“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.” ― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
Half plus Half = 100.0%, the entire world is incorrect
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Atheists are reactionary, all they care about is repulsing The Bible, Quran, Upanishads, Torah. That’s like repulsing fiction Hamlet because it contains ghost characters, or repulsing Star Wars because it contains “the force” magic themes, or repulsing Lord of the Rings because there are “magic rings”. Science Fiction stories like The Bible can be understood, don’t be afraid of fiction.
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Believers confuse fiction with non-fiction. Bible verse “John 1;1” from 2,000 years ago spells out this problem along with Bible verse “1 John 4:20”. You can not love God or love Jesus, because love of a fiction character or dead person you never met isn’t really love. Again, Bible verse “1 John 4:20” spelled this human brain confusion / educational misunderstanding thousands of years ago.
It’s a broad stroke to claim all atheists are dismissive of the Bible as a piece of storytelling. There are some good stories to ponder, but that doesn’t change the fact that as a whole narrative is disjointed and contradictory, and it’s a bad influence in many areas for those who would treat it all as fact and act on the worst parts.
It’s a broad stroke to claim all atheists are dismissive of the Bible as a piece of storytelling.
I would say it is a super super large ultra broad stroke, and even a multi-stroke multiple layers of paint, primer paint, top coat, clear-coat.
all atheists are dismissive of the Bible
Not only the Bible, but the Jesus and Mary stories that are retconned in the fiction Quran by Mohammad in the spirit of Bible verse Romans 11:32 which allows anyone to re-write The Bible as they see fit. Not only did Mohammad in Saudi Arabia rework the Bible stories, removing Mary’s husband Joseph, for example - a Founding Father of the United States of America took a knife to The Bible and deleted scenes and stories he did not want to be emphasized. The Jefferson Bible rewrite / retcon - Jefferson was following the same rewrite / retcon tradition as Mohammad had done more than a thousand years earlier.
all atheists are dismissive of the Bible
They are dismissive of poetry, metaphors. They have failed to grasp media literacy concepts and teachings. It is just easier to dismiss entire categories of the Public Library, not fully questioning the line between the non-fiction and fiction section.
From: https://thesithlibrary.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/the-way-of-art-by-joseph-campbell/
So I come to one–I won’t say where–on so and so’s show–and it’s live on the air–not television this time but radio. I walk in and here is this young man sitting across the table and I saw him and I knew I have a real slick article here. So I sit down and he says to me, “I’m tough. I’ll put it right to you, I’ve studied law.” So, okay, the light goes on and the first thing he says to me is, “A myth is a lie, isn’t it?” And I say, “No, a myth isn’t a lie,” and then I gave him my definition. I said, “It’s an organization of symbolic forms, images and narratives that are metaphoric of the possibilities of human experience and fulfillment in a given society at a given time.” Well, that went out the window and he said, “It’s a lie.”
So, on we go…and we have one half hour of this kind of dialogue. And almost exactly five minutes before the end of the show I realize this guy doesn’t know what a metaphor is.
So, I said, “Mr. metaphor, give me an example of a metaphor.” He said, “You give me an example.” I taught school for a long time, I said, “I’m asking the question this time. Give me an example of a metaphor.” Well, if you’ve ever seen a building fall apart, you’ve seen what I saw. This “authority” became…I felt ashamed that I had done this to a human being and it was on his show! He was all over the floor trying to look for a metaphor. Finally with two minutes to go–it was like the end of a ball game you know with half a minute–he comes up and said, “I’ll try.” Isn’t that wonderful? He said, “So and so runs very fast, ‘he runs like a deer,’ that’s a metaphor.” “That’s not the metaphor. I said. “The metaphor is. ‘so and so IS a deer.'” He says, “That’s a lie!” And I said, “That’s the metaphor!!” and that was the end of the show!
So, listen, that taught me a lesson. This is a metaphor. Good. Nobody knows what the hell a metaphor is. All religions are mythological. You see what that means. They don’t realize that Yahweh is a metaphor. The terrible thing about Yahweh is, he didn’t realize it either! He thought he was the connotation, don’t you see? So, when a metaphor is read with reference not to the connotation but to the denotation, it’s a lie. Hence atheism.
Meanwhile, the ones who are worshipers of the metaphor don’t know what they are doing, so they are missing the message. Do you get what I’m saying? This is really important stuff. I don’t know whether its in the N. Y. Times yet but its important.
it’s a bad influence in many areas for those who would treat it all as fact and act on the worst parts.
