Why Is There Still Religion And Medical Quackery?

The major religions of today began when written communication was rudimentary and well before modern science evolved. It was a period of ignorance and superstition:

The Growth of Knowledge

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INTELLIGENCE: the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

KNOWLEDGE: facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education.

SCIENCE: knowledge about the natural world that is based on facts learned through experiments and observation.

UNDERSTANDING: the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination.

IGNORANCE: lack of knowledge or information.

SUPERSTITION: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation.

QUACKERY: dishonest practices and claims to have special knowledge and skill in some field, typically medicine.

RELIGION: many definitions, but usually includes belief in spiritual beings/the supernatural/a God.

A Look At False Beliefs

"Since the dawn of our species, an unquenchable curiosity has driven us to ask and re-ask the same questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Are we alone? Myths offered the first answers: myths of creation and of spirit worlds. From here, one trail led to religion and to answers grounded in faith. But another trail led to philosophy–to reasoning. Pure reasoning at first, then reasoning aided by observation and experiment–what we now call science."

Every once in a while I run across a focused web page supporting science-based thinking in all areas of reality. Click on the link below to see an example that I recently found.

Ramblings on religion, superstition, and pseudoscience

Religion: Superstition And Mythology

"Superstition, belief, half-belief, or practice for which there appears to be no rational substance. Those who use the term imply that they have certain knowledge or superior evidence for their own scientific, philosophical, or religious convictions. An ambiguous word, it probably cannot be used except subjectively. With this qualification in mind, superstitions may be classified roughly as religious, cultural, and personal.

"Every religious system tends to accumulate superstitions as peripheral beliefs—a Christian, for example, may believe that in time of trouble he will be guided by the Bible if he opens it at random and reads the text that first strikes his eye. Often one person’s religion is another one’s superstition: the Roman emperor Constantine referred to some non-Christian practices as superstition; the Roman historian Tacitus called Christianity a pernicious superstition; Roman Catholic veneration of relics, images, and the saints is dismissed as superstitious by many Protestants; Christians regard many Hindu practices as superstitious; and adherents of all “higher” religions may consider Australian Aboriginal peoples’ relation to their totem superstitious. Finally, all religious beliefs and practices may seem superstitious to the person without religion." (link)

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"Mythology is the main component of Religion."

"Initially, theology and mythology were synonymous."

"- - -  both primitive and modern theology is inescapably constrained by its mythical backbone. - - -"

"The classicist Robert Graves defines myths as 'whatever religious or heroic legends are so foreign to a student's experience that he cannot believe them to be true.'"

"Folklorists define a myth as "a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind came to be in their present form."

" Widespread similarities between religious mythologies include the following:

• an initial Paradise preceding ordinary historical time^[20]

• the story of a god who undergoes death and resurrection (life-death-rebirth deity).^[21][22]

• The mythical geography of many religions involves an axis mundi, or Cosmic Center.^[23]

• Creation myths

• Supreme deity

• Hero's journey"

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_mythology)
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How does one tell which religion is true, if any? What tool are you going to use when all of them believe on faith and not evidence?
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***If you disagree with this article, how do you justify or verify that your beliefs are true? What is your view regarding the value of evidence?***
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Sports Rituals And Superstitions

"I suspect that getting cupping prior to a race is no more effective than getting a relaxing massage minus any dubious health claims about toxins or chi. Visualizing your floor routine is probably as or more effective than rubbing your lucky charm."

Do Superstitious Rituals Help Performance?

When Superstition Was Considered Science

"So next time you read a judgmental description of Catherine as a practitioner of the “dark arts,” bear in mind that astrology would not have fallen within that category at the time the Queen was alive. Prognosticating based on the stars in the heavens would have been considered science not superstition."

Science-based thinkers are enlightened regarding evaluation of reality, are you?

Star Struck: Catherine de Médicis and the Science of Superstition

Supernatural: What Is It And How Do You Know It Is Real?

I, and many other atheists, have said that all arguments for a god or the supernatural are arguments from ignorance.  Why do we say this?  Because, all we really know is within what most people call nature.  The concept of supernatural is a vestige of humanity's ignorant and superstitious pre-scientific past.  There is no method to test for it or to verify that there is such a thing.  At the bottom, there is reality:  there is the reality we know through scientific methods and there is the reality that is presently unknown.  Nothing is added to knowledge by believing in any supernatural force or being.

Religion. Faith And Superstition

"There are two things that theists always yell at me about: characterizing faith as 'belief without evidence' (which in fact the Bible says it is!), and calling religion a 'superstition.'"

Faith is belief without evidence and religion is a superstition.

Fear Is The Root Of All Superstition

Empathy and cooperation from evolution and socialization, combined with reason and science-based thinking, are the antidotes.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/we-got-scared-a-paean-to-science-and-rationality/

Is Religion A Superstition?

Of course it is a superstition. Note the 7th definition, however. It does what the American Psychiatric Association has done to the definition of delusion: they also removed reference to religion for no reason other than political correctness.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/05/06/is-religion-a-superstition-2/

Can You Rise Above Superstition?

It's difficult, but a person has reached a higher state if he or she can overcome superstition and trust science to best determine reality.

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/the-science-of-superstition/384962/