1/8/2014 Superstition

This coming Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe, we will be discussing superstition.

Not that we are going to talk about witch doctors, primitive tribes, and other obvious illogical beliefs.

But what about top notch professional athletes that adhere to certain things to do or avoid before an important game?  The fear from a lot of us that we may "jinx" a successful streak?

Avoiding black cats on Friday the 13th or not having 13th floor in a high rise building?

Is the power of suggestion so strong that it can sway the outcome of an event just because we are influenced by that suggestion?

I once read about a Coastal First Nations faith healer who said he grew up hating faith healers because he did not believe they can heal at all.  He joined the healers with the intent of learning and revealing their scam.  In doing so, he learned the dance to chase the spirits away from the sick person and also learned the practice of sucking the disease out of the patient and let it fly away on a feather.

This involved stuffing some white feathers in his mouth while dancing, bite his own tongue to stain the feathers with blood and then blow these blood stained feathers out when he appears to be sucking the disease from the patient.

He was completely taken aback by the success from this act, both from people who believe that he actually sucked the bad blood from the patient and from grateful families thanking him for healing the patient.

The placebo effect is well documented in medical science and elaborate double blind tests for new drugs are required to make sure the new drugs are effective on their own and not just by the power of suggestion.

If the placebo effect is so powerful and easy to do, why don't we do it more often?

Maybe this is where "faith" comes in.  Don't ask why, it just works.  Trust me.

What is wrong with a lie that results in healing someone?

Is there any harm in us staying away from the 13th floor "just in case"?

For starters, the placebo effect works some of the time and not all the time and it is likely highly dependent on the trust with the person administering it.

The blind trust required can easily be abused.

Little "harmless" reading of horoscopes can bias a person's decision making for the wrong reasons.

Our ability to choose who we trust is also greatly compromised by this process.

With modern day physics being so far out from our daily experiences, the talk of us being involved in parallel universes at the same time sounded way more ridiculous than most of the claims that we normally will consider as superstition.

So we have to choose our authority carefully as to who we trust. 

Should we disregard the power of positive thinking as just superstition? 

How is maintaining a positive attitude in the face of adversity different?  If not superstition, at least somewhat naive in assessing the gravity of the situation?

Then there is religion.  How is it different from superstition?  How is faith in one religion different from faith in another religion?