I took the week off between SexMas and Arbitrary New Year's, and that's why you've all had the immense pleasure of reading so many ramblings of mine-- but it's nice excuse for me to write.

My undergrad degree is in English and Physics. Yes, I like both reality and imagination land, and my English background is more in mythology because I find mythology to really be the fundamental ideas behind what makes us human.

Mythology is all about desires. The desire to explain phenomena before science came around, and the desires that humanity most desperately wants to achieve. Mythology is all about symbolism, and unfortunately religion has poisoned mythology.

Myths are symbolic stories that only make sense when NOT taken literally. They are stories to be shared about desires, but not about literal reality. Religion tries to impose a sense of literalness that debases the myth from something beautiful to something non-nonsensical and silly.

One of my favorite myths is the story of how Odin learned to read: Odin new that to be the father-god and ruler of all, he needed wisdom and magic. After consulting the witches on how to do this, he hung himself from a tree for seven days. During this time when he was hung, twigs fell from the tree and made shapes-- the shapes of runes. After being hung dead, Odin learned the magic of the runes and brought himself back to life--literate. Full of wisdom and magic.

Taken literally, this story is beyond stupid. But again, that's not the power of the myth. What's amazing to me is the symbolic nature behind this story. Odin needed wisdom. He sacrificed himself. Hung himself in order to learn how to read. The Norse storytellers understood symbolically that education comes with a price. And any of you out there who've been to college, know what it's like to hang yourself--choking, gasping, dying just for your education. It's the symbols that make the story.

The Adam and Eve story has a similar beauty to it, but again, not if taken literally. Man was not meant to be alone so god made his partner from his rib. His rib, the bone that protects the heart, but also that which comes from his side. Eve is part of him--part of his side, and she protects his heart.

Unfortunately, re-writing, re-working, twisting the story for "literal" truths can poison the crux of the story. And fighting over a "literal" interpretation can also poison a society.

Eve is "beguiled" first by the serpent to partake of the fruit of knowledge, then forces Adam to partake. Taken literally, and suddenly women are root cause of all of the "suffering" in the world-- when really the symbolic nature of the story would be more appropriate. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is really the knowledge that we as humans will eventually die. We know we will die because we are "smart."

At some point in our past, our species finally figured out that other animals die, and that would happen to us. We gained the knowledge of simply knowing that we would die-- and doesn't that put a damper on our spirits? Suddenly, the world isn't so rosey and Garden-of-Evey anymore because, oh shit, we're going to die. Again, it's unfortunate that religion has to come along and try to make these stories literal, and that their institutionalized interpretation is the ONLY correct interpretation.

As soon as that happens, these stories are either just silly or can become damaging. "God made ADAM and EVE not ADAM and STEVE." Well, had we been raised with the Greek myth of the origin of love, we wouldn't have had this annoying phrase.

The Greek myth (and the movie Hedwig turned it into a wonderful song) has three original sexes. One sex is made up of two human males attached, another with two females attached, and the third sex is one male and one female attached. The gods became jealous of our independence from them and so Zeus split us apart and scattered us. When we find our significant other we find the person who knows our pain of being alone and that aching feeling of "missing something." So we put ourselves back together by making love. We find our "missing half."

Pretty easy to see the symbolism there.

Nameofraptorjesuschrist. Amen.

...that Christianity went off the rails when it decided the myths were literal fact.

The irony is that in believing the myths are real they've created a new myth.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2010 08:25AM by Stray Mutt.

Thank you, Raptorjesus,this was very thought provoking and helpful to me. I was just trying to express something like this to my TBM dh last night, but probably fumbled what I was trying to get across. Wish I could have put it as eloquently as you.

"Myths are symbolic stories that only make sense when NOT taken literally. They are stories to be shared about desires, but not about literal reality. Religion tries to impose a sense of literalness that debases the myth from something beautiful to something non-nonsensical and silly."


Also, it is important to distinguish between myths that rise organically and legitimately out of a genuine culture, typically over many generations, and the fabrications created for their own self-aggrandizement by men like Joseph Smith, etc. ("etc" would certainly include every North American "Holy Man" I am familiar with).

Myth on the one hand, the fabrications of a social parasite on the other.

I wonder when the LDS church will finally admit the amazing stories JS made up are myths, and then declare that the church is true because they are amazing myths!!

...is that LDS leaders and devout followers have a personality type that is very uncomfortable with the non-concrete nature of myths, metaphors and such. They want certainty. They want hard and fast rules. So declaring that it's all Joseph's Myth, but lovely myths that illuminate eternal truths and all that, would pull the rug from under their firm foundation.

