Mythology and Religion: In The News

What needs do mythology and religion serve in today's world and in ancient times? Here we discuss the relationship between mythology, religion and science from mythological, religious and philosophical viewpoints.

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CarmelaBear
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Mythology and Religion: In The News

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CarmelaBear
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Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

The religious ceremonies of the Israelites included the use of psychotropic materials that can found in the Negev and Sinai, he says. "I have no direct proof of this interpretation," and such proof cannot be expected, he says. However, "it seems logical that something was altered in people's consciousness.

..."Hypotheses have been around for 20 years connecting the beginning of religions with psychoactive materials,"
Then, for the next 5000 years, you have straight people buying into the hallucinations.

Wow. That's... I can't find the word.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

ptahku
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Post by ptahku »

terrence mckenna work is interesting in this area/dont forget T.leary/yet cambell hints at the core of these experinces >in the The interpretation of Symbolic Forms> when we adventure into our own depths, we are adventuring into natures's depths,........pg171.THE MYTHIC DIMENSION.

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

Also in the news!
Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.

Mecca is the direction all Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers.

The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice.

One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.

Mecca watch

A prominent cleric, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawy, said modern science had at last provided evidence that Mecca was the true centre of the Earth; proof, he said, of the greatness of the Muslim "qibla" - the Arabic word for the direction Muslims turn to when they pray.

The meeting also reviewed what has been described as a Mecca watch, the brainchild of a French Muslim.

The watch is said to rotate anti-clockwise and is supposed to help Muslims determine the direction of Mecca from any point on Earth.

The meeting in Qatar is part of a popular trend in some Muslim societies of seeking to find Koranic precedents for modern science.

It is called "Ijaz al-Koran", which roughly translates as the "miraculous nature of the holy text".

The underlying belief is that scientific truths were also revealed in the Muslim holy book, and it is the work of scholars to unearth and publicise the textual evidence.

But the movement is not without its critics, who say that the notion that modern science was revealed in the Koran confuses spiritual truth, which is constant, and empirical truth, which depends on the state of science at any given point in time. LINK
Oy.

(I have to thank our new associate, gwenny, for this article. I found the link on her website. I also found this very amusing story there.)
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

From today's NY Times:
Godless
by Timothy Egan

This Father’s Day, one of most popular pastors in America will open his megachurch to homosexual dads, an event that would usually signal an extreme weather alert from old guard Republican evangelical leaders.
Rick Warren. (Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images for Meet the Press)

But by welcoming gay fathers into his Southern California flock, Rick Warren, author of the “The Purpose Driven Life,” is not just living up to the highest standards of Christian fellowship, he’s turning the page on a particularly embarrassing part of our politics.

Just to refresh: it was televangelist Pat Robertson who predicted “earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly even a meteor” would hit Orlando for inviting gays to Disney World, and Rev. John Hagee who blamed Hurricane Katrina on a vengeful God angered over a gay pride parade in New Orleans. And they did this even without Doppler radar.

The fact that these people were taken seriously about anything other than, say, what color socks to wear on bingo night, tells us something about how far we’ve strayed rom the pulpit into the town square.

Over the last 30 years, church and state have become far more entangled than any of our fair-minded founders and their better successors — including some chiseled on Mount Rushmore — envisioned.

The good tidings from Warren’s Saddleback Church come at a time when Barack Obama has ditched his incendiary ex-preacher, and John McCain has separated himself from the apocalyptical Hagee.

It’s a start, but how about a clean break? Let’s go Godless for the rest of the campaign.

I know, it’s not going to happen, with Obama courting evangelicals this week and McCain trying to figure what makes Catholics in the Rust Belt tick.

But for a moment, imagine no religion, as John Lennon sang.

Forty-eight years ago an Irish Catholic presidential candidate said this about a bedrock principle of his:

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”

And, “I believe in a president whose views on religion are his own private affair.”

That was John F. Kennedy, of course, sounding light years removed from Mitt Romney, who declared this year that “freedom requires religion,” and Mike Huckabee, who called himself a “Christian leader” and advocated amending the Constitution to follow Biblical principles. Both men are being touted as running mates for McCain.

