grimnirs-child:

volvano:

underthepleiades:

pomegranateandivy:

To quote Sense8 “Science is another language we use to talk about the same miracles faith talks about.”

I actually see a lot of people who express concern over becoming religious because they “don’t want to give up science” and that’s really sad to me. I think my favorite post I’ve ever seen was someone explaining the science behind fairy rings and how rings of mushrooms will grow in nutrient dense soil–like where trees once stood. They apologized for “ruining” the post talking about fairy circles, and someone responded by saying basically, “But doesn’t that mean fairy rings are basically tree graves? Like, if they mark where the tree had been when it lived, then it’s like a tree grave, and you wouldn’t walk on a human grave, so this actually makes it cooler!”

Yes, I believe in the theoi. I believe they exist and are real. I believe that stories of them moving mountains and pulling the sun in a chariot are more poetic metaphors to describe the natural occurrences of our world, than literal occurrences. In my mind, yes, Helios is responsible for the movement of the sun. We know the science for why the sun rises and sets; so that means (for me) that the scientific phenomena that results in the sun appearing to move across the sky is the work of Helios. Sure, it’s not a chariot in a literal sense, but the poetry of calling it a chariot sounds awfully nice. Science, poetry, and religion are not mutually exclusive. 

As our understanding of the universe grows and changes, I think it’s important to let our understanding of religion grow. When we look at religious writings from hundreds or thousands of years ago, we’re looking at how people understood and explained the world at that time too. Look at sickness! The ancient Greeks thought that miasma caused sickness. Is miasma related to sickness? Sure, but I think it’s more the other way around. Sickness generates miasma in my opinion and experience. Can miasma generate sickness? Sure. You ever worry yourself sick? Worry and stress (things related to miasma) can lower your immune system, which can make it easier for you to get sick. We know germs cause illness, there’s no if-ands-or buts about it. But that doesn’t mean I have to dismiss the idea of miasma in order to acknowledge that, or that I have to disbelieve in germs in order to accept miasma. Knowing that actions which generate miasma have a documentable affect on my health only serves (in my mind) to enforce the idea that miasma should be cleaned and avoided. The science strengthens my religious opinion here.

I don’t know how to say it more than this, but I will say it as many times as I need to. Religion and science are not diametrically opposed. You never need to give up one in order to accept the other. 

@volvano

I agree. It’s like people who think they’re explaining away mystical experience by pointing to elevated temporal lobe activity and going, well, it’s “just” neurobiological. Why is it this huge big surprising gotcha that a real mental experience might leave real observable physical traces behind? The word “just” is a red flag for questionable premises and assumptions and category structures.

Yes. 

The literal does not exclude the metaphorical. 

Science only opposes religious beliefs which cling to literalism and ignore the complex and multi-faceted nature of truth. For instance, the notion that the Earth is literally 6′000 years old, or was literally carved out of the body of an ice giant. Ignoring the potency of mythic and emotional truth, or meta-truth.

And the idea that a spiritual phenomenon can be described in scientific terms invalidates the spiritual perspective on said phenomenon, can be filed away with the notion that because we can describe the release of oxytocin the experience of love is not “real”. 

Filed also with the concept of “consensus reality” as anything more meaningful than a regression to the mean. [Pardon the pun.]