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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> Religion is by definition superstition

For some, Religion encompasses superstition, but it goes beyond that.

For others, Religion is "Dharma" [1]. It's a way of life / discipline.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma

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.

You are blurring the distinction to drive home your point. The fact is, superstition carries a negative connotation. Discipline does not.

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.

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