“Where we are today is almost the antithesis of Kennedy’s time,” said David Domke, a professor of communications at the University of Washington and co-author, with Kevin Coe, of “The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America.”

Not so long ago, politicians could talk about national defense or currency fluctuations without having to mention Him. But since 1980, the total number of references to God in major presidential speeches has jumped 120 percent over the preceding half-century, Domke and Coe found.

“It’s the verbal equivalent of an American flag lapel pin: few notice if you do it, but many notice if you don’t,” Domke and Coe wrote in a recent essay in Time. Domke, by the way, is no tweedy secularist; his wife is a Presbyterian minister.

Obama has been the more overtly God-centric candidate in this campaign, perhaps because of the whispers that falsely paint him as a Muslim, or interchangeable blondes on Fox News who interpret playful hand gestures with his spouse as “a terrorist fist jab,” as E.D. Hill said on air.

At a meeting with prominent Christian leaders on Tuesday, Obama discussed his “personal journey of faith,” as one participant recounted. That, alone, goes against Kennedy’s dictum of keeping it private.

Teddy Roosevelt, a McCain hero, was prescient on this point as well. He argued against putting, “In God We Trust,” on the currency in 1907, saying it cheapens the divine. “It not only does no good,” he wrote, “but it does positive harm.”
Ted Haggard. (Credit: AP Photo/Erik Stenbakken, New Life Church)

To their credit, some ministers have learned from their fallen fellows of the cloth. Four years ago, Ted Haggard’s phone number was on speed dial at the White House, and he regularly boasted of his political clout as head of the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals.

Then came his admission of patronizing a gay prostitute and buying crystal methamphetamine, a two-fer in the hypocrisy sweepstakes. It also made for one the strangest images on television — a smiling Haggard in his S.U.V., with wife and kids, talking about meth and massages from a buff male escort.

On the plus side, Pastor Ted is now welcome at Rick Warren’s church on Sunday.

Joel Osteen, the feel-good Texas optimist who is perhaps the nation’s most popular minister, and Warren have both disavowed politics this year. They will not endorse a candidate, allow politics in the service, or issue thinly disguised election “guidelines,” hint, hint.

Bless ‘em.

Now let the politicians pick up the cue, following advice of one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rushmore face mates.

“Say nothing of my religion,” said Thomas Jefferson. “It’s known to my God and myself alone.”
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Golly, Michael! What wonderful material. Thank you. Praise Allah!

MasterYoda
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Post by MasterYoda »

To bad there never was a Moses, he is purely a mythological character. But, as Joseph Campbell said: "Facts don't seem to matter for religious people."

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Post by Clemsy »

Well MasterYoda, that might very well be true. It certainly is in terms of the character described in the Old Testament, however, I like to think that mythic figures are sometimes, or often, born of real people, so who knows?

The case here, is that the use of psychotropic drugs was apparently used ritually by the ancient Hebrews.

Hey, if there was some charismatic dude named Moses hanging around at the time, maybe all that tripping magnified him. Certainly would explain burning bushes that talk!
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

MasterYoda
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Post by MasterYoda »

There's a very good documentary on South American ritual drugs entited: "Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey" -- from the History Channel documenting the work of ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schulte (who they claim is the real Indiana Jones, but Indiana Jones is really based on the life and times of Joseph Campbell).

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Post by jufa »

MasterY stated:
To bad there never was a Moses, he is purely a mythological character. But, as Joseph Campbell said: "Facts don't seem to matter for religious people
Don't see any evidence submitted to substantiat this claim.
Never give power to anything a person believe is their source of strength - jufa
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MasterYoda
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Post by MasterYoda »

The evidence is history. The Jews were never in Egypt. You cannot find even one thread of Jewish clothing or one piece of broken Jewish pottery from Egypt.

Yet there is abundant archaeological evidence of the Hyksos. Furthermore, the Egyptians never had slavery, not in the conventional sense. They had conscription, but not slavery.

Listen to the lectures of Joseph Campbell for more detail.

Moses lives to an age beyond the range of human beings.

