@Lightwizard,
Quote: The extra-causal propensity or agent has a very high utility
as a recourse in perplexity, but its utility is altogether of a
non-economic kind. It is especially a refuge and a fund of
comfort where it has attained the degree of consistency and
specialization that belongs to an anthropomorphic divinity. It
has much to commend it even on other grounds than that of
affording the perplexed individual a means of escape from the
difficulty of accounting for phenomena in terms of causal
sequence. It would scarcely be in place here to dwell on the
obvious and well-accepted merits of an anthropomorphic divinity,
as seen from the point of view of the aesthetic, moral, or
spiritual interest, or even as seen from the less remote
standpoint of political, military, or social policy. The question
here concerns the less picturesque and less urgent economic value
of the belief in such a preternatural agency, taken as a habit of
thought which affects the industrial serviceability of the
believer. And even within this narrow, economic range, the
inquiry is perforce confined to the immediate bearing of this
habit of thought upon the believer's workmanlike serviceability,
rather than extended to include its remoter economic effects.
These remoter effects are very difficult to trace. The inquiry
into them is so encumbered with current preconceptions as to the
degree in which life is enhanced by spiritual contact with such a
divinity, that any attempt to inquire into their economic value
must for the present be fruitless.
The immediate, direct effect of the animistic habit of
thought upon the general frame of mind of the believer goes in
the direction of lowering his effective intelligence in the
respect in which intelligence is of especial consequence for
modern industry. The effect follows, in varying degree, whether
the preternatural agent or propensity believed in is of a higher
or a lower cast. This holds true of the barbarian's and the
sporting man's sense of luck and propensity, and likewise of the
somewhat higher developed belief in an anthropomorphic divinity,
such as is commonly possessed by the same class. It must be taken
to hold true also -- though with what relative degree of cogency
is not easy to say -- of the more adequately developed
anthropomorphic cults, such as appeal to the devout civilized
man. The industrial disability entailed by a popular adherence to
one of the higher anthropomorphic cults may be relatively slight,
but it is not to be overlooked. And even these high-class cults
of the Western culture do not represent the last dissolving phase
of this human sense of extra-causal propensity. Beyond these the
same animistic sense shows itself also in such attenuations of
anthropomorphism as the eighteenth-century appeal to an order of
nature and natural rights, and in their modern representative,
the ostensibly post-Darwinian concept of a meliorative trend in
the process of evolution. This animistic explanation of phenomena
is a form of the fallacy which the logicians knew by the name of
ignava ratio. For the purposes of industry or of science it
counts as a blunder in the apprehension and valuation of facts.
That was a cut from Veblen's essay The Belief in Luck.
So I am well aware that religious belief is a fallacy when seen from the standpoints of industry and science but, as Veblen is careful to point out, there are other standpoints. He lists them: "the aesthetic, moral, or
spiritual interest, or even as seen from the less remote
standpoint of political, military, or social policy", all of which the industrial and scientific standpoints necessarily have on Ignore.
Of course, I am also well aware that when your tables are set out for your Thanksgiving meals they will not be arranged according to the industrial and scientific standpoints. Not even remotely.
So look at those magnificent tables and know what a bunch of phonies you are when your aesthetic, moral, spiritual and social interests have been energised due to your egos having been chucked under the chin by the presiding matron and the advertising industry. It would be very difficult to account for the procedures in the strict scientific terms of causal sequence.
The type of intelligence which is of especial consequence for
modern industry was covered by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times.
