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BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Greek God Creationism



Saturday, April 28, 2007  

Greek God Creationism


While enjoying some light reading Friday afternoon, I had an interesting, and undoubtedly unoriginal, thought. What if there were Greek Mythology creationists? People who not only believed in and worshipped Zeus and Apollo and Aphrodite and all the rest, but who insisted on the literal truth of the legends in which they star? Here's the example that spurred this thought.
Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, while playing in a meadow with her girlfriends, sees a beautiful narcissus wich she runs to pick. As she does so, the earth opens and she is snatched away by Hades, who takes her to his underworld kingdom. Demeter, goddess of the earth, so mourns the loss of her daughter that she refuses to allow anything to grow. The crops that sustain life on earth shirvel up, killing men and animals alike, until Zeus takes pity on man's suffering and persuades his brother to return Persephone to her mother. But before she leaves, Persphone eats some pomegranate seeds, which ensues that she will spend part of every year with Hades in the underworld. (Pg. 23)
Gilligan uses this myth to illustrate one of her concepts about female psychological development, and obviously doesn't mean it to be taken literally, but just suppose that some modern day believers did? Can you imagine the faux-scientific discussion of how earthquakes could actually be caused by Satan Hades to pull people down to his domain? Searching historical records for evidence of a worldwide drought that caused horrible famines? The strange amd mystical properties of the pomegranate fruit and the seeds thereof? Of course all such endeavors would be ludicrous, but how is that story any more outlandish than any number of popular Christian myths? Humans building a tower into the sky and failing when they all started to speak different languages? Oceans parting to allow escaping slaves to escape their pursuers? A whale swallowing a guy for some days and horking him up unharmed? Two of every animal on earth journeying to a forty-day Middle Eastern cruise?

How would a Christian literalist even argue this? "See, some of those things really did happen. Because my book of ancient writings says they did, and it's the truth. Those other books of ancient writings are just telling stories. It would be silly to believe those events actually took place."

I'd agree with part of that. It would be silly. And yet plenty of people spend much of their adult lives doing just that.

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Comments:

I think that a lot of the more moderate religious people don't take many of the stories in the bible as literal fact. Of the few religious people that I know well enough to ask such questions, not one of them truly believes that the worldwide flood actually happened. The Garden of Eden and creating Eve from Adam, though, is a truth in their eyes.

But for the purposes of your discussion, I would be willing to bet that there is already a group somewhere that still believes that old Mythology is true. Of course if such a group does exist, the higher-ups in religious circles would probably be smart enough to realize that if they go around criticizing them, their own religion would lose all credibility.

There are still people who believe that the earth is flat FFS. If an otherwise intelligent being can be made to believe that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I think it is safe to say that someone, somewhere believes everyt ridiculous thing.


 

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