Very Nice! So, the gods become reflective projections, much like empathy or the (over hyped) mirror neurons. I'd argue that's a statement about both your 1st point (thinking about ourselves) and your 2nd (understanding our environment). I'll read the Brague book. But it reminds me of the persistent anthropomorphized physics like that of Smolin or even the consciousness-centric physics.
RE: re-ligiere -- Would it be appropriate to argue against Marcus's alleged independence from his entertainment by asserting that things like Harry Potter or Eat, Pray, Love are little religions? Perhaps even something like Dr. Oz or Oprah Winfrey ... or perhapse even the evening news are little religions. Obviously, something like futbol or football fits even better. These smaller coherences of thought/behavior tie their subcultures together in much the same way as something like a small Xtian denomination.
Science, I'd argue is a different beast, though, depending on whose definition you use. I try to be a critical rationalist and assume that actual science (as opposed to any concept of "science" inside any people's heads) doesn't tie us together at all. It's an observer-independent set of methods that could be carried out by someone with 3 arms as well as someone made of pure energy (whatever that means) as well as someone with hooks isntead of hands. There need be no relation between the "doers of science", whereas there must be some relation between the "doers of religion".
circa Tue Dec 23 13:26:17 EST 2014 doug wrote:
The theory that early humans projected their own powers on to events like lightening, war and such and called them gods seems compelling. What is less well known is that in our interaction with those gods, say through ritual and prayer, we learn about ourselves. In fact dealing with the projected gods may have been necessary for human enlightenment about its own powers. Also the very idea of god or gods may be important in telling us something about the awesome coherence of the universe. Are the gods necessary for this? Don’t know. We are on the edge of human cognition as it explores the very idea of uni-verse. A very interesting book on the long history of humanity getting to the concept and words for “world.” is Remi Brague’s The Wisdom of the World: the human experience of the universe in western thought. In the background of the god talk of course is the idea of religion. I prefer to take it at its root, re-ligiere, to re-tie together. Religion is a way of tying things together. In this sense science too is a religion, a way of tying things together. It appears to be different because of its stress on matter and to a slightly lesser degree mathematics. But that is a selection of out of experience of some aspects while leaving behind others. - that is, science is much more focused on stuff than on say love, passions, or the subtleties of human and animal interactions. The things of novels are not the things of science (yet). The standard religions are just tying together a different set of experiences than science does, but all are motivated in part by explorations in understanding (and by careers, power, etc.) f aspects of our experience.
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