naturalphilosophy

The speaker gives examples of historical figures like Newton and Galileo who faced opposition from religious institutions when presenting their scientific findings. The speaker also talks about how some people in religion and spirituality can have rigid beliefs, but that change and adaptation are important. Hi everyone, I hope you're all well. I've just had my breakfast. It was a bit of a shambles. I was going to have egg, bean and sausage. I ended up opening a tin of soup. They're like a range where, when you look at what you think is beans, it could be soup, and it was soup, and I wondered why it looked so peculiar. So I opened a tin of soup instead of a tin of beans, and instead of baked beans, which is soya beans I think they're made from, I opened some channa, some chickpeas, had that with organic tomato sauce, and four sausages, which was absolutely delicious. That was my breakfast. Anyway, I wanted to talk about the combination, I say combination, there is an assumption that people who have a mystical bent or a spiritual interest have no interest in science. It's complete and utter nonsense. We use quite often the language that is constantly being updated by science, we use it in our explanation of the world, because the early explanations of the world were of course from the wisest people in the tribes, and they made up stories as well as they could, you know, the stars were gods, and the sky was a god, and the volcano was a god, whatever it was, or a goddess. And gradually, over time, we developed better systems of understanding. So by the time of Newton, whose main interest was actually alchemy, but he was a sideline, he was also a natural philosopher of the time, he was a Christian, and he was also somebody who developed various formulas that explained the forces, some of the forces that were happening. It was just like Galileo, in Galileo's time, he was looking through a telescope, he had an improved, he didn't have the best telescope, but he had to create his own, and he went to the church and said, look, this is what I've found out, or I don't know if he did go to the church, but they said this is nonsense, because this is what it says in the Bible, so what you're saying is obviously blasphemy, heresy, and he had to retract what he said. And this happens quite often, people who are studying one thing or another, they develop insights into how the world works, and they share that, but their assumption is that the people who they're sharing with don't take an interest in it, that they've got some bonkers ideas, and there are a lot of people who are involved in religion and spirituality who are completely off the scale in terms of their ability to not want to think, but just to have a sacred idea of how the world works. For example, the Mormons, early on, they wanted to, well, the leader, let us say, founder, John Smith, wanted to have lots of wives, and he invented this incredible story about gold plates in a magic hat, or, you know, you can point to, let's take another religion, a religion of Quakerism. Quakerism started with people having shakes, they used to get possessed by the Holy Spirit and shake like crazy, and then, later on, as they tried to get rid of that, that reputation, they became a very quiet religion, and it's quite interesting, they're very similar, if anything, to some of the Buddhist ways of sitting quietly, and they sit quietly, and if they've got any, if they come into some contemplation, they come out with some understanding, they stand up and they share it, and everybody else will be, will hear that, and maybe it will be for them, and they will think about it as well. And they do share their, I remember going to, they call their churches the House of Friends, and I remember going to some Sufi meetings at a friend's house, or House of Friends, however they describe it. So, things do change, and people do change, and they do adapt, and it's well, well worth bearing that in mind. All right, that's all from me for today. Bye now.