“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

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  • RoundSparrow @ .ee@lemm.eeOPM
    1·
    25 days ago

    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?

    • Boomkop3@reddthat.com
      1·
      25 days ago

      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

      • RoundSparrow @ .ee@lemm.eeOPM
        1·
        25 days ago

        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

        1. Non-fiction section in the Public Library
        2. Fiction section in the Public Library
        3. Fiction that people think is non-fiction because they never learned the concept of “metaphor”
        4. 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