Thread Killer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wonder when the LDS church will finally admit
> the amazing stories JS made up are myths, and then
> declare that the church is true because they are
> amazing myths!!


I know what you mean by this but Joseph Smith didn't write myths, let alone amazing ones. Joseph Smith fabricated history and then fabricated prophesy, literally pretending to be speaking for God. He didn't mean any of it as a myth. He meant everything literally.

Mormonism isn't myth and wasn't meant as myth. It's meant literally. And this is the handicap (ex)Mormons face.

I think we tend to use "myth" as a bad word, as in "it's all just a myth." Myths can actually be beautiful, inspiring, thought-provoking ways of exploring who we are as humans. It's only when people take them literally that it causes a problem.
I kind of think that dreams work the same way on an individual level as myths on a collective level. Myths can express a sort of collective unconscious the same way that dreams express subconscious desires. Both can express our deepest desires, but make no sense if taken literally.

We had a poster here couple of years back name of Wiccan Priest who implored the entire board to put-down the anger and hate it directs at Joseph's Myth in favor of lovingly accepting it as the beautiful tale of a troubled lad in search of truth.

I don't think so, sparky!

Turns out the guy's a "soul coach" who charges a minimum 25 bucks an hour for his spiritual services:

http://www.soulcoachkevin.com/

I enjoy a good fantasy or sci-fi novel from time-to-time and love flicks like Star Wars, Star Trek, Iron Man and such, but I know its all bulls**t when I fork over the cash as do the respective creators.

No harm, no foul.

Religion doesn't operate that way. Mormonism, for example, uses the power of myth to scare the s**t out of people who, in turn, fork over 10% of their gross income to stay out of an imaginary sky daddy's doghouse.

That's borderline criminal in my book.

Timothy



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2010 01:00PM by Timothy.

I think the problem with that guy's line of thinking is also that the Joseph Smith myths (first vision, BOM, etc.) aren't very good. With the exception of parts (and I mean just parts) of the book of Abraham.

Humanities best myths had time to evolve and grow by really good storytellers. Time made them better. Even the first vision got a littl better with time, but quickly was cononized as literal truth. Then we also run into the problem that 3X mentions above. Not organic myths, but parasitic ones whose only purpose is to justify legitimacy of a con man.

I like you line of thought, but it should be clear that Joseph Smith did not make myth. The first vision, all versions of it, like BoM and the D&C, were meant literally. This is precisely why Mormonism is so easy to debunk.

Christianity, on the other hand, is centred upon a myth, and still works as myth. This is why it is more elusive, and evades the criticism of hard-line atheists, who insist upon reading it literally. In other words, hard-line atheists go after the weakest Christians, the American literalists. They prefer a strawman.

All due honour to Humanity's best myths, but let's leave off thinking of Mormonism in those terms.


raptorjesus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think the problem with that guy's line of
> thinking is also that the Joseph Smith myths
> (first vision, BOM, etc.) aren't very good. With
> the exception of parts (and I mean just parts) of
> the book of Abraham.
>
> Humanities best myths had time to evolve and grow
> by really good storytellers. Time made them
> better. Even the first vision got a littl better
> with time, but quickly was cononized as literal
> truth. Then we also run into the problem that 3X
> mentions above. Not organic myths, but parasitic
> ones whose only purpose is to justify legitimacy
> of a con man.

Dante wrote a big thing about levels of meaning in language. If memory serves, he discussed five levels of meaning. An ideal story will perfectly mesh every level of meaning.

CS Lewis and Tolkien also discussed the fact that the surface meaning of a story must be compelling enough in its own right to create an idea in the listener. As the listener develops her own understanding, the story will not change, but will have deeper meaning and significance to her because she understands it more completely - not differently.

I've always kind of thought that the transition from orally transmitted myths to the written form helped make the push to literalness.

What I mean to say is, when such tales are orally transmitted, they allow a lot of wiggle room for the teller of the story to alter and change details in accordance with the audience. In other words, you could hear the same story over and over again, but the details could be radically different. I think this helps towards a more symbolic/analogic understanding of the story.

Once the stories were written down, that wiggle room for personal presentation by the teller, as well as the personal interpretation of the listener, gets lost. The story is the same every single time it is told. I think it is the invariability that moves the story towards a literal interpretation.

Anyway, just some rambling thoughts for you. I agree with you and am also a huge fan of mythologies, folklore and fairy tales. They are incredibly important for us to understand. Not only do they give us a window to the past, they help us understand what it means to be a part of our culture.

