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Day 04 ⇝ Your views on religion

I guess there was a time that I would have described myself as an atheist. I, and my sister were never christened, much to the annoyance of my father's mother. My Mum said it would be our choice when that time came. Living out in the countryside of Herefordshire meant that primary school was religious assemblies every morning. My one escape, and passion that developed in primary school, was for mythology. To me it was the super hero stories of old. Norse, Greek, anything I would read, and my mum nurtured it. But then I was also obsessed with space and science as a child and the issue would be reconciling this all.

At high school the religious assemblies were diminished, however my second headmaster while there was an ex baptist minister and drove religion into the school. Of course this, and at primary school, was all CoE. The only time I felt OK with even entering a church was out of respect for the school on foundress day, or something like a persons funeral or wedding. While at high school my Religious Education teachers were happy with how much mythology I had read and how I connected the dots between them and more contemporary faiths.

As a growing scientist at high school, then sixth form and then uni, I could not see the point of organized religions and especially those Abrahamic faiths. I saw myths of old and the Bible as just good stories and tales through which morality and concepts could be taught.

Now it was through fellows up in Manchester, and meeting Sam, that I figured out my actual stance on religion. I tend towards agnostic, but really I am abiding to Hermetic philosophy. This along with more open forms of paganism allow for an expansive spiritualism, where Gods are just names and forms through which to contemplate the universe. Just as we have electrons, there are other names for the same force, such as Thor and Zeus. This and science are then not mutually exclusive. In fact they are inclusive and compatible. See science is made up of theories and rules, and scientists always find the fun things where those theories have to be revised, and rules altered. Thus, science can't rule out some form of universal force, some spirit of the universe. Equally science can not be dismissed as through knowledge and it's teaching we gain enlightenment. Hermetic philosophy also does not rely on middle men. It is about personal enlightenment and not rhetoric.