Ha ha, yeah, rain is the result of divine pedophilia. Didn't think that one through... I dunno, just playing with ideas. My point is that "sky spirits" as an explanation isn't "incorrect", just imprecise and prone to misinterpretation. I mean, there are many myths that have turned out to be pretty good intuitions of real phenomenon. for instance, the Hindu belief in "divine vibration" sounds uncannily like string theory- then there is an African tribe known as the Dogon that was aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system hundreds of years ago. "the plants told us". I'd expect a Curandero in the amazon to know more about the ecology there than any "rational" (quotes to highlight subjectivity) scientist... Even though they would probably use terms like "spirit" to describe it. Holding a glass over a pot of water doesn't explain condensation, it just demonstrates it. "why does water gather there?" It's very possible to intuit things about nature. Strange but it's true. [As an aside, I know this isn't on topic, but I'm multi-attentional, so it's okay.] I'd recommend Jill Bolte Taylors' talk on TED for a pretty good explanation of what I'm referring to; you don't need to have a stroke to get to that state of consciousness. I guess what I'm getting at is, why is it so important to be "right" in the objective sense? If you're trying to build some kind of precise machine, I can see the value. Otherwise, a pretty story is way more than good enough, especially if it conforms to universal archetype... IMHO
there are many myths that have turned out to be pretty good intuitions of real phenomenon.
That might be true ...
for instance, the Hindu belief in "divine vibration" sounds uncannily like string theory- then there is an African tribe known as the Dogon that was aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system hundreds of years ago.
... but all that is not true. There is a long list of distinctively modern concepts and discoveries - DNA, the Big Bang, black holes... - which are constantly being linked in spurious ways to ancient myth and sc...
As our tribe wanders through the grasslands, searching for fruit trees and prey, it happens every now and then that water pours down from the sky.
“Why does water sometimes fall from the sky?” I ask the bearded wise man of our tribe.
He thinks for a moment, this question having never occurred to him before, and then says, “From time to time, the sky spirits battle, and when they do, their blood drips from the sky.”
“Where do the sky spirits come from?” I ask.
His voice drops to a whisper. “From the before time. From the long long ago.”
When it rains, and you don’t know why, you have several options. First, you could simply not ask why—not follow up on the question, or never think of the question in the first place. This is the Ignore command, which the bearded wise man originally selected. Second, you could try to devise some sort of explanation, the Explain command, as the bearded man did in response to your first question. Third, you could enjoy the sensation of mysteriousness—the Worship command.
Now, as you are bound to notice from this story, each time you select Explain, the best-case scenario is that you get an explanation, such as “sky spirits.” But then this explanation itself is subject to the same dilemma—Explain, Worship, or Ignore? Each time you hit Explain, science grinds for a while, returns an explanation, and then another dialog box pops up. As good rationalists, we feel duty-bound to keep hitting Explain, but it seems like a road that has no end.
You hit Explain for life, and get chemistry; you hit Explain for chemistry, and get atoms; you hit Explain for atoms, and get electrons and nuclei; you hit Explain for nuclei, and get quantum chromodynamics and quarks; you hit Explain for how the quarks got there, and get back the Big Bang . . .
We can hit Explain for the Big Bang, and wait while science grinds through its process, and maybe someday it will return a perfectly good explanation. But then that will just bring up another dialog box. So, if we continue long enough, we must come to a special dialog box, a new option, an Explanation That Needs No Explanation, a place where the chain ends—and this, maybe, is the only explanation worth knowing.
There—I just hit Worship.
Never forget that there are many more ways to worship something than lighting candles around an altar.
If I’d said, “Huh, that does seem paradoxical. I wonder how the apparent paradox is resolved?” then I would have hit Explain, which does sometimes take a while to produce an answer.
And if the whole issue seems to you unimportant, or irrelevant, or if you’d rather put off thinking about it until tomorrow, than you have hit Ignore.
Select your option wisely.