Are cats our enemies?

Date: 12/22/2004
Place: Los Angeles
In India, I think there is a tad over belief and dependency on God, Stars and Superstition.

For example,
- If a cat or widow or a sneeze guy comes across, the job you are going for would most probably fail.
- One is not allowed to perform any important activity during certain time of the day (Rahukalam, etc.)

Thinking back, you would realize that no God would ask you to do follow these rules – unless he doesn’t have any control over the activities in the world. In my opinion, people who follow these superstitions are not believers of God.

If you see the big picture, it would have been some less self-confident guy, who might ave failed in his activities on all days when he saw a cat across. He would have spread his experience and people, in an effort to strike right and strike first, follow these and these beliefs have gone on to become rules.

This is exactly where a belief, rather than helping people, starts to occupy and command them.

I believe there will be a number of Indians, like me, who want to stop the black-journey of superstitions. But the rest should think twice or more, what they get from those silly rituals. It is enough to believe in God, and to be a moral and good person, and to love peace & prosperity of the mankind.

Recently, Maharashtra, an eastern state in India, is moving to introduce an anti-superstition law. The details can be found in: http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/nov/04spec.htm

As the joke goes, “A friend of mine saw a cat walk across on one fine day and that whole the activities went very bad – for the cat. Is it in cat’s bible to stop activities if a man comes across?”

Some wonderful quotes on superstition here…
"It is bad luck to be superstitious." ~ Andrew W. Mathis
"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds." ~ Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other." ~ Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
“Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy; the mad daughter of a wise mother.“ ~ Voltaire
“Superstition is a senseless fear of God.” ~ Cicero