Superstitions - harmless and deadly

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleСуеверията - безобидни и смъртоносни
3. Language term Bulgarian
4. lemma author Nachev, Ivaylo
5. lemma category Orthodox theological tradition and practice
6. Publication date 18-9-2018
7. lemma work Касиан, архимандрит [Author]. Суеверията - безобидни и смъртоносни
8. lemma manifestations Суеверията - безобидни и смъртоносни - Жабляно: Монастир Св. Йоан Предтеча, 2003.
9. Keywords superstitions - Spiritism - materialism - folk religion - pseudoscience - astrology
10. Lemma body

    1. The book makes an overview of superstitions from a Christian Orthodox perspective. Used by many as a guide in the “contemporary confused world”, their origin is in the Greek pagan culture and materialism. The author shifts attention to a number of aspects: astrology, Spiritism, fatalism, intuition and others. Although the Church position is clear since the time of the first ecumenical councils, elements of superstitions continue to penetrate religious rituals (observations on the contemporary Bulgarian situation). Often agent is the so called folk Christianity (folk religion); the underlying reason are attempts to avoid all kind of disasters. Elements of superstitions become even part of church sacraments (Baptism and Marriage). In many cases superstitions are spread by attractive pseudoscience, for example ideas for special abilities of chosen people. The author argued that since the current rationalistic worldviews are based on the ancient Greek philosophy this opens the door for superstitions, which only change their vocabulary. So, the cosmic forces are not magical anymore, they are presented rather as laws in physics. Magical practices are replaced by technologies. Superstitions often use a scientific base and perspective. So, astrology bases its assertions on a number of scientific disciplines – astronomy, astrophysics, astrochemistry and others. The author points that the rationalistic worldview had driven advances of sciences but the current science seem to have reached its limits. Current scientific experiments are so expensive that even scientists have doubts in their sense. Moreover, the benefits of their results are questionable in many cases.  A problem in discussions with believers in superstations is that they demand scientific proofs. Christian faith, however, does not demand scientific proofs. In that sense Cristian faith is opposite to science – if examined by scientific methods it will not be faith anymore (science, just as faith, uses a number of axioms on which it bases its further development). A paradox is that there are people of science who spend time on activities such as spiritism, fortune telling and others.