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On resisting mythological consciousness : Comments
By Peter Sellick, published 25/6/2015The function of these narratives is not to diffuse the alienation between humanity and nature, but to carry theological weight.
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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.