces, all of which is then flushed down the toilet.

  The Rationale (What they say): If someone steps on your nail, the person will hate you. And, of course, you don’t want people to hate you.

• Recently, I have become leery of wearing black shirts. I have about three altogether, and it’s beginning to seem as if I might never wear them again.

  I might have acquired this superstitious belief when I lost my paternal grandmother. The news of her passing had been conveyed to a relative who had convened a meeting to tell my father about the passing of his mother. My father came to the meeting in a black shirt. He later confided that he hadn’t worn that shirt in a long time, but that something moved him to select the shirt that day.

  So that incident, for me, begat a superstitious belief.

This journal also takes the form of a rant (without the postscript).

Related Pages

• The Metamorphosis of an Ambivalent Disciple
• My Beliefs
• An Empiricist's Argument for the Existence of God

11 July 2004