I'm not sure if oral transmission has anything to do with it - my understanding is that oral prose was usually a recitation of something memorized, with no wiggle room at all. As in how the first Muslims memorized and recited the Quran in its entirety for years before it was ever written down - which was normal at that time and place for prose.
But I guess it depends on the culture, and whether we are talking about memorized recitations or more like bedtime stories that evolve through the generations.

Yes, the culture in question does impact the tradition. The Qu'ran was memorized verbatim for very different reasons than, say, Beowulf or the Icelandic Sagas. The Qu'ran was literally believed to have been dictated by God, in God's perfect language. I.e., Arabic. No changes allowed. It isn't, strictly speaking, oral epic poetry.

This is vastly different than what we see happening with the Illiad, Enuma Elish, Chanson de Roland, El Cid, Beowulf, etc...

In these epics, the story would be broken down into a set list, if you will, of all the important scenes in the story which had to be touched upon. In addition to this, there are "lyrical elements" which fit within the meter of the prose which are used over and over again. (i.e., Swift Footed Achilles; or "battle sweat" for blood in Beowulf). These "epithets" are critical pieces of the story which call to mind specific characters or situations without having to use the same simple noun over and over again.

In other words, "memorized recitation" is used to create the bones of then story and the "bard", trained to utilize these forms, would infill judiciously depending on the audience at hand.

For a quick overview, you can check out the work of Millman Parry and Alfred Lord. This is a good thumbnail sketch:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_tradition

...and always have.

(Good stuff)

Cheers

Human

Why, thank you!

And right back atcha, Human. :)

Erin

of course, not as eloquently as you, but Christians, Mormons and by extension Exmormons have a tendency to take things much too literally. Take the myth of God, for instance. Religion has certainly fucked that one up with the whole literal "man in the sky who watches over us" bullarkey. Yet, in completely discarding our myths simply because they aren't fact, we miss the purpose of the story all together, to gain understanding of and insight into ourselves.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2010 12:43PM by wine country girl.

Nicely said, wine country girl. I still think there is value in many myths even if they aren't literally true.

I was watching Zeitgeist on religion yesterday and was struck by one of the last quotes, an audio clip of Thomas Monson basically saying that we should not question the truth of particular stories or myths, but accept their value. Hmmm.

All of these ex-mormons who thoroughly believed in the myth of moromonism now declaring, "Behold, I am wise, listen to me as I know that of which I speak." Mind you, this is coming from people that were once no doubt completely duped (or dishonest or foolish), but we won't talk about that now.

HELLO... You were duped before. EITHER THAT, OR YOU WERE DISHONEST BEFORE.

Questions:
Insofar as spiritual matters go, what makes you the arbiter of what is truth v. what is myth now? Why the constant effort to equivocate the stupidity of mormonism with the Bible? Why should we trust anything you have to say about any part of the Bible? How would you know?

Given your spiritual background, your testimony cannot be trusted on spiritual matters. In a court of law, you would be what is called an "impeached" witness. No one has to accept what you say, and given your track record, the jury would be instructed to be very careful in assessing the veracity of your testimony. Sweeping conclusions by you would be sticken from the record.

Oh, I see, you took an undergracuate class in mythology and read a couple of books, and your mom thinks you're smart, so that makes you an authority on the matter. Right?

Some of you people forgot to leave the mormon ego behind when you left mormonism. Arrogance is putting it mildly.

RJ, I know this might be impossible for you, but I would appreciate a response that does not include any words that start with an f and end with a k. Thanks in advance!

why should any of us listen to you, Badger John? You seem to believe you have the answers. You also seem to believe you are not an "impeached" witness.

Presumably, you also have an MDiv? Otherwise, what makes your opinion more valid than anyone else's? Presumably, you've taken more classes than just Sunday School?

Come on. Throw it down. Start a new thread on the topic of Bible truthiness and let's see where it goes.

I, for one, adore such threads.

I was duped as well as dishonest.

And I will be again.

Are you suggesting you never fell for anything in your life? You never perpetuated a lie that benefited you somehow?

A court of law took all those sacks of letters to prove Santa was real. A court of law also declared a house haunted. Shove your court of law up your own arrogant backside, buddy.

"Raptorjesus expresses his opinion on RFM...How dare he?"

... that he's still under the spell if his first "dupe"

We'll let you know BJ!

Timothy

Well fuck me, does that word bother you? If so, maybe you should start your own fucking thread. But please discredit me simply because I use scary potty language.

