The Superstitious Side of Dice
Much of the stigma attached to gambling comes from a strong religious prejudice against dice.
There was a good reason for the Christian Church to detest dicing. The practice was going strong in ancient Egypt as long ago as 2000 B.C. But the dice in those days were more than devices to determine who would win, and who would lose, a game of chance.
Dice, the configurations of the entrails of sacrificed animals, the movements of the stars, and the priests' dreams, were thought to foretell the future.
Casting lots was done by priests and priestesses in many cultures, among them the Aztec, where the dice were made of beans.
The notions that future events could be revealed to the faithful, or to certain highly placed religious figures, was repugnant to orthodox Christianity; so by the Middle Ages playing dice was strictly forbidden.
Although the church argued that gambling was wicked and destructive to the individual, much of the prohibition came not from fear for the soul of the gambler, but from a very real fear of the reemergence of older, pagan religions.
Christian doctrine stressed obedience to the will of God and divine grace as the vehicle on which the soul would ride to eternal life.
It was heresy to suggest that God would reveal His purposes to those who threw the dice. Nevertheless, dicing persisted, at least in part because people continued to believe that they might discover what the fates had in store, or at least influence the spirits of luck a bit by casting the bones.
Dice were often made of carved knuckle bones or other animal bones, in Egypt and in ancient Rome, as well as in more modern times; thus they're called bones.
Many stories were circulated, perhaps by the Christian clergy, of gamblers and dice players whose souls were snatched by the devil during dice games.
Gaming was supposed to make a person particularly vulnerable to capture by the 'Evil One'.
In a way, these are our modern methods of trying to influence the gods to give us special favors. Every real gambler - in the casinos, or anywhere a gambler may be playing - believes that he or she is different, special, and outside the rules of fate that apply to ordinary mortals.
Perhaps we all feel this a little bit when we hold the dice in our hands, just before they are rolled. We are holding the future in our very fingers - is it possible there is nothing we can do to influence the outcome?