HW1: RELIGION VS. SUPERSTITION (Article1)

Religion or Superstition? Why do you think this two are competing with each other? What are their reason behind that? We all know that religion is against to superstition because religion believes that superstition is becoming a people to be ignorant, but religion has no proof to said that but infact it is only their opinion. And as person, we have a right to respect others opinion.

According to the article that I read, not everyone who is religious is also superstitious and not everyone who is superstitious is also religious. A person can faithfully attend church services all their life without giving a second thought to a black cat walking in front of them. On the other hand, a person who completely rejects any religion whatsoever may consciously or unconsciously avoid walking under a ladder — even if there is no one on the ladder who might drop something.This means that religion and superstition is different from each other. 

    Furthermore, there is also the appearance of a desire to provide meaning and coherence to otherwise random and chaotic events. If we get hurt in an accident, it is might be attributed to a black cat, to spilling salt, to failing to pay sufficient honor to our ancestors, to performing the appropriate sacrifices to the sprits, etc. There seems to be a genuine continuum between what we tend to call “superstition” and the ideas in animistic religions. In both cases, people are expected to avoid certain actions and perform other actions in order to ensure that they do not fall victim to the unseen forces at work in our world. In both cases, the very idea that such unseen forces are at work seems to stem (at least in part) both from a desire to explain otherwise random events and from a desire to have some means of affecting those events. 

        Those, these psychological benefits can explain why religion exist and why religion persist. It is all the reason of existence and persistence of superstition. We all know that superstition is not a form of religion. People have their own ways to understand the difference between the two. It can also help us to gain more useful thing because of the two.