I hear ya. The literal-figurative distinction probably didn't exist in antiquity or didn't matter as much as it does today. Fact & fiction merged together, all in an attempt to make sense of the world which seems to have been priority #1. This anticipated science - reason (facts/observation) + imagination (fiction/hypotheses/theories) - in a sense, oui?

In a nutshell philosophy is subjective but it values the objective and atempts to be so; a sinner trying to be a saint; the irony, o the irony!

...it is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once.
DESCARTES — Yohan

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

:grin:

"YOU" is the participant in the dialogue who does not say that there is something outside of everything. That is "SOMEONE", the interlocutor who you're claiming has caught "YOU" in a compromising position — Hallucinogen

:blush: Apologies for that silly mistake.

It is not so simple — Fooloso4

Not an expert here - 10 minutes of "analysis" by Agent Smith doesn't hold a candle to decades of dedicated study by qualified mythologists.

:smile:

Good points! Nothing is what it seems!

Is there an authentic story of self-sacrifice you know of? I'm too lazy to google. Apologies.

P. S. Visit The captain goes down with the ship on Wikipedia.

Not sure that sacrificing yourself to yourself to save us from yourself and from rules you made yourself - counts. Given Yahweh is jealous, vengeful and murderous, like any Mafia Don, then Jesus is part of the problem. — Tom Storm

Sadly, I'll have to agree with you. If the world were a novel, Jesus is a poorly developed chracter. I wrote it on the spur of the moment - it just felt right then, not so now. Muchas gracias, señor!

The Good life = Jesus of Nazareth (only a man and yet ... a god).

You are my ASAC :ok: (Heard the term on Breaking Bad, and I thought it might fit. You being an Agent and all) See you around, Agent :cool: — Yohan

:up:

The trouble you went through to share your ideas! I'm sure everybody's thankful as I am. The categories you use to compare prescientific and post scientific weltanschauungs are awesome.

However, absit iniuria, science has a rather disturbing down side which can be summed up in the quote below:

So we're just bags of chemistry? — Neil deGrasse Tyson

Too much information, woah!

I think you're getting the lines mixed up. — Hallucinogen

Explain! Please.

Break a leg! :lol: (reverse psychology???) — Yohan

:lol: I'll need to look that up! See you around Yohan.

futurorum malorum præmeditatio — wikipedia

This will be of great use to me mon ami!

I can feel the bitter medicine sting my tongue.
Enjoy the show. But expect the bill! Did you think admission was free? Your turn to perform is coming! — Yohan

You're my AWACS; muchas gracias señor! I pray to The Almighty that my performance meets everyone's expectations, but don't count on it, ok?

Good advice! I'll keep that in mind for as long as possible. I'm in two minds about this but here goes anyway - reject accept Maya, don't we all enjoy magic? However, a big however, Maya bites deep & hard. Expect some cuts & bruises and even an early appointment with the Grim Reaper.

Isn't that the rest of us? Or do you think the rest of us know what we are doing? — Yohan

I have no idea - the veil ignorance is, as of now, impenetrable for me. I have a feeling it's gonna stay that way for a long, long time.

Such life on social media! — Yohan

So it seems mon ami!

There's a lot we have to work on!

We can hope but probably never know! — Yohan

Love it, hate it, sic vita est, si señor?

Vide Trust


You hit the nail on the head when you said skepticism is self-refuting - to argue that no argument is good enough is indeed to shoot oneself. Is it a murder-suicide though?

The word "myth" has a rather negative connotation in the modern world, its meaning very nearly is lie/falsehood. Myth busting is a bloody profession, spearheaded mostly by scientists. Those who view mythology as untruths probably miss the point of this large corpus of ancient wisdom.

No worries, I'm ok.

The ancients weren't dumb and we ain't too clever. — Cuthbert

You can say that again, but some would say humanity went through a "dumb" phase viz. post-Hellenistic religious stage (the Abrahamic triad) which lasted up until the renaissance (17^thth century?). What sayest thou?

Danke for understanding mon ami!

I'll get back to you.

Vishvakarma/Tvashtar (The Architect/Lord of the machines). :pray:

Om Vishwakarmane Namah!

