When do you distinguish between mythology and religion?

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DJK100 said:
True many have died for a lie. Although many have died for the truth.

If you look at the events, the apostles claimed to witness miraculous things not under any duress or stress that would cloud their memory, unlike witness to say a robbery or a murder etc. This eye witness believes what he sees to be true and has first hand knowledge of the person who performed these feat. The eyewitness goes on living his life in abject poverty and runs the risk of getting killed on a daily basis for talking about these things which incidentally were witnessed by numerous others. This eye witness is then brought up to a court where all they would have to do is say"just kidding!" to be exhonerated. But don’t do that. This while being in a court in which you know you will be condemned to die a horrible gruesome death for not doing the very simple act of retracting what you personally saw. I can see how that testimony would be unreliable. Like I said let’s get rid of that in court.
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Which all rather presupposes that one believes the reportage in the first place.
 
There are actually pretty good literary clues about how to tell texts that are meant to be mythological and those that are meant to be historical, and so on. These are all genres of literature with their own characteristics. Every language has these clues, and there are philologists who make it their lives works to study such things in whatever time and culture they are interested in. There are lots of them that study the Bible, and I don’t think any of them believes the Gospel accounts are meant to be myth.

We have these kinds of clues in our language too - if you start a book that goes “once upon a time” you know you aren’t getting tv programming instructions or an account of WWII.
 
NonServiam said:
Well, I don’t know what to tell you except that when someone gives me a book filled with stories that are fantastic and improbable, I don’t start from the position that everything in the book is true.

But again, some people – you guys, for example – assert that some of it’s myth (like, the Garden of Eden stuff) and that some of it’s fact (like, the Jesus stuff), but you don’t provide any criteria for distinguishing between myth and fact, other than saying that some spirit tells your church which is which. But you have to understand that other Christians and Christian denominations report that the same spirit tells them differently.

I’m not aware of a method of determining who’s “really” in touch with this spirit, and even if we could determine that, I’m also not aware of a method of determining whether this spirit is even telling people the truth.
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Well, let me look at your premise. If the language is “fantastic,” it might just be poetry, like the language of visionary poets like Blake. Or to take “Revelation” for instance, the language is like that which comes to you in a dream. Dreams play a major part in cultures other than our own, which has adopted a myth that assumes we are organic machines and that our very thoughts are epiphenomena of the operation of these machines, that dreams are but periodic discharges of the brain, although "Scrooge’s"first thought that his was but the result of dyspepia. But, honestly, most of the stories of the p]Bible are hardly fantastical. The stories of Abrahamic, Issac and Jacob were quite understandable by Mohammed, because his own culture was still quite similar to that of the patriarchs. The feats of Samson may seem exaggerated, but, when we find out the author was describing, less so. I am not trying to put a naturalist spin on the Bible stories. but the supernatural is not really ghosts and goblins, but --in our way of looking at the world-- but is the very basis of the natural. Richard Feynman was an atheist, but it is interesting to read how, after he got interesting in art, he sought to find a way for him to convey the sense of beauty he found in the order behind things.
 
DJK100 said:
Sure you do, the Church Magisterium tells you so as dictated by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirt will guide you to all truth — it says it right there in the bible.

Satisfied now?
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No, not least of all because there are other Christians and Christian sects who interpret the Bible in completely different ways who also claim to be in touch with the so-called “Holy Spirit.”

I’m not aware of any methods of determining whether this spirit exists, whether or not a particular group is in touch with it, and – assuming that we could determine that it was talking to a particular group – whether this spirit is even telling the truth.
 
DJK100 said:
Or vastly simplifies it by answering the question.
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I don’t think you understand the nature of my objection.

If your premise is that “Complexity needs to be explained, and it’s too improbable that complexity could come into existence,” then you can’t solve the problem by postulating a supernatural intelligence because – by definition – you’re increasing the amount of complexity that, according to you, needs to be explained and is improbable.

If a complex universe coming into existence is improbable, then a complex supernatural intelligence coming into existence has to be somewhere in the ballpark of a million times more improbable. Your “solution” only increases the amount of complexity that you have to find an explanation for.

Of course, if you want to claim that this supernatural intelligence “always existed,” which is what religious folks typically say, then you’ve invalidated your own premise by admitting that complexity can just always exist, without the need for a cause or explanation.

So take your pick – you can be wrong either way.
 
RobbyS said:
But, honestly, most of the stories of the p]Bible are hardly fantastical.
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Sorry, but talking snakes, angels interacting with people, races of giants, ten plagues, the parting of the red sea, virgin births, water into wine, and death and resurrection would be considered “fantastical” by virtually anyone.

When a text contains fantastical elements, I do not start from the premise that it is true, and neither should anyone else.

Instead, I try to figure out what parts of it may have some basis in reality, if any, and I discard the rest.
 
NonServiam said:
I don’t think you understand the nature of my objection.

