 Religion or Mythology?
The most influential book (or books) in my evolution from fundamentalist Christian to agnostic was Joseph Campbell's four-volume set entitled The Masks of God. Campbell, at his death in 1987, at the time a professor at Sarah Lawrence College and founder of the Eselen Institute, was the world's foremost authority on comparative mythology. And what I took to heart from his research was that religions are nothing more than mythological systems that have gained wider acceptance than some others.
What I continue to marvel at is that modern-day humans in developed countries, with access to advanced education and the latest scientific research, continue to even feel a need for religion, or mythology for that matter.
There is no longer a need for allegorical explanations of the developing universe when we have completely sufficient, although not yet completely developed, scientific explanations. |