Hi,
Reconstructionism, witchcraft, Gaia reverence, polytheism these are all beliefs that modern science, which is inscreasingly materialistic, tell us are superstitious, outdated and irrational.
I have never heard about a single scientist of renown claiming to be polytheist or defining him/herself as pagan.
So i guess that begs the question, is neopaganism at odd with science?
Hi Tyho,
Mythological stories describe reality as we experience it. Nothing changed there. We still have summer and spring, wind and tides, etc. The language used is a symbolic poetic language that connects with the experiences. It uses allegories, likenesses, personalizations as tools
We should not take personifications the wrong way either. In the Pagan mind everything in Nature has its own consciousness, and similar qualities are found in it as us, as we are part of Nature. We can be hard, and metal can be hard. A strong man can tear things, and the wind can tear things. You can strike and the lightning can strike. The stories tell us the qualities of natural phenomena by creating likenesses with certain kind of people, animals, beings. These stories are still a 100% true if understood with the intelligence of the writers.
If you take then literal, you do not understand how to read poetic, symbolic texts. Than they become indeed untrue, but only because you treat them as a literal truth. Later religion indeed became untrue because it started to do that. In the Bible the once mythological stories were turned in an unchanging literal truth. The Sun being in the Cross, became a man being crucified. The Sun going down to its lowest point in Winter for tree days and than rising again, became a man literally rising from the death after three days. Venus being seen after the Sun went down and described as Prometheus stealing the light from the Gods, became Lucifer the Angel challenging God. Everything was changed in stories to believed literal.
Not only that, In later Monotheism these explanations were cast in an unchanging doctrine in a book. They are theories that can not be questioned. Death to people who question them. That is a 100% at odds with Modern science that continuously wants to question literal truth called theories. Modern Science finds that people can not rise from death, can not walk on water, can not move mountains by thought, can not change water in wine etc. If people can not convincingly demonstrate this, it is not considered true. Science rejects the idea that we have to take things on revelation (belief), it uses scientific methods based on observation. These things are at odds with each other.
So a Neopagan that would believe Thor is a superhuman literally flying in the sky is indeed at odds with science. But if he understands it as a very intelligent symbolic description of the experience of a natural phenomena it does not contradict science. If the Sungod rises his chariot with a golden disk in the morning, that still accurately describes what I observe. But if we take it literal it is not true. But poets in Ancient times well understood that the Sun was not a man. For them it was a whole different class of beings, who had however human-like traits allowing to describe them in stories understood by man.
Science still uses that instrument. If they say a photon is both a particle and a wave they use things from our world to describe phenomena outside our direct view. When we call something "a black hole" that is likeness too. "dark matter" is also a likeness, curved space is likeness. Our human mind can only understand things by relating them to things we can observe around us. The difference between modern science and Paganism is that Paganism experiences everything as having consciousness, being alive, while modern science tries to describe things in a very mechanical way. That is why science generally will not use likeness with living things. It does sometimes. For instance the Plasma as in the Sun, was called plasma because it did have lifelike qualities reminding of blood plasma.
All religions that have doctrines have a problem, because science disproves their doctrines. But Nature religions that simply describe Natural events as being experienced in a symbolic poetic language not. Things like Magic are not at odds with science either. Practical Science = Magic. It has always been that way. When I make a potion and that potion helps cure a wound, that is both science and magic. But we can use Natures power without scientifically understanding it. For instance a professor building a quantum computer said, we have really no idea why it works, but I do not need that build a quantum computer, I only have to know how it interacts. Theoretical understanding is not necessary to use things. They do help to predict behavior. But I can bake a cake without understanding the chemical processes. That is magic! In the magic the only thing that counts is that it works. It is not at odds with science unless you start to create explaining theories around it. If you insist that "the devil did it", or that "God caused it" then it becomes at odd with Science
Paganism is no more at odds with science than art or craft. As Paganism fully accepts Natural phenomena, science is the result of Nature religion. It is Man studying nature. This is different from later religion attributing to things outside of Nature, calling things supernatural. In Paganism there is not supernatural, just the natural. It only uses a different symbolic language than modern science that mostly uses mathematic as symbolic language. But Poetry does not defy science.
Science is gradually proving Nature religion right in that all in Nature has conscience. For instance Monotheism believes only Man has consciousness, and can experience emotions. All else is just biological machinery made for Man. Only Man is made in the image of God. Science now proves that Animals have the same emotions as man and worry, feel sorrow, feel empathy for others. They even found that bacteria have separate languages to talk to bacteria in general and a dialect to talk to only their own kind. Plants talks to plants and insects, they discovered.
Monotheist religions create the idea that they are superior by their vast scriptures explaining everything, but those scriptures are actually antiquated science from a time that people still believed that the sky above them was Heaven, where spiritual light beings lived. Astrotheology was the science of the day. If you declare theories as absolute unchanging truths and put them in books that can not be changed, you will be in trouble when science moves on. Pagans never made that mistake. That is why a Pagan holds a mix of personal views and no doctrine. If the Pagan is scientifically schooled his views will reflect that. But he can still celebrate the wonderful event and experience of a solstice. A pagan connects to Nature first and foremost.
Sure Pagans can hold on to absurd theories, but so can scientists. But both Pagans and scientists can trade them in for better ones because they are not trapped in a doctrine. They do not have to believe anything. Making people literally believe in things that can not be observed and contradict experience, is like raping their minds. You have to literally believe a guy rises from death and then floats to heaven above, from where he sits on a throne and rules the Earth. That wasn't so bad when people did not know what was up there, but in an age of airplanes and satellites it becomes non-sens-ical. So now they pretend their heaven is in another dimension, but it remains asking people to believe in things outside of the range of the senses, and so it remains non-sens-ical. That makes theology fantastical or make-belief.
Nature Religion is the natural companion for Natural sciences for spiritual people. That is why people like Einstein rejected the personal God, but embraced a pantheistic view as found in Nature Religions. The only way for Monotheist to get along with modern science is to separate science and religion as their theories are colliding. Pagans however can integrate the two.
