7 ms·

> "Everything we found shattered our expectations....suggesting the site had a dual role as both a spiritual and a scientific place. I've been interested for a

• 082349872349872 2y ago
  ancient connections between religion and astronomy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38761574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38761574
• codegladiator 2y ago
  The scientists of today are the priests of tomorrow. The only reason we don't use "religious" method is because science has taught us to only believe "data backed evidence". Also at the same time we are moving fast into the era where reproduction of most "papers" being published today is hard and unlikely if not impossible. That "day-to-day" people neither read science papers in depth nor religious scriptures in depth is a common problem as well.
  • j_maffe 2y ago
    This is simply false. Reproduction of papers is an academic issue but your claim is at the very least hyperbolic. The scientific method has proven to be by far the most successful method of investigating the world around us.
    • shermantanktop 2y ago
      Agreed. However, the method has ritualistic elements that can reproduced without following the method itself all that closely. When we use “accepted by a top journal” as a proxy for value, we are substituting social proof for actual value.
      • lazide 2y ago
        I think what you’re referring to is that a lot of traditional ‘hard’ science we are familiar with came out of a period of time when the most important thing was being provably correct (or not) - and it mattered in concrete ways - and so was enforced pretty heavily. Aka ~ early 1900’s to mid cold-war. When hard science and industrialization was a front and center, existential thing for society. A lot of science (both back then, but especially now) is less hard and is more optimized towards being accepted. Psychology, Anthropology, Geology, Paleontology, many fields of Biology, and many others are all about social proof, since really what else can you use? There are too many lines of judgement that have to be drawn for any of it to make sense in a hard ‘verifiable’ way. And hard science still requires reproducibility, but a lot of that is getting more niche and harder to verify, rather than more directly verifiable, so it is also falling prey to ‘acceptability’ vs ‘verifiable correctness’. Going back even further Historically, it was very hard to afford verifiable correctness, so very few people could actually do it. Pretty much either very rich people, or people with rich rich sponsors - which also often required or provided social proof/acceptance. Religion helps wrap the whole thing up in a way that is marketable, and secrecy protects the ‘trade secrets’ so any sort of professionalism can be supported for further work or development. And because people need to eat.
        • detourdog 2y ago
          I’m not so sure it was secrecy or just some not that curious about the complicated subject matter. Much of the group study happend in specific location travel and publishing being what they were I expect knowledge scarcity without trying to control the information.
          • 2y ago
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • elashri 2y ago
    > reproduction of most "papers" being published today is hard and unlikely if not impossible. It is unlikely because there is no incentive to it. In contrast, it would be considered career sabotage if you keep reproducing other studies than creating original research. Because funding agencies and hiring committees will look for that. Not because it is impossible (Of course operative word here is "most")
  • detourdog 2y ago
    I think it may be more subtle than what you present. Earlier naive beliefs my have just as much evidence of support in the context at the time of conception.
• gwbas1c 2y ago
  Well, we grow up with knowing about the origins of the universe, and life, from a young age. I suspect, when you don't understand things like the big bang and genetics, the line between religion and science (or fact and fantasy) is quite blurry.
  • prewett 2y ago
    We grow up with an Epicurean world view (matter is all there is, the gods didn't create the universe, it's just independent atoms), which is the only reason why science and religion are at odds. Knowing that the universe started with the Big Bang doesn't preclude God in any fashion--the Epicurean worldview precludes God. In a theistic worldview the Big Bang is how God created the universe. Likewise, genetics doesn't preclude God creating life, the Epicurean worldview precludes that. How did the genetic code come to be? An Epicurean worldview says that it was all chance. A theistic worldview says that God created the genetic code, and you have lots of options to choose from that are consistent with evidence: God created the major changes (i.e. God caused much of the major evolution); or God is such a good engineer that he created the minimal amount once, in such a way that it would evolve into what he wants; or even that God is such a divine engineer that he created the universe such that it would naturally create what he desired without him having to do anything else.
    • gwbas1c 2y ago
      I personally treat "God" as an anthropomorphism of concepts that are beyond my understanding. Just like some children might imagine that there's little people inside a TV, sometimes it's convenient to apply human characteristics to things I don't understand, especially during emotional distress or when dealing with weak-minded people. Other times, it's better to take comfort in accepting that I can't know everything and realize that the scientific method tells us far more about this subject than imagination. It just requires a big dose of humility.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • theultdev 2y ago
• dr_dshiv 2y ago
  The interconnection of “the divine” and science was central to the scientific revolution — Kepler, Newton, Galileo, etc. There became an understanding that one can learn about the divine through empirical methods, not just doctrine or contemplation. Though interesting that each of the above scientists all explicitly claimed to be Pythagorean… where are the Pythagoreans of today?
  • mcphage 2y ago
    Gene Ray? :-)
  • datameta 2y ago
    The book A Beautiful Question explores this topic quite well.
  • dbrueck 2y ago
    > The interconnection of “the divine” and science was central to the scientific revolution Agreed. Even today, for many people there is no fatal tension between science and religion (often in large part because they serve to answer different questions). My personal rule of thumb is that if I see an apparent contradiction between religion and science, it just means I have an incorrect/incomplete understanding of some area of religion or science (or both).
  • WillAdams 2y ago
    I would like to view every scientist or academic who publishes, even a Master's Thesis, but most especially a PhD: https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ is a successor of the Pythagoreans.
