Where Do Superstitious Beliefs Originate From?

What does a fully developed consciousness mean?

Based on the video presented, I am assuming you are not referring to something like retardation. However what about a disorder like autism... Does an autistic person display any less consciousness than an individual without a disorder?

 

Skinner didn't so much create religion, but observed superstitious behaviour in pigeons. However, I don't want to offend anyone here, just my opinion, but I do count religion as superstitious thought or belief. One answer could be that periods of uncertainty and stress can trigger superstitious thoughts and behaviours which can be explained by the reduced feelings of control when under stress. Participating in superstitious thoughts or rituals can give one the 'illusion of control'.

As Ace mentioned at the beginning, superstitious or magical thinking is noticed in mental disorders, most commonly OCD, which is an anxiety disorder. Superstitious beliefs could arise in anxious individuals with a need for control, in an effort to overcome perceived uncertainty.

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Superstitious beliefs first originated due to a gap of knowledge. Primitive people looked around and asked themselves what created them and all that was around them. As a result, due to their lack of knowledge, they created gods as an explanation. Unfortunately, primitive beliefs have the same survival rate as cockroaches: they will not die out no matter how much they are unwanted.

 

Superstitious belief can develop along the lines illustrated by your post. You see a phenomenon (superstitious belief) that you feel a need to "explain" , and you then formulate what seems to you to be a plausible explanation that you present as truth. The explanation you offer reflects your own conviction that all religion is superstitious. But you haven't dealt with the hard questions. Your explanation amounts to a "just so" story, or atheist superstition, to help you along as you whistle past the graveyard.

 

Do you not see Skinner's observations as accurate or are you suggesting superstitious beliefs are essentially different than the superstitious behavior in the pigeons that was mentioned in this post directly above yours?

If you are suggesting they are different, please elaborate? Otherwise, I am thinking that with Skinner's work in mind, superstitions likely developed in some form prior to modern human existence.

 

Skinner's observations may have been accurate, but if he characterized them as "superstition" similar to human superstition, he was making an inference that may have been unwarranted. Skinner was trying to explain superstition in humans as a conditioned reflex, and was using the behavior of pigeons to do so. Like bioassays in testing the effects of medicines and chemicals, use of laboratory animals in experimental psychology involves the assumption that animal behavior is commensurate with human behavior. Skinner's explanations of the mechanisms invloved (operant conditioning) were criticized by Staddon and Simmelhag (1971) who found that a combination of operant and classical conditioning was invloved. Skinner's results found some confirmation in humans on the British TV series Trick or Treat, although not in a tightly controlled manner. At best, "rat" (or in this case, pigeon) psychology can give us data that can be useful in further testing on human subjects. .I think it's plausible to suspect that superstitions are either the result of conditioned reflex or social learning, which is similar. The examples I'm familiar with are part of folklore or associations people make from personal experience, like a musician friend who thinks chrysanthemumsI bring here bad luck because she had bad experiences in the past when she was given them. I think it's reasonable to conclude that behavioral conditioning plays an important part in human behavior, but most humans seem more intelligent than pigeons, so attributing pigeon behavior to humans requires making assumptions.

Most certainly, Skinner didn't create "religion" in pigeons, since that involves language and a much more elaborate set of beliefs and practices about a transcendent reality that, to the best of our knowledge, is foreign to pigeons, and requires a high level of development in the neocortex. Experiments on bird-brained pigeons are unlikely to be the best source of information on this. His theory is in the same category as Freud's theory that religion is based on wish fulfillment--i.e., "only a theory". Skinner's behaviorist assumption that the "inner life" of subjects is irrelevant and that only behaviors count doom any efforts of his brhaviorist followers to understand religion to failure.

For elaboration, try Bellah, Religion in Modern Evolution.

 

In no way did I suggest, nor did I take Skinner to suggest that the superstition of pigeons and the superstition of humans operates in a similar manner. The fact I am gleaning from this however, is that superstitious traits reside in both animals, which suggests to me that it has been a common trait in the chain of evolution, prior to appearance of modern man.

To give an example which can take our egos out of it, it's fair to assume a lion and a cow both experience hunger, however the behavior and response to hunger which a lion and a cow display greatly differs.

I suppose we can't ask a pigeon what, if anything it believes when it is exhibiting apparent superstitious behavior but I am interested in FierceFlower's ideas. He was rather abrupt in his assertions so I am interested in hearing him elaborate on If superstitious beliefs arise independent from superstitious behavior?? It seems that's what he is suggesting and making it appear as if superstitious beliefs came about purely as a mental phenonema, cultivated in the mind.

 

I think you're right. Not only do we see this with religion, but also with patriotism, in which people are conditioned to feel strong emotion (or at least to feign it) at the sight of the flag, or the sound of the national anthem. Historically, this is how most of the states of antiquity were formed, under kings who either were divine or claimed authority from the gods. And this is probably the result of tendencies for which humans are hardwired through the evolutionary process. Although it is doubtful that their beliefs come directly from genetics, their cognitive programming makes it very easy for them to learn religion. You mention group pressure. A classic experiment in social psychology, the Asch experiment shows how people in groups can radically change their perceptions of reality to fit the judgments of the rest of the group. But the addition of one dissenter can dramatically reduce this pressure.

Given some of the odd beliefs held by various religions, it appears that otherwise normal, intelligent people can come to believe just about anything. Scientologists are told that humans are being spiritually harmed by the influence of thetans, ghosts of aliens brought to earth by a galactic dictator 75 million years ago. Mormons believe that God was once human, is still a creature of flesh and bone, has a throne on or near the planet Kolob, is married, and didn't create the universe. Catholics believe that during communion they literally ingest the body and blood of Jesus, even though it continues to look and taste like a wafer and wine. Of course Protestants are completely rational when we profess our belief in a pregnant virgin, the walking dead, and three persons in a single God. I am, shall we say, skeptical.

We live in a complex society in which cross-pressures from parents whose religious views differ, or peer groups whose values may challenge those of the family of origin, can create countervailing patterns of socialization. We'll never get away from it entirely, but its force is arguably weakened in comparison with traditional societies. And some of it probably remains functional, as part of the glue that holds us together in the face of strong centrifugal forces of individualism, hedonism and greed. In the face of all this, I continue to consider myself a Christian because the teachings attributed to Jesus make sense to me, ultimate meaning seems to be spiritual and my sense of "non-flukeness" in what I perceive as reality seems most consistent with "Something Big Out There" (besides space). Undoubtedly, this is influenced by my socialization, but that's inevitable for humans.