"It's not superstition!!!! It's TRUE!!"


GS, while I deeply sympathize with the embrassment the position may cause, I submit that, no, there is not a difference. The worshippers of Baal were just as sure as you are, just as clear in their perception of the Truth. So, indeed, are the followers of Mohammet, and the many antecedent faiths with their various pantheons.

Superstition and truth are intersecting sets -- ask anyone who has been taken out by a juujuu man's curse. The reason they intersect is because of what is often caleld the placebo effect, the ability of the human mind to bring about phenomena. While medical people limit their discussion of this to the ability of the body to be healed by the mind under power of suggestion, of some disorder or other, it extends as well to the bringing about of all kinds of other perceptions and phenomena including deities, spirit guides, deja vue and precognition.

I believe you, and Slag, and the other devout I have talked to about this, are in that interesecting realm, and that what you say you have experienced is perfectly sincere, and unarguably real in the important, experiential sense. I honor it. But it is not in the realm of empirical and objective "truth". SImilarly, the statement that brings about a placebo effect does not have to be true for the effect to be solidly real.

This is a tricky area, is it not?

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