Let us return briefly to more deeply examine the conflict which is all the rage in my admittedly sketchy rendering of Charles’ mind.
Science is the master of Identity and Function, but has little or nothing to say about meaning. It loves to chase Meaning and Origins. It wants to ‘Penetrate’, and thus ‘Master’ them. ‘Nature’ is nothing more than forces and processes acting at scales of observation. When science penetrates Nature, the result is not children — but death.
For Science, Mastery means “constraint” in the dimension of meaning (reduction) and “explanation” in the dimension of Origins. It uses a tool like a blade, or very fine point. The ‘whatness’ of things, what they are, do and are for, are areas Science now owns outright, by virtue of being able to table the immediate overwhelming force of peer-reviewed research and similar tangible ‘proofs’.
It’s very reasonable and even heroic that Science wants to protect humanity from a closet full of madness catalysts that drive us insane all the time. These insanities (gods and superintelligences) do not exist (after all, no one can prove they do) and many can offer excellent arguments about why this closet should be (preferably permanently) relegated to the scrap heap of ‘strange, dangerous, and occasionally interesting fantasies’ — which is, as far as they are concerned, the origin of all these matters. Of course, it is a bit more difficult (well-nigh impossible) to protect us from the insanities Science engenders and becomes when enacted as human activity. Science has empowered military, governmental and commercial interests to toxicify every ecosystem and organism on Earth.
Religion is the master of Meaning and Origins, and doesn’t care so much about identity, except in one peculiar domain. Since the advent of Science (essentially her prodigal son) Religion has other concerns. Among other terrifying recent events, Science has abruptly decided that its own sources do not exist. Therefore, along with all the old demons Religion has been fighting for, apparently, eternities — there’s a new kind of enemy who has managed to turn the basis of communicating — language — against its ‘rightful source’! This is too much to bear. Along with getting the world ready for a gigantic war that keeps happening over and over again, Religion must also wrestle with Science, an opponent far too serious to overcome, or exclude.
Science has no such problems. It can take on Religion, mankind, the planet, and the future, and win.
It seems there are these two monsters, comprised entirely of adults, who have both been arguing (in a cognitive dimension we might call Authority) for a very long time. They are arguing about the basis of reality, and the politics of belief. Science is largely rational, and Religion is (or at least, used to be) visionary.
But no one can locate any actual authorities anymore, because everything else in the universe is so busy mimicking them that no one can get a call through.
Startlingly, not only were children aware of this matter, they were bothered by it — but had no one to talk to about it, and even less of a vocabulary. Every adult they encountered had already been yelling on one side or both sides or back and forth for years and years.
Science can be described as what’s left of being human in the face of engineering authorities.
Science demands that if you produce a miracle it cannot examine, or which cannot be explained you are almost certainly lying or at least confused. If you can do something that looks like a miracle (and you’re actually doing it) then science should be able to tell you more about it, somehow (at least eventually) so that you can see that there’s actually nothing miraculous anywhere in the universe, or that what you consider miraculous — isn’t. Exception: things that Science thinks are pretty amazing even though they cannot really be miracles — since, as every scientist is taught, a miracle is merely a process not yet verifiably understood or methodically analyzable. There is no such actual thing because it merely describes an incomplete knowledge state.
Religion is what’s left of the relationship with [our sources] in the face of theological (and philosophical) authorities.
Religion demands that if you’re doing anything miraculous without the proof of God’s intention it get done this way, you’re ‘a magician’ — a very bad thing indeed. Apparently, the only way you can get proof of God’s intention that you be doing miracles is through other humans who worship various beings and/or books. If you can do miracles, or something that looks like them, you are very probably either damned, confused, or just plain crazy. There are a few exceptions here, just as with Science, but it’s the gist that is important, because both of these authorities are setting up for prosecution of innocents.
Now, there’s this other strange thing going on, which is that both Science and Religion have good points to make. There are in fact, people who are lying about making miracles (they use various skills involving diversions and inside knowledge of systems and thinking), and Science can reveal how they do this. This is profoundly useful, when properly applied.
There are also people with nefarious ‘powers’ (much like magicians) who don’t believe in souls or God at all (think: Derren Brown) who could be extremely dangerous either in what they are doing, or teaching (by example). People like this have a profound effect on children and others, who are very interested in the idea of ‘powers’. They also have a profound effect on adults because they can deploy relational assets with utterly compelling skills that are of an entirely different order than those any of the witnessing adults (or children) possess or even understand. There are other kinds of ‘possibly dangerous magicians’ running around as well, and many of them claim to know something about the peculiar nature of [the herald and the teacher]. Some will even tell you they want to use it — to 'improve the world’. Possible, but very unlikely — for a number of complex reasons. Also: thus far they apparently have failed to do so.
Then we have ‘regular magicians’ who are usually playing a game, and whose main interest is in developing an entertainment craft and presenting it to audiences. These usually don’t represent any significant threat — except maybe in a mating context. Many of them begin the quest for the source of magic itself, and, not finding it, decide that it was essentially a perceptual con — much like their ‘illusions’. Many adults make the same decision about spiritual matters in general.
re: turn to skyBook(g)