Ryan Roberts - "Truth or Explanation?"

     I'd never thought that, after the second day of class, I would find myself disagreeing with the ideas posited. This all began when we were posed with the question of what the following sentence meant: 

"It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening though which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation."

    And the very first thing I thought was, "Myths are explanations for how the world, as we know it, works." Yet, the first thing we are told is that they aren't explanations, but rather truth. In fact, they are some of the first examples of truth that gave birth to their own realities, as reality is based on truth. But this got me thinking; Can truth be without explanation?

    Imagine for a moment that you are a 30-something first time parent. Your toddler, let's call her Megan, is sitting in her car seat for a long drive when she asks, "How does a car move?" (now, let's also say for this exercise that you have absolutely no idea how a car works). You'll tell her that you press a small pedal by your feet and the car moves. Then come in the most dreaded question any parent will ever have to deal with; 

"Why?"

    You, being someone who knows absolutely nothing about cars, can't say that pressing the pedal releases more air into the engine by opening a throttle valve, which changes how much fuel is injected, causing the engine to produce more power and move your 5,000 pound death machine forward. You also can't say that because Megan doesn't know that half of those words exist. So, being the stellar parent you are, tell her that there are hundreds of tiny horses in the hood of the car that run on little treadmills. She is perplexed by this, but decides to accept your answer and look out the window to daydream some more. She then goes and tells her friends about the tiny horses in cars, explaining the term horsepower in her own way, and makes this the truth for many of the kids at daycare.

Congratulations! You inadvertently had your daughter create a myth!

    But the reason I created this whole fake scenario and inadvertently made you terrified of children is to show that truth cannot exist without explanation. You told Megan the truth, the car moves when you press a pedal, but without that explanation, she could not believe it. How are you meant to picture a 5,000 pound metal death box moving because a pedal is pushed? It simply doesn't make sense. And the answer, "Because it does." isn't good enough. There has to be a reason, or more plainly, an explanation.

    When ancient peoples saw that the temperature changed on a semi-regular basis, they couldn't just stick with "Because it does.". No, they took this concept and gave it an explanation they could understand. Their reality was governed by gods, so naturally, their explanation is too. They said that Persephone returns to the underworld and her mother, Demeter, is so stricken with grief that the land turns cold and no crops are able to grow until her daughter returns. Today, we see this temperature change not as a goddess missing her daughter, but as the planet's axis tilting closer or further away from the sun at certain points in its orbit. If our explanation is proven false, than that too will become a myth.

    However, the most common contradiction that popped up in my mind while writing this was, "What about something based in faith?" And I actually do have an answer to that. Let's return to Megan asking questions, but this time, you are an ultra-religious person that still doesn't know how a car works. She asks her question, you respond the same way, but when she asks why, you say that God gave that knowledge to someone else and we just have to believe that pressing a pedal moves a car. 

    This is STILL an explanation. It's not a very good explanation, but it is one nonetheless. God is the explanation, something that by design cannot be explained. And I'm not getting into the kerfuffle of trying to explain what I do not believe in. If you believe in a god or any myriad of things that only require belief with no explanation, then look within yourself and you tell me the answer. But the reason I say that I'm an atheist rather than an agnostic is because I require proof, or explanation, to understand and accept something. This, after all, is my understanding of truth.

    And in my mind, a myth is a former explanation for how our world works. It is reflective of our truth but doesn't necessarily reflect The Truth (trademark). Science today is our truth (or at least mine), but we are not some all knowing, all seeing species, so we cannot say it is The Truth (trademark). It is simply, an explanation that gets us one step closer to The Truth. And who knows? Maybe my flying spaghetti monster is the real truth!!

TLDR; I believe that myth is an explanation of the truth, one that is flavored with whatever the people around it deem as their truth. Have a wonderful day! ❤