Religion
In reply to the discussion: What if God's existence were proven without doubt? Good or bad? [View all]tblue37
(65,664 posts)People have worshipped all sorts of non-transcendent gods and powers all through human history, and still do in many places today. In fact, even the followers of the monotheistic religions often practice a kind of polytheism based on the notion of "divine" powers that belong to and operate directly on the material world in response to the believer's actions to influence or propitiate them.
People who practice the sort of everyday magic that we call superstition actually demonstrate more commitment to the unmysterious supernatural powers they believe in than they do to the God they claim to believe in. Folk religious practices did not go away when Christianity colonized other cultures. They just went underground and were no longer called religion by the authorities or by the people who engaged in them. In harsh regimes, such practices were condemned and punished as magic, witchcraft, or heresy. These days most are ignored, while some end up becoming the sort of belief we now call "woo."