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Definition of Religion: A religion is a set of beliefs and practices generally held by a community, involving adherence to codified beliefs and rituals and study of ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience.
Definition of Mythology: A body or collection of myths belonging to a people and addressing their origin, history, deities, ancestors, and heroes.
A body of myths associated with an event, individual, or institution.
Then explain why Zues is a myth and God is not. Thanks!
Mythology is simply any culture's way of explaining the world. That can be a body of stories, poems, sacred texts, The Origin of Species, etc. Many cultures had a completely oral tradition that was no less vast and intricate than other cultures' written words. Mythology informs us where we came from and who we are.
Religion is the rituals, creeds, etc., by which we approach the divine.
You can have a mythology and not necessarily have a religion. But you absolutely cannot have a religion without a mythology.
Mythology is simply any culture's way of explaining the world. That can be a body of stories, poems, sacred texts, The Origin of Species, etc. Many cultures had a completely oral tradition that was no less vast and intricate than other cultures' written words. Mythology informs us where we came from and who we are.
Religion is the rituals, creeds, etc., by which we approach the divine.
You can have a mythology and not necessarily have a religion. But you absolutely cannot have a religion without a mythology.
Thank you. I stand corrected.
(Not to be pedantic - okay, to be pedantic - the more I think about it, myth and religion intersect, rather than one being a subset of the other.)
If it were possible for every aspect of a particular religion to be absolutely true, then it would also be possible for there to be a religion that wasn't a myth, or based on mythology or mythological.
But since there are undoubtably at least parts of every religion that aren't absolutely true, then every religion probably does contain some myths and are therefore, somewhat mythological.
The problem is probably that people tend to see things in terms of being simply black or white, when actually, things are usually different shades of gray.
By that I mean that there are often degrees of truth and degrees of fiction.
If something is more true than it is fiction, some may consider it to be all true or all fiction, when actually it becomes part myth, or a shade of gray.
So overall, God is often seen as being more true than not and therefore not a myth, or at least not as mythical as Zeus, who is seen as being much more fictional than true, so therefore he becomes a myth.
But again, in absolute terms, the absolute truth should not be considered to be a myth, or mythological, at least not in my humble opinion.
For example, The American dream is considered to be a myth. It's a belief that if a person works hard, they will succeed. However, because the American dream doesn't absolutely always reflect reality, it therefore becomes the American myth.
There has to be some wiggle room in the definitions for shades of gray, or degrees of truth.
The Christian God is a myth in the same way Zeus is a myth.
There is also this definition of "myth:" something not true, fiction, or falsehood. A truth disguised and distorted.
A Christian will apply this definition to Zeus but not the Christian God.
I agree. I think that the problem comes when people are using the same word for two definitions. So while I may talk about the Biblical creation myth of Adam and Eve using definition number 1 (as in the OP), someone might become offended because they are interpreting it with definition number 2 (as above).
It's like what happens when we start talking about the theory of evolution and the laymen and the scientists are using a different definition of "theory".
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- the more I think about it, myth and religion intersect, rather than one being a subset of the other.)
