Timeline for Why would a scientifically advanced future community believe in multiple gods?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
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| Jan 15, 2017 at 22:06 | comment | added | Pedro Gabriel | @DLosc: Your point regarding the difference between veneration and worship is quite accurate, including the catholic POV you mentioned. | |
| Jan 15, 2017 at 21:58 | comment | added | DLosc | @NZKshatriya Yes, they are very close. I used the word "venerate" to mean "honor or respect deeply, without taking the honored person or thing as an actual deity." For example, in Catholicism one "venerates" the saints but "worships" only God. On the other hand, the English word "worship" has been used with both meanings in the past. One might have to read the writings of the revolutionaries in the original French to parse out exactly what they meant. | |
| Jan 15, 2017 at 21:46 | comment | added | DLosc | @PedroGabriel All I really know about the Cult of Reason is from Wikipedia, but: "Unlike Robespierre's Cult of the Supreme Being, Hébert's cult [of Reason] rejected the existence of a deity." I'm sure your second point is quite accurate, in that the people in charge didn't believe that the religious trappings meant anything. They did believe in the philosophy that the Cult taught, though. | |
| Jan 15, 2017 at 4:15 | comment | added | NZKshatriya | @DLosc I still cannot, for the life of me, see how veneration and worship are different. | |
| Jan 13, 2017 at 21:16 | comment | added | Tonny | @PedroGabriel Ouch... Facepalm... Somehow I got Lemaitre and Einstein mixed up. (Must be the lack of sleep... The little one has teething problems and has been keeping us awake the last few days.) Einstein had a very liberal Jewish upbringing and became a theist later in life. | |
| Jan 13, 2017 at 21:06 | comment | added | Pedro Gabriel | @Tonny: You're absolutely right. But allow me a correction: Albert Einstein was not a devout christian. He was a theist of sorts, that called "God" to the "fundamental laws of nature". He despised organized religion and the idea of a personal God. He was a theists, nonetheless. If you want a devout christian from the same time and field of expertise as Einstein to prove your point, it should be Father George Lemaître, that formulated the Big Bang Theory. | |
| Jan 13, 2017 at 11:58 | comment | added | Tonny | Your last paragraph certainly makes sense. As an example that a scientific mind doesn't automatically mean atheist, just look at Albert Einstein who was a devout Christian. And, another example, historically a lot of scientists came from the Catholic Order of the Jesuits and were priests. God as "the great Watchmaker" is a well-known concept that many people with a scientific background adhere to. | |
| Jan 13, 2017 at 8:56 | comment | added | Pedro Gabriel | @DLosc; I admit that I didn't have that in mind, but a kind of Cult of Reason could indeed happen in the OP society. Two corrections: 1) the revolutionaries were not atheists, but rather deists (which could be construed as a kind of idolatry of the laws of nature, caused by scientific positivism)... and the revolutionaries persecuted atheists as a kind of anarchists and moral subversives; 2) The Cult of Reason didn't take hold because the revolutionaries didn't actually believe it: rather it was instituted as a surrogate of classical religions for the un-enlightened masses. | |
| Jan 13, 2017 at 6:36 | comment | added | DLosc | Your mention of an Athena-like goddess made me think of the Cult of Reason during the French Revolution. Granted, the Cult venerated Reason as an abstract concept, not a goddess; but maybe if its founders hadn't been such dedicated atheists, they might have let veneration turn into worship. | |
| Jan 11, 2017 at 21:47 | history | edited | Pedro Gabriel | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 11, 2017 at 21:27 | history | answered | Pedro Gabriel | CC BY-SA 3.0 |