Journey to the West
Nobody seriously believe in Sun Wu Kong actually exist lmfao
Probaly the same as archeology versus grave robbing
Mythology is only a part of religion (and often survives after the rest of the religion has withered away). Mythology is the stories that try to explain why the world is the way it is.
A living religion will also feature doctrines (a set of teachings, typically about morality, correct beliefs, prescribed or proscribed attitudes or sayings or practices) and rituals.
That makes more sense thanks
Number of living believers.
That is incorrect. Active religions (e.g., Christianity) still have a mythology.
Follower size.
Myth is stories. Religion is community.
The playbill is not the play. The script is not the actors. But everyone coming together, audience included, to take part in a production of theater is all of it.
I see myth and religion being connected like that.
Christian mythology is the Jesus was baptized, or transfigured, or died and was resurrected.
Christian religion is that you must be baptized, or be confirmed, or receive communion.
Not much. Alan Watts had interesting talks on this. Myths are just stories. The Bible is just a collection of stories. Religion goes beyond the written stories, sure, but it’s still nothing without them (spoken and written) and everyone has their own personal mythology.
Like many self-described Christians these days think Jesus is weak/woke and what other people(definitely not themselves) really need is tough love not ‘sissy/pussy Jesus love’(choice words I’ve heard at services from the pastor at the podium, along with rantings on how lgbtq will burn in hell and the whole congregation is cheering, crying, and/or talking in tongues… It’s fucking creepy.)
This is especially common in pentecostal and Evangelical sects. Quite rare in mainstream protestantism or Catholicism (though you may get guilt-tripped. My mom said her Sunday school teachers said paying tithings was fire insurance - it keeps you from burning in hell. What a great lesson for children!) Sadly, modern Christianity practice includes things I think would absolutely appall Jesus, canonically. But that’s the great thing about religion, the scriptures are often vague and people genuinely don’t really care about what the Bible actually says unless it’s something they like (Cherry picking, selection/confirmation bias, etc.), like the beatitudes sound great but practicing them is harder than preaching.
Mythology is the rules invoked to justify a religion.
I use this framing to explain how finance is the rules invoked to justify an economic model.
They’re both control mechanisms conjured by the ruling class to maintain class division, the newer incarnation just substituted smiting with accounting.
The gullibility of the person hearing the tale.
A mythology is a set of shared stories that define a culture—its values, its productive metaphors, its identity. They may or may not be believed in as actually true—even when they are, they’re generally understood to have occurred in a place and time distinct from the culture’s current reality.
But the point of a mythology is the relationship it establishes between community members, while the point of a religion is the relationship it purports to establish between its adherents and the divine.
None really. Once active believers are gone its treated as mythology. Are they fall below a threshold where they can support the beuracracy of an organization.
If it’s currently used and ritualized it’s a religion, if it’s in the past and no longer practiced it’s myth.
A religion is what its believers call it, and what non-believers call it because it has believers.
A religion becomes mythology when it stops being popular, nobody believes its particular set of nonsense anymore and it and slip into history.
What they are at the end of the day is living or dead cults.
Active practioners perhaps?
