Do we need myths?
Hardcore scientists, as Richard Dawkins, thinks that we don't need them.
But it may depend on what we mean with a myth.
If we mean a story, like the ones about Zeus or Indra, it may seem like fantasy.
Even the stories in the Bible may look like fiction.
But Christian people don't seesv it that way.
Why?
Because it gives them meaning.
I can guess that science gives meaning to Dawkins.
Yuval Harari looks at humanism and capitalism as myths and stories.
We have to believe in them to make them true.
The idea that all people has the same value, is also an idea, although a good one.
The value of a dollar is also fiction that becomes real because we all have the same idea.
Myth helps us to distinguish between god and bad.
Science can't do that.
So it may be good to believe in some myth.
Some say that science and the idea of its progress is a kind of religion, that nowadays seem to promise longer life or even eternal life as Ray Kurzweil seems to wish for.
He wants to be frozen down when he dies until science can make him live again in the future
For me, the idea of interaction gives me some kind of meaning and gives me advice how to live a good life.
When a baby is born the mass on Earth does not change. The minerals and the water in the body comes from the Earth. So all of us are interacting with the planet Earth.
Without that interaction we cannot live,
When we die, the atoms in our body won't go away, they will go on in other bodies, and not just in human bodies.
So in that way we will never totally die.
Our bodies is made of dust from a big star, a supernova, that exploded very long ago.
So we are interacting with that star too.
If we have no essence, even if it we have, we are in a deep sense not individuals but interdependent organisms. You can see yourself in other people and even in animals and and plants.
That perspective influence you live our lives.
But it may depend on what we mean with a myth.
If we mean a story, like the ones about Zeus or Indra, it may seem like fantasy.
Even the stories in the Bible may look like fiction.
But Christian people don't seesv it that way.
Why?
Because it gives them meaning.
I can guess that science gives meaning to Dawkins.
Yuval Harari looks at humanism and capitalism as myths and stories.
We have to believe in them to make them true.
The idea that all people has the same value, is also an idea, although a good one.
The value of a dollar is also fiction that becomes real because we all have the same idea.
Myth helps us to distinguish between god and bad.
Science can't do that.
So it may be good to believe in some myth.
Some say that science and the idea of its progress is a kind of religion, that nowadays seem to promise longer life or even eternal life as Ray Kurzweil seems to wish for.
He wants to be frozen down when he dies until science can make him live again in the future
For me, the idea of interaction gives me some kind of meaning and gives me advice how to live a good life.
When a baby is born the mass on Earth does not change. The minerals and the water in the body comes from the Earth. So all of us are interacting with the planet Earth.
Without that interaction we cannot live,
When we die, the atoms in our body won't go away, they will go on in other bodies, and not just in human bodies.
So in that way we will never totally die.
Our bodies is made of dust from a big star, a supernova, that exploded very long ago.
So we are interacting with that star too.
If we have no essence, even if it we have, we are in a deep sense not individuals but interdependent organisms. You can see yourself in other people and even in animals and and plants.
That perspective influence you live our lives.
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