We steer clear of hate speech but we do seek to reclaim some of the symbols lost to us because of the Nazis and seek to understand all of the Gods and recognize Christian taints in the retelling of our stories.

Just a simple note on science: Science and the scientific method do presuppose a belief about reality — that empirical reality is measurable and has meaning. The scientific method is a way to establish a shared understanding — we all agree that if you follow these steps when you perform an experiment, you have demonstrated that your results have empirical reality. I think that this position is important especially considering the current public discourse in which demonstrable falsehoods have not been effectively de-meaned — deprived of meaning.

That said, I believe in different ways of knowing — knowing through empirical reality and the scientific method is one way of knowing, and knowing through religious cosmology and ritual, through spiritual perception, is another way of knowing, and for the individual, they are both valid. For an entire society, it is unclear how non-empirical ways of knowing can be valid. In America, I want the separation of Church and State maintained, and I don’t want anyone passing laws to regulate my religious or philosophical behavior.

To the deified human question I would like to add two criticisms: the class criticism and the structural criticism. Roman emperors were deified because they were emperors and controlled the majority of the power of the state and the religious institution — not because they were great people from the perspective of human-centered relationships. Caesar used the combination of titles — pontifex maxiumus as well as imperator — to consolidate power in the person of the emperor. I would not agree to deify any individual human using this method.

Egyptian emperors were deified as part of the structure of Egyptian religions — not because they were great people. They played a role, a very important and powerful role, in Egyptian religion by performing deity for their people. I would not agree to deify an individual human being using this method, either, because it is so susceptible to abuse. Presidents and Popes are bad enough.

I agree wholeheartedly with Cat’s and Chell’s comments about deity-formation on a smaller scale. Like Cat, I experience powerful relationships with trees, streams, and other natural features, and because of my proclivities, I choose to interpret these relationships using metaphors for human realtionships.

Also, it makes sense that people would tell stories over and over again, and eventually a hero would be treated like a god. Notice, however, that through the stories that hero would be significantly divorced from the living individual — so in effect, the personal was not deified, but the community collaboratively created a deity around that person’s deeds and personality.

I’m not sure that process is one we can necessarily control, except through storytelling. Given these considerations, I would not consent to deify a living human being.

If anything has corrupted our religious imagination, I would say that it is the concept of God as separate from and superlative to human beings.

(1) I agree that there is much evidence to support that Pagans deified people after their deaths. Many local deities (and I believe this is referenced in the sections that deal with Jarl Haakon’s adventures in the Hiemskringla) were deified townsfolk–outstanding folk heroes and the like. I also agree that this tradition has blended with Catholcism in the custom of “Sainthood”.

(2) I do not think that we will ever fully understand what a “god” meant to an ancient Heathen, nor to any Pagan. The word itself has been too changed by the trials and tribulations that have befallen Western History. We can read the ancient texts and have a good guess about how our ancestors saw gods and the concept of divinity, but we can never fully understand it.

I’m pretty OK with that, incidentally.

(3) One of the interesting asides that I saw was an aside about “why do we have gods?” I think that everyone should have a look at Daniel Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell”. Amazing book by an amazing American philosopher. In essence, havng gods and personifying certain natural features is all a part of how our brain-software functions. We have the tendency to ascribe agency to something as a result of an evolutionary trait, which Dennett (and I am paraphrasing here) shows in an example of being in the jungle and hearing a rustling of leaves. We don’t think “what was that?” but rather, we think “WHO was that?” Reason being, those that did not think “WHO was that?” were more likely to get eaten by something–and thus did not get a chance to spread their genes.

That’s just one of the many features and benefits produced by human evolution that interact to give us religion and gods, according to Dennett’s conjecture–and one that I believe to be quite true, I might add.

(4) You all bring up interesting points about science. And yes, science is just theory. It is just theory that has been gleaned from hundreds of tests and experiments, analysis of data, and then tested again against any new data. Of course it is conjecture, but it is far less prone to error as a result of its constantly having to be re-tested in light of new data.

Religion is also just theory, but it has been by definition a thing that cannot and should not be tested. I have been of the mind that religion is fully within the realm of scientific and philosophical inquiry, so I don’t really get the cold-prickly feeling when someone goes poking around to see if the Bifrost Bridge really does exist.

Bernulf – I see where you are coming from but you are using only part of the definition. (And Chell stated that it was not the sense that she was using it in.) Another part of the definition is accepted as true. If anything is accepted as true, it become “truth” – until something else comes along and replaces with something else that becomes true. After all, wasn’t it the “truth” that world was flat? What I was trying to say was that truth can change over time. This was the part of the definition that I was picking up on and what I was referring to when talking about truth. (I’m guessing that Chell may not have been using “truth” in the way that I am using it, but only she could confirm that.) (Gotta love language. There are so many meanings for words these days, that it is easy to disagree on certain points just based on word definitions alone.)

