Bao wrote:People today don’t understand how religious and superstitious people were back in the old days. Remember that Buddhism teaches you that you can’t kill. Soldiers always used prayers and ceremonies before and after going into battle. Even today the Hong Kong police force do some kind of Buddhist rituals if someone dies. You see this in some HK action movies. So the connection between religious practices to martial arts is not that far fetched.
(For instance, I have written about that the roots of Tai Chi silk reeling could be linked to Buddhist rituals.)
People are not so different now than they ever were. People today are both very superstitious/religious and pragmatic. Don't believe me? No one has ever actually seen an electron. Ever. Yet, we (mostly) all believe in electricity, because the lights turn on every time we flip the switch. The mechanism for that is something that we all take on faith, based on the words of some unknown person in authority who we trust has a deeper connection to the science and the mathematics that validate the hypothesis. Just because many people have replaced the pope with Neil DeGrasse Tyson does not make their world views any less faith-based.
At the same time, people who interact with the physical world learn that certain things, like mass and momentum, are non-negotiable. It doesn't matter what anyone's rights or beliefs are, physics gonna physic. Serious fighting hurts, even if you win, and if you lose you can easily be crippled, maimed, or killed. Throughout most of human history, there were no hospitals or sick leave to take care of people. If you get hurt, it may or may not heal right. If you can't work, you (and your family) go hungry. So the stakes were often much higher. If anything, people in the old days were likely more observant and clearer thinkers than people today, because even simple mistakes could have real and lasting consequences. To think that religious beliefs are going to consistently trump practical experience in the execution of critical survival functions is, again, the viewpoint of a remarkably safe and wealthy society. Usually, it's the other way around-- religious beliefs arise from practical experience that is beyond the ability of the originating group to articulate or understand the cause of.