What better subject for empirical science than the Pantheon of the Gods.
Let's start with Zeus.
In the beginning, whatever that means, there was Cronus. Cronus is a no-brainer. For anyone ignorant of reality looking out at the universe, time was immeasurable. Because our minds are constructed to compare recall with reality, when we think of the beginning, we then ask, what was before the beginning. When we say, well, this was before the beginning, then we say, what was before that beginning. This can go on forever, so to speak, just like asking where the end of the universe is can go on forever. The problem is, space is nothing, and being nothing, simply doesn't exist. It can't go on forever, is simply doesn't exist. Therefore, with minds evolved to compare something with something, when we are faced with nothing, we can't compare and we simply can't comprehend.
The same with time. Time does not exist outside the reference point of two events. If there is nothing in the universe, then there is no time. In short, time is only relative to the movement of matter and does not itself exist. Just as we can't comprehend something that doesn't exist, the original creators of the Pantheon of the Gods had to start out with something that simply didn't exist, time, and that something was Cronus, time. However, time had a couple of sons. You see, once nothing is personified, then there's something to compare, and it has to have a place to live, a family history and even a parent. Cronus' pop was Uranus, the sky god, the son of Gaea, the earth mother, who actually didn't have a husband, not even the sun, so we get a neat little circle, starting with the earth. Although I should note it's not relevant, the two major forces in prehistorical religious thought were one based around the sun god, the other around the earth god. Here we are dealing with the Westernized one based around the earth god.
In any event, Uranus married his mother, Gaea, and they procreated profusely, including twelve of the Titans. Cronus, the ruling Titan, under the tutelage of his mother Gaea, castrated Uranus, who either died or was blown away. Getting back to Cronus, he married Rhea and they gave birth to the Olympians. Knowing his own history with a knife and what it could do, Cronus decided to eat each of his children as they were born, until Rhea substituted a rock for Zeus and this dumb god didn't know the difference. Well, not so dumb. He apparently escaped to Italy where, with his name change to Saturn, he started the Saturnalia feast, that orgy of the flesh that's universally celebrated to this day, in many places, year round.
Which brings us back to Zeus. Apparently a couple of Zeus's brothers came out the backside in pretty good shape, in good enough shape, in fact, to challenge Zeus to leadership. These two were Poseidon and Hades. Being reasonable gods, the three decided to draw lots to see who got heaven and earth, who got the vast oceans and who ended up with hell. Zeus, of course, won, with Poseidon riding the waves and Hades going to hell, which wasn't a bad stint because hell was where all the precious metals in the Earth were located, making him pretty darn wealthy.
When we get to Zeus and his brothers, however, we can start to analogize the Pantheon of the Gods to the Pantheon of empirical science. Empirical science was originally a project to eliminate Aristotle, who 17th Century scientists considered dumb enough to mistake a rock for a tender baby, in Aristotle's case, think the sun went around the Earth instead of the Earth going around the sun. Although not contemporaries, ideas outlive their personification, so we can characterize the three sons of Cronus, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades as Newton, Huygens and Bacon. Newton, vying for the position of ruler of the sky and the Earth, believed that the universe was operated by immutable laws God created to control the movement of matter in reality. Bacon, on the other hand, vying simply for the truth, claimed that we could never know with certainty what the nature of the forces were that caused movement or even how the matter that made up the Earth was ultimately composed. He said the only way we could approximate knowing was to collect facts, create concepts, and test if those concepts worked to explain the facts. He knew that we could never know all the facts. He therefore said the concepts we create must always be open to change. They can never be fixed because, as we uncover more facts, our concepts have to be modified to explain the new facts. Finally, resorting to Occam's razor, he said whatever explains the most with the least assumptions was the best concept to go on. Although he didn't express it, it's obvious that concepts describing one area of reality have to be consistent with concepts describing other areas of reality. Because empirical science turns its concepts into unchallengeable laws, Bacon has been consigned to hell.
Huygens can be considered Poseidon because he was obsessed with water, and more specifically, the waves that rolled across the vast waters of the oceans. He thought that light was a wave. Therefore, it was only natural he should draw this assignment after Newton won the draw for the heavens and the Earth. However, Newton, never wishing to give up any part of his kingdom, considered the waves to be part of his kingdom, and quickly consigned Huygens to 18th Century obscurity by claiming that light was a particle. As far as Bacon was concerned, he was well out of sight, buried deep beneath the surface of the Earth, never to be allowed entrance into the ruling triumvirate again simply by destroying hell, heaven and everything religious.
The oceans are vast, however, and Huygens was reborn at the end of the 18th Century in the form of the god Young, whose deceptive two-slit experiment (see column 09-04) once again created the god of the ocean with light as a wave, with Newton giving up part of his kingdom, the part dealing with light, to Young as a result. Another 18th Century god took his place in the empirical pantheon. This god, who represents Athena, was Laplace, who, since the empirical Pantheon of the Gods doesn't admit women, can be analogized to Zeus's daughter, Athena. That might take some explaining.
