I would guess that most Christians don't believe in the literal seven day creation of the earth. Some accept the story of the Garden of Eden as an allegory of the joining of Man and Woman in marriage. Others dismiss the story of Jonah and the whale as a fable. The story of Noah and the flood is seen by some as myth while others as an actual, historic fact.

The life of Jesus, on the other hand, is expected to be taken at face value. He did heal the blind, he was born of a virgin, he did die giving us salvation and he did physically rise to heaven.

The religious fallacy is accepting the mythology of one's religion as absolute fact, instead of as an extended metaphor of our struggles with life.

On this subject, Joseph Campbell says,

From the point of view of any orthodoxy, myth might be defined simply as "other people's religion," to which an equivalent definition of religion would be "misunderstood mythology," the misunderstanding consisting in the interpretation of mythic metaphors as references to hard fact: the Virgin Birth, for example, as a biological anomaly, or the Promised Land as a portion of the Near East to be claimed and settled by a people chosen of God, the term "God" here to be understood as denoting an actual, though invisible, masculine personality, who created the universe and is now resident in an invisible, though actual, heaven to which the "justified" will go when they die, there to be joined at the end of time by their resurrected bodies.

What, in the name of Reason or Truth, is a modern mind to make of such evident nonsense?

-- (Campbell 55)

Religions today serve exactly the same purpose that they have since the beginning of human thought: to explain the unexplainable and to provide comfort when events and circumstances are beyond our control.

We laugh at primitive medicine men and sun worshipers and then pray that God make Timmy's kidneys better.

We believe Satan has made our world horrible and unclean while practically ignoring the destruction and defilement of our earth by humans themselves.

Which was it that made the tornado destroy your house and kill your son? Was it God? Satan? What did you do to deserve it? "I don't know, there must be a reason!"

But of course there's more to it than that. Religions also provide a place for mankind within the context of his environment; they give a beginning, a purpose.

Because they are unaware that Bible stories share many of the same mythological images with other religions, some Christians can be told that "this is the way it is." Or in other words, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."

Some will go so far as to acknowledge that there are other viable religions in the world, but they comfort themselves with the fact that the others are simply worshiping God in their own way whether they call him God, Jehovah, Allah or Buddha.

Of course! That's the whole point! They are worshiping God THEIR way. And yet Christians seem unable to accept other cultures that worship God as female or as a collection of unnamed forces. Instead of being content with expressing their own personal relationship with God, Christians, because they believe that their brand of mythology is fact, not metaphor, are intent to "save" the rest of the world. Missionaries cover the globe to preach their beliefs and end up replacing an indigenous mythology, which is appropriate for the lives of the local citizens, with one that has been drawn through the dark ages of Western European reasoning.

Of course the Missionaries don't see this because, to them, they're right and the others are wrong; life after death, heaven and hell, salvation and eternal damnation are as real as the sun, moon, trees and oceans.

It all leads to a crippling fear of those with different viewpoints. If you are not with them, you are with Satan, or are somehow being controlled by him. "He who is not with Me is against Me and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad." (Matthew 12:30). If you do not accept, as they believe, that Jesus died for your sins, then you will suffer a literal hell and it's their job to bring you to salvation through witnessing their beliefs.

How incredibly frightening that must be.

For some specific examples, let us turn again to Joseph Campbell, a man who studied the mythologies and religions across the world and through time. In discussing what we know now about the solar system and galaxies, he examines the ascent of Jesus after his resurrection.

It is believed that Jesus, having risen from the dead, ascended physically to heaven (Luke 24:51), to be followed shortly by his mother in her sleep. . . It is also written that some nine centuries earlier, Elijah, riding a chariot of fire, had been carried to heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:11).

Now, even ascending at the speed of light, which for a physical body is impossible, those three celestial voyagers would not yet be out of the galaxy. Dante in the year AD 1330 spent the Easter weekend in a visit to hell, purgatory, and heaven; but that voyage was in spirit alone, his body remaining on earth. Whereas, Jesus, Mary, and Elijah are declared to have ascended physically. What is to be made today of such mythological (hence, metaphorical) folk ideas?

Obviously, if anything of value is to be made of them at all (and I submit that the elementary original idea must have been something of this kind), where those bodies went was not into outer space, but into inner space. That is to say, what is connoted by such metaphorical voyages is the possibility of a return of the mind in spirit, while still incarnate, to full knowledge of that transcendent source of which the mystery of a given life arises into this field of time and back into which it in time dissolves. It is an old, old story in mythology: of the Alpha and Omega that is the ground of all being, to be realized as the beginning and end of this life. The imagery is necessarily physical and thus apparently of outer space. The inherent connotation is always, however, psychological and metaphysical, which is to say, of inner space. When read as denoting merely specified events, therefore, the mirrored inward images lose their inherent spiritual force and, becoming overloaded with sentiment, only bind the will the more to temporality.

--(Campbell 30,31)

In other words, Jesus rising to heaven represents our ability to realize, while we are still alive, the capabilities of our spiritual mind. Accepting as fact that Jesus bodily rose was all well and good for a population that believed that heaven was literally in the sky somewhere. With our modern understanding of the earth and solar system, we must ask, "where did he go?" Did he rise up out of sight and then somehow physically leave this world in favor of the spiritual world? Such a compromise is necessary if we insist on thinking of the Gospel of Luke the same way that we think of a news report.

Campbell removes the story entirely and focuses on the idea behind the story.

"He who has ears to hear, let him hear!" (Mark 4:9)

The point of the lesson of the religious fallacy is not to invalidate Christianity, but to simply reduce it from the definition of reality, as Christians see it, to simply the mythology of modern western civilization.

It's quite all right for Christians to believe that Christ did bodily rise from the dead and ascend to a real heaven. But it is also quite all right for the Buddhists to believe that Gotama Siddhartha, born a Prince in 563 BC, after feeling an overpowering urge to seek for a way to save mankind from being born into a world of suffering, left home and lived the life of a homeless beggar and, after deciding that giving up desires would end suffering, he meditated for six years before reaching Enlightenment.

No matter which religious dogma is adopted, mankind seems to have an innate need to understand its place in the fabric of the universe. This, it seems to me, is the basic theme that is the connecting thread through all religions. Christians recognize their place as being defined by God and assume that other monotheistic religions are promoting the same philosophy under a different banner; however, the various religions are not worshiping the same god so much as they are each finding a way to express the mystery of their place in the universe through some personal transformation which brings them above mere animal instincts to a higher level of consciousness.

This theme has been expressed throughout human civilization. Christianity is merely the latest and, thanks to domination of Europe by the Catholic Church for several hundred years and the current proliferation of western culture throughout the world, one of the most extensive.

Some new age philosophies, which Christians fear so much to be the work of the devil, express this idea by encouraging that we all find our personal power within. This is frightening to Christians (who forget that in John 10:34, Jesus, after being accused of blasphemy by the Jews for declaring himself to be a god, said "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, "You are gods"'?") but seems quite natural for Buddhists who are taught to find the Buddha in all men.

In Luke 6:27,28, Jesus is quoted as saying, "Love your enemies, do good to those that hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you." Tao 49 suggests, "The Master has no mind of her own. She works with the mind of the people. She is good to people who are good. She is also good to people who aren't good. This is true goodness. She trusts people who are trustworthy. She also trusts people who aren't trustworthy. This is true trust. The Master's mind is like space. People don't understand her. They look at her and wait. She treats them like her own children."

In Matthew 18:3,4:, Jesus said, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." Tao 55: "He who is in harmony with the Tao is like a newborn child. Its bones are soft, its muscles are weak, but its grip is powerful... The master's power is like this. He lets all things come and go effortlessly, without desire. He never expects results; thus he is never disappointed; thus his spirit never grows old."

Mark 10:24,25: "Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Mark 10:42-44 "You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all." Tao 81: "True words aren't eloquent; eloquent words aren't true. Wise men don't need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren't wise. The Master has no possessions. The more he does for others, the happier he is. The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is. The Tao nourishes by not forcing. By not dominating, the Master leads."

What I am trying to show by pointing out similar passages from the Bible and the Tao Te Ching is that wisdom is not the exclusive property of any one religious point of view. Such a cursory comparison isn't meant to imply that the two ideologies are in any way directly related. On the contrary, if one examines them literally, they are quite different. However, if you think of them as metaphorical, similarities arise.

In this sense, the kingdom of God and the Tao both represent a level of consciousness that is within the spiritual plane and not the material plane. In striving to be like the Tao or to enter the kingdom of heaven, we end up being better people. We are more patient and forgiving, we are in control of ourselves and our environment and, most importantly, we are able to find a peace with our existence. That peace is called the Tao, God our Father, Nirvana, Gaia, Slack, Magick, Allah the merciful, the Eagle's emanations. If I knew the names that this understanding took in other religions, I could keep going.

Religion should be about that search for inner peace, control and selfless love and tolerance for others. Focusing on the literal aspects of Christianity or any other religion is confusing the medium with the message.

This is the religious fallacy.