(no subject)
Problem popped into my head at work today. Maybe some people have some thoughts on it.
There is an old belief that says that the Gods are only as strong as the belief of their supplicants. Deities, and all that they represent, are valid, or even existing, when people hold faith in them. Now, the world is becoming steadily more secular, and religion is petering out, being replaced by science. It is often thought that science and religion are opposite, that religion is a lack of science, and that science is the truth. I propose that they are simply... options.
What if the only reason we find science to be so incredibly valid, the reason we can find it everywhere, is because of the stock we place in it? Long ago, science was pretty much nonexistent. All it was was worship. This God did this, and this Goddess did that. This Diety lifted the sun into the sky, in this Divinity's tears flooded the Earth to make the seas. There was no other way about it- the only way of understanding the world was through the stained glass of religion. Eventually, there was an alternative developed. This strange, flawed beast was science- it careened recklessly through the theistic world, eating away at faith and devouring Gods left and right. Science was like the Roman Empire of memes- it overtook everybody in sight, renaming Deities and changing the rule of the world. Apollo didn't light the sky by day- that's this gi-normous ball of hot gas. Atlas doesn't hold up the world, but gravity.
This is my proposition: Religion and science are exactly the same thing. What formerly was a world of mythology is now a world of formulae. Our world is ruled by rules, rather than anthropomorphic dieties, but it's entirely possible that both are simply masks of a Truth (with a capital T) that we, as a species, cannot currently, or possibly ever, grasp.
I don't exactly have an answer to this conundrum. I don't know what this theoretical Third Option would be. One doubts that a scientific theology would be an answer, as, you know, vanilla plus chocolate does not equal strawberry. In fact, it's possible that three won't be enough- our next conceptual revolution may simply be another way of getting around actually knowing the truth. The human race may simply go through an infinite number of global paradigms, one after the other, until the stars burn out and we don't have to bother with anything but being dead.
But yeah. Still. Just a thought. Please, feel free to respond.
-N
There is an old belief that says that the Gods are only as strong as the belief of their supplicants. Deities, and all that they represent, are valid, or even existing, when people hold faith in them. Now, the world is becoming steadily more secular, and religion is petering out, being replaced by science. It is often thought that science and religion are opposite, that religion is a lack of science, and that science is the truth. I propose that they are simply... options.
What if the only reason we find science to be so incredibly valid, the reason we can find it everywhere, is because of the stock we place in it? Long ago, science was pretty much nonexistent. All it was was worship. This God did this, and this Goddess did that. This Diety lifted the sun into the sky, in this Divinity's tears flooded the Earth to make the seas. There was no other way about it- the only way of understanding the world was through the stained glass of religion. Eventually, there was an alternative developed. This strange, flawed beast was science- it careened recklessly through the theistic world, eating away at faith and devouring Gods left and right. Science was like the Roman Empire of memes- it overtook everybody in sight, renaming Deities and changing the rule of the world. Apollo didn't light the sky by day- that's this gi-normous ball of hot gas. Atlas doesn't hold up the world, but gravity.
This is my proposition: Religion and science are exactly the same thing. What formerly was a world of mythology is now a world of formulae. Our world is ruled by rules, rather than anthropomorphic dieties, but it's entirely possible that both are simply masks of a Truth (with a capital T) that we, as a species, cannot currently, or possibly ever, grasp.
I don't exactly have an answer to this conundrum. I don't know what this theoretical Third Option would be. One doubts that a scientific theology would be an answer, as, you know, vanilla plus chocolate does not equal strawberry. In fact, it's possible that three won't be enough- our next conceptual revolution may simply be another way of getting around actually knowing the truth. The human race may simply go through an infinite number of global paradigms, one after the other, until the stars burn out and we don't have to bother with anything but being dead.
But yeah. Still. Just a thought. Please, feel free to respond.
-N