If your premise is that “Complexity needs to be explained, and it’s too improbable that complexity could come into existence,” then you can’t solve the problem by postulating a supernatural intelligence because – by definition – you’re increasing the amount of complexity that, according to you, needs to be explained and is improbable.

If a complex universe coming into existence is improbable, then a complex supernatural intelligence coming into existence has to be somewhere in the ballpark of a million times more improbable. Your “solution” only increases the amount of complexity that you have to find an explanation for.

Of course, if you want to claim that this supernatural intelligence “always existed,” which is what religious folks typically say, then you’ve invalidated your own premise by admitting that complexity can just always exist, without the need for a cause or explanation.

So take your pick – you can be wrong either way.
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Read Thomas Aquinas and Jewish mystical writing (Kabbalah), in which the notion of Divine Simplicity is espoused. The complexity of G-d is thought to be a by-product of the human mind, but in actuality G-d is simple in His being apart from the Universe He created, and rather than CONSISTING of an amalgam of perfect attributes, EXISTS as their singular essence.
 
DJK100 said:
Well, I guess we bette abandon most of the court systems then if we can’t believe what anyone has seen with their own eyes.
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Over the last decade, courts have become far more willing to throw out eye witness testimony in tota, precisely because it is unreliable.

Video camera evidence is also under attack in court rooms, because of actual, and alleged unreliability of the evidence shown by the camera.

Amber
 
amber_lux said:
Over the last decade, courts have become far more willing to throw out eye witness testimony in tota, precisely because it is unreliable.

Video camera evidence is also under attack in court rooms, because of actual, and alleged unreliability of the evidence shown by the camera.

Amber
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Good. Soon we will have no possible way of telling what is going on. It will be a free for all. Yay! That is why I said toss it all out.
 
DJK100 said:
These are eye witness reports. Who allowed themselves to die. They obviously believed in their own reports.
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Depends on whether you think the reportage is sacred scripture or pious fiction.
 
Hello NonServiam;
Sorry, but talking snakes, angels interacting with people, races of giants, ten plagues, the parting of the red sea, virgin births, water into wine, and death and resurrection would be considered “fantastical” by virtually anyone.
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God created the universe and all life, so all other miracles are minor by comparison.

God created you with the ability to talk, he can give a snake speech, God created all life from no life, he can raise a person from the dead, he can give birth to a virgin, create giants, look at all the giant animals. Is it harder to part the sea than it is to create the universe and life.

Peace

Eric
 
“Religion” is what I believe in.

“Mythology” is what you believe in.
 
DJK100 said:
How is this making it more complex. I am simplifing it by giving you a conscise answer. God did it. Simple yet elegant.
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You’re making it more complex by postulating a complex being.

Indeed, the postulation of such a being, in and of itself, is simple – some would say “simplistic” – but the thing that you’re postulating involves introducing more complexity.

Let me try an analogy: let’s say that there’s an alternate universe in which the only thing that exists in the whole universe is a sand-castle on a beach. Somehow, I figure out a method of observing this universe, and upon seeing the sand castle, I say, “This sand castle is complex…complexity requires an explanation of some kind.”

Someone can give the answer, “Oh, a gleegrox grismald built it – a gleegrox grismald is an intelligent, disembodied creature that has the ability to create sandcastles.”

Indeed, that answer is very simple, but that simple answer doesn’t solve the problem of complexity because it introduces something even more complex than the sand castle.

Now, we need to explain the gleegrox grismald. What accounts for that complex creature?

And if the answer is, “Oh, gleegrox grismalds have just always existed,” then you’re admitting that complexity can just always exist, which invalidates the premise from which the argument began.

I’m not quite sure how to explain this any more clearly. If you are still having a problem grasping it, I would suggest taking a break for a few hours and then coming back and reading my posts again with a fresh mind.
If it is in existance then it must of not been that too improbable to form in its complexity otherwise it wouldn’t have happened.
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You’re confusing improbable with impossible here.
OH… I see your error. You think God came “into existence.” What if he always was. Does this help you now?
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It helps me see the gaping flaw in what you’re trying to argue, yes.

If you think that a complicated being like a god can just “always exist,” then you are admitting that complicated things can “always exist,” which means that the initial premise from which this argument began (i.e. “complicated things require an explanation”) is not true, and you have thereby defeated your own argument.

In other words, when you say that “God just always exists!” you’re saying, in effect, that complex things don’t need an explanation…but that was the reason you postulated a god to begin with, as an explanation for the complex universe. Now you’re admitting that that explanation wasn’t necessary to begin with, so the whole thing is pointless.

Unless you can substantively address these points, you’re just going to dig yourself deeper and deeper into a hole here.
 
NonServiam said:
If you think that a complicated being like a god can just “always exist,” then you are admitting that complicated things can "always exist.
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The response: God is not a thing (not composed of subatomic particles).
 
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