As I ponder a world without superstition, and what would be required for a free society to arrive at such a state, I always get stuck on one problem: ignorance is perennial. In other words, every generation must become educated.
In a free society, people can choose to stay ignorant of science and history. Learning is required to free people of superstition and belief in its powerful and comforting stories and traditions. Each new generation can cling to the comforting explanations of religion, and there will always be people in power who take advantage of that and teach the young and uneducated to be willfully ignorant so that they can control them. As long as we embrace freedom, which is good thing, we must accept that it allows for people to choose ignorance.
Almost without fail, when I find myself speaking to another person about why I don’t believe in a supernatural element to this world (i.e., god), I find that the other person does not have much interest in science or history. I also realize that as I speak her imaginary friend is ever present in her brain, ready to pounce with derision if she has a thought that is contrary to his wishes.
The late Christopher Hitchens put it, “It’s not so important what a person thinks as how he thinks. All of the discoveries that have been made, and all of the enlightenment that has come to us has come from the scientific and the philosophical method; and NOT that of a priori assumptions of faith or the belief that wisdom comes from revelation. … Now we know what the church used to tell us wasn’t possible, that we are a primate species, produced by evolution…”
So if a person doesn’t accept evolution or has a very limited understanding of it, let alone come to appreciate its beauty as a scientific theory that explains everything we know about biology, he will more readily accept the fearful story that “man is evil” and that we’re all a plaything of a pitiless immortal dictator who will punish us forever if we don’t do what He says. (And good luck knowing whom to believe about what He says.) In the absence of knowledge, fear trumps logic every time.
“Ignorance is perennial.” — Les Jetson