My children have too much time on their hands right now and have heard a bit more from their LDS cousins about the supposed "true" church than i would consider optimal. At dinner tonight, my six-year-old son asked, "What if Greek mythology is true?"

I didn't know how to answer except that most of Greek mythology is not significantly crazier than Mormonism. My wife told him he can always keep a couple gold coins on his person and that he can tape them to his eyelids whenever he feels as though the end might be near if he wishes to hedge his bets.

May I have a couple of gold coins too?

Big ones?

Sure, but the only ones I have are the chocolate ones covered in gold foil that we use for the leprechaun's stash on St. Patrick's day. They're big.

That would be a more than adequate start!

Time to get him some turtles to stack!

Explain to your son that greek gods were actually superheroes, each with unique super powers.
He will like them better than that lame christian god.

YHWH was originally a tribal sky god, so he could throw bolts of lightening at you if you were mean to his people. It was only later, with the Zoroastrian influence, that he ascended to the top echelon of heaven and merged with Ahura Mazda as Lord of Lords.

but Ahura Mazda was the fun god.

YHWH beat out Zeus for the top job? Totally cool!

I've always felt that the Greek and Roman gods had a lot more appeal. They had personalities and they argued with one another. They did crazy things. What's not to like?

The irony, summer, is that by 600 BCE, give or take some centuries, Greek philosophers had become metaphorical in their theology and spoke of God as a sort of universal spirit in an esoteric, almost Buddhist way. So the Greek religion in the Axial Age, which produced monotheistic Judaism and the cluster of mono-cosmic Indian faiths and the more philosophical Chinese ideologies, was moving away from polytheism.

It's intriguing to see that followed within a few centuries by the popular rebellion in the form of mystery cults throughout the Greek half of the Roman Empire. Perhaps thinkers inevitably migrate towards an esoteric God who is relatively impersonal and even disengaged but uneducated farmers required a more visceral experience and gravitate(d) towards religions that gave them that.

That would conform to Nietzsche's view that when a religion becomes too distant from commoners' experiences (God is dead), those people impulsively search for new and more emotionally satisfying faiths like Nazism and the leftist forms of totatitarianism. We again confront the question whether humans are primarily rational or irrational.

It could be that we humans need proper care and feeding of the irrational since culture is at its heart irrational. Even our belief that we are rational beings is irrational, if you believe Donald Hoffman.

Against that backdrop, I can see a method to the madness of Joseph Smith. Creating an entirely new culture is no small feat. Sure, he had to lie to do it, but otherwise it couldn’t have been done. It did work for a while, but not so much now.

Was it Ahura Mazda who turned out to be a real wankel?




In the movie My Blue Heaven, we get to meet the actual inventor of the Wankel engine. It's a great scene!

I see you are failing as a parent because your kids appear to be thinking and questioning. ;-)

I might have preferred it had they been slightly quieter and more accepting, but it wasn't in the cards.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/28/2021 03:53AM by scmd1.

Thinking and questioning? Oh no, how horrible! Good on you scmd1 :)

I think your son is asking a very good question. The same thing happens when you study modern world religions. Who is to say that any particular one of them got it right?

When I taught sixth grade, we read "The Lightning Thief" (in which modern children interact with the ancient Greek gods,) and the kids loved it. It was so entertaining and engaging. I sometimes wonder what our culture would look like if the ancient Roman/Greek faiths (Norse faith, etc.) had prevailed over Christianity.

Ah yes, the Percy Jackson series. Good, creative stuff: it achieved the great feat of educating without appearing to do so.

Exactly. As a teacher, I was living the dream. lol

It sounds fascinating, Summer. I'm making a note of it so that we can red it together in a couple of years.

Greek Mythology is true in the same way that Book of Mormon stories are true. Somebody made up the stories to teach something about life. Anyone knows that wax wings and Jaredite barges are completely impossible in the real world, but religion doesn’t operate in the real world. It operates in the world of pure imagination. Joseph Smith was like Willy Wonka. The Johnny Depp one, not the Gene Wilder one.

You can probably buy him some Wonka candies to take to church on Sunday or hand out in Family Home Evening. Embrace the fantasy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/28/2021 10:25AM by bradley.

Yeah, but at least one of the points of the Icarus story is the impracticality of wax wings, whereas nobody even mentions the smell there "must have been" in the Jaredite barges. Surprising it didn't kill the bees, but there you go.

The quotes around "must have been" are to indicate that this is predicated upon the existence of fictional facts... or something like that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/28/2021 03:47PM by Soft Machine.

"Fictional Facts" are probably the most useful, all things being equal

Fictional facts (or, as the Golden Ghoul says, "alternative facts") are certainly more useful than those truths that are not useful.

Urban myths may have saved you from eating too many Pop Rocks and drinking Coke like that kid who exploded.

Are fictional facts anything like alternative facts?

Yep, just like that Golden Ghoul, Kellyanne Conway, invoked.

>> "Greek Mythology is true in the same way that Book of Mormon stories are true. Somebody made up the stories to teach something about life."

Except that the BOM was created to make money.....$5000 if I'm not mistaken. It was written to be sold and when no one wanted to buy and publish it, it some how became the cornerstone of the religion.

I suppose if you approach it from the angle that the BOM teaches something....like racism....you might have a bit of truth there.

Does the boatman take bitcoin? Perhaps I can transfer the coinage now and not have to worry about it. Anybody got his coinbase account number? I wonder if he'll take dogecoin?

HH =)

Bitcoin should be fine as long as it's GOLD bitcoin.

Tell him he can make up his own god like everybody else did.


And the sky's not the limit this time!