Newton, the god of the skies and Earth had a little problem with late 18th and early 19th Century empiricists. While he was clearly the god, he had the unfortunate defect of actually believing in God. There was no place in the empirical Pantheon of the Gods for a real God, so Newton's God had to go. However, Newton's entire theory of gravity, his Celestial Mechanics, the diadem that made him the leader of the empirical Pantheon of the Gods, was based on God. Not only did God put the planets in motion, he kept them in motion, and not only did God give the skies motion, he also caused the gravity that made objects fall. This was not permissible in the empirical kingdom of the world. Thus, out of nothing, with no evidence, and no reasoning, Laplace painted a picture of the solar system condensing out of a swirling mass of gas. The planets are all orbiting aren't they? Sure they are. Ergo, they must be orbiting because they condensed out of a swirling mass of gas. And because they are still orbiting, the space through which they are orbiting must be empty, frictionless.
The fact that Young's two-split experiment turning space into an aether filled place that would cause friction to slow the motion imparted to the planets from the swirling mass of gas didn't cause a ripple. Little discrepancies among the gods that occupy the empirical Pantheon of the Gods are to be expected.
In any event, like the swirling mass of gas sprang full grown out of the forehead of Newton's Celestial Mechanics, Athena sprang full grown, and wearing armor, out of Zeus' forehead. Laplace's fantasy wasn't born with armor, but it soon acquired it as it became the basic mantra of empirical science.
As to God producing gravity, the devil's in the details, and who the heck knows (or cares) what the details are when we are dealing with the gods of empirical science?
So now we have the basics of empirical science enshrined so deeply into the religious mantra that to question any of them is to commit a deadly sin. Gravity has no explanation, the motion of the planets has no explanation, and light has no explanation. Just as in ancient times, when questions arose about reality, people were referred to the gods, so today, the answers to the basic questions of our existence are represented by gods in the Empirical Pantheon of the Gods, no reasoning, no logic, nothing to understand. All that's necessary is to repeat the dogma.
The 19th Century added gods to the empirical Pantheon of the Gods along two lines. Louis Agassiz stepped up to the plate (although baseball was yet to be invented) when explorers began bringing back clear evidence for a worldwide flood. This was as bad as Newton relying on God for motion It had to be correctly interpreted, and fast. Agassiz came up with the ridiculous notion of the ice ages, things that had never been seen, that had no source, and couldn't be explained in any way. What better answer to the riddle of the flood evidence than a nonexistent fantasy that couldn't be disproved? For that contribution, Agassiz joined the empirical Pantheon of the Gods as Apollo. You see, it's a simple process, take a lie and turn it into the truth, so who better to represent Apollo, the God that couldn't tell lie, than the guy that was all lie.
Then came Lylell, the author of the clearly deceptive uniformitarianism, the notion that all changes to the Earth are gradual and take long periods of time to occur. Lylell, of course, was targeting the biblical begats that determined the Earth was only thousands of years old, clearly erroneous, but as usual, empirical science errs in the opposite to the extreme. Lylell took his position in the empirical Pantheon of the Gods as Artemis, Apollo's twin brother, to whom all animals were sacred. Uniformitarianism harms no animals, not even the dinosaurs who had to be killed off by comets, asteroids, or maybe just a bunch of shooting stars.
Both these gods made it possible for Darwin to propose his species evolution, with uniformitarianism providing the time and the ice ages destroying the evidence. Darwin's real target was biblical creationism, and for taking that on, he was definitely a warrior, making him Ares, in the empirical Pantheon of the Gods, the god of war. It's still raging a century and a half later. The final god in this line is Freud, whose psychoanalysis turned the battle of good and evil into a mental construct of a battle between the id and the ego, or something like that. I say something like that, because Freud can morph to accommodate all situations, which makes him Hera in the empirical Pantheon of the Gods. Hera was Zeus's wife. She tried to get rid of him. He survived and hung her from a golden chain until she promised never to rebel again. The promise turned her into the trickiest of gods, and that of course is the definition of psychoanalysis.
Faraday started the other line becoming Hermes in the empirical Pantheon of the Gods, although I prefer to consider Joseph Henry this god, although I respect Henry too much to consign him to the status. Both more or less discovered inductance, the electrical force that drives our civilization. Electricity is pretty fast, as was Hermes, but that's not why Faraday becomes Hermes. Hermes was fast due to his winged sandals, winged hat and magic wand, which makes as much or more since than the empirical definition of electricity, which starts off with it being a moving charge and ends up with, oh wait, that's it, it's a moving charge. Maxwell takes his position in the empirical Pantheon of the Gods as Hestia, goddess of the hearth. While the electromagnetic emissions Maxwell identified are clearly at the heart of reality, his description of them is impossible to fathom, which was the same as Hestia's, who as Zeus's sister, had no personality. Hearths are everywhere, as are electromagnetic emissions, but I really think Hestia is appropriate for Maxwell because hearths produce fire, and empirical science does not consider fire a source of electromagnetic emissions. Well, maybe one emission, light, but that's a special case. Curie joins the empirical Pantheon of the Gods as its first female member for the discovery of radiation, or at least that's what she more or less gets credit for. Here we find lame Hephasestus, not because Curie was lame or radiation is lame, but because the empirical explanation for radiation is lame. See column 13-06.
Well, that leaves Hubble and his Big Bang.
Come on folks, this one's just too easy.
Aphrodite!
Peter Bros is the author of the 9 volume Copernican Series and is President of The Far Museum of Dallas, an actual history museum, which will house its collection of 50,000 rare Eastern Mediterranean manuscripts and artifacts together with actual history displays and tours in a full-sized replica of the Egyptian Temple at Dendera to be built in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Email:peterbros@therealskeptic.com