The Case for God: Mythos Versus Logos

Today we live in a world where religion permeates every aspect of our lives, even if we don't consider ourselves religious. We hear religion preached on our televisions, radios and in the million churches that dot the American landscape. Our politicians spew out their religious beliefs, avowing a faith in this God or that one. Political decisions, constitutional law and our moral compass are judged each day by people who claim religious superiority.

Yet, I would say that we live in society of scientific logos, and the myths that sustained generations upon generations of men have lost their spirit. For those of us who believe that story and myth are a sacred heritage that still holds the power to shape the world, we are saddened when religion attempts to become logos, because we know that the Greeks had it correct.

In the premodern world the Greeks had two ways of thinking, speaking and learning. They called these two ways, mythos and logos. Logos (reason) was the everyday thinking knowledge that allowed people to function. How to hunt, prepare food, build a boat, make clothing, grow food, be safe from predators, how to conduct warfare against an enemy and how to govern a community were all excellent examples of logos knowledge. There was a constant increase in logos knowledge as man evolved into larger, more complex societies. But logos was weak without mythos knowledge to make sense of that world.

Today, we would say, that a myth is something based in fantasy. We read the Greek myths and know they are stories. But these myths were not just self indulgent fantasies. Myths weren't simple tales about Gods and heroes, but truth presented in a way that helped the ancients deal with life and death. They were focused on the elusive, somber and often tragic elements of being human. Those of us who study mythic stories know that myths were designed to help ancient people make sense of their inner thoughts and psyche. In many ways, they were the psychological therapy of the ancient world.

But, they were never intended to be logos knowledge. A myth was not an accurate account of a historical event but something that might have happened once and for all time continued to show a path through our souls. We each know that some of the most important knowledge we have in our psyches is how to love, how to forgive, how to be independent in thought, how to find courage, how to grow up and leave our childhood behind us and how to find a path to happiness.

How did logos and myth work together in the ancient world and why have we lost this in our modern world? A myth would not have been effective to helping a person if they simply believed in it. A myth could only help humans if they took the truth of the myth and then acted upon similar events in their own life. As writers and readers, we understand the myth of the hero. It's a cultural tradition, found in every society throughout history. What was the goal of the myth? To help a person unlock their own heroic potential. An ancient could hear the tales of Hercules moving mountains and fighting monsters and arm themselves with that knowledge for their world.

Combining mythos knowledge of the spiritual world and logos knowledge of the physical world enabled a young man to leave his home, in search of his own heroic self. Those ancient myths are still the backbone of any modern hero story. Luke Skywalker left his murdered family behind and charted a new course through the universe. Along the way he found companions to love and a mentor to guide him along the path. He used his logos knowledge of piloting and fighting to survive the physical challenges, but it was by facing the demons of his own psyche and fears that he found the Force within to become a hero. At the end of the sage, Luke Skywalker is a man, who has forgiven his father, saved his world, found his sister, discovered true friendship and stands prepared to face the world a stronger man, humble and brave.

From the earliest history, we see this story repeated in every culture and every religion. Early religions were about the practice of ritual that allowed a person to acquire mythos knowledge in their life. Those early rituals included such things as creating a transition between childhood and adult hood, usually around age 13. It is no coincidence that this is the age of many religious ceremonies for young people. This passage between childhood and adulthood was often marked by trials, tests of manhood, giving up of a young girls childish roles and being secluded as a woman, (often with her first sexual experience being a ritualistic one) A boy might take a journey to the mountain top, go on a large hunt for a beast to slay, or being painfully circumcised in a ritual of overcoming pain to become a man on the other side.

Our western society would look upon these rituals as primitive and unnecessary, but our adolescents often wander lost between the two worlds of childhood and adulthood because they have no ritual to chart the way. We've tried to create graduations, or levels of learning, or getting a license to drive, or any of the more sedate modern rituals of transition for our young people. And yet we feel inside our psyches that something is missing.

Modern day religions ask us to be born again in an attempt to become a new person, a hero of our own lives. They ask us to take actions to be a good person, to slay the evil parts of our psyche and to be constantly renewed in prayer, confession and sacrifice. These are remnants of ancient mythos knowledge. But modern day religion has decided in many instances, to try and become logos knowledge.

It has taken the myths of the scriptures and attempted to squeeze it into a reason block of truth. Let's look at the beautiful myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In our modern world, this story has become controversial as it appears to clash with science. For logos based thinkers who have lost touch with mythos thinking, this is a real problem. They have attempted to take an ancient myth and make it factual. But until the early modern period of history, around 1000 AD, no one would have considered the creation story to be a fact.

It was understood that the creation stories of ancient time attempted to answer some deep spiritual questions for ancient people. Where had we come from? Why was life so hard and difficult? When a person stopped breathing and existing what had been the force that animated them? Why did the elk exist if not to feed mankind? Why did the rains come? Why did lighting kill? So many questions and with a limited logos knowledge based on scientific knowledge available, it was to mythos that ancient man looked for an answer.

In the middle east around 3000 BC, there were several peoples who thought that one of the gods, known as the High God or the Sky God had created heaven and earth. The Aryans called him Dyaeus Pitr, the Chinese called him Tian, The Arabians called him Allah, and the Syrians called him El Elyon and, the Israelites called him Elohim.

