Gods and Physics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last weekend\u2019s Intermediate Pagan Practice class covered deities: common concepts of God, Pagan views of God\/Goddess and gods and goddesses, and how we\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2010\/06\/gods-and-physics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gods and Physics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last weekend\u2019s Intermediate Pagan Practice class covered deities: common concepts of God, Pagan views of God\/Goddess and gods and goddesses, and how we\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2010\/06\/gods-and-physics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-06-24T11:42:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"John Beckett\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2010\/06\/gods-and-physics.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2010\/06\/gods-and-physics.html\",\"name\":\"Gods and Physics\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-06-24T11:42:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2010-06-24T11:42:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/b4c8980dc36f971434424c304ca429ad\"},\"description\":\"Last weekend\u2019s Intermediate Pagan Practice class covered deities: common concepts of God, Pagan views of God\/Goddess and gods and goddesses, and how we\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2010\/06\/gods-and-physics.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2010\/06\/gods-and-physics.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2010\/06\/gods-and-physics.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Gods and Physics\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/\",\"name\":\"John Beckett\",\"description\":\"Musings of a Druid, Pagan, and Unitarian Universalist.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/b4c8980dc36f971434424c304ca429ad\",\"name\":\"John Beckett\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0f50bfa2a79f70103847fe75540bb29c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0f50bfa2a79f70103847fe75540bb29c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"John Beckett\"},\"description\":\"I grew up in Tennessee with the woods right outside my back door. 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{"id":397,"date":"2010-06-24T11:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T11:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2010\/06\/gods-and-physics\/"},"modified":"2010-06-24T11:42:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-24T11:42:00","slug":"gods-and-physics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2010\/06\/gods-and-physics.html","title":{"rendered":"Gods and Physics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Last weekend\u2019s Intermediate Pagan Practice class<\/a> covered deities: common concepts of God, Pagan views of God\/Goddess and gods and goddesses, and how we can relate to and interact with them. We began by asking everyone \u201cwhat do you think when I say \u2018God\u2019?\u201d The responses ranged from traditional monotheism (we had one Christian in the group, albeit a very liberal, universalist Christian) to descriptions I would describe as \u201cNew Age\u201d to hard polytheism to some concepts that wouldn\u2019t be out of place in a conversation between mainstream liberal theologians.<\/p>\n

From there we went into the concept that the variety of human religious experience is evidence (though not proof) of the diversity of the Divine: the world we actually live in is better explained by many limited gods and goddesses rather than by one all-powerful Supreme Being. This is one of John Michael Greer\u2019s main points in A World Full of Gods.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

In that discussion, Cynthia Talbot had one of the best analogies I\u2019ve heard on this subject. 17th century Newtonian physics (the laws of motion and gravity) explains how things work in the world we experience. When we learn this in high school or college, we say \u201cyeah, that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

But 20th and 21st century physicists have found that when dealing with the very small (subatomic particles) and the very large (the Big Bang), Newtonian physics doesn\u2019t always hold true. Most of us have to stretch to understand Einstein\u2019s Theory of Relativity, and we\u2019re left scratching our heads when string theory and M theory are brought up. Even though the mathematics show that the universe may very well have eleven dimensions instead of four, we have trouble getting our minds wrapped around that concept \u2013 and it makes absolutely no difference in the way we live our lives day to day and year to year.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the God of the theologians (such as Karen Armstrong\u2019s \u201cGod beyond God\u201d<\/a>) may be necessary to reconcile authentic religious experience with the lack of conclusive proof of the existence of God, but that God has little impact on the daily lives of all but a few mystics.<\/p>\n

The religious equivalent of Newtonian physics is polytheism. We experience the spirits of natural forces \u2013 sometimes in a way that causes us to identify them as Zeus or Poseidon or Demeter. We experience the spirits of a place or a land \u2013 sometimes in a way that causes us to identify them as Geb or Tefnut or Set. We experience the spirits of a people or a culture \u2013 sometimes in a way that causes us to identify them as Cernunnos or Danu or Brigid. We meet them in prayer and meditation, we interact with them in ritual: they are gods and goddesses we can understand and relate to.<\/p>\n

The deities of an Earth-centered universe (i.e. \u2013 before Galileo and Copernicus) cannot explain the Big Bang, evolution, or black holes. But in the day-to-day world that we experience and in which we spend the vast majority of our time, they provide an intuitive, satisfying framework for understanding and making meaning from our religious experiences.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"