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The Forum > Article Comments > On resisting mythological consciousness > Comments

On resisting mythological consciousness : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 25/6/2015

The function of these narratives is not to diffuse the alienation between humanity and nature, but to carry theological weight.

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Craig Minns wrote: “a story of the enormous power of belief in the capacity of a group with right on its side to overcome great odds it's hard to beat!”

Dear Craig,

That is precisely the reason I find religion a dangerous and destructive force. It gives a people the feeling that they have right on their side whether they actually have it or not. It has played out in both history and myth too often as a justification for destruction. Whether the book of Joshua is actual history or myth I do not know, but it justifies divinely ordained genocide.

Joshua 3:10 And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Jebusites.

How does God’s command play out?

Joshua 6:21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

I am now reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s “A History of Christianity”. It tells how Constantine transformed Jesus into a God of Battles.
“[Constantine’s] troops bore on their shield a new Christian symbol: the Chi Rho, the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek combined as a monogram.”

The next step was to try to eliminate all the dissenting forms of Christianity. Jewish Christians, gnostics, Montanists, Monarchians had already been eliminated. At the council of Chalcedon in 451 other dissenters such as the Church of Antioch which had originated the word, Catholic.

Islam is the monotheistic partner of Judaism and Christianity and exhibits the same sense of belief in their rightness. We hear of Muslims shouting “Allahu Akbar” while committing an atrocity.

However, dissenting sects are legion in both Christianity and Islam. The sense of rightness justifies the slaughter who subscribe to a different version. I am horrified by the divine sense of rightness.
Posted by david f, Sunday, 28 June 2015 9:02:24 AM
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David, you're confusing cause and effect, I think. The sense of having the power to do things that are very difficult is enormously enabling. That sense of self-efficacy is what allowed you to take on the hard task of learning to apply the complex abstractions of mathematics to practical problems.

Developing the judgement to choose which things are worth doing is an entirely separate problem.

What may well be a completely reasonable thing for a tribe short on resources in a bronze age culture may become a particularly poor choice of action for a polyglot nation with an economy based on trade in a nuclear age culture. Circumstances alter cases as they say.

If the only thing guiding our actions is adherence to the judgement of others, such as power-hungry religious or political leaders skilled in manipulating emotions, it is inevitable that things will end in tears sooner or later. Conversely, if a cold rationalism is all we have to guide us, then what separates us from machines?

Spirituality is a quintessential part of the human experience, even if some never experience it or don't recognise it when they do. The fact that it can be misused by the unscrupulous does not taint the beautiful ideas it can generate.
Posted by Craig Minns, Sunday, 28 June 2015 10:49:39 AM
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In a world where nuclear war is just around the corner, it seems rather pointless to be discussing ancient myths and legends and spirituality.

The issue of nuclear war and probable human extinction seems to be more important that arguing about religions of which there are literally hundreds (all of which make fanciful claims, none of which can be substantiated or proven).

How about we forget about non-existent angels and Gods for the time being and spend some time trying to save our world from destruction by the American Empire?
Posted by David G, Sunday, 28 June 2015 11:07:44 AM
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Dear David F.,

<<That is precisely the reason I find religion a dangerous and destructive force.><

I can well and truly sympathise with your feelings, except that the examples you cite have nothing to do with religion, but with national histories.

The devious tactic of placing words in God's mouth according to one's political ambitions, words which God never uttered, is anything but religion - it's plain criminal.

<<Whether the book of Joshua is actual history or myth I do not know>>

While there could be some history mixed in it, surely you don't believe that God actually said such things as described in the book of Joshua?
Posted by Yuyutsu, Sunday, 28 June 2015 12:31:32 PM
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Dear Craig,

I don’t feel that the alternative to believing in spiritual mumbojumbo is a cold rationalism. We as human beings can feel compassion, a sense of right and wrong, love and a desire for justice without being imbued by a sense some religious mumbojumbo can guide our way.

I feel what is called spirituality is another word for mumbojumbo and is essentially nonsense.

We can feel that other member of our species have more or less the same feelings that we have, care for them and try to see they don’t suffer. We can also feel that we are part of nature, and there is nothing outside of nature.

Spinoza rejected narrative religion and saw God as coterminous with nature. I can go along with that.

All I see in spirituality is crap.

Yuyutsu wrote: “While there could be some history mixed in it, surely you don't believe that God actually said such things as described in the book of Joshua?”

Dear Yuyutsu,

I don’t believe God ever said anything. The God in any religion is just a creation of the human imagination. The belief that a creation of the human imagination actually exists is a destructive and dangerous one.
Posted by david f, Sunday, 28 June 2015 4:40:57 PM
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Well David, you're perfectly entitled to feel that way, but it's not a lot different to the person who doesn't understand (say) complex numbers suggesting that they are crap.

The fact that you or I don't have a particular experience doesn't mean that someone who reports that they do is full of crap. Spinoza rejected his faith not because he didn't have a sense of the spiritual, but because he felt that the faith community he was born into was too locked into a particular view of the world. He would have been equally as unimpressed with your exposition of your own "faith" here.

Rationalism is a way of reasoning that demands a willingness to be convinced that one is wrong. His philosophy is very much in line with what I would like to think of as my own particular way of looking at the world. That is; a poor explanation of a set of observed phenomena does not invalidate the phenomena.

Attacking the explanation as "crap" may be satisfying if one's intent is to shock, but it doesn't help to explain what the actual phenomenon might be. I suspect that you also feel that way, and that perhaps the expletive is more from frustration at not having a proper explanation to offer?
Posted by Craig Minns, Sunday, 28 June 2015 5:02:26 PM
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