superstition

Gonzales was one of several fans attending Friday’s victory parade who said they had patted shirts and jerseys, kissed rosaries and prayed during the postseason games, turning to faith, ritual, superstition and luck in the hope that it would push their beloved team over the top.

So Dr Igwe set up Advocacy For Alleged Witches, an organisation focussed on “using compassion, reason, and science to save lives of those affected by superstition”.

“The superstition against a cat crossing your path is real here,” explained Mansi Tejpal, a social researcher with a focus on animal ethics.

"There is a concept of purity for Hindus that relates to the consumption of meat, so some people are very uncomfortable feeding a cat. And there is a lot of superstition. Believe it or not, some people believe that if a cat cries, someone in the house will die. I have had to do emergency rescues of cats because of that."

As I said at the beginning of the book, we can compare this to the 18th Century, which was called the "Age of Reason," in which people began to discover that you could learn about the world with science, reason, logic, thought and observation — as distinguished from blind belief, superstition, fantasy and supernatural things.