:snicker:

:up:

What are you getting at? Do you suspect that ’ is a tiny glimpse of the language of the universe? — Jamal

I wish! It's just that I can relate to computers (machines); of course not at a grand scale the likes of which you see in films i.e. neither can I communicate with them and nor can I comtrol them in ways better than ever Tom, Dick, and Harry.

The computer couldn't parse the curly quotes as you said and did what it could - it tried to understand the code, but it came out wrong. I feel like that sometimes; ok, let's be honest, all of the time.

I also feel like one of the infinite monkeys in the infinite monkey theorem, writing gibberish mostly but once in a blue moon penning something that kinda sorta makes sense, at least to me. I wonder then, where are the other monkeys? :snicker:

Danke for the reply. Anything else that you might wanna say?

Is 'I think therefore I am,' subjective? — universeness

The Münchhausen Trilemma takes care of Descartes' cogito in my humble opinion. I ain't sure though, I'm a skeptic, comes with the territory or thereabouts.

mythos (infancy) to logos (adolescence) to ethos (adulthood) to philosophos (maturity) — 180 Proof

Ati sundar! :clap:

White elephants aren't exactly white; they're just light grey if I remember correctly. Talk about lowering one's standards. :snicker: Yellow is the new black? :chin:

There's more to worship than merely begging for help - it tends to purify/sanctify relationships via a power asymmetry between the worshipper and that which is worshipped. Some like it but then some don't. I knew this guy in college; one day I swung by to his room and noticed all his books were strewn on the floor. I asked "what's up?" His reply was that if you keep them on the shelf, they're above your head and that would have the unpleasant consequence of failing to understand them; in other words the contents of the books would "go over his head". Instead of worship, he looked at Sophia with contempt - an inverted worldview worth pondering upon. Si comprehendis, non est Deus, no, no, not at all!

Imagine how fascinating it would be to have a shrine to Sophia (wisdom), complete with a statue(ette) in every philosophy department around the world? You would be required to :pray: there, offer incense, and perform a small ritual before you begin your day. :snicker:

Back to the main page now - the negatives of mythology. It's kinda a mental illness/cognitive bias (re agent detection/delusion) vis-à-vis current psychological paradigms. If one wants to worship Sophia one has to do so half-jokingly nowadays (re the Flying Spaghetti Monster). If you don't, be ready to be the laughing stock of your colleagues.

You stopped making sense at " :up: " ... — 180 Proof

:blush: One can't be always right! Oh well!

fertility rates have gone down — ssu

This probably isn't biological but more of a sociological phenomenon. The age of puberty for girls is falling according to reports and they've chalked it up to improved nutrition. The takeaway - a much longer period during which females are fertile (do the math).

Yet, fertility rates are paradoxically going down, more in some countries than others. The explanation - women have other/bigger fish to fry i.e. starting a family has been deprioritized.

Even so, we can't really rule out a genetic cause for the change in our behavior - it could be hardcoded for all we know.

:ok:

So we've discussed the pros of mythology, what about the cons? Let's not forget its limitations too, oui?

One downside that stands out like a sore thumb is sometimes people begin to rely completely on prayer and prayer alone which can range from simple :pray: to (animal/human) sacrifice :scream: . They forget to do their part (the king of Lydia's tragic fate is a case in point - he attacked Persia because the oracle of Delphi told him "a great kingdom will fall"; he didn't use his brains all that well).

Il est facile de voir que [...] — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Sharp!! — L'éléphant

You jest of course!

Well written, highly informative OP. A thank you from all of us to javi2541997.

Mythology is, inter alia, what in modern terms would be novelization of one/more ideas - the point is to convey the meaning of them through a story involving, if the writer is worth his salt, interesting & relatable characters, good, bad and all in between. Story-telling around the fire, ring any bells? Everybody loves a story, oui monsieur?

The other facet to myths is the personification of qualities e.g. war has a god Ares, death is Thanos, life is Phanes and so on. I'm particularly partial to this approach - it resonates deeply with me. This way of looking at our world is not unique to the Greeks though; even Hindus do it e.g. there's a god of death, Yama, in that religion. Once we replace a something with someone, which myth is, doors open - we can talk, beseech, curse, negotiate, placate, persuade, instigate, the list goes on, with these gods/deities.

Myths make the abstract concrete - ideas become beings we can, sensu amplissimo, commune with.

Sorry. I don't understand this thread at all. — L'éléphant

Isn't that the gist of the OP, mon ami?