Acting out Star Wars and playing Darth Vader fiction character like Elon Musk is doing with Starlink and SpaceX isn’t a good idea either, but people do it. Joseph Campbell even discusses the metaphor meaning behind Darth Vader… Elon Musk is “act on the worst parts” of science fiction stories.
And then some like to generalize the entire population into two groups :p
And then some like to generalize the entire population into two groups :p
What’s really come to dominate since the year 2007 introduction of the Apple iPhone is Twitter-length Bluesky-length messages and thinking. People who think and message in 1-bit logic (reactionary / rapid response) of the latest digital machines, as if the human brain is Redhat Linux operating system or something. Just Look in year 2024 and 2025 how Elon Musk is dominating the entire world, treating everyone as slaves, via the Twitter-length memes and reactionary comment systems. That is the religion faith of the world wide web, “X Elon Musk” and Starlink ISP.
“Similarly, in mythology—if you have a mythology in which the metaphor for the mystery is the father, you are going to have a different set of signals from what you would have if the metaphor for the wisdom and mystery of the world were the mother. And they are two perfectly good metaphors. Neither one is a fact. These are metaphors. It is as though the universe were my father. It is as though the universe were my mother. Jesus says, “No one gets to the father but by me.” The father that he was talking about was the biblical father. It might be that you can get to the father only by way of Jesus. On the other hand, suppose you are going by way of the mother. There you might prefer Kali, and the hymns to the goddess, and so forth. That is simply another way to get to the mystery of your life. You must understand that each religion is a kind of software that has its own set of signals and will work. If a person is really involved in a religion and really building his life on it, he better stay with the software that he has got. But a chap like myself, who likes to play with the software—well, I can run around, but I probably will never have an experience comparable to that of a saint.” - Joseph Campbell, age 83, who is not a computer nerd when he shared this in year 1987 - but a teacher of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Ever tried Kali Linux on your computer system? Ever read Finnegans Wake?
Sounds very fancy, but this was just a simple issue of pointing out your generalization. It can be helpful to use categories for things to think about, and almost always you should. But this is not one where two boxes is enough to represent the population and individual diversity.
Also yes, and no I prefer non-fiction
But this is not one where two boxes is enough to represent the population and individual diversity.
You seem confused by the quote. I’m not the one who created two boxes, who can’t count beyond 1, 2. Or binary computer 0 and 1.
Joseph Campbell is saying there are four categories. 1, 2, 3, 4
- Non-fiction section in the Public Library
- Fiction section in the Public Library
- Fiction that people think is non-fiction because they never learned the concept of “metaphor”
- Non-fiction that people think is confusing, interpret as fiction, because it uses metaphors.
We have a massive world-wide crisis of people who have never been taught how poetry works. Song lyrics in rock music, etc. It’s all just Quran Poetry and Bible Poetry and Upanishads Poetry and Rock Music lyrics to me…
where two boxes is enough to represent the population and individual diversity.
And people murder each other. In Palestine and Israel, they are killing each other over the two boxes of non-fiction and fiction, unable to grasp poetry and metaphor. There are people who can’t tell Elon Musk’s messages on Twitter (X platform) are fiction, or Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News is fiction, they get so damn confused trying to put things into these “two boxes” that they haven’t even considered that “poetry” and “metaphor” is outside the fiction / non-fiction box. That the human brain / mind isn’t a binary system.
It’s a real shitshow the way people think in year 2025. We were warned in the past: “What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.” ― Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT university, 1974
George Lucas creator of Star Wars films
To educate his film audience, in the summer of 1986 and summer of year 1987, George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars films, invited Sarah Lawrence College Professor Joseph Campbell to California to film education about metaphors to the audience to put a stop to this problem in media ecology and media literacy.
