The Invention of God: The Natural Origins of Mythology and Religion by Lauritzen Bill

Author:Lauritzen, Bill [Lauritzen, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: www.earth360.com
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

With our modern (around 2000 AD) knowledge of geology, or earth science, we can reinterpret many other classical myths, but as I said once before, this book is not meant to be an exhaustive survey. My purpose here is to show you that the myths are there, waiting to be correctly interpreted.

Let’s return to Mott Greene to end this section:

“We should learn to accept more freely what the sources report to us, since it is largely due to their uncritical repetitions that much of the material of interest…has survived.

None of the ruling theories of mythology—literary, functionalist, structuralist, Freudian, Jungian, ritualist—is of much help with this aspect of mythic texts, and all such theories hold the study of myth hostage to opposed camps of specialists engaged in a power struggle over the origins and nature of human thought in a way which can obscure the literal sense of the texts. If we cart off the freight of excessive theory and take the texts at their words, we can…perhaps come to a better understanding of the approach to natural phenomena that characterized Greek thought in the period down to 500 B.C.

Anyone who studies this material has an obligation to gain some knowledge of geology, geomorphology, volcanology, and a host of allied sciences…if he or she wishes to have access to the text’s message.

Finally, no formalistic analysis of mythology, however polished, brilliant, time-tested, and attractive should ever be used to devalue the content of a myth until all possible avenues to a message of some sort being transmitted by that content have been exhausted.” 129

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