PCP: The Blog

Often Phil Plait (“The Bad Astronomer”) and I butt heads over his discussions of theology and metaphysics. However, I think there’s finally one thing we both agree on, a Religious Bill of Rights in the US is at best redundant, at worst imposing one’s beliefs upon others. You can read his rant about this on his blog at:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/02/15/do-we-really-need-a-religious-bill-of-rights/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BadAstronomyBlog+%28Bad+Astronomy%29

Freedom of religion does not mean you must be able to be comfortable in all situations in society. If you choose to take a teaching role in society, realize there are certain things you will need to teach and certain things you may need to bite your tongue on. Just as creationism has no place in biology classes, neither does energy work. Pagans try to avoid this issue by trying to agree with science, with our cop-out being “well, science just doesn’t understand this yet.” Sure, to Pagans that makes sense — but to non-Pagans, they see it for what it objectively is, a cop-out for us to avoid disagreement with science.

Dude, what we do is religion, not science. We should stop portraying what we do as science and internalize energy work, auric photography et. al. as what it is – faith! Additionally, calling it faith doesn’t mean it wont work on an anecdotal level. If we didn’t think our particular song and dance would work, we wouldn’t be doing it in the first place!

Sure, it’s great that we endorse the scientific method as a method of analyzing our religious practices. It’s even interesting that scientists have determined some of our practices actually have some science to them. However, there comes a point where we’re pretending all Pagan practices are backed by science. Eventually, those folks realize Paganism is some sort of religious thing and go Atheist. They may even host a popular podcast and shock Pagans that were stuck in disbelief when this finally happens.

Okay, got a bit off-topic in this rant. To summarize:
- Phil and I agree on something, holy shit!
- Pagans need to stop pretending EVERYTHING we do is backed by science. Sure, some herbology is backed by science but let’s not pretend “science doesn’t understand it yet.” If you’re so hellbent on it being proven by science, go out there, become a scientist and work on it! Just don’t be like one of those climate scientists that just do biased research rather than science.
- Pagans relying on science to explain everything are just Atheists in denial.

Comments?

I don’t know offhand what episode it was, but someone posed the question of what would a Pagan society look like. We took hypothetical stabs at what it would be like, yet the groupthink we were raised in and continue to be exposed to in the Pagan community blinded us to the fact that World War II was fundamentally about Pagans trying to take over the world. It wasn’t until watching some History Channel did I stumble across this epiphany.

You had Nazi Germany, embracing the Nazi religion (a cheap knockoff of the parts of Norse and other Germanic mythology the leaders of the Nazi party thought reflected well on them). Aspects of that history survive till this day. Then you also had Imperial Japan, a blatantly Pagan culture. Siding with Germany was the Tibetan Monks training Nazis in their metaphysics. I must admit, I am impressed with the metaphysical research the Nazis did as it is arguably the greatest quest for metaphysical research in the history of mankind. They scraped every corner of the globe for metaphysical knowledge. Kinda makes you wonder, what ever happened to all that research?

I’m not going to pretend their opposition was entirely Abrahamic or monotheistic. However, instead of painting the entire picture for you, I’ll let you do your own research and paint your own picture. You want to know what a Pagan dominated world would look like? Just look at the 1930s and early 1940s. Maybe the Wiccans do have a good idea about doing things in balance, peaceful co-existence and all that hippie crap we like to mock.