[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 75, Issue 22

[Ben Zaiboc]

> From: Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Tolerance
> Message-ID:
>     <580930c20912110415pb4d90feuab4bcefe0e4b9449 at mail.gmail.com>
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> 
> 2009/12/10 Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>
> 
> > One huge problem with this rather disjointed thread is
> the confusion
> > between "religion" and "belief in a god or gods". An
> atheist, just from the
> > derivation of the word, is a person who has no belief
> in deity. But of
> > course there are many godless religions. Animist
> religions seem to have no
> > gods, per se, but see the world as suffused with and
> shaped by personified
> > forces and passions. The Australian aboriginal
> Dreaming is a vast ancient
> > integral cosmology in which the seasonal landscape and
> its inhabitants are
> > representations of volitional Ancestors; there's
> nothing remotely like an
> > Abrahamic God--but it would seem absurd not to call
> this all-encompassing
> > worldview "religious."
> >
> 
> Yes, this is fundamental point. And I suspect that even our
> understanding of
> pre-christian or non-European gods are nowadays strongly
> influenced by
> monotheistic views (including for some of their
> followers).
> 
> For instance, ancient Greeks used not to see any especially
> dramatic
> contradictions in the fact that very different and
> incompatible versions of
> the same myth were widespread. Chronology thereof was also
> quite vague.
> 
> It has been persuasively contended that this shows that
> they did not
> consider statements concerning everyday life ("there is a
> stone in this
> basket") on the same basis as statements concerning
> mythical facts ("Pallas
> Athena was wounded during the Troy siege").


Is this not also true of your average modern holy roller?
Anyone who reads the bible can't fail to notice the different and incompatible myths therein, not to mention the vague chronology.

Yet most of them don't seem able to separate real life from myths.

Ben Zaiboc