DEU 34:7 Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone.

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Post by jufa »

I do not hear histry speaking, I hear only your words on this matter. Your word is not evidence.

Through the ages people have confessed this was not so, that was not so, and throughout the 20teh century, things which were said not to be has turn up.

I asked you for evidence, since you are the one making such a claim, so present Campbell's lecture to the contary to me.

Just today, in the Akron Becond Journal there were four people who died that were over a hundred. On Today's show there are always people who are over a humdred.

Now tell me what is the range of human being?

It is odd that you attempt put forth a person you said is a myth in this conversation, and never existed in this conversation in an attempt to back up your allegations. What's up with that?
Never give power to anything a person believe is their source of strength - jufa
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Post by jufa »

Of these gods Osiris and his family alone had any biography. They once lived upon earth. His wife and sister Isis was a goddess, while Osiris himself had two natures: he was partly god and partly man. He was put to death by the wicked Typhon, the hippopotamus, and

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his limbs scattered to the four winds. These Isis collected and put together again, and Osiris returned to life, but not upon earth. He became judge of the dead in the infernal regions, with the title of Ro-t-Amenti, or king of hell, whence the Greeks borrowed the name of Rhadamanthus. His son Horus revenged his father's death, and is styled the Avenger of his father. Horus was the last of the gods that reigned upon earth. Hence he was styled Horus the king. His hawk's head has also the same meaning; the hawk was the bird of royalty. The death of Osiris was piously lamented by Isis and her sister Nephthys; and once a year the Egyptians joined their priests in a melancholy procession through the streets, singing a doleful ditty called the Maneros, or Song of Love, which was to console the goddess for the death of her husband. But this grief for the death of Osiris did not escape some ridicule; for Xenophanes the Ionian wittily remarked to the priests of Memphis, that if they thought Osiris a man they should not worship him, and if they thought him a god they need not talk of his death and sufferings. This story the Greeks copied, and have given us in the form of the loves and lamentations of Venus, a goddess, for Adonis, who was a mortal. The boar which killed Adonis is no other than the hippopotamus Typhon. This shows us how in poetry, as in architecture and sculpture, Greek taste was sometimes willing to make use of Egyptian invention.

Of all the gods, Osiris alone had a place of birth and a place of burial. His birthplace was mount Sinai, called by the Egyptians mount Nissa. Hence, according to Diodorus Siculus, was derived the god's Greek name Dionysus, which is the same as the Hebrew Jehovah-Nissi. This name Moses gave to the Almighty when he set up an altar to Him at the foot of the holy mountain, a spot

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sacred alike with Jews and Egyptians (see Exodus xvii. 15).
Many cities claimed the honour of being the burial place of Osiris, and thence, perhaps, the profit arising from the offerings to his shrine. The honour, however, seems at last to have been thought to belong more particularly to the island of Philæ
Wanted to present this which came from "Religion of Upper Egypt"
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MasterYoda
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Post by MasterYoda »

Jufa, so much to discuss.

Just because you claim not to hear history speaking, doesn't mean anything, you are narrow minded.

People confessing to beliefs is not FACT. People believe in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. That doesn't mean these people exist.

Examine any of Joseph Campbell's lectures on Egypt, the Exodus and the Myth of Osirus.

Just because some people today live over 100 years, doesn't mean they live to 120. Also the life expectency now is greater than in the past, consult any alamanac. Furthermore, archeological evidence indicates that people around the time Moses is suppose to have lived, lived much shorter lives and there is no way anyone back then could have live that long, The person is mythological. Moses represents the personification of the culture's mythology.

The current age range of a human being is 0 - 120 years.

You last question is so poorly worded and gramatically improper I don't understand it. But if you are asking why I cite scripture to illustrate that Moses was mythological, PEOPLE BACK THEN DIDN'T LIVE THAT LONG. So the Deuteronomy passage is mythological.

It's like Joe said: "These people [fundamentalists] damn well know these things aren't true [not historiical facts], and that accounts for the violence. And if they can convince someone else of something that isn't true, it makes them feel better."

Do some historical, archeological and anthropological reading. Then we can talk.

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