Anyway, as I've been researching material to support my thesis that "Society does not allow man to make more mistakes than woman," I have come across some things that are actually interesting, and I actually didn't already know--which naturally means the exact opposite of what we learn in school. I could go on forever condemning the nature of religion, but interestingly the work I'm reading by Joseph Campbell, widely considered the premier expert in the world on mytholgoy, has done an excellent job of supporting my own beliefs.
The specific book I'm looking at now is Occidental Mythology, which is volume three of "The Masks of God" series. In a blurb on the back of the tome the purpose is simply described: "A systematic and fascinating comparison of the themes that underlie the art, worship, and literature of the Western world." For my paper I'm researching the concept of "The Warrior Hero," but in my reading I came across a portion of the book that so wonderfully explains one of my biggest thoughts on religion, only in the words of one of the highest experts in the world, rather than my own. Its nice when a world-renowned expert has come to the same conclusion that I did before I'd ever heard of him. Campbell writes:
"The world is full of origin myths, and all are actually false. The world is full, also, of great traditional books tracing the history of man (but focused narrowly on the local group) from the age of mythological beginnings, through periods of increasing plausibility, to a time almost within memory, when the chronicles begin to carry the record, with a show of rational factuality, to the present. Furthermore, just as all primitive mythologies serve to validate the customs, systems of sentiments, and political aims of their respective local groups, so do these great traditional books. On the surface they may appear to have been composed as conscientious history. In depth they reveal themselves to have been conceived as myths: poetic readings of the mystery of life from a certain interested point of view. But to read a poem as a chronicle of fact is--to say the least--to miss a point. To say a little more, it is to prove oneself a dolt. "
In other words, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Qu'ran--they are all just as ludicrous and mythical of works as the famous myths that come out of ancient Greece and Rome. Yet, somehow, modern people of any of the related religions seem to feel a need for literal translation of their holy text, and have completely neglected to realize that while they may disregard the writ of another religion as poetic farce, the truth is their religion has the exact same problem. Nearly every contemporary inhabitant of this earth would readily admit that there is no way the fables of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades could possibly be true--but somehow that admittance fails to cross over into the realm of epic poetry that relates to Jesus, Mohamed, and others. You may say that of course there was never a Pandora that opened some ridiculous box to create all the worlds problems, but it is pretty much fact to you that Jesus did indeed make bread and fish pop up out of thin air. For some reason, that isn't unlikely at all.
Unfortunately, even if someone of devout faith were to read my words on the subject, it is certain that they would immediately disregard them, just as quickly as they disregard any utterance of common sense or fact that sheds poorly on the truth of their religious beliefs. Sadly, the world has trained us to be ignorant and nervous about confronting the beliefs we are trained in. Its just as Campbell said--all the holy texts are simply epic poetry written to validate the beliefs, customs, etc. of the particular group that originally wrote the work.
This naturally leads to religious friction as we see it today--people in Mecca are going to have trouble conceding the fact that the million different translations of their Qu'rans are all bullshit, because they have to use this mythology as an excuse to prove themselves over the Christians that they hate. The Christians, naturally, do exactly the same thing--preaching the truth of the Bible and ignoring the fact that it is just as fictional as the Qu'ran. Which is funny, considering that there are a lot of similarites between the stories and myths themselves among Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Campbell shows that many of these stories even connect pretty directly to the tales of earlier religions that we now consider farcical. Religious texts are nearly all derivative of each other--yet somehow to a believer in one, the rest are ridiculous.
And now I'll leave you with a quote from Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (one of the great contemporary satirists) that I will NOT speak on. You can think on it as you'd wish:
It was The Gospel from Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space, shaped very much like a Tralfamadorian, by the way. The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was the slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.
But the Gospels actually taught this:
Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected.
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