Two Myths
Dean
I always enjoy the subject of common myths. Two of my favorites are the one about how lemmings supposedly drown themselves mysteriously en masse on a periodic basis, and, the chestnut about how a frog thrown in boiling water will jump out but if placed into cold water that's gradually heated will allow themselves to be cooked to death.
While both myths are instructive and illustrative of important ideas, I think it's equally illustrative and important to note that these are both fairy tales. Lemmings never migrate en masse into the sea to drown themselves--as in, never--and a frog placed in very gradually heated water will leap out once it starts to get uncomfortable.
Or that objects entering the atmosphere burn up due to friction?
Or that George Bush is a conservative?
All lovely little myths passed down from generation to generation!
As you can imagine, I'm lots of fun at parties.
1) That Europeans before Columbus believed that the Earth was flat. False. Ever since Eratosthenes, the Greeks knew not only that the Earth is round but even its approximate size. This was transmitted to us through the Romans and then through the Catholic church. All educated Europeans had this knowledge. E.g., see Dante's cosmology in The Divine Comedy. Columbus actually underestimated the size of the Earth and, had it not been for the New World (which he initially thought was India -- hence "Indians"), he would all too soon have run out of provisions for his men. He was a bold explorer, and I'm glad he discovered America, but he was a bit erroneous in his thinking. The Catholic church turned out to be right.
2) That a myth is a popular belief that turns out to be false. False. A myth is a story about the deeds of Gods and/or Goddesses. It is from myth that holy dogma is derived and all theology. Myth, therefore, is absolute truth.
E.g., it is a myth that you should not throw a hone across the floor, and it is nonetheless true. Not only might you give Thor a headache, but -- even if you're an atheist or don't believe in Thor -- you might break something. Be careful. Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw hones.
Here is the holy myth of Isis and Osiris. Which exactly parallels the holy myth of Inanna. Which exactly parallels that other holy myth to which I alluded in a previous comment in another thread, that myth which, more than any other, has shaped our Western high culture. I hold this supreme archetypal myth of the Queen of Heaven as absolute holy dogma.
Myth, in its original sense, is not false, but is the highest truth of all. "Myth is the language in which the Gods speak to us," as Stephen A. McNallen (founder of the Asatru Free Assembly) put it so well.