Many modern day religions have taken the creation story of Adam and Eve as actual fact. But the Eden story isn't a morality tale about how to live, it is a tale of mythos. In Eden, Adam and Eve are still in the womb of life; but they have to grow up, and the snake is there to guide them through the difficult rite of passage into adulthood. To know pain and to feel desire, to be conscious of mortality are the core of being human. It is the experience we share with all mankind. And like all mankind, we yearn for the Garden of our childhood. We want to retreat into a mythical time when life wasn't difficult, when our every need was met by an all loving God (parent). We can see Adam and Eve and even the serpent as parts of our humanity. In the snake, we see our constant rebellion and our compulsion to question everything that authority insists is crucial to human progress. In Eve the hunger for knowledge that drives us to learn more and more, to experiment and grow. In Adam we see our reluctance to take responsibility for our actions, the desire to let a mythical father provide for us. The story tells us that good and evil are intertwined in our world and in human beings.

Our logos knowledge can save us but it can destroy us (atomic bombs or fossil fuels). Talmudic rabbis understood this perfectly. They didn't see the fall as a catastrophe but as a necessary step in every human beings life. To leave the garden and find our own painful path to maturity and adulthood is key for our survival and our future happiness. We cannot live in the Garden of Eden forever. The world is so much more fascinating, but it is challenging, full of problems to be solved, obstacles to overcome, loss and pain as well as joy and possiblities.

The Eden story was never meant to be logos knowledge. It was always understood for millenia to be mythos knowledge and yet we now live in a world where we attempt to make this ancient mythos knowledge sacrosanct and legalistic logos knowledge. And when we do that, we destroy the very heart of its truth.

God wasn't meant to be packaged in a neat little square, for humans to leaf through His pages. He's a mystery, a powerful mythos force that truly can transform our lives. But when we package him in trappings from ancient texts written to explain ancient forces beyond the knowledge of ancient men, we belittle Her existence in our modern world. And so people turn away, because they cannot make the two fit, modern logos knowledge of scientific inquiry and fact with ancient mythos knowledge of our inner psyche and soul.

Thus wars are fought and names are called and hate grows based on myth that was never meant to be reality. Both are crucial to our survival as human beings, but real religion is hard work. And the path is meant to be difficult to attain enlightenment. We don't simply fall to our knees and say transform me God, because we know that true transformation of our soul only begins with that call for salvation.

We then must embark upon the work of growing up. We must learn to love, to find compassion, to be brave, to care for the needy, to cry for the weak and to act upon those feelings. I sit in modern churches and I watch grown men and women talk in tongues and seek God's power and then never take one action to help their neighbor who is hungry or homeless. We cannot speak words of judgment against an entire race of people and claim they are the serpents of a mythical beast and find the way to God.

That path is hard, it's found in going within, and residing there in quietness and mindful meditation. We seek the truth, we find the power within that all human beings possess in some degree and we turn it outward to the world. We take our potential to be good and we act upon it. Confucious wrote in 550 BCE , "never do to others what you would not like them to do to you." He told his followers that the Practice of this Golden rule would bring human beings into a state of "ren" or benevolence. One of his followers, Yan Hui wrote about his struggle to attain ren, "The more I strain my gaze toward it, the higher it soars. The deeper I bore down, the harder it becomes. Step by step, the Master lures one on."

Christ described the same rule and the same path to God. He said it was harder for a camel to pass through a needle than for man to find his way to Heaven. He knew the path was a difficult treacherous one, that required deep meditation and daily practice of benevolence and compassion for all life. We cannot hate anything or anyone and find God.

There are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindu's, Buddhists, and Bahai that know this truth. We have been silent too long and allowed logos based religions to defy wisdom and reason. We label our scientist liars and our search for scientific solutions sacrilege, when the ancients already had the answer. They knew that logos and mythos together had the power to transform the human being into an adult. It remains to be seen, if man can leave behind his immaturity before we destroy our world. But all storytellers know that without an informed understanding of the power of myths of our world we won't survive.

Karen Armstrong makes this Case for God so much more succinctly than I in her latest book, The Case for God. If i could mandate that every human being must read one book before they are allowed to be grown up, then it would be The Case for God. With reasoned informed logos, Mrs. Armstrong, an acclaimed writer, takes the reader through the beginnings of time, history and religion and charts a new path for religious pursuit in the 21st century. We are intent upon destroying ourselves, in the name of religion in this world. But God is bigger than we puny humans and will endure another third millenium despite our best efforts to destroy Her creation.

Resources

Akenson, Donald, Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds. 1998

Atran, Scott. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion

Armstrong, Karen, The History of God, 1996

Armstrong, Karen, The Case for God, 2009

Ayer, A.J. The Central Questions of Philosophy, 1973

Barnes, Jonathon: Early Greek Philosophy, 1987

Campbell, Joseph, The Hero with A Thousand Faces, 1989

Confucius, The Analects of Confucius, 550 BCE

Friedman, Richard Eliot. Who Wrote the Bible? 1987