So, let me get this straight. God created the heaven and the earth in seven days? Did god also not create death before the "fall of Adam" as implied by the New Testament?

Adam and Eve were the first people created around what six thousand years given the "genealogy" of genesis?

Then the world was all one land and the tower of babel came and pissed god off to scatter the languages and rip up the land?

The whole world was covered in a flood killing off everyone but a handful of people? And these people had to restart all of earth's civilizations?

Then Moses covered Egypt in plagues until the Jews wandered the desert for a long time?

And after that they kept conquering and conquering, taking some cities simply by the power of their horns?

god turned a metropolis to salt and everyone in it because he doesn't like butt sex?

Put all of that shit up in a court and see how far it takes you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2010 01:50PM by raptorjesus.

That's almost exactly the response I got from a Mormon apologetic when I said that I no longer believe in the LDS Church. He said I was either dishonest then, or I'm dishonest now. Nope, I was just duped. Hopefully I've learned from the experience and won't be so easily fooled next time. That's partly why I'm not a committed believer or a committed atheist - I know that I've been fooled before, and I could be wrong again. Does that mean I should keep quiet and never say anything that could possibly be wrong? But isn't it even more likely that people who absolutely think they are right and don't question themselves, could be wrong too?
It's not really about proving who's right and who's wrong, it's just having a conversation and hopefully learning something from each other.

I often post about the power of God Myths.

Mormonism is best understood, in my view, in the realm of a God Myth with it's characteristics of a generational, religious tribe.

The power of a God Myth is the core of Mormonism and why it is still functioning today and will continue for many more generations.

I doubt there are many believers that accept it as a God Myth, however, as that seems to discount it's value to them. The typical uses language such as "I know it's true", which is misleading, of course, as it's a belief by faith. The believers prefer to accept it as factually true as metaphysical, supernatural claims take on the same level of truth, even they are not the same kinds of truth. The emotional bond/attachment cements the belief by faith.

Human beings have always loved their myths. They are ancient. They create dozens of religion God Myths with unique, specific buildings, costuming-attire, music, sacred writings, some have dances, and on and on from their God Myths. They continue as they create generational, ritual, traditional, societal, familial, tribes and ties. They are difficult to leave.

"The individual has always had to struggle to resist the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

--Nietzsche

"The individual has always had to struggle to resist the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

I like being part of a tribe - I just want to be free to choose which tribe to belong to.

Clarification: I'm not talking about churches - "tribe" to me just means family and friends.

Sorry, the Badger must get back to work now, so that he can make a decent salary, and pay enormous amounts of income tax on that salary, so that the LDS corporation can take tax free "tithes" and build a huge empty shopping mall.

Bye.

He still labors under the delusion that RFMers extend the best they can muster to folks who don't warrant it.

Johnny is well known for achieving mental orgasm when everyone else ain't even breathin' heavy yet.

Timothy

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_29?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=power+of+myth+joseph+campbell&sprefix=power+of+myth+joseph+campbell

I prefer the hard copy as the illustrations are beautiful.

This is one of the books I read early on when I left the LDS Church that gave me an overview --the Big Picture -- so to speak of how human beings gravitate to and use myths - including God Myths. It was knowledge that I had missed being so immersed in living a very restrictive religion.

I highly recommend the book.

It doesn't matter what time period it is, or what country, or society it is, there one constant that is at the core of our humanity and that is the power of myth.

Every religion is based on a God Myth. Every human being that ever lived or will live, will come into contact with, or live by a God Myth, whether they realize it or not.

That is what makes Mormonism so powerful. It's human nature, part of our quest for answers that generally, generally, we gravitate to common ground in our family. For some, the God Myth works for their entire life. For some, it is only temporary, mainly because of external controls, that some humans are unable to adapt to, resulting in a quest to remove themselves.

I would never consider myself duped or lied to when I was involved in and believing God Myths and their accompanying archetypes. It's what human beings do. It's part of their nature. Most humans in all societies value the metaphysical, supernatural, mystical myths and their archetypes.
I don't find anything about that to be ashamed of in the least.

Understanding how my six generations of very varied life experiences fit in the Big Picture of God Myths has given me the ability to make peace with all of it.

raptorjesus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> My undergrad degree is in English and Physics.
> Yes, I like both reality and imagination land, and
> my English background is more in mythology because
> I find mythology to really be the fundamental
> ideas behind what makes us human.


Nice education. Would that more scientists bothered themselves with the humanities.

Here's a brief thing that illustrates why scientists do well studying English:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704584804575645200523271296.html

Cheers