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Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

How do you know that this is how myths came to be?

I don't; that was one possible explanation. Another is that, as we all came from Africa, that maybe sometime earlier in time some event did happen that was remembered by the various tribes that eventually populated the world. So in that, maybe we're in agreement.

You see, farflung cultures recorded a Golden Age followed by cataclysms that destroyed the Golden Age. They created rites (sometimes quite gruesome) that recapitulated both Golden Age and the destroying cataclysms so that (1) they would not forget them (2) they might appease the gods and "head off a repetition of the cataclysms" (which by the way always seems to have to do with comets). They intended to remember something that had been lost. If only one culture had done this, we could say that a regional conflagration of some sort occurred. That the same kind of cataclysm is described in farflung cultures, does not merely suggest, but leads a reasonable mind to ask what can be understood from the strange points of agreement from culture to culture.

Again, I think that we agree. Where we may differ is in the event itself. Maybe we should define "Golden Age" that we may know it when we see it. As wonderful as the past may have been, I'm not willing to give up my current life and culture in exchange, as I don't see anything worth the trade. I have indoor plumbing, the ability to travel faster than sound, heat/cooling when I want it and that grail of grails, Google, that knows everything.

There is a hermeneutic of comparing myths. One must take the culture's mode of expression as a given, and allow it to say what it says, suspending judgement until comprehension is as complete as it can become. The results, across many different mythologies, are striking in their similarity.

Again, I would assume that there would be similarities. We're all the same species, came from one place via various migrations, have the same physiology and live in similar environments (i.e. under the sun, need water and food, see the moon, etc). But to say "striking?" I'm not willing to concede that without evidence.

Here's a link to Encyclopedia Mythica that might be helpful.

Before we get any further, let me just clarify to the moderators that this bears on Tolkien's legendarium to a great degree in that he picked up on many of these themes, but not all.

Thanks; I see myself getting censored as I'm not sure I can say what I want and keep on-topic.

Points of similarity:

• a sun god who is the benevolent universal ruler par excellence, who resided at the north pole, and is associated with the planet Saturn
• an anatomically impossible dragon, sometimes bearded, or hairy, flying across the sky, wreaking destruction upon earth
• a comet which is the heart of the dying sun god, which bursts forth into the heavens, and is associated with the planet Venus

Not sure that Scientology has any of those.

These are not the only similarities from culture to culture. Tolkien does not record any comets, but does record the planet Venus, as not having always been in the sky. The universal ruler is in middle earth the evil Morgoth, residing in the northern Angband. What is intruguing to me is that Tolkien turns the "par excellence" of the benevolent deity on its head. Obviously, Tolkien has a number of dragons.

Regarding comets and what people believed about them, I recommend the documentation by Andrew White in Chapter 4 of The War of Science with Theology published in 1896.

You mis-apprehend what I'm saying. The reason I have a problem with much of modern science is that when confronted with yet more evidence that the paradigm is wrong, our scientists do not question the paradigm; instead they create yet another ad hoc theory that cannot be tested in any lab.

I thank Aiwendil for answering this. I would add that maybe the reason for friction between our two ways of seeing things it that from one side, everything that can ever be known already has been recorded, and from the other, we haven't even started knowing anything. I make no assumptions, and state this as tactfully as I can, but do you see it as having to fit observations to what you already 'know?' Science, as stated, sometimes has to throw everything out and start down a new path. It's not comfortable, yet what we want to 'be' and what 'is' are two different things, and wishing earnestly that the world conformed to how we want it to be changes how it works not one wit.

Not that I would want to know that the reason I fell in love with my wife and had four children which I adore is all due to the the Grand Equation of Everything. Even it that existed, it would make my experiences no less enjoyable and real.

Think of what science would be doing to poor Pluto, the Roman god of the dead. I understand that he wasn't named after the planet (or planetoid). In their mythology, he was a pretty important god, managing the dead and all, and with his kidnapping of Proserpina, caused winter. And he was also associated with wealth.

Science would be promoting and demoting him yearly as they decided where his place was. That, to me, is why it was mistaken of Tolkien to rewrite his works to be more scientifically correct. Science can change; a beautiful story with meaning does not have to to be great.

Regarding black holes, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, a thing cannot exist with an infinite degree of any one aspect of reality, such as gravity. Black holes have, according to theory, infinite gravitational force. So either one or the other is incorrect; yet, modern science is not denying Einstein's theory, nor is it admitting that black holes cannot exist. With good science, either one or the other must be put to rest.

Maybe I was in error saying that General Relativity said thus; any errors are surely mine. But, in regards to the existence of a Black Hole, all I can say is, "and yet it removes..."