Being religious is not superstition. The serenity prayer nicely puts things in perspective - there are many things beyond human control that can cause failure - if going to Tirupathi gets him in the zone all the power to him.
Religion is by definition superstition. It just depends on how okay you are with superstitious beliefs. Sometimes you can get benefit from them courage or art or motivation to live a better life, sometimes they muddle your critical thinking skills and do a sloppy job solving problems because you believe some higher power will take care of the details.
"Being outside the realm of human control and understanding" is not what superstition means.
Dharma is also a superstition. People put too much negative weight on the term superstition. Dharma is a way of life driven by one of some set of superstition beliefs.
If you doubt this, ask a series of "why?" questions about Dharma and drill down into it until you stop hitting rational thought and start hitting belief about the nature of the universe and belief about the importance of righteous action.
It doesn't really matter though, Dharma is still a superstition. So is not changing socks when your baseball team is in the championships.
Trying to parse it from other superstitions doesn't change the meaning or existence of the word, nor the fact that it's still classified under that category.
Speaking for myself, religion/dharma is not hurting others and being honest. It's not based on superstition, it just makes me feel happy. Happy is healthy.
Point being, the meaning of these terms are too broad to tag & generalize them with a few words.
The only difference between religion and superstition is societal acceptance.
I'm all for a "live and let live" approach for any religious belief or superstition that doesn't hurt people. I don't think this behavior by Dr. Radhakrishnan is worth any criticism (and plenty of other countries have ingrained rituals). But I don't like these distinctions we try to draw to legitimize religion over stuff that religion doesn't like but which outwardly appears to be the same.
Yes, it is. In certain cases it might be harmless superstition unlike the kind of militant superstition that prompts people to oppress others, but superstition it is.
> Superstition is the belief in supernatural causality
But then the influenced people become the causality of their actions. These root "superstitious" influences would then exist in concept and have a real effect. Note that conceptual existence is enough to influence intelligent beings who can recognize these concepts.
There's also effects that aren't explained by science, yet. That is a playground for all sorts of possibilities.
The serenity prayer has a rational and a religious aspect.
The rational one is discerning between the things that are in our power and those that aren't, and concern ourselves only with the former. This idea can be found in Stoicism [1] and other ancient philosophies, 2000 years earlier than the serenity prayer. Not just the ideas, mind you, but practical techniques of how to achieve this as a mere mortal.
The religious one is resignation: Instead of being confident that it is possible to do the things mentioned in the prayer using your ability to learn and think, the praying person begs a divine being for those things.
So you are seriously saying that going to pray for a successful rocket launch is an empowering strategy?
