Mythologies

Back when we learned that Big Love was planning to show scenes of the temple ceremonies, I remembered some less than respectful jibes I had taken a few years earlier toward Scientologists. And I felt bad about that and decided never to do anything of such a nature again.

One elective I took and enjoyed while in college was a Classical Mythology class. Our professor told us not to regard the myths as true or false; in fact, he posited that even the Greeks and Romans didn't necessarily see them that way. Instead, we were to regard them as neither true nor false but as a third category altogether: myth. This is hard for me to really do conceptually. Maybe for those people who don't believe in objective truth and right it is doable, but that is not a part of my religious tradition. There is absolute truth and there is absolute  right. And while some things are matters of opinion, most are either true or false.

Of course, there are other mental gymnastics that others can't see a solution to where I don't even see a problem. I recently started reading a book of my father's, Mathematics in 10 Lessons by Jerry P. King. It teaches the basic concepts behind mathematics, from counting through calculus. Just the concepts, no formulas or processes. In the very first chapter, he briefly discusses whether mathematics is created or discovered. He himself favors the idea that mathematicians create mathematics, saying "Obviously, you can discover only that which already exists. The Platonist (one who claims that mathematics is discovered) must then provide for mathematics a creator other than a mathematician... I have none to offer. Neither have the Platonists. Mathematicians create mathematics."

Well, I see no reason for mathematics to need a creator. Matter has always existed. So has God. So have I, in some form. And so has mathematics.

But back to myth.

Although I have a hard time conceptually allowing a grey area between truth and fiction, I can express it perfectly well. So I have decided that when presenting other people's religious stories that I do not believe, I will treat them as myth. I will not claim that they are true. But I will also not say that they are ridiculous, strange, silly, or even merely false.

I will present them as mythology. Which, in the dictionary definition of the word, they are.