Campbell in Short, for those who don't get it.

Should we take the Christian scriptures verbatim on the possibility that was how they were meant to be taken?

Don't we run the risk of offending Allah if we do? (I'm pretty sure he meant his Koran to be taken verbatim.)

How do we choose, and how do we know which one of those "myths" are the "true" stories?

(Wow, this might seem way off topic, but this is where the train of thought has led me, haha.)

Connor Lidell wrote:

Jestor wrote:

Connor Lidell wrote:

scott777ab wrote: Don't over think what I said. Myths are simply stories to help teach a concept. It really is that simple.

But what if they aren't meant to do that? What if they are true stories?

Do you have an example?

Many Christians believe that the purpose of the Christian liturgy is to gain access to an actual heaven rather than the Universalist view that preaches love and forgiveness lead to heaven.

It can be interpreted both ways, or any ways in between. But, there's always the possibility that the scriptures are to be taken verbatim.

lol, no, my question was:

Do you have an example of a true story that doesnt teach a concept?

True story or a fake story...

Can you provide one that doesnt have a point?

Learn_To_Know wrote: Should we take the Christian scriptures verbatim on the possibility that was how they were meant to be taken?

Don't we run the risk of offending Allah if we do? (I'm pretty sure he meant his Koran to be taken verbatim.)

You might want to look up "Pascal's Wager", since that is the argument you just presented. You might as well take the Judeo-Christian or Muslim scriptures literally and end up offending Hindu gods, if they happen to be real and tell true stories.

There is no way avoiding the damnation risk as long as you have no solid way to tell truth from falsehood. And if you consider all the possibilities, in which every religion and belief could be true, you end up with several hundreds, if not even thousands, of possibilities where one is true and the others are false. Thus the probability of a religion to be true is 1/n where n is the amount of all religions ever to exist. For each one it is more likely than not that they are false and before we assume for one that it isn't we have to find an irrefutable way to falsify all the others.

And yes, regardless of wether any is true, they would never have come up or even persisted, if there was no gain people had from them. They all tell stories people could tell their children to teach them principles required in the society they were going to be part of.

Jestor wrote:

Connor Lidell wrote:

Jestor wrote:

Connor Lidell wrote:

scott777ab wrote: Don't over think what I said. Myths are simply stories to help teach a concept. It really is that simple.

But what if they aren't meant to do that? What if they are true stories?

Do you have an example?

Many Christians believe that the purpose of the Christian liturgy is to gain access to an actual heaven rather than the Universalist view that preaches love and forgiveness lead to heaven.

It can be interpreted both ways, or any ways in between. But, there's always the possibility that the scriptures are to be taken verbatim.

lol, no, my question was:

Do you have an example of a true story that doesnt teach a concept?

True story or a fake story...

Can you provide one that doesnt have a point?

That's not possible. Zen Buddhism teaches that even the breath has a lesson.

Gisteron wrote: You might want to look up "Pascal's Wager", since that is the argument you just presented.

Yup....that's exactly what I was referring to. I've had many a lengthy discussion with people on Pascal's wager.

Campbell is a good place to start when investigating the philosophy of myth. Scholarship over the past century regarding myth is extensive and there is a wide variety of theories regarding it. True myth is not philosophical allegory as in Hesiod. Robert Graves says that myth is not an explanation, satire, parody, sentimental fable, embroidered history, minstrel romance, political propaganda, moral legend, humorous anecdote, theatrical melodrama, heroic saga or realistic fiction. Below are a few points that I discuss with my college students when I teach courses in World Religions or Philosophy.

Generally, myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event in primordial time; it tells how reality came into existence. Myth places the experience of man in a whole that receives orientation and meaning from the narration. Thus, an understanding of human reality as a whole operates through the myths by means of reminiscence and expectation. Myth can be known, experienced, lived in the sense that one is seized by the sacred in the re-enactment of the primordial, sacred event.

Myth is the narrative embodiment of an idea; the symbolic expression of primal experiences; a narrative account of the origin of the symbol which represents a primary aspect of experienced reality.

Myth is a, “traditional narration which relates to events that happened at the beginning of time and which has the purpose of providing grounds for the ritual actions of men of today and, in a general manner, establishing all the forms of action and thought by which man understands himself in his world.”
(Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, pp. 5 ff)