Sometimes I do appreciate the subtle details of the Craft...

[jducoeur]

A recent posting of tpau's put me in mind of the oft-cited (and to me false) dichotomy between science and religion. I find myself ever fonder of Masonry's even-handed attitude towards the subject. One of my favorite bits of the ritual refers to "the books of Nature and Revelation". The latter are the books of scripture on the altar; the former is the world around us, which must be "read" carefully and fairly if one is to have any hope of grasping truth.

There are times when I wonder if we've learned anything at all since the Enlightenment...

Comments

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Dan Brown touches on this in Angels and Demons. (He has good concepts and non-sucky plots... now if he could just learn to write like a person....) One of the lines that resonate is along the lines of "Science is just too young to understand."

When I was little, I asked my mother how God coluld create the world in a week... she said, "the Bible says seven days, but it doesn't say how long each day was."

[jducoeur]

The idea's an old but good one. I seem to recall first coming across it in Inherit the Wind (a play I've always been fond of, even if it rather oversimplifies the story).

It's the old question: are you open to treating your religion as metaphor or not? I consider myself a religious person -- but I think that reading revelation and ignoring nature is kind of missing the point...

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

I am... but I was raised by a scientist who was also a spiritual person, and encouraged to question (by my church, even) as much as I needed to to reconcile my religion with my world and vice versa. I realize now how lucky I was(but I still believe they mostly kept me around for amusement value).

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

If you ever see Inherit the Wind (about the Scopes Monkey trial), the lawyer makes that exact point.