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Is the General Public’s Confusion Over the Religious Studies Term “myth” Analogous to Science Term “theory”?
Question by Logician: Is the general public’s confusion over the religious studies term “myth” analogous to science term “theory”?
As I read R&S posts, there seems to be similar debate and anger over the use and misuse of the term “theory” in discussions of science as can also be found in angry debates over the word “myth” in discussions of well known Bible stories. The general public often assumes that a “theory” is simply a hunch that involves a lack of certainty….and likewise assumes (incorrectly) that a religious myth is something that has been proven false. So aren’t the arguments between Christians and non-Christians provoked by mere mention of the “scientific theory of evolution” or “the Creation Myth” doomed from the start because of the confusion over conflicting definitions? (Indeed, will the stupid statement, “The Theory of Evolution is ONLY a theory.” never die a natural death?)
And even if someone here explains the proper definitions of the word, isn’t there always an insistence by someone else that only one definition is acceptable? Why is there so much resistance here to the idea that words can have more than one definition?
Best answer:
Answer by Bodhidharma
Only the religious have trouble making this distinction.
Add your own answer in the comments!
<BR%20/>Tags: religious, Myth, Confusion, Science <BR%20/>
Basically its due to lack of going out and seeking the knowlege, but then again, you can’t expect a group of people who follow the mythology that God gets angry when his creations eat from the tree of knowledge and gain knowledge to want to go out and gain knowledge.
OBVIOUSLY words can have multiple meanings but that doesn’t mean they carry multiple meanings at the same time in a given context.
Creationists misunderstand deliberately. I’ve never known any atheist to make a fuss about the word myth. Religions are just myths that haven’t gone out of fashion yet.
You illustrate why the resistance. Of course words exhibit polysemy BUT in a syllogism/argument using a word in two senses is a fallacy, the fallacy of Equivocation !!
EQUIVOCATION
Description: An argument in which an equivocal expression is used in one sense in one premise and in a different sense in another premise, or in the conclusion. Equivocal means (1) of uncertain significance; not determined, and (2) having different meanings equally possible. Equivocation is a type of Fallacy of Ambiguity. The opposite of equivocation is “unovocation,” in which a word always carries the same meaning through a given context.
Haven’t you seen those fallacious questions about Is Christianity a cult ? It takes the connotation and the denotation.
Many people like to think that their way is right and not have a sense of objectivity.
I’ve never heard someone argue “Creationism isn’t true because it’s called a ‘Creation Myth’”, so I don’t think your analogy is quite perfect. Also, things that are “myths” in the technical jargon are likely to be “myths” in the common meaning, while the same does not hold for “theory”.
Arguments aren’t “doomed from the start”, as long as people are willing to rationally settle on a common language for the purpose of their discussion.
The fundamentalist Christians (and I’m using them as an example since you speak of the Bible Stories) will never accept that any of the biblical stories are myths because they realize it’s a slippery slope. If one story is a myth, then others can be as well..and then who decides what is myth and allegory and who decides what is literal? That’s why the most fundamental of Christians will not accept that anything is mythological in their book
Here is their other problem with calling the creation story a “myth” or not literal. If there was no LITERAL Adam and Eve and no LITERAL tree of knowledge they ate from, then there was no fall of man or original sin. Their Bible makes it quite clear that Jesus was sent because of original sin or “the fall” as atonement to reconcile people to God. Without a literal tree of knowledge and a literal Adam and Eve, there is no need for a Jesus. So all of Christianity unravels if you pull the creation string.
Furthermore, since Jesus himself spoke of Adam and Eve as if they were historical, literal people that lived (Mark 10:6) if the creation story is not literal, this opens up another can of worms.
In truth, the creation story has of course, already been dis proven. God did not make men and animals at the same time (or within days of each other), as evidenced by the dinosaur fossil record. Animals were here many centuries before people. So Christianity has already been unraveled, but they are trying to hold it together.
That is why no matter how the words “evolutionary theory’ or “myth” are defined, they will not accept them.
And I also think that the less-fundamental or more “modern” Christians who do say they are Christian, but believe in evolution, or Christian but don’t take the creation story literally, don’t realize they are invalidating the Jesus story. If he was not sent as a sacrifice to atone for the literal fall of man as the Bible says, there is no reason to think he existed or that he was resurrected. And since the Bible says it was his atonement opened the gates of heaven…this is another issue.
Yes! I have made this point myself many times … although I’ve sometimes used the similar word ‘allegory.’
But I think a lot of people are not quite putting their finger on the problem.
It’s not so much that people have multiple meanings for these words, but that the words imply *diminishment of truth value*.
The phrase “only a myth” is as misguided as the phrase “only a theory.”
Joseph Campbell made a centerpiece of his philosophy and career out of explaining that myths can be a way of conveying DEEP TRUTHS in a way that purely factual stories cannot. They reach into the *collective subconsciousness* of human beings, and have a FAR better chance of tapping into the truth of spirituality than merely recounting the mundane details of actual events.
He lamented that people calling something a “myth” meant calling it “untrue” or a “lie”, when in fact the opposite is true … a myth that resonates with people is communicating deep, profound Truth with a capital-T.
But yes, it comes out of the same childlike approach to truth where every statement is either “true” or “false.” The statement “I took the trash out yesterday.” is either true or false … and we can always go out and verify if the trash was indeed taken out. But the problem is when people use that same approach with such mundane statements, and apply it to deeply complex questions … the *important* questions.
When people say that “evolution is only a theory”, they are trying to say that evolution is “in doubt”, and that therefore it is not in the category of “proven to be true” (that they think all of science is striving for … which it is not), and therefore one is perfectly rational to conclude that “therefore it is false.” Besides being a logical fallacy … it fails to understand that calling something a ‘theory’ in science does NOT mean that it is in doubt! Scientists are not striving for “truth”, they are striving for UNDERSTANDING! All that matters is: does evolution EXPLAIN things? That is the same standard scientists use when using the word “theory” with any other concept …as in the ‘theory of gravity’, ‘theory of relativity’, ‘atomic theory’, ‘cell theory’, etc. To fail to understand this is to fail to understand SCIENCE. (This is why I battle Creationism … not because it threatens to demolish evolution, which it most certainly does not … but because it promotes nothing short of widespread scientific illiteracy … completely mangling an appreciation for HOW SCIENCE WORKS, and replacing it with an open *contempt* bordering on *hatred* of science in general.)
The same is true with the word “myth”. The stories of Adam and Eve, or of Noah and the Ark, or of Abraham, Lot, or Job are MORE TRUE when they are understood as myths than when they are viewed as “literally true.” To focus on mundane details of how many generations there were from Adam to Noah, or how many cubits of gopherwood did Noah use to build his boat … is to focus on trivialities … it is to turn the entire story into trivialities … it misses the entire POINT of the story! But understand them as myths that have endured for centuries, in many cases myths that share important commonalities with the myths of other ancient traditions, and we catch a glimpse of DEEP TRUTHS that go back to the roots of human consciousness and the things that *unite* us spirituality. To fail to see that is to be content with *division* … as in “my scripture is ‘true’ to the tiniest details, and anything including science, logic, or the scriptures of other faiths that differ in the details, or even different *interpretation* of my scripture, must be capital-F False!”
It is to fail to see the ENTIRE POINT of scripture!
So yes, I think you are absolutely right.
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