Sunday, May 21, 2006

Theology and myth

First up, one of my Ambrose Bierce moments led to this pithy comment in a conversation

Theology - The science of trying to work out what God thinks. Physics for the mathematically challenged or follower of Aristotle.
Which struck a few harmonics about ego, resulting in this

[The addition of ego results in] my preference for the non-Theist God. That way we're not making God in our image, which seems to be the point of Theology, making a god we're comfortable with. Even the most despotic OT versions of God are comfortably human, since we understand jealousy and anger. We can't grasp a non-intelligent god.
which then led to a musing on the point of myth

If Jesus had whelped 35 bastard offspring, spent every night buggering John the Beloved and it was Simon who got nailed to the cross, it really doesn't change the myth, since that what it is... myth. Myths don't NEED to be true, they just are. It's when folk try to prove them was correct in every Jot and Tittle you end up with some of the MAJOR arseholes on The OOZE calling everyone heretic and flouncing off if people can't see their innate wisdom to return in 48 hours as though they'd not made a great long exit speech about how everyone hates them. [Any OOZE regulars will] know who I'm talking about there.
Why does the modern mind have such a problem with 'myth'. There is minimal evidence that the Greeks or the Romans believed in the literal existence of their man-Gods as anything more than illustrative of a principle. Same with the Northern European pantheon. People seemed to grasp that they were worshipping an idea, not God's only little boy in the sky.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home