    • towaihee 2y ago
      [dead]
  • detourdog 2y ago
    I see the pursuit of the divine as searching for small repeatable surprises. The people doing the discovery observed some small physical world and surprised an set about divining the origin and documenting simple repeatability.
• debit-freak 2y ago
  Any distinction is likely only about 500 years old at most. Though I do very much dislike the term "religion" for interpreting history as it connotes so much that's specific to abrahamic religions and in particular Christianity and Islam. Such framing really doesn't prepare you well for empathizing with people who were likely as curious, critical, and wanting to understand the universe as we are.
  • dotancohen 2y ago
    When I hear the word religion I specifically think of people that are curious and critical. Referring back to your example of Abrahamic religions, their most famous work opens with an explanation of how the world was created. Was that not the work of somebody interested in how the world works?
    • lazide 2y ago
      No major world religion I’m aware of is all that friendly to anyone who disagrees with the answer once ‘given’. Which doesn’t go well with ‘critical’. Some will flat out kill you for disagreeing, in fact.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • LinuxBender 2y ago
        I am not an expert in this area but I think one has to go further back in time before religions were weaponized, censored, intentionally mistranslated, edited and otherwise tainted by kings and emperors. One example might be Gnosticism [1] not the modern version. There are probably better examples from earlier times of antiquity but again I am not an expert in this area. I would wager someone here may be knowledgeable in this area. Perhaps some religions around the time period of the Mycenaean period or other periods where people may have partaken in mind expanding substances as a matter of religious or cult practice? Or perhaps theories around psychedelic drugs used in the Eleusinian Mysteries? [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
• simplicio 2y ago
  I've found this interesting as well. It's not really clear that "formal" mathematics is actually that useful to an ancient society, even ones like Egypt or Greece that embarked on large engineering projects (you don't really need a proof of most basic geometry, just empirically noting relationships between shapes will get you far enough). So the idea that it started as basically a religious activity amongst mystery cults in Egypt and Greece is appealing Of course, the fact that the "mystery" part of "mystery religions" means they didn't write anything down, so rather frustratingly we only get vague third hand accounts of this stuff from classical greek philosophers and Roman-era neo-platonists.
  • detourdog 2y ago
    I see the large monolithic monuments are the evidence of an extremely sophisticated society that could carry the name of “simple machine age”. I beleive these ancient societies had as rich of an intellectual life as we do today. Since the simple machines were made cord/rope and wood the evidence of the sophistication is lost. The pyramids is the evidence of this sophistication.
• sharpshadow 2y ago
  Reading and writing was done in temples. Most people until recently weren’t capable of it.
• netcan 2y ago
  Mystery, science and what we retrospectively see as "religion" co_existed. This didn't end in the classical. Consider the medieval European priesthood... for example. It's basically where all scholarship and literacy resided. Also esoterica, healing magic, astrology, alchemy... This persists until the scientific age. Mendel was a monk. Newton was highly devout, and mostly devoted to jewish christian protoscience... some of it tracing all the way back to those Egyptians. If you'd asked him, he would have probably described himself as an alchemist. Recall that the church tried Galileo... because his published results negated Church dogma. That's because the study of celestial motion was a religious function. Always had been. Ancient Greek philosophers are often seen as "proto-secular." They were mostly seperste from formal priesthood and often treated homeric gods and myth with scepticism. But... they tended to be highly devoted to "mysteries" and their cults. There's also evidence that Socrates and co taught "secret" esoterica too... about the secret nature of the world... and triangles. Math, religion, deciphering of celestial patterns.. those have been together for a long time. Having religion separate from math, physics and natural science is a modern invention.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • 7952 2y ago
    And there were priests who pursued science as a passion. I think it was seen as a good secure job and had time for side projects.
    • markovs_gun 2y ago
      Priests weren't (and, I suppose , still aren't) expected to do heavy labor or manage a household, and they had to be literate to perform the Mass and all of the various sacraments. They were all scholars of religion and philosophy by training, and had the free time to persue other studies if they desired. That said, being a priest isn't just a job, it's a 24/7 commitment. Catholic priests had to give up all lands and any possibility of marriage, and especially in the middle ages the performance of various religious ceremonies took up a LOT of time. They also had to actually manage churches as institutions, and churches themselves could own lots of land and have tenants and whole economies under their purview.
• wahnfrieden 2y ago
  Graeber & Wengrow published good work on reassessing "priest" labels in anthropologic and archaeologic works of the past
• natroniks 2y ago
  I have formulated a dual analogy between antiquity and modern viewpoints: science:technology::religion:magic Science today, like religion of old, had a centralized authority with strict qualifications to enter. Academia, like priesthoods, were often a blend of talent and nepotism. Meanwhile, technology today is like magic of old, in that in can be wielded by anyone who has the desire to learn. There is also the common refrain in today's tech world that things like the recently unveiled Meta's Project Orion are "like magic." Meanwhile, the Ivory Tower is not far removed from the college (a coincidental term I'm sure) of pontiffs at Rome. Anyway, this is not to say the modern form has replaced the old, but it helps me conceive of how ancients may have understood the distinction between religion and magic, since both involved the gods, just as scient and technology are based on the same foundational principles and yet are applied in the real world in much different ways.