Skeptical Dialogue Continued
*Watches video, mostly patient* ‘So, Graham Hancock is a flake. That’s hardly news. You’d better have more than that.’
Did you see the animation? Do you know what Hancock is blaming the wanton destruction of the Earth on?
‘Yeah. Seems to make sense to me. I would have thought it did to you, as well.’
Really? Graham Hancock is blaming modernity, including science, for the world’s troubles. Does that make sense to you?
‘Wait. What?’
Maybe watch it again.
*Exasperated sigh.* ‘Fine.’
*Watches again.* ‘Oh.’
‘Okay, maybe I don’t understand Hermeticism as well as you do. Something is amiss here, I agree. But what?’
*finally takes coat off and sits.*
Hermeticism is the first of the sciences. Before the flowering of Empirical Science during the Enlightenment, alchemists in Europe were the only serious investigators into nature.
This video lumps them into the same categories as the ancient nature worshipping religions—with shamanism.
Hermeticism was and still is, in fact, science.
Empirical Science was a natural outgrowth of Hermetic Science. Hermes, had he actually existed, would have praised and not condemned, it.
‘I see that, yeah. But the militarization of the world…’
How can science possibly be to blame for that? Science discovers facts about nature. The uses to which such discoveries are put cannot be laid at the feet of the investigators.
‘So, governments are to blame.’
Only partly. What’s ripping the world apart more than anything, right now?
*nodding* ‘Religion. I think I see where you’re going.’
‘Hancock is blaming them too, though.’
I know. He’s lumped contemporary religion and science together.
‘The “Science is just another religion” trope. Okay, I’m a little pissed, now.’
‘What’s the real story?’
I think the best way to explain it is to give the proper interpretation of The Æsclepius.
*Sitting forward and really into it, now* ‘Go, man.’
