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Religious Fundamentalists: Would You Ever Accept A Monomyth Theory?

Basically, the idea that all religions are trying to understand the same thing, and these deep ideas were rendered in different cultural icons and symbolism depending on the social context they formed in. Each culture is like a colored lens; the western culture sees Jesus and the middle east sees Muhammad, and Moses, and the East sees Vishnu, Buddha, Taoism, and Shintoism. Or like Cheese going through different cheese graters. It is the same cheese, just different slice patterns.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth for the monomyth according to the late Joseph Campbell, a world class Myth expert.

These symbols make sense to you because they have cultural significance and personal experience. But we all feel the same things. We all feel anger, rapture, joy, love, dullness, disgust, bliss, etc. and we have images and symbols based on personal experience to label and interpret these feelings in our minds.

If you don't think that this could be true, do you see how I might?

Update:

@Richard - Sure! One says "It looks yellowish-red" and the other says "it looks redish-yellow to me" and another says "its orange" and even another "burnt dark yellow". That is what I am saying...there are different ways to say the same thing!

3 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    I'm not a religious fundamentalist, but I definitely agree with that possibility.

  • 1 decade ago

    M. sounds like a nice and attractive theory to try to justify the idea that "all religions are correct." That we all see the same god but from different angles, so god looks different to all of us.

    But 'nice' does not mean it holds water. If 8 pre-school kids looked at a pumpkin and each described it with a different color, does that make all of them correct?

  • 1 decade ago

    I do not have mono!!!!!

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