I’m not Poly or Tris, but from my end I would say yes.
His, I consider that screed a vile slander on Nicholas of Myra, a man who did his absolute best to follow Jesus and teach others about Him, and whose kindness and generosity were legend in his own lifetime. That we’ve come up with a fable based loosely on him and incorporating parts of Germanic myth as a sort of “fun story for children” is perhaps not altogether good – though the fun kids get from the Santa myth and the early exercise in clear thinking that realizing the truth about Santa provides tilt the balance in its favor in my book. As for the anagram thing, “Santa Claus” is derived from “Sint(er) Klaas” which is Dutch for St. Nicholas, Claus being the dimunitive for Nicholas in Dutch as Bobby is for Robert in English. To show you how silly it is, let’s use your screen name. Well, if we change the final R to an L, and move the letters around, we get He’s 4 Evil, so by “the truth of anagrams” you must certainly be an agent of the Devil! (In case you’re still slightly irony-impaired, I do not think that – I’m using it as an example to show you how ridiculous the anagram game is.)
Kabala (usually spelled with a K, not a C) is a mystical discipline in medieval/modern Judaism aimed at improving one’s appreciation of God by contemplation of His presence and characteristics exemplified in His creation, using letters and numbers as a part of the analytical technique. It is not an exercise in anagramming, except in a very tangential sense.
And in my experience most New Agers have absolutely no use for the idea of Satan, even under an anagrammed name.
Blowero, in the form I’ve encountered it, the Santa analogy is used by people intending to ridicule or debunk belief in God by the idea that as small children believe in Santa, but discover the truth as they age, so people who still believe in God are failing to let go of another childhood myth, out of a sense of security they get from clinging to the God idea. That, and the nature of myth, was what I hoped to play off in drawing my parallel.
Xeno and Spiritus, where I was going with this requires a lot of explanation, and like most critical analyses, destroys the point in attempting to exegetize it. But to deal in my own way with what you’re asking, let me categorize my personal assumptions:
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There is an underlying reality and purposiveness to the Universe, a metaphysical Truth on which the physical universe is built.
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Those who are comfortable with an abstract, intellectualized deity call that underlying reality God.
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That underlying reality, on the testimony of people in the past and my own experience, has a personhood, a sentience, great power, great knowledge, and appears to be possessed of (if not comprised of) benevolence towards the living things which he has caused to come into existence. (“Omni-” is a now-torn-down arena in Atlanta; let’s leave those descriptives at “great” and add that if He has limits, I’m not aware of them.)
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It appears humanly impossible to stretch one’s mind to wrap it around the totality of this Noumenon.
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However, He can and does know us in full, and (being benevolent) allows us to know Him as if a person like ourselves.
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His providence is evident in the world around me. While a lot of sad and unfortunate “bad” things happen, He is always present to those who believe in Him to help them past the bad, to transform bad into good, and to help us learn from our experience. In addition to this omnipresence, He sometimes reveals Himself in particular ways (“theophanies”), although historical accounts of these need to be taken with substantial amounts of salt.
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Humans being humans, they construct myths to attempt to explain the world around them.
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That Noumenon posited above has been described by a number of such myths, some of them contradicting each other.
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Nonetheless, because He does attempt to get across a moral code of behavior and to aid people in living the sorts of lives that are most self-fulfilling, there is significant truth about Him in those myths.
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People are called to live out the sorts of lives to which He calls them, to the point of self-sacrifice in some cases. In doing so, they model and show God to the people about them.
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In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, His teachings and His Self-Sacrifice, we have the clearest human example of how to live out such a life and how to model and show God to others – to the point that when we see Jesus, we see God in human form. This is the doctrine of the Incarnation.
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In the mythos that has grown up around Nicholas of Myra, we have a similar (though not identical) parallel of historical truth and myth collaborating to produce a reality that is not definable in facts. “Santa Claus brings presents” was strictly true for only a handful of young people in ancient Myra – but it encapsules a large part of the “Christmas spirit” of jovial warm feelings and generosity towards one’s fellow man, in a mythical construct that is nonetheless valid.
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Whence, for me, one can accept the truths contained in the Bible without any necessity for its historical validity and total inerrancy. Because it mediates the central myth of the Ultimate Reality’s dealings with humankind, and can be read as “true myth” in the same sense as the Santa myth is “real.”
