Ojuice5001

Galileo Redux

I assign importance to the theological issue of whether the things of the natural world, such as the weather, are influenced by the will of the gods. My answer is yes, of course, so it's always good to see other religionists argue the same. Here's an article that contains a surprising number of things I agree with, in the fields of both theology and meteorology:

1. The gods (or God) are sovereign over the weather, and exercise their control over it.
2. The Enlightenment quest to predict and control natural phenomena like the weather has been an unsettling influence on the world.
3. Science leads away from a view of the weather that says it's deterministically predictable.
4. It can be illuminating to imaginatively look at the modern world with the attitude that it's only superficially different from the ancient.
5. Global warming and cooling have always been with us. On the issue of global warming, the environmentalists talk as if it were a bigger deal than it is.

The article does have a negative view of New Agers (with whom I might be considered to share some beliefs). But although its specific comments about sacrifice are silly, pagans do exist who associate natural disasters with divine wrath, or at least consider it a possibility. After all, there are gods with ties to nature, and humans do impact nature in some rather negative ways. I myself hold to the theory that the 2004 hurricanes in Florida were guided by the post-Enlightenment gods in the interest of making Bush lose the election to Kerry. And the environment is one of the many ways that a Kerry presidency would have been better than Bush.

On a related, but more scientific note, Al Gore isn't as wrong as the article makes out. Many scientists think global warming increases the propensity of the Atlantic to form hurricanes.

Jobar

Hi, OJ. A few questions- just which of the Greco-Roman gods was considered to be in control of the weather? Apollo? (That actually makes a little sense, Apollo being the sun god.)

I suppose that intercessionary prayers attempting to change the weather have been offered ever since men came up with the notion of gods. Given the classical fact that 'the rain falls upon the godly and the ungodly alike', and that tornadoes are no less likely to destroy churches and temples than any other structure in their path, and many other such indications that the weather completely ignores the prayers of the faithful (to whatever god or gods)- just why should you care if god(s) control the weather? Its effect is quite thoroughly chaotic in any case. And why should anyone object to scientific attempts to predict it? After all, weathermen certainly can't be accused of hubris- they are quite up front with the fact that their predictions are only statistical and not certain.

And I'm pleased to know that some people think there's god(s) who aren't Republicans.

Ojuice5001

I know that one of Jupiter's epithets was Jupiter Pluvius, Jupiter who brings rain. The people prayed to Jupiter for their crops to be rained on. I don't know which god, if any, they prayed to if they just wanted the winter nights to stop being so cold, or something like that.

True, it doesn't have as much practical import as some people would like. But the religious mind is interested in the idea that the cosmos is orderly even if we don't understand how it's anything but chaotic. And this order is supposed to be presided over by the gods; it's also an issue of divine sovereignty.

Yes, scientific attempts to predict the weather are no doubt harmless. But then, critics of technology realize that it won't stop there. They would have predicted that in the nineteenth century, and the engineers of today have proved them right.

Is it hubris to want to control the weather, and not just predict it? The religious critique of secular technologism is that attempts to engineer a more comfortable world for ourselves will not stop until we're perfectly comfortable. Except that long before that, we'll try something that backfires into catastrophe.

That's one of the beauties of polytheism, isn't it? For any god who has a goal for the world that one doesn't like, there's usually going to be an opposition, a god with a different view.

sharon45

It was very easy for me to see that the 2004 hurricanes were going to help bush, too bad these gods understood different.

orac

What I find very strange is that prayers to the god of gravity invariably stop me falling off the earth, prayers to the gods of momentum keep the earth spinning in an amazingly predictable manner, yet prayers to the weather gods seem strangely erratic and unreliable. Prayers to the god of getting old and dying are routinely answered in fairly predictable times, but getting prayers for staying young and beautiful to work seems to be more than most people can manage.

Does anyone know how we can get these powerful and reliable deities to change career and work somewhere useful for a change?

Why is it that the weather has all these different competing gods, but all the gods can agree that getting old is good? Why do some gods toss hurricanes and meteors and all sorts of disasters at people, yet not one of them has thought that making all the Australians fall off the bottom of the earth would be a neat disaster? Shouldn't the earth occasionally spin the other way when the god of momentum loses a fight with his/her/its enemy of the day?

Can anyone explain why there are people so stupid that they think anything can actually happen without the direct personal involvement of a deity? Come on, next people will be telling me the nerve impulses I use to direct my fingers on the keyboard aren't being personally supervised by my own personal nerve impulse deity. (Sure, a few people might claim that there's some things not controlled by deities - but as they keep telling us, if they can't prove that there's no deity then they have to accept that there is a deity.)

I really feel sorry for whatever deity is in charge of making snot stick to people's lips, though.