Then you've either not been paying close enough attention, or not reading the same discussion threads I have.

The stay classy thing is overused.

You're also generalizing all religions, when in fact there are some religions which actively warn against superstition and miracles (Buddhism, for example). So I can see why someone might think your comment was ill-informed (and I say that as an atheist).

What he did not actually say (though we can certainly infer) is that all religious thinking (or all deeply religious thinking) is necessarily irrational thinking.

If we merely grant that much deeply religious thinking is irrational, then I see nothing inherently wrong with suggesting that people who engage in one form of irrational reasoning might be susceptible to other forms.

Instead of commenting on religion, I will wager that people who claim to be superstitious tend to buy into horoscopes and homeopathy more often then the general population. That's not an offensive statement, is it? Yet what really is the difference between astrology and other things that we describe as religions?

You realize that's what superstitions are made of, right? Fancy science words don't make you rational.

I wasn't aware that "correlation" is a fancy science word, I guess it depends on your personal background.

Of course, some people only notice data that fit their preconceived perspective, and some people have received superstitions based entirely on the words of others. I'm sure there are other exceptions too. But in my mind, the conceptual framework for understanding irrational thought is that we have these brains that are amazing pattern matching machines and we don't know how to turn them off. Once we've noticed a pattern, most of us assume it's a real correlation, and no matter how many exceptions to the pattern we see, we don't know how to stop believing.

Superstitions are generally formed when two things are correlated, but the causative variable fails to be correctly isolated, resulting in the mistaken impression that one event causes another despite being either independent or actually dependent on a third variable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_and_dependence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_correlation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...