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Disclaimer: I personally think that a fair amount of the historical accounts in Scripture, e.g. the Tanach accounts of the Davidic monarchy, the factual accounts underlying the Gospel stories, and Acts, are “true” in the sense that they represent excellent Classical historiography – where providing dialogue for one’s characters and a verisimilitude set of actions that may not be precisely what your character did are valid reportage. The Sermon on the Mount as we have it reported, for example, is (as Matthew points out elliptically) not the exact words that Jesus said on that particular day, but sort of a Reader’s Digest Condensed Best Jesus Sermon on Individual Morality – not because Matthew would lie about Jesus, but because in his day, such reportage was considered accurate – Jesus presumably said all the stuff in the SotM, Matthew did not have his exact words on that day, and so he reconstructed the SotM from stuff Jesus had said, though perhaps at different times and places. He may have taught the Beatitudes at Lazarus’s house in Bethany, the “Consider the lilies/Seek ye first” passage on that hillside, and the teaching on adultery as He walked with the Twelve after encountering the woman taken in adultery – no matter, they fit together in Matthew’s scheme for presenting Jesus’s teachings and so he set them together as the SotM. This, however, does not mean that I happen to believe the exact historicity of every conflicting statement in the Gospels (who cares who got to the tomb first?) nor of the legends in early Genesis. A literate Bible scholar over on the Pizza Parlor pointed out that the reason that the Law is set apart as being what God commanded with Moses as spokesman is that to the Jews, God was the Source of All Law and Moses the human Lawgiver sent by God – so whenever something required codification as part of the law, it got inserted into the Torah. Just as James Madison would be amazed to find that the Constitution he wrote contains provisions limiting Presidents to two terms and prohibiting poll taxes – the amendments having been incorporated into the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, so the judgments of Deborah and Elon the Zebulonite on the inheritance of land and discharges from the human body were attributed back to God and Moses as being part of the Law which God gave through Moses.
I tend to agree with the link. It seems to show the parallels between Santa and God and the fact that Santa (or satan, if you choose to believe that) wishes to replace God with Santa. I see Santa as an attempt to get people’s minds off Jesus Christ which is what Christmas is about.
I’m not totally sure I’m understanding “mythological constructs.”
Myths that have true meanng behind them? I suppose there are some that may, so I don’t know as I would disagree totally with Poly. Santa, of course, to me is a myth. At least the one with the sleigh and reindeer that go flying through the air. I’m assumng this may have started because of a giving person named St. Nicholas, that’s entirely possible.
Even though it may have started that way with a real person, what we have today is what I’ve stated above: trying to replace God with Santa. I didn’t believe in Santa before I read the link, but after I read it, it really opened my eyes to the parallels between Santa and satan. Satan wanted to take God’s place too, you know. Anyway, it’s just my opinion. I’m sure Poly has plenty of good points about it also.
Poly, in what sense do you accept the doctrine of the deity of Christ … does he just sort of have an extra helping of Imago Dei? Is there a qualitative or only quantitative difference? “Clearest human example” seems, to me, like you’re heading toward Jesus as the best of humanity, but not necessarily THE unique manifestation of the divine.
Not that there would be anything wrong with that.
Furt, “being God” and “being Man” are not to my mind exclusive qualities. The traditional formula about Jesus, “truly God and truly man,” is not suggesting a 50:50 split (he was God on His father’s side, and man on His mother’s, like Elrond Halfelven), but rather that the reality of the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, was made manifest in the person of the human being Jesus of Nazareth. And there’s one final point that needs to be made, since you brought up Imago Dei, and it’s (ironically) from fundamentalism: “He became like us in order that we might become like Him.”
His, if there’s any objective reality behind “Santa,” it’s the historical person Nicholas (the story of whose life as an exemplar of what a Christian ought to be is really worth rading) – and I’m confident that he, in Heaven, is not in the slightest interested in replacing Jesus. To the extent that secular marketing and imagery have replaced the Manger with the Sleigh as the pre-eminent symbol for Christmas, I might agree with you – and I neither know nor care what Satan, if he is real, may have to do with that.
Tris and Poly, thank you both for your comments. As always, you’ve made the glass a bit less dark for me. I will note that you both seem to agree that “human interaction” is the necessary mechanism behind the revelatory power of myths. I’m so pleased you choose to interact on this board.
His4Ever, thanks also to you for answering my rather pointed questions so politely. While personally I don’t see any startling parallels between the mythical jolly gift giver and the mythical father of lies, I’m glad you shared your opinion.
