The whole Science vs. Religion is very much a Christian thing, not an all-religions thing. Uncovering the mysteries of how the world works is, for many people throughout history, part and parcel of worshiping the divine. There are probably a great many breakdowns on that by much better-placed religious scientists than you can find in the comparatively wee polytheist community, so I’d actually look at how other mainstream religions answer that question first, to give you a different baseline.
But on the whole, it’s just not something we’re terribly bothered by? There’s something at stake if you tell a Christian of a certain sort that what they believe is historically, factually wrong. We don’t generally have anything at stake. Our myths don’t work like that. LOTS of people’s myths don’t work like that. It’s the frustrating middle of a Venn Diagram of “GOTCHA: Your myths are fake because science!” and “GOTCHA: Your religion is backwards because it doesn’t function just like Christianity!” Which is, incidentally, the same central sliver that classical academia has only crawled out of in the last 50 years.
So this isn’t something I honestly give any thought to at all, outside of looking at the history of academia. It has zero theological significance for me.
If pressed to invent some, or account for the anthropological origin of a tradition, my answer has always just been “People Feel Thing.” People Feel Thing, so they give it a name and see what happens. People Feel Thing, so they interact and see what happens. People Feel Thing, so they fiddle with structures until They Feel Thing that seems like they’ve got it right. Humans like structures. Some humans Feel More Thing and some Feel Less Thing. And inevitably, humans are a mess and get many things wrong.
The reason that simplistic answer works for me is that it’s both what I’ve experienced and seen in other polytheist friends. Being a kid, Feeling A Thing. Not having any word for it until you grow up and discover, oh, other people Feel That Thing too. And as an adult it’s the same way you hone a practice: well, that Felt Wrong so we’re not gonna do that again. Let’s try this instead. Listen, I’m not saying it’s nymphs, but that river has a Feel about it, and I’ll throw a flower in when I pass, and that’s that. That offering would be better than this other one, but I couldn’t say why. This holiday is significant even though it’s meaning is lost, and that half-remembered one doesn’t speak to me at all.
Upon realizing they’re a polytheist, how does anyone choose a tradition? I always Felt something about Latin and passed it off as my linguistic zeal while I was off studying other polytheisms and trying them on like precious, irreplacable hats, unique in all the world. Only to discover I look, and Feel, awful in hats. There was no moment where I sat down and analyzed which paths would suit me; I Felt A Thing, and by the gods, it would not go the hell away.
So there’s always a measure of trusting your own perception, or at least deciding to follow where it leads even if you have questions or complaints.That doesn’t mean rejecting science; it also doesn’t mean interrogating your every feeling against all scientific evidence. It’s actually kind of the same spirit of inquiry that drives science to begin with, at least for those polytheists building traditions or mucking around in the academic/archaeological mud.
In the end, is Jupiter the vague placeholder for why the sky makes that Shiny Boom Attack, or is he manifest in the experience of thunder and lightning, the force and power, the way you still jump and turn your head even knowing exactly what it was, and why, and all the science behind it? Did people ever confuse the two? Sure! Does that mean modern polytheists have to believe exactly what a peasant in 250 BCE believed without the intervening millennia of growth and change? Nahhh.
