Superstition is a form of pseudo-religion, a degenerate or distorted form of religion. But what exactly is it and how does it differ from genuine religion? Let's start by asking what sorts of item are called superstitious. There are (at least) superstitious beliefs, practices, and people. Perhaps we should say that a person is superstitious if he habitually harbors superstitious beliefs and engages in superstitious practices. Since practices are underpinned by beliefs, perhaps we can make some progress by trying to define 'superstitious belief.'
Go back to my example of the plastic dashboard Jesus icon. The hunk of plastic has both physical and representational properties. But properties of neither sort induce in the hunk any causal powers of the sort that are relevant to the prevention of automotive mishaps. Now if the motorist believes to the contrary, then he is superstitious -- this seems to be an exceedingly clear paradigm case of superstition -- and part of what makes him superstitious is that he harbors erroneous beliefs about the causal workings of nature. So it seems that part of the definiens of 'superstitious belief' is
1. an erroneous belief about the casual structure of nature.
If (1) is a necessary condition of a belief's being superstitious, then the mere belief that God exists or that unembodied/disembodied souls exist is not superstitious. Obviously, the belief that there are entities transcendent of nature needn't involve any false beliefs about nature. We have to avoid the mistake of identifiying superstitious beliefs with beliefs about the supernatural. That would be on a par with the mistake of thinking that religion just is superstition.
But (1), though necessary, is not sufficient. For not every erroneous belief about nature's workings is a superstitious belief. When I was a young child I got it into my head that my left arm had to be stronger than my right arm because, being right-handed, I used my right arm more and my left arm less with the result that the power of the left arm was preserved while the power of the right arm was reduced. My childish belief was 'logical' in way, but empirically false. Flexing a muscle is not like flexing a piece of metal. The former typically strenghtens, the latter typically weakens. But there was nothing superstitious about my false belief. A second example is the gambler's fallacy which, though sometimes classified as a superstition, is not one by my lights. So it looks as if we need to add a second necessary condition along the lines of
2. That makes reference to a supernatural agent.
Thus in the case of the dashboard Jesus what makes the belief superstitious is not the attribution to a hunk of plastic as a mere hunk of plastic of causal powers it cannot possess; it is the attribution of such powers to a hunk of plastic that is also iconic or representational, the item represented being a supernatural agent. If the icon were melted down into a non-representational blob, then the superstitious motorist would presumably no longer consider it causally efficacious in warding off danger.
But now it appears that our two necessary conditions are not jointly sufficient. I am assuming that superstition is a form, but not the only form, of pseudo-religion. (Idolatry and blasphemy may be other forms.). As a form of pseudo-religion, superstition is a degenerate or corrupt or distorted form of genuine religion. Now suppose our motorist is a member of a Satanic cult and has on his dashboard an icon that represents some demon or maybe the head honcho of demons, old Mephistopheles himself. And suppose our satanist believes that the presence of that icon (made of the molded excrement of a sacrificed cat) will protect him from the dangers of the road. Then both (1) and (2) will be satisfied without the satanist's belief being superstitious. So I add a third necessary condition:
3. and involves a corruption or distortion of a genuine religious belief.
Example. A kid makes the sign of the cross as he steps up to the plate in a baseball game. If the kid believes that the gesture will increase the likelihood of his connecting with the ball, then he has an erroneous belief about natural causation. But that is not enough to make his belief superstitious. Nor is it enough if we add the reference to a supernatural agent. We need to add the third condition. The genuine religious belief being distorted here is the belief that one's spiritual salvation depends on right relation to God, a right relation that can be secured only via the mediation of Jesus Christ. This genuine religious belief may be false but it is not superstitious: it does not involve any erroneous beliefs about the causal structure of nature. The distortion consists in the invocation of Jesus and his self-sacrifice for a paltry mundane self-serving and ego-enhancing purpose having nothing to do with salvation.
This seems to do the trick. My claim is that my three conditions are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for a belief's being superstitious. Counterexamples anyone?
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