Skywalker Ranch interviews in 1986 and year 1987
Joseph Campbell was age 82 in 1986 and age 83 in year 1987, which was his last year alive. In 1988, Bill Moyers published a book of the interviews and a TV series on Public Broadcast Systems network. Released shortly after Campbell’s death on October 30, 1987, The Power of Myth was one of the most popular TV series in the history of public television, and continues to inspire new audiences.(1988)
Former White House director Bill Moyers
The key part of that audience education in 1987: Metaphors
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“A spiritual man, he found in the literature of faith those principles common to the human spirit. But they had to be liberated from tribal lien, or the religions of the world would remain—as in the Middle East and Northern Ireland today—the source of disdain and aggression. The images of God are many, he said, calling them “the masks of eternity” that both cover and reveal “the Face of Glory.” He wanted to know what it means that God assumes such different masks in different cultures, yet how it is that comparable stories can be found in these divergent traditions—stories of creation, of virgin births, incarnations, death and resurrection, second comings, and judgment days. He liked the insight of the Hindu scripture: “Truth is one; the sages call it by many names.” All our names and images for God are masks, he said, signifying the ultimate reality that by definition transcends language and art. A myth is a mask of God, too — a metaphor for what lies behind the visible world.” - Bill Moyers, 1988
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“But my notion of the real horror today is what you see in Beirut. There you have the three great Western religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and because the three of them have three different names for the same biblical god, they can’t get on together. They are stuck with their metaphor and don’t realize its reference. They haven’t allowed the circle that surrounds them to open. It is a closed circle. Each group says, “We are the chosen group, and we have God.” Look at Ireland. A group of Protestants was moved to Ireland in the seventeenth century by Cromwell” - Joseph Campbell, 1987
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“I have had a revelation from my computer about mythology. You buy a certain software, and there is a whole set of signals that lead to the achievement of your aim. If you begin fooling around with signals that belong to another system of software, they just won’t work. Similarly, in mythology—if you have a mythology in which the metaphor for the mystery is the father, you are going to have a different set of signals from what you would have if the metaphor for the wisdom and mystery of the world were the mother. And they are two perfectly good metaphors. Neither one is a fact. These are metaphors. It is as though the universe were my father. It is as though the universe were my mother. Jesus says, “No one gets to the father but by me.” The father that he was talking about was the biblical father. It might be that you can get to the father only by way of Jesus. On the other hand, suppose you are going by way of the mother. There you might prefer Kali, and the hymns to the goddess, and so forth. That is simply another way to get to the mystery of your life. You must understand that each religion is a kind of software that has its own set of signals and will work.” - Joseph Campbell, 1987
BILL MOYERS: Do you see some new metaphors emerging in a modern medium for the old universal truths?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I see the possibility of new metaphors, but I don’t see that they have become mythological yet.
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BILL MOYERS: Do you think there was such a place as the Garden of Eden?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Of course not. The Garden of Eden is a metaphor for that innocence that is innocent of time, innocent of opposites, and that is the prime center out of which consciousness then becomes aware of the changes.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck to its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.
BILL MOYERS: What is the metaphor?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: A metaphor is an image that suggests something else. For instance, if I say to a person, “You are a nut,” I’m not suggesting that I think the person is literally a nut. “Nut” is a metaphor. The reference of the metaphor in religious traditions is to something transcendent that is not literally any thing. If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the menu.
For example, Jesus ascended to heaven. The denotation would seem to be that somebody ascended to the sky. That’s literally what is being said. But if that were really the meaning of the message, then we have to throw it away, because there would have been no such place for Jesus literally to go. We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would still be in the galaxy. Astronomy and physics have simply eliminated that as a literal, physical possibility. But if you read “Jesus ascended to heaven” in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward—not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward. The point is that we should ascend with him by going inward. It is a metaphor of returning to the source, alpha and omega, of leaving the fixation on the body behind and going to the body’s dynamic source.
BILL MOYERS: Aren’t you undermining one of the great traditional doctrines of the classic Christian faith—that the burial and the resurrection of Jesus prefigures our own?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That would be a mistake in the reading of the symbol. That is reading the words in terms of prose instead of in terms of poetry, reading the metaphor in terms of the denotation instead of the connotation.
BILL MOYERS: And poetry gets to the unseen reality.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That which is beyond even the concept of reality, that which transcends all thought.
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… like music does, vibes and beyond … George Lucas hosted and filmed these interviews with a 83 year old professor from a women’s arts college to educate his cinema audience about “The Force” science fiction vibes and meanings.
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“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, year 1995
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… We had these problems worked out by teachers and educators in the 1980’s and 1990’s. But we are drowning in so much fiction storytelling / fiction memes in year 2025 that people can no longer locate and recognize the non-fiction educators and teachers on the very subject of mixing fiction and non-fiction! It’s horrific how much we have lost our minds and information systems to fiction content.
“Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious narratives. We see this, of course, in the conflict concerning creation science. Some educators representing, as they think, the conscience of science act much like those legislators who in 1925 prohibited by law the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. In that case, anti-evolutionists were fearful that a scientific idea would undermine religious belief. Today, pro-evolutionists are fearful that a religious idea will undermine scientific belief. The former had insufficient confidence in religion; the latter insufficient confidence in science. The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.” ― Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School, September 26, 1995
We had these problems worked out by teachers and educators in the 1980’s and 1990’s. But we are drowning in so much fiction storytelling / fiction memes in year 2025 that people can no longer locate and recognize the non-fiction educators and teachers on the very subject of mixing fiction and non-fiction! It’s horrific how much we have lost our minds and information systems to fiction content.
