Boost of @curtd
MYTHOLOGY IS THE SYSTEM OF CALCULATION OF LAST RESORT
Theology is a system of measurement for those lacking education, training, and ability to engage in less intuitionistic means of measurement. Just as philosophy is. Just as moral normativism is.
Math, Science, Algorithms, Economics and Law are burdensome, and all require external state management (external means of memory) in order to function, while anthropomorphism anthropocentrism, gods, souls, and debts, credits, reciprocity within the limits of proportionality are very primitive means of describing the economics of cooperation in intuitionistic terms that do NOT require external state management.
So here is the thing: it’s one thing to say IT WORKS the way nursery rhymes, mnemonics, poems, and parables work. it’s another to say it’s TRUE.
It’s not TRUE in fact. It’s allegorical.
As such one can base an argument as to the morality of a statement, but one cannot base an argument on the existence of an analogy.
One can inform by analogy. One can only speak the truth descriptively (operationally) by testimony (experience) that is warrantied by due diligence, against error, bias, fictionalism and deceit.
The ten commandments are just property rights under natural law. The christian strategy is just the optimum prisoners dilemma strategy for optimum cooperation also under natural law. But one requires knowledge to make both those statements. One can however, teach ignorant slaves, serfs, herdsmen, of intelligence below the threshold of reading and following instructions, or children the ‘system of accounting’ that they were evovled to practice, “morals”(property rights) without the need to train them in the use of systems of tools of measurement first.
Mythology is the SYSTEM OF CALCULATION OF LAST RESORT. Religion is the means by which incommensurable systems of calculation of last resort were made commensurable, despite the (extremely) limited ability and knowledge of the populations.
So when presented with a significant problem that affects others, for which we have insufficient knowledge we can GRACEFULLY DEGRADE from Math, so science, to algorithms, to economics, to law, to norms, to traditions, to myths, and EVEN IF WE FAIL we will have done so within the boundaries of cooperation within our polity, and not enter into debt with that polity and be held accountable for failure.
ie: We will be forgiven.
That is the purpose of the grammars, and the grammar of last resort: mythos.