You didn't say religious people were prone to superstition, you said they were prone to 'other irrational thinking'. I think there is a slight difference.

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).

Technically he implicitly said that superstition is a form of irrational thinking (few could argue otherwise with a straight face). He further implied that being deeply religious can be another form of irrational thinking.

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?

So do you actually think that climate change denial and the rejection of evolution is not correlated with religious believe, or membership in the Republican party?

> I'm talking about correlations

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

It is the express lack of correlation that makes up a superstition, so the opposite of what you're saying is true.

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

I would say that most superstitions are formed by noticing that two things in one's past experience were related in some way and assuming that the relationship will continue in the future. That's correlation.

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.

> It is the express lack of correlation that makes up a superstition, so the opposite of what you're saying is true.

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...

> I would bet that the vast majority of people who fall for this stuff are also deeply religious.