Poly
Thank you for plainly laying out your belief system. From reading your posts, I had assumed (incorrectly) that you thought that “God” was more or less equivalant to “Justice” and “Love” in that they are abstract ideals to be respected and worked for, rather than actual entities; and that your religious beliefs were more of a philosophy - (To paraphrase Bruce Lee) - “(God) is like a finger pointing at the moon; concentrate on the finger and you miss all that heavenly glory.” In other words, I was under the impression that you thought that we should strive to live up to the best of Christian ideals even though the mythology that expresses those ideals does not reflect (capital R) Reality.
However, you say that you believe that God does have a “personhood”. I think that this is what requires a defense. More specifically, the statement that, “There is an underlying reality and purposiveness to the Universe” requires a defense, as this assumes the existence of something or someone existing apart from the universe to provide that purpose.
Do you have an argument to support this belief, or is it a matter of creo qui consolence (sp?). Why not simply posit that existence is sufficient unto itself rather than requiring a creator, who would then himself require an explanation.
In response to Smitty, let me quote Tris:
I thought his post said vividly and clearly what I laboriously laid out in fourteen points (missing “open coventants openly arrived at,” I suppose ;)) tried to analyze and in doing so missed the human, feeling factor involved.
I’d have the minor quibble that subjective and quasi-legendary evidence is definitely available – but they don’t constitute “sufficient evidence” in the views of a skeptic, so beyond challenging a “there’s no evidence for God” statement with the suggestion that the evidence available may not be convincing to you (generically), but there certainly is evidence, I tend to let those statements lie.
Bottom line: The accounts in the Bible, whatever they may in reality be, presuppose a theos, an active deity involved with the world He created, and in the lives of people. My personal theophany and my “sense of His presence” makes Him out to be a Person. The only way in which I’d encourage that evidence to the acceptance of others is that I get the impression that I am generally considered a clear thinker with a willingness to look at and challenge ideas, so my testimony that I have encountered Him on a personal basis may bear slightly more weight in the views of others than that of a person perceived as clinging to a belief out of fear or blindly accepting authority.
Besides, I have my assignment (as do all other Christians). We’re not supposed to demand that others believe in God, or attempt to prove Him by logical means, but to show Him to others by the lives that we lead. That’s the witness that I try to make, generally – though my naturally argumentative side does occasionally come to the fore when someone pontificates his worldview as though it were something that others were stupid for not accepting. 
Poly, I haven’t read the works to which your earlier post refers - I’ll try to hunt them up and let you know what I think about them.
FWIW, I suppose that I see God as one of very many archetypes.
Poly,
I probably should mention that the evidence which actually made me change from intellectual agreement with the philosophy of Christ as portrayed by the common understanding of Bible, to an impassioned lover of Christ, the person, and Lord of Salvation, was not mythological. It was miraculous. However it was not of a nature that would convince anyone but me. I received no answers, and yet, I no longer had questions.
It is out of respect for the very considerable intellect and also moral character of our mutual friends, the objectivist atheists of this board that I do not ask them to consider it in an argumentative manner. (OK, there is a bit of “Pearls before Swine” to it too, but I mean that in the nicest way. 
) If I am to engage in intellectual examination of my faith, and I seldom am willing to do so, I feel constrained to leave miracles out of the mix, since they are necessarily not amenable to objectivist scrutiny. I will try, if asked, to explain how I reconcile my own intellectual examination on the nature of faith, but it always contains the caveat that my faith itself is not a matter of fact, evidence, or intellect.
Tris
" It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching." ~ Saint Francis Of Assisi ~
Thanks guys. I appreciate your efforts, but I’m afraid that the rather focused nature of my question was lost in your generous replies. Or, perhaps, my question was answered therein but I am unable to sift it out. Poly’s OP really did get me thinking explicitely about the relationship between mythological constructs and the metaphysical reality which so compels you. On the one hand, each of you decries “putting God in a box”. On the other hand, you each seem to take significant core elements of your faith from a specific mythological construct (I apologize for this phrasing, actually, but I am trying to follow the parallel outlined in the OP. Please do not consider this a slur on the nature of the Bible, the Gospels, etc.) So, if you don’t mind my asking the question again: when someone discusses “God”, and the object of their conversation is the mythological construct, are they discussing God?
Yeah. Just as much so as Tillich is, or a Unitarian pastor is in his/her sermons, or Julian of Norwich was in her accounts of her visions. There’s no way in which we can comprehend God – we can only apprehend Him, and one of the main ways in which we do this is by reference to myth. Another way, according to us Christians, is to read the (purposively written but naively quasi-accurate) accounts of Jesus, whom we believe to be an aspect of God (a Person of the Trinity) in human form – one can grasp more of Who God really is by observing what Jesus did and by paying close attention to what He taught about Him --> remembering that He was generally speaking to Jews and using the Jewish theographic terminology in doing so. (Before you ask, I coined it – but what I mean by it is obvious: the language you use to describe deity.)
Spiritus Mundi, you may want to read “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell for the answer you seek.
I’d like to add that the strength of metaphor (which I think we can agree is an important component of myth) is also its weakness. Metaphor compares the known to the unknown in an effort to comprehend. It transports us across a barrier or gap to something other, something we can’t grasp without it – and still can’t completely grasp with it. The weakness is that metaphor is a comparision, not a definition, and if we come to accept it as a definition (through habit, satisfaction, laziness, etc) then we are limiting our perception of other to a very narrow angle.
** Spiritus Mundi ** asks:
Spiritus,
Yes, I think everyone who speaks of God is speaking of the God that is, even those who think that He is not. I know it pisses some of them off, but even the ones who call God by another name, or even several names, and believe Him to be several people, or believe Her to be someone entirely different are still speaking of God, the person who is.
Likewise I believe that Jesus is God, and that when you speak of one, you speak of the other. And I believe, as well, that the person who is Jesus is the embodiment of the Holy Spirit of Love, the love that God has for man. The rather obvious inconstancies are, in my intellectual view, the inconsistencies of human understanding. (Yes, that includes me.)
If my Muslim brother says, There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His prophet, I am not constrained by my belief to take issue with him. (Point of language, he actually probably said There is no God, but God. For some reason we always translate the first instance of the word Allah, and not the second.) The fact is that the mythological world view of my faith is significantly different from the mythological world view of my Muslim brother, and our Hindu brothers are different as well. Still, Brahma alone has made the world; we can only look upon it with awe, and limited understanding.
The matter of faith is not the same as the matter of religion. I have very little interest in religion, and find love to be the metaphysical rock upon which all real truth rests. Philosophy and logic, and science are all ways of drawing maps of the truth. But as so many have been mentioning lately, the map is not the territory. But in the matter of the spirit, there is no map, only territory. And the way of the spirit is not a single path, or even an eight fold path. There are differences in dogma, between me, and my brothers. But love is greater than those things. I have faith that the Lord, my Savior will meet us, each and all, upon whichever path we have traveled.
Tris
“And the veils shall pass from our eyes, in that day, and we shall see clearly, at last, what God hath wrought. And we shall say :smack: Doh!”
Great point, Fewl! A fair amount of my frustration with literalism is that there seems to be a willful (or perhaps purblind) refusal to grasp that truth can be contained in the non-factual.
I have no problem with DDG or Joe Cool (to cite two examples) taking portions of Scripture literally that I would read as figurative accounts. They respect my privilege to grasp the essentials of Christianity from Scripture (and tradition – another debate) while presuming the non-literality of something they see as accurate historical account. As a result, we can have an intelligent and fruitful discussion – particularly if I do not make reference to whether or not a passage is literal in my view, but focus on the message it contains.
Others however are insistent on the literality of the Bible as the sine qua non of true Christian belief. And faced with this, we end up clashing heads.
After all, the question “What’s a metaphor?” has a punning answer, “For pasturing sheep, of course!” that has a second and very significant meaning behind it – using “sheep” as a metaphor itself!
Someone who calls me Fewl! Thank you.
Speaking of puns, Poly, are eight, sixteen and thirty-two metaphors?
By the way, your earlier mention of the Kabala and mysticism is the general direction I was thinking in on the first page of this thread when I mentioned the structural similarites between immanence and imminence. I think this sort of contemplation is useful and productive for anyone – no matter what they do or do not believe in. I see it as exercising a sense of wonder.
JustPlainBryan
I’ve read several of Campbell’s books, but I don’t recall any passages where he addressed what specific individuals who post on the Stright Dope Message Board feel is the relationship between Godhead and mythology.
Poly
I thnik I get where you are coming from (and I agree with you on Fatwater’s point). I guess the issue that still concerns me is whether or not there is a “cutoff point” at which you decide that someone is no longer talking about the God that you apprehend. Does “God hates fags” say something about your God?
One reason I ask is because the “mythgenesis” process painted by the OP runs from “truth --> myth.” (Let’s set aside our differences in regard to metaphysical truth. I’m not trying to grind that axe here.) That seems reasonable to me. It also seems to lead smoothly into the conclusion that the apprehension of God is primary, and the selection of mythological structures is tested against that apprehension. But that can really only be seen if sometimes when someone is talking about a mythological construct “God” you do not think he is talking about God.
Even then , I think the issue of childhood exposure to specific mythological constructs complicates the issue of primacy. I mean, the direct experience of the numenous seems to be pretty rare, even among adults who profess faith. That would seem to indicate that for some folks, at least, the mythological structure (or perhaps an intellectual “understanding” of God) would by the only means of apprehension available. Before delving to far into that, though, I should probaby find out if even the first step is one you have taken.
So, does “God hates fags” say anything about God?
tris
I don’t mean to keep lumping you in with Poly as if you were somehow bound to agree with every detail of his faith. So far, though, on this particular issue you seem pretty closely in tune. So . … um, same question.
FWIW, I think you’d find that many atheists such as myself struggle to really understand the enormity of how science tells us the universe came into being - The Big Bang. It’s a concept that is extremely difficult to wrap your head around when you really think about it; it’s one I can only begin to understand through some of the models (metaphors) used by scientists like Hawking - and even then I get only a glimpse of understanding.
How about a metaphor, then.
Suppose folks on this board started talking about me. Now, my name isn’t really Triskadecamus. But, they would be talking about me, anyway. The real me. The things they said would be their real feelings, and opinions about me. They might say, “Triskadecamus would tell you that you can play an imaginary instrument, and get real music out of it.” Now, at that point, you have to decide, based on what you remember about what I said about imaginary instruments, whether that is true about the Triskadecamus you know from the board.
Then you have to decide if the difference between what you remember I said, and what is being reported is important enough to you, for you to bother posting a reply giving your opinion of what I said, and what I meant. As it turns out, we have a bible here, in the archives, and you can get the Chapter and Verse quote where I said what you remember. And it might turn out that I was so faithful to my metaphor of the Gausepheme, that the words actually could be interpreted to mean I thought someone else might perceive the beauty of the Concerto I described. Now, is that “hearing real music” or is it just a metaphor for something sort of like hearing real music? Can you be sure what was in my mind?
At some level, you have to choose what message of God you hear, and what you are unable to accept from another person as a message of God. People who don’t believe in God answer bitterly to those who post on this board that God hates Fags. They protest, even without belief, that that is not true. They don’t believe in God, but they don’t believe that God hates fags. They don’t just protest, they get angry. But when I tell them that God loves them, they don’t tell me I am full of shit. They might not believe me, but they don’t deny me my belief. They recognize that if there is a message, it is my message, and I think I am giving them God’s message. And the fag basher is giving his own message too, because he decided to tell people this one thing he thinks God thinks. The Fag basher and I must both own our messages, and cannot fob them off on God without owning them.
I, on the other hand get all upset, and start rebuking folks in the name of Jesus. (And, oddly enough, the folks I have done that to have never replied, at all.) I speak with no authority, and yet, on the simple matter of rebuking them, in His name, no one has ever called me out on my authority to do so. I suppose they might just think I am too weird for a rational discussion, what with praying and rebuking sinners, and all. And I even say all the time that we cannot judge sinners, only Jesus can.
So, where am I going with all this weird assed metaphor? Where I am going is that yes, I think that everyone who speaks of God speaks of the same God that I believe in. But I don’t think that everything they say, or in fact everything I say is the truth about God. My eyes are a poor window into the Soul Eternal. But, they are the eyes I have. And at some point, when the being I love, and honor is slandered, I start yelling. You may ignore me, or yell back, as the mood strikes you. But to me, it is defending the truth before the active force of evil. I try to save my outrage for the most dedicated servants of evil. Most of evil’s henchmen are dupes, and fools, not willing servants.
Tell me the color of God’s hair, or how he likes His eggs in the morning, I will have nothing to say. Tell me you spoke to Him this morning, on the phone, I will not deny you. Tell me who God hates, and I will come down on you like the very Wrath of God you have invoked. Because I love Him, and because He told me to bring the message of His love to all His children. And it really pisses me off when someone tries to make their own hatred His.
Looking back, I can see this post falls fairly short of logical, and rational. Oh, well. It is probably therefore a lot more honest. I am not all that reasonable a man, and certainly not a logical one.
Tris
“RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.” ~ Ambrose Bierce ~