Superstition?

doctor(logic) has lately been accusing theists here and on his blog of basing our beliefs on superstition. Superstition as I understand it is defined by two major aspects: seeing a connection between events that are not naturally connected, and supposing that this connection occurs in some mystical, spiritual, or "mental" realm. Christians particularly do this, says doctor(logic), when we say that God answers prayer.

I'm writing this in a hotel room where I cannot access the Internet and review all he has said, so I have to be somewhat general about this. He has said quite rightly that we humans often make the mistake of thinking coincidences mean something when they do not. Some coincidences--even some remarkable ones--are bound to happen. The law of averages does not say that rare and unlikely events will never happen without somebody monkeying around with reality. It just says they happen rarely. On any given day, they are unlikely, but over a period of many months, some unlikely thing will happen. And when those kinds of things happen, they stand out. They enlarge themselves in our awareness, so that we think they mean something they do not. This is well established in psychological research.

So, says doctor(logic), when we pray and we see God answering, we're really misinterpreting outcomes as being connected to our prayers. What's really going is this: what happens, happens. If we pray and we don't get an answer, we gloss over that in our minds; if we get "an answer," we take note of it, it takes on a larger significance in our minds, and we mistakenly think that this is the rule rather than the exception.

I have four general answers to this. First, in many cases he is right. I think this probably happens a lot (we can chalk it up to common human foibles). Some of the events Christians ascribe as prayer answers cannot reliably be proven to have been such. (They may be prayer answers, but they cannot be proven to be.) But in order for his point to be solidly made, doctor(logic) has to be right about this in every case. That is, if he wants to show that God is not active in the world, it won't do him any good to show that God is not active in some or even most of the situations where someone thinks he is. God cannot be active in any of those situations.

Second, there are credibly attested claims of miracles--I've linked to them before, and I've described my own experiences--where the possibility of mere coincidence stretches credulity. Some of these are genuine. He can ascribe these to coincidence if he must, but he's really pushing hard to do so.

Third, I've said the greatest miracle of all is changed lives. This really happens. It has genuine statistical support well beyond the possibility of mere coincidence. So doctor(logic) and others cannot say that all belief in God's activity is superstitious. There are genuine, non-spurious correlations there.

Fourth, answered prayers are not, for many, the primary foundation of Christian belief. Many do not experience (and believe in) answered prayer until well after they decide to believe in Christ. It was that way for me. Not that there's any set rule on this: the Chinese family referenced in the link for miracles (above) believed in Christ because they saw him heal a family member right before their eyes. There's no single way that people come to faith in Jesus Christ.

Given that there are independent reasons to believe that God exists and that he works in the world, it is not necessarily the case that prayer and later events are unconnected. Superstition involves belief that events are connected when they are not; but if there is a God at work, then the events very well may be connected, by his work.

I'll throw in a fifth thing, too, which is probably going to drive poor doctor(logic) nuts, because it's going to sound like superstition again, in a way. But it isn't. When Christians pray, we are communicating with God. Sometimes something happens in that communication that assures us that God is acting or will act. When that has happened in my case, there has been an unfailing connection to answered prayer. But the point of the prayer isn't the answer; nor is it to get further proof that God exists. The point is to be with God, to have that communication as an expression of a love relationship.

doctor(logic) has jumped on his charge of superstition as a way to write off all Christian belief. But he can only write off some of it that way. Sometimes when Christians ascribe events to God answering prayer, there's no reliable way to be sure the same thing wouldn't have happened without the prayer. But for doctor(logic) or others who want to make that charge, sometimes isn't often enough. It has to be every time--which it isn't.

Posted: Wed - May 16, 2007 at 10:24 PM |

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Superstition?

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson