Can we live without myths?

[heretic]

Slowly, imperceptibly, over the last three hundred years the scientific “myth” of evolution has become the backdrop, the frame of reference, the mindscape within which we think. For the first half of my life, I, like many others lived my life within the context of the Christian myth of Salvation History and Creationism. Personally, I find it impossible to live now without some over-arching mind-scape to make seeming sense of human existence.

If you look at any form of human thought it always implies a genre, a frame of reference, a context - a mindscape with its own horizons, its own dimensions, principles and features. Literature falls within innumerable genres or forms from narrative, to poetic. Science falls within its disciplines from theoretical physics to psychology. Every kind of human conscious thought implies the use of some semiotic or symbolic code and some degree of abstraction or generalisation. It implies some kind of “reflection” of reality into a story form, a visual art, a philosophy, a science or a form of politics.

Because of the way our human minds and consciousness have developed we cannot but presume that reality is “intelligible” and fits into the frames of reference, the contexts of our “abstract” and “generalised” thinking. We presume the universe is intelligible.

Theists, believing in an intelligent creator were able to presume that “Lex mentis, lex entis” - the way the mind works reflects the way reality works because they believed we were made in the “image and likeness” of the creator him or herself. But if we do not accept such a creator and accept the myth of evolution why should we presume that the way our mind works co-relates to the way reality works?

Surely our minds evolved to respond to the world we were immediately aware of, to the limitations of human experience? Could it not be that human consciousness is a false line of evolution leading to in-built contradictions. And when you look at all the religions, philosophies etc etc that human beings have lived in and by in the past, surely there is no quarantee that our modern myth of evoluion is any better than any that went before?

Just as our human eyes are only accurate within a certain field and range or reality, so surely too our human minds are similarly only accurate within the field and range of reality they evolved to deal with. We can no more see atoms or sub-atomic particles than we can comprehend relativity or Higgins’ field?

Indeed some would say that the very way our mind works, needing to think within a frame of reference, a coherent story or philosophy might “falsify” reality because there may be no ultimate explanation comprehensible to us.

If we are a product of an evolving universe how can we hope to “think outside the box”, because there is no box.

[Rhinoboy]

So basically, our minds are too puny to deal with the reality of the universe that we inhabit. Well Id sertainly go for that. What makes me curious is wether or not the myths that we tell are a result of a flaw in our intelegance or the expression of our thought processes marking something beond the normal vision of existance. Ie can some people see something that we dont? The rational answer is to say no as myths have been disproved, but think a little more and you will see that belifes have been found to be true also. For example Thousands of years ago one of the first human ideas of the sun was that it was some sort of God and that it created the world. This is not so far from the truth as stars do produce matter, and that our earth is the product of a sun. Of course its likely this is coincidental but when we assume that our brains are not able to cope with everything, it makes sence that there are some subjects that we can catch a glimpse of truth from if only a little.

From a purely evolutionarry point of view it could be simply that humans needed to have something more to latcvh onto in the darker times of societal development. Ie in the ice age, the thought of afterlife or higher perpose could give someone reason to live where as thouse without gave up and died. Of course this would have no baring on ether or not a higher perpose exists just that it was essential for human development

[heretic]

Let us say that truth is the theory or model that fits the available data, knowledge or information and that works. So for primitive man the theory of Animism, or trees and natural forces having personalities etc, and later the idea of polytheism and there being a whole range of personal gods controlling different aspects of nature… all these fitted human experience at that time and worked.

Just as prior to Einstein, Newtonian Space and Time fitted current knowledge, data etc and most of us still today think of space as a big box, of gravity as smaller masses being attracted to larger masses, and time stretching behind and in front forever. And it works for our day to day living. Currently we still think imaginatively and day to day with this model and our thinking has not “evolved” or developed enough for us to come up with a model, a myth, a frame-work that will fit in with relativity and quantum physics. It could take a very long time.

So too with evolution- this is the model, the myth, the narrative or framework that is slowly taking over the narratives, epics and myths of relgion.

It is still a “myth” because the world that theoretical physicists and astronomers are revealing, the microscopic and macroscopic, are simply incomprehensible to us normal mortals who cannot think mathematically to the degree needed to render some of their theories about multiple universes, wave versus particle physics, Higgs’ field etc. And so we have to make do with a “myth” a simplified, imaginable narrative or model that we can live within.

Just as the mystical tradition within religions always maintained that institutional religion over-simplied reality for the sake of “ordinary mortals” so today the theoretical physicists and cosmologists - the mystics of our modern relgion of science - know that the media/ documentary versions of evolution are also over-simplified myths.

Evolutionary theory is, I believe, much better than all the other myths that went before, but it is surely naieve to think that it is the last myth or explanation mankind or some other intelligent species will discover. And, I suggest, that at some point in the future there will be some kind of synthesis between the religious way of thinking in terms of gods and a human utopia and the evolutionary thinking of science, along the lines that evolution is developmental and creative, with man bringing meaning and purpose into the universe.

[sdwilson2002]

@heretic

Slowly, imperceptibly, over the last three hundred years the scientific “myth” of evolution has become the backdrop, the frame of reference, the mindscape within which we think. For the first half of my life, I, like many others lived my life within the context of the Christian myth of Salvation History and Creationism. Personally, I find it impossible to live now without some over-arching mind-scape to make seeming sense of human existence.

If you look at any form of human thought it always implies a genre, a frame of reference, a context - a mindscape with its own horizons, its own dimensions, principles and features. Literature falls within innumerable genres or forms from narrative, to poetic. Science falls within its disciplines from theoretical physics to psychology. Every kind of human conscious thought implies the use of some semiotic or symbolic code and some degree of abstraction or generalisation. It implies some kind of “reflection” of reality into a story form, a visual art, a philosophy, a science or a form of politics.

Because of the way our human minds and consciousness have developed we cannot but presume that reality is “intelligible” and fits into the frames of reference, the contexts of our “abstract” and “generalised” thinking. We presume the universe is intelligible.

Theists, believing in an intelligent creator were able to presume that “Lex mentis, lex entis” - the way the mind works reflects the way reality works because they believed we were made in the “image and likeness” of the creator him or herself. But if we do not accept such a creator and accept the myth of evolution why should we presume that the way our mind works co-relates to the way reality works?

Surely our minds evolved to respond to the world we were immediately aware of, to the limitations of human experience? Could it not be that human consciousness is a false line of evolution leading to in-built contradictions. And when you look at all the religions, philosophies etc etc that human beings have lived in and by in the past, surely there is no quarantee that our modern myth of evoluion is any better than any that went before?

Just as our human eyes are only accurate within a certain field and range or reality, so surely too our human minds are similarly only accurate within the field and range of reality they evolved to deal with. We can no more see atoms or sub-atomic particles than we can comprehend relativity or Higgins’ field?

Indeed some would say that the very way our mind works, needing to think within a frame of reference, a coherent story or philosophy might “falsify” reality because there may be no ultimate explanation comprehensible to us.

If we are a product of an evolving universe how can we hope to “think outside the box”, because there is no box.

Religious psychology says no we cannot live without myths. It is a natural human drive to make sense of the world. The stories we tell, myths, are our means to do that.

[Joker]

It is said that we can’t live without uncertainty but I myself rather embrace cold uncertainty then a spoon fed bowl of lies.