While philosophers often escape the taboo ground of their own religion to exercise their freedom of doubt in the open pastures of foreign religions, the rest of their home crowd escapes religion for the realm of mythology, in order to comprehend the incomprehensible. Indeed, the Jews have it about right in asserting that God, Ein Sof, is unknowable and incomprehensible, made somewhat marginally comprehensible only through a series of successive emanations. In my understanding, while these emanations are strictly a matter of faith, the fact that mythology is a means of comprehending what is difficult or even impossible to comprehend, is a matter of common sense. (I am not going so far, of course, as to suggest that in Christianity God the Son is a means of comprehending God the Father, because in Christianity the dual hypostases of Jesus lie at the very core of the Christian theology, and do not qualify as mythology.)
I may be told that it is the other way round, that it is, in fact, religion, which is born out of mythology. But I stand by my declaration anyway. It is just that perhaps we are talking about very different things. And in my estimation all true religion is revealed philosophically, in different ways to different cultures, but even the best of them can of course be easily corrupted by the excesses of public worship, which heavily indulges in superstition.
It is not religion, but mythology, which is born out of human superstition. Historically, they are too hard to distinguish. Rome’s acceptance of Christianity, under Emperor Constantine, led the Church to a deliberate effort to fuse religion with pagan mythology, to make Christianity an easier pill to swallow for the masses. Even today, much of the Christian worship is not about a philosophical religion, but mostly about pure and simple superstition, in which the authority of God is readily substituted by the authority of the saints and the holy men, as in Catholicism, for instance, or by the authority of televangelists and mega-church pastors, as in the “new age” American Protestantism. The cult of the holy man is alive and well today, which only proves that today’s religion is as much pagan as it ever was, except that we should perhaps call this religion neo-paganism, to honor the Zeitgeist.
Come to think of it, however, the fusion of religion and superstition is not such a great evil, except for the cult of greedy manipulative scoundrels in modern American religious culture, and the inordinate reverence for the Catholic priest, which encourages the unaccountability of certain perversions of the cloth. But, at least theoretically, if a truly righteous holy man, alas, the rarest of exceptions, may evoke such reverence, normally, only God’s due, I may still ask, why not? Let the holy man make God accessible to the masses by allowing them to at least try to comprehend the incomprehensible through their superstitions.
I may be told that it is the other way round, that it is, in fact, religion, which is born out of mythology. But I stand by my declaration anyway. It is just that perhaps we are talking about very different things. And in my estimation all true religion is revealed philosophically, in different ways to different cultures, but even the best of them can of course be easily corrupted by the excesses of public worship, which heavily indulges in superstition.
It is not religion, but mythology, which is born out of human superstition. Historically, they are too hard to distinguish. Rome’s acceptance of Christianity, under Emperor Constantine, led the Church to a deliberate effort to fuse religion with pagan mythology, to make Christianity an easier pill to swallow for the masses. Even today, much of the Christian worship is not about a philosophical religion, but mostly about pure and simple superstition, in which the authority of God is readily substituted by the authority of the saints and the holy men, as in Catholicism, for instance, or by the authority of televangelists and mega-church pastors, as in the “new age” American Protestantism. The cult of the holy man is alive and well today, which only proves that today’s religion is as much pagan as it ever was, except that we should perhaps call this religion neo-paganism, to honor the Zeitgeist.
Come to think of it, however, the fusion of religion and superstition is not such a great evil, except for the cult of greedy manipulative scoundrels in modern American religious culture, and the inordinate reverence for the Catholic priest, which encourages the unaccountability of certain perversions of the cloth. But, at least theoretically, if a truly righteous holy man, alas, the rarest of exceptions, may evoke such reverence, normally, only God’s due, I may still ask, why not? Let the holy man make God accessible to the masses by allowing them to at least try to comprehend the incomprehensible through their superstitions.
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