Archive Home Page >>that concepts like the virgin birth, resurrection, transsubstantiation, everlasting life, etc -- all of which are not provable -- were invented to intrigue the gullible. Just like advertising and packaging do today.<<
All mythology is "not provable" yet there it is time and time again, the same emotionally powerful themes often playing out in different and unrelated cultures. The historical aspects of religion and mythology though interesting and necessary are in my view the least relevent.
"Creation myths, furthermore, which, when read in their mystical sense might bring to mind the indea of a background beyond time out of which the whole temporal world with it's colorful populations has been derived, when read, instead , historically, only justify as supernaturally endowed the moral order of some local culture."
- Joseph Campbell
"The Inner Reaches of Outer Space
Metaphor as Myth and as Religion"
I guess in the context of this folder, I remember a time not too long ago here on these very boards when "agape" love was used as a rhetorical weapon in attacking gay relationships as in OK it's alright if you're gay as long as you adhere to platonic or agape love in your relationships... It is a part of being human to seek out romantic and passionate and spiritual love. I don't recall agape love, as good as an idea as it is, being a prohibition against other forms of love, some of which no doubt we probably can't even imagine at this particular stage in humanities development.