The fact that truth can change over time is another reason why your question (…as we reconstruct the religious perspectives of our ancient forebears, is do we want this to be a prevailing social norm for us now?) can become a little sticky. If we say yes, we know that there are practices that just don’t coincide with what our society believes today and we would be in contradiction between our beliefs and our societal norms, which could cause many legal and social problems. If we say no, we could be implying that the way that our ancestors ordered the world is no longer “good enough” for us. And what does that imply as a reconstructed religion? It is a tough question to answer.

Chell – I could have been more clear with my statements (and definitions) as well. :)

You said:

Actually, there doesn’t even need to be a lab or a list of criteria in hand for us to stumble across a fact.

You’re right; there doesn’t need to be a lab or a list of criteria to find “facts.” However, in some cases, “facts” can be interpretations instead of truths. Without going into too much detail of research methods and such (which would be bring the discussion way off topic), if you were trying to “prove” something scientifically as true, you need more than stumbling (as you put it) to prove your fact was true (and you yourself mentioned that you were talking about truth from a scientific perspective as that was what had been mentioned previously). Scientifically speaking, even if you declare something as a fact, it doesn’t make it so; you need to support your idea with data when talking about science.

You said:
If a bird flies over you, it’s a fact.

This, also, is not necessarily a fact; it could be that person’s reality depending on the situation. Think about it this way. Two people are standing next to each other; one is hallucinating (for what ever reason) and one is not. “Dude, there’s a bird!” “What bird? I don’t see a bird!” Which person knows “the fact” of whether the bird is there or not? It depends on their subjective reality. In this case, is either of them wrong? No, because that is what they experienced.

But now we really are getting further from the original topic.

I guess I’m saying that, yes, everything is full of gods… but, so long as I’m human, I’ll perceive them socially, since that’s how I’m put together.

I think this neatly sums up everything in your preceding paragraph – we understand things on a social level by relating with them. I think this explains why we have the need or instinct to personify things so much, because it brings them to our level of understanding. The danger in doing this, of course, is that not everything necessarily shares or responds to this need of ours … such situations are golden opportunities for us to employ the flexibility and adaptability of mind we so often pride ourselves on. With our gods, I think they know us (and our limitations) well enough to relate to us in ways we can understand, when they so choose; but I don’t think they are limited to human form, human words and languages, human mortality or human motivations.

I think you bring up a good point, that our ‘Mighty Dead’, our honored ancestors, are a suitable link between us and the gods: we understand them to take with them into the afterlife a basic human form, retaining human language and motivations; but lacking human mortality, and likely capable of more directly communicating with the gods (Christian saints would also conform to these things). That these things were assumed by early Heathens is evident in the practice of human sacrifice, where the offered people were often meant to take messages with them to the afterlife, to the gods. As such, they make an appropriate bridge; and I can more easily understand how posthumous deification in extraordinary cases might be reasonable (although I’m still not sure I’d go so far as to embrace the practice).

But, as invisible beings themselves, they must participate in that other, invisible reality…right?

Must is such a strong word, lol; but I would agree it makes sense that (especially with so many different invisible realities that we’ve conceived of over the past thousands of years) the dead participate in realities the mortal living can’t participate in.

As to the deification of Roman emperors, I’m really not convinced they were sincerely felt to be gods.

With some, you might very well be right; but at least the cult of the deified Caesar Augustus lasted for a good three hundred years (ending only as Christianity rose to power in the empire), so I suspect that it wasn’t always just a matter of PR and going through the motions of piety.

I’m also enjoying this thread of conversation, and hope that it will continue :-)

Good to see you blogging again!

Thank you very much – despite mixed feelings and moods over the past few months, it does feel good to be back in blogging mode :-)

I’m using the word “truth” in its cold, hard sense here, and not in a mutable, personal conviction sense, because science was mentioned.

In other words, you’re using “truth” in its absolute sense, when even science shows an increasing reluctance to engage in absolutes. Here is an article you may find interesting, published in issue 6 (volume 113) of the online edition of The Tech, from MIT. It’s title, “Absolute Truth, Dogmatism Antithetical to Science” should provide some idea to both the article’s subject and the author’s attitude toward immutable truths and science. That I share this author’s perspective is why I originally supported the first half of your original statement, that science and logic are truths.

*still saying this in a polite, quiet voice*

The frith of this blog is tried by bashing, name-calling, over-the-top obscenities, religious and racial hatred and other forms of pig-headed stupidity; and I don’t put up with it very well. This blog’s frith is not tried by polite disagreements, misunderstandings, or constructive criticisms … if anything, it’s enhanced by such things :-)