Elaboration 63

It is Lucretius again who demonstrates so vividly the inhumanity, the violation of human dignity (and rights and duties) that is caused by superstition, especially the irrational belief in 'sperrits' (the term is from Long John Silver). Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition, he said. We know of the Iphigenia's in Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, etc. and of modern man, blasted to bits by bombs in a marketplace, shot like a pig in a hi-jacked train, plane, ship or bank. These superstitions cannot change man's rights and duties, they only can violate them by consent of the (stupid) majority. (For these illegal rights, see also Maugham's 'Rain', Wyndham's 'Wheels', his 'The Chrysalids', Forester's 'The Sky and the Forest', ....., etc.).