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Superstition today greater than in Middle Ages?

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The Ottawa Citizen’David Warren thinks so: Re “Most superstitions go back to the Middle Ages,” he writes,

… Not true. Most go back either to the beginning of time, or to the beginning of modernity. The Middle Ages were, to those with a mild acquaintance with them, centuries remarkably free of “common superstitions.” Unless, of course, you count faith in God as a superstition. But even if so, you should notice that it tends to preclude faith in a lot of other superstitions; and that the medieval mind, though not yet aware of many later scientific discoveries, was hard-boiled when it came to gnostic and “spiritualist” sludge.

Certainly, the literal belief in space aliens is new. And the myriad of Darwin superstitions, fronted as truths. How about “Cancer is a newly evolved species.” Of what, exactly? There’s hardly any point in asking. Just say the word “Darwin” And all doubt vanishes.

Comments
Christianity taught mankind to be rational. Certainly, there have always been rational individuals, but most individuals are only sporadically rational, and thus societies tend to be irrational. Christianity rationalizes those peoples who, as a nation, embrace it. As the modern Western peoples emphatically spurn the Christianity their fathers embraced, one expects a new wave of superstition and irrationality to wash over them.Ilion
July 31, 2011
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David Warren should look into Malleus Maleficarum....DiEb
July 31, 2011
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