Oooooh fundamentalists make me cross! They really really do! Why the pagan community cannot see why it is such a laughing stock amongst religious groups (or indeed, any societal group) is beyond me, when it insists on publishing clap trap!
OK, some semblance of calm is required I feel.
My gripe is against White & Talboys’ “The Path through the Forest – A Druid Guidebook”. Now, before I start, I will admit that I have not gotten beyond page 55, and this is not an attack on the information presented on Celtic beliefs, Celtic history, or the Druid Tradition as it was then or now. My concern lies with lines such as the following:
“The current dominant metaphysic is extremely aggressive, perpetuating itself through violence rather than rightness”
Uh-huh. Last time I checked there was no absolute universal definition of ‘rightness’. Rightness is a human created concept, and what is right varies according to the societal values and norms within a culture during any specific time period. Once upon a time it was ‘right’ to behead criminals in front of hundreds of spectators. It was ‘right’ to burn thousands of men and woman at the stake in the name of heresy. Countries have been invaded, wars started, thousands killed, in the name of ‘what is right’ for eons. And I shall point out here, that the Celts were subject to the same rules of survival as all other tribal peoples. They killed, they maimed, they conquered. They committed acts of violence then, just as we do now.
Anyhow, moan over semantics over. But, and I have mentioned this before, people are too quick to bend language to suit their own ends. Think before you type people!
Also:
“Suffice it to say that scientific materialism (the current dominant metaphysic) turned more natural and more balanced forms of seeing the world inside out, whilst also introducing biases that favoured certain sections of human society over others and human society as a whole (the World) over everything else”
Soooooo. Science, has caused the current worldview that we humans are at the top of the foodchain and have the right to plunder Gaia to our hearts content.
Let me remind you of a little line in Genesis, the Bible. Written a very, very long time ago, before the scientific revolution in fact! *gasp*
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
The bible! Not science, the bible! States that man rules over the earth and all that was in it! Christianity has been teaching the West that we are the big shots at least since Constantine 1 converted the Roman Empire to the religion in the year 312CE! Christianity was infiltrating the then accepted pagan religions probably for years and years previous to its official acceptance!
Natural science, mathematics, physics, medicine, all have been studied using critical thinking (albeit closely entwined with theology, the two were pretty much as one back then) since the classical ages in Ancient Greece and in the Middle East. But I don’t think the authors are criticising these great nations when they decide to launch their attack on ‘scientific materialism’
Science, does not promote violence.
Science has freed us from the constraints of religious superstition and tyranny. It has allowed us to travel the earth and beyond. It has allowed us to cure that would have once certainly killed. It has allowed the developments of technologies that bring us closer to universal truth than ever before. It has shown us how wonderful this earth really is. Science promotes understanding, and greater understanding allows for greater positive change.
Scientific enquiry is not the enemy here. We have been a nasty violent species for a long time prior to science. The problem is that we use science incorrectly. We have used it to flaunt the earth’s resources, caused death on a tremendous scale. Our ability to be greedy, viscious, selfish and plain unpleasant have nothing to do with science. We do that all ourselves. The evolution of a hugely complex and sensitive brain results in a multitude of emotional and sensory responses. It allows for the greatest flexibility and degree of opportunistic behaviour. We have evolved to be the ultimate opportunist. We have willingly chosen to use science to promote the greatest gain to ourselves.
Science has helped us do Gaia a lot of wrong, I won’t deny that. But scientific discoveries have not promoted the worldview that we humans are outside and above the earth. Christianity did that for us. Science simply allowed us to follow our evolved instincts to survive and ingrained religious metaphysic to the greatest degree.
Ah. But had you read the whole book and other of my writings, you would know what I mean when I use the word 'rightness' and you would know my arguments as to how a scientific (materilistic and reductionist) metaphysic has come to dominate how human society is constructed and behaves.
ReplyDeleteYour use of the term 'suffice to say' before embarking on your attack on science, does suggest that there is no need to read the rest of the book in order to appreciate the fundamentals of your argument.
ReplyDeleteHowever, throughout the book I could find no diversion from your claim that scientific materialism is the source of all negative behaviour towards the envrionment, you have simply reiterated what I have quoted from your book above.
But the point I'm making is that humanity has been doing terrible things to the planet since well before modern 'scientific' times, the idea that we are separate from the Earth has been postulated by Christianity for eons - the differences in the present day are that a) the human population has increased dramatically and b) our increasing scientific knowledge allows us to express our destructive tendencies ever more widely. Our use of science in this way does not render science itself the source of our woes - it is merely the tool we use to further our aims.