A Logical Inquiry On Faith by Marshall Brain

Author:Marshall Brain
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Sterling Ethos
Published: 2015-04-29T15:49:14+00:00

WHAT ABOUT MYTHOLOGY?

Myths are a common feature of many human cultures. They are fanciful stories that primitive people often use to entertain or to explain things that they can’t understand. The dictionary defines the word myth as:

A traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.

Many of the stories from Greek mythology are still told today. Here is one myth that Greeks used to explain the coming of winter every year.

Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, giving her power over the fertility of the earth. She had a daughter named Persephone, fathered by Zeus, the king of the gods. But Hades, the god of the underworld, kidnapped Persephone and took her to live with him. Demeter could not find her daughter and, distraught, failed in her role as goddess of the harvest. The earth suffered a terrible famine. When Persephone was finally found and returned, there was much rejoicing. But there was also a problem—Persephone had eaten from a pomegranate, the food of the underworld. Therefore she was forced to return to the underworld each year. Persephone’s time in the underworld causes Demeter to enter a period of mourning, which we see on earth as winter. When Persephone returns, Demeter’s joy is the cause of spring.

Does this mythical story explain why winter comes each year? No. How do critical thinkers know this? First, critical thinkers—in fact most people today—understand that Demeter, Zeus, Hades, Persephone, and the underworld are all imaginary. Like Santa Claus, there is no evidence that they exist and plenty of evidence that they do not. There is no goddess of the harvest who causes famines on Earth with her distress and mourning. Pomegranates do not force anyone to do anything, and they especially do not compel imaginary goddesses like Persephone to return to an imaginary underworld. All of these facts make it apparent that the Greek explanation of winter is a myth.

Today we understand winter scientifically instead of using myths. We understand that winter comes each year because of the inclination of Earth’s rotational axis with respect to its orbital plane around the sun. This is the valid scientific explanation for the phenomenon called winter, supported by many different types of evidence. The inclination of Earth’s axis has several easily observed side effects besides winter. For example, the inclination is the reason why the North Pole and South Pole will have periods each year where there are twenty-four hours of daylight or twenty-four hours of darkness (unlike equatorial locations, which have a very even and nearly equal amount of daylight and darkness throughout the year).

With this knowledge about the inclination of Earth’s axis, we can make predictions. If we understand that winter results from axial inclination, we would predict that winter in the Northern Hemisphere should correspond to summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and vice versa.

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