People 'believe' all sorts of things. If YOU believe something unprovable, its religion. If you don't believe something unprovable but believed to be so by others, that's superstition.
As an example, consider Buddhism, a set of beliefs and practices accepted by millions. But it's far away and misunderstood here, so it might be considered superstition. Beliefs and practices we are taught as children, that's religion.
Religion and superstition do not come to us naturally; they are taught. Same with belief and trust in government. Is belief in the need for government not also at its root a superstition, the most widely accepted superstition of them all?
Well there are a lot of answers to this but one is that superstition is usually things you fear and religion usually gives you guidelines to mold your culture which hopefully will help your particular culture survive. So from a purely practical standpoint that's one thing.
If you're focusing on whether or not things are fictional or not then the answer to that is you may experience some things in your life that don't seem to fit the physical laws and when you do you make question whether the physical laws you know actually are the complete answer to your surroundings and you may open your mind to the possibility of there being more and if you do that then you open your mind to the possibility of religious teachings being true.
Then there are two other aspects one is religion can give a person strength and hope it is very real whether or not the religion is real or not and that has a direct physical effect on physical reality for that person and others and therefore it is real in that sense.
And lastly at least all I can think of is that if you land on a desert island and all 1000 of the 1,000 inhabitants believe that the coconut tree is God and they will kill you if you don't believe it then you're going to believe in the coconut tree and the belief in the coconut tree is an absolute real belief. The moral of that story is if everybody believes a religion it becomes real as far as all practical matters go. Therefore it's very different than believing in a superstition which may be held by only a few people.
Crackinjokes 2 points 7 hours ago
Well there are a lot of answers to this but one is that superstition is usually things you fear and religion usually gives you guidelines to mold your culture which hopefully will help your particular culture survive. So from a purely practical standpoint that's one thing.
If you're focusing on whether or not things are fictional or not then the answer to that is you may experience some things in your life that don't seem to fit the physical laws and when you do you make question whether the physical laws you know actually are the complete answer to your surroundings and you may open your mind to the possibility of there being more and if you do that then you open your mind to the possibility of religious teachings being true.
Then there are two other aspects one is religion can give a person strength and hope it is very real whether or not the religion is real or not and that has a direct physical effect on physical reality for that person and others and therefore it is real in that sense.
And lastly at least all I can think of is that if you land on a desert island and all 1000 of the 1,000 inhabitants believe that the coconut tree is God and they will kill you if you don't believe it then you're going to believe in the coconut tree and the belief in the coconut tree is an absolute real belief. The moral of that story is if everybody believes a religion it becomes real as far as all practical matters go. Therefore it's very different than believing in a superstition which may be held by only a few people.