Mythology and Religion

Mythology and religion are always considered opposites, by religious and non-religious people. There are some similarities between the two. For mythology and religion are very similar to each other, they both have stories or parables to teach the people about the world. They both answer, whether correctly or incorrectly, the questions most asked about ourselves and the world around us. They also use rituals to accomplish different things, mainly to have the person become part of the 'cult' or to have the person become new, but

mainly that a transformation occurs.

In the book, The Case For God, it says, “[myths] were designed to help people negotiate the obscure regions of the psyche...” All the Greek myths were used to help the Greek people acknowledge how the world came into being, as described in The Primary Myths. In order to teach the people about an idea, they used stories. In the Bible, Jesus used parables (stories) to illustrate a certain topic, like The Good Samaritan. He was teaching the people a concept that would have been hard to grasp without the story's illustration. In The Thoughts of Brahma, the Hindu religion gives a visual representation of how the world came to be. It answered a question that people, for ages, have been trying to answer. Why stories though? Why does every religion and every mythology use stories to say something? Because, stories are easy to understand, they are fun to listen to, they are simple, and because language is so important to human societies, they are part of our everyday life. We use stories to teach morals to little children, like The Little Red Hen. We use stories to answer children's questions of “why?” Religion uses stories to illustrate a moral or a religious concept so that adults, whom only think logically, and children, whom can't think logically, can both understand. Mythology does the same thing, for stories are the easiest things to remember. For example, everyone knows the story of Beauty and the Beast, there are may be a thousand different versions but everyone gets the same message out of it. Mythology and religion have many different versions of the same principle, the most known is how the world came to be. There are many different ways that people believe the world came to be, but all versions are somewhat similar in context and all are stories.

The second way religion and mythology are similar is how both answer the questions of the world. How did the Earth become the Earth? Why am I here? Who am I? Mythology tries to answer those questions using stories, as stated above, but still it tries to give the best possible answer to the hardest questions in life. Religion does the same. In Sophie's World, Sophie gets these strange letters asking her who she is and how the world came to be. Sophie didn't know, so she started to make a story to explain to herself how the world became the world. If Sophie religious, she would have turned to religion to look for an answer. In the Bible she would have found the Creation story, how the earth was created in seven days and man made in God's image, etc. In the Hindu scriptures she would have found the story of Brahma. If she believed that the old Greek myths or any old mythology were true , she would turn to mythology for answers and she would find the myth of The Birth of the Gods. But either way she turned, she would find answers, whether wrong or right, they were still answers. In the Sacred and Profane, it was discussing the idea of “Chaos and Cosmos,” and here it was saying that “our world” must be “created.” There are many different questions to life and mythology and religion try to answer them.

Lastly, religion and mythology use rituals to achieve something. As seen in the movie, “The Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” we see that the cavemen performed a ritual for boys to become men. This ritual creates a new being, a man out of a boy. In the Bible, when a person accepts Jesus into their hearts, they are born again. When a hero in Greek mythology went through a tribulation and came out on the other side victorious, he had to go through a ritual to achieve that status of hero. In the Sacred and Profane, it talked about a certain Vedic ritual, when someone wanted land he would build a fire altar in order to establish it legally and the fire altar was a communication with the gods, it also represented creation. Rituals were used and still are to ensure that a person's commitment was ensured, now religion has more rituals than mythology did/does, but they both still have rituals that ensured transformation between one stage to the next of a person's life.

Mythology and religion are very similar, they share many similar traits. Religion and mythology use stories to teach people certain things. Religion and mythology answer, whether correct or incorrectly, the questions of life. And lastly religion and mythology use rituals to ensure some type transformation in a person's life. These two topics, considered opposites, have more similarities than you would think. These are only a couple of the similarities, there are probably many more than those mentioned.