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25/02/2005

Treating Superstition

Treating Superstition


Since I am a Catholic I only recently understood the issue of basing Protestant Christianity only on the Bible. This was a response to having huge numbers of superstitious people basing their beliefs on tradition. They would pray to saints using rituals that were not described in the Bible hoping for miracles. Martin Luther and others objected to religion that was not based on facts. And, facts in the eyes of these leaders could only come from the Bible.

Of course there is quite a bit of ritual in Catholic services that is not explicitly from the Bible and these things were created in a response to a need to build a relationship with God. They are passed down by tradition. I don't know if any protestant Christians pray the Rosary or the Stations of the Cross. Of course you don't need these things to be part of your faith, but they are just another way to build a closer relationship with God.

Jesus went out to the Mount of Olives to pray when he needed strength. He didn’t go into the Synagogue or the Temple to find this strength. Some people today go to quite natural places to find peace and tranquility, but it would be highly unusual for most people to pray on a mountain today when they needed strength. Most people choose to go to a place of worship. Going to a place of worship on days other than the Sabbath is also a tradition that is not demonstrated in the Bible, but it helps build a relationship with God. Catholics could attend church every day of the year if they choose to. This could be used as a superstitious crutch to assure unsure people in times when they are seeking strength. But maybe this is exactly the medicine that these people need.

If we worry about superstition, then we should worry that a place of worship is given more importance than a mountain. But, believing that a mountain is a more important place than a place of worship would also reflect a superstition. The truth must be that no place is more important than any other place, so we should just find the time to pray and not worry about the place.

However, if we worry about superstition we need to examine the whole idea of placing complete faith in a book that does not agree completely with the observations of the world in which we live. The Bible tells us that the world is surrounded completely by water. The firmament above us prevents the water from spilling down on us. Obviously this is wrong and NASA has proven it wrong on every space fight. Even if we were to say that the firmament was billions of light years away I believe that there is no water on the outside of the Universe.

The point is that God gave us the world around us as well as the senses to observe this world. Based on these gifts of God we can determine quite a bit about the Earth and the Universe that we inhabit. If we want to understand the moral lessons of the Bible then we must understand that the Bible gives us clues to how we should live, but the world around us gives us the clues to how the world was created and how it has changed over time. Jumping to the conclusion that the Bible tells us everything puts us back into the pre-reformation basis of faith by superstition.





12:13 Posted in Religion | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this | Tags: religion

Comments

Overall I agree with this post, but I want to firm up two points. I think you are on the right track, as both errors are Protestant deviations (which many American Catholics have, because of the Protestant traditions in this nation).

You say

"The Bible tells us that the world is surrounded completely by water. The firmament above us prevents the water from spilling down on us. Obviously this is wrong and NASA has proven it wrong on every space fight"

It is no more wrong than saying Jesus's "living waters" speech is incorrect, because science has yet to demonstrate the existence of any beast composed exclusively of water.

Genesis is part of the Bible, so it is part of the Divine Tradition. But it makes no sense to examine Traditions apart from their context. Would the storyteller who spoke of "the waters above and the waters below" have meant "two liquid seas composed primarily of molecules consisting of an oxygen atoms that shares certain electrons with two hydrogen atoms?" Possibly -- that's one explanation. Certainly it's so hard to get into that mind that the speaker obviously meant that, and so is "obviously" proven incorrect, is strange.

Second

"Jumping to the conclusion that the Bible tells us everything puts us back into the pre-reformation basis of faith by superstition."

This is oddly worded. Are you arguign that pre-Reformation Europe believed that "the Bible tells us everything"? That's strange, as a Protestant cry was "Sola Scriptura!" ("Only the Scriptures!"), because they believed the Church was too interested in other sources of knowledge (Divine Tradition, Aristotlean sciences, etc). Or are you saying that the Reformation led to a clear decrease in superstition (odd, as much of your post talks of modern superstitions -- not to mention that belief if Witchcraft took off post-Reformation).

Last, a question: what do you mean by "superstition"?

Posted by: Dan | 26/02/2005

Dan:

You are missing the point here. If you believe that there is a firmament and water surrounding the earth, then you are believing in somethjing that is not "real." This is superstition. If you believe this is a metaphor, then you are allowing metaphor into the interpretation of the Bible. This is fine for those who accept the Bible this way. Metaphor can be used to explain quite a number of things in the Bible and still keep it consistent.

However, to disbelieve what is observed in the universe in favor of what is written in the Bible is superstition.

Posted by: Dr. Forbush | 27/02/2005

I believe in "the waters above and the waters below." I'm not sure what it means, I don't know if it is a metaphor or if there really is something that is best described as "the waters above and waters below," but I know it's true.

We share a Catholic faith and distrust of the Protestant innovation of biblical "plain" literalism and using only the Bible to view the world ("sola scriptura"). As both of our bibles have the Book of Ruth (which contains obvious historical inaccuracies), and some of our books have translators notes /in the text/, we are well aware of the role of poetry and interpretation.

Last: what is your definition of superstition?

Posted by: Dan | 27/02/2005