Comment by akomtu
10 hours ago
The God of science is the Theory of Everything that unifies all forces under one set of closed-form equations, that this theory can be understood by our minds, and can be used to predict observations. When these assumptions are declared the final truths, the science morphs into a religion, and when the science is hollowed out with the 'Occam razor', the religion morphs into a very rigid materialistic doctrine.
I believe that aura has some basis in reality, maybe not what we think it is. It's much harder to believe that all the folklore around aura is made up in a consistent way. Auras must be material, if they are real, but it's not necessarily in the thin slice of matter our science is familiar with. It may be something in the realm of neutrinos or that famous dark matter: something very elusive that can be detected only in huge amounts.
Your first paragraph is what I frequently hear when people purport science to be a religion, but you're making two fundamentally wrong assumptions - first most scientists no longer believe a "Theory of Everything" to be able to fully predict observations, and second "Occam's razor" is merely a useful tool, but not a guiding principle of modern science. Sure, there are some people who might follow the ideas you talk about, but there are people who believe anything.
I don't fundamentally deny that something like an aura could exist, but believing it on the basis of common folklore should mean you also believe in many other things - like ghosts, fae and so many other "consistent" ideas. Yet I see no reason to believe it unless there is reliable evidence of it. You said that such evidence cropping up would be a disaster for science - I disagree, it would be wonderful! It would finally be a way for these things to be studied objectively. Does it not give you pause that, after so many decades, no group of people has been able to bring up such evidence?