Religion/Mythology, past or future?

I grow ever more curious. I am wondering and philosophizing and a question i keep asking myself is,

What if mythology is a prophetic vision of the future designed as a story of the past? What if all these ancients were trying to describe for us not a story of a deep and distant past, but of our own future? They could be being portrayed as past to disguise it. Mybe some of these stories are being used to manipulate the future by deeply ingraining the same story over and over and over again for thousands of years so that it will be so deeply ingrained in our DNA that it actually evolves into our present by predisposition? All these religions have such a stronghold on the population they may be choosing to evolve into the same story they are reading about without understanding what's happening.


Any other ideas?

Please no negativity, i am just curious to gain other perspectives and not have someone elses views slammed down my throat. This is a discussion forum!

reply to post by onequestion


I hope this does not sound too negative but could you give me an example of this prophecy of the future?

I think I understand the point you are trying to get across but an example would be awesome.

Hmmm tough one. Ok,

Osiris/Jesus (myth or fact i don't care to debate just using an example). Let us say for EXAMPLE and for example only as i am trying to convey my thoughts properly, let us say that Osiris was a story of prophecy, it may have been changed into or structured differently then the original prophecy to deceive people out of thinking that they themselves would be able to reach this sort of status. Or to trick people into thinking that this has already happened and that it can't or won't happen again. it could have been developed to take away credibility of this Osiris. Now i am not claiming anything as fact, i am just using this example to further explain my ideas, not that this is my belief, just an idea.

So an act of suppression. Now lets say a book like revelations is created through another prophecy, they use the 2 stories combined to trick the masses into thinking and creating the end times prophecy scenario into existence, by using it as a means of manipulation. SPECULATION.

I hope i explained myself properly in this example. Please ask more questions or whatever you need if i am hard to understand or under explained.

[edit on 5-5-2010 by onequestion]

Here is my two cents.

All most everyone who lives in the western world has heard of Greek and Roman mythology in school at one time or another. We are taught that these stories are what the ancients believed whole heartily. The same way most Judeo/Christians believe in the Torah/bible today and for the most part the last 2000 years.

Now days Greek and Roman mythology is told as stories that are just that, stories. With no basis in reality anymore. Actually I remember being told in school that to believe in mythology is CRAZY.

At what point is Christianity going to go the way of Greek and Roman mythology and be out dated and looked at as just stories to keep the masses in line.

My point is why should I put more credibility into modern day mythology as opposed to ancient mythology. As for prophecy I believe that this is a tool to keep people in line and the smart writers of both ancient and modern mythology knew that events happen over and over again. Mighty Civilizations will fall eventually. Popular ideas of end times are fun to discuss. (Fun is relative is guess)

I love discussing end times prophecy and wondering what will happen if the mighty USA falls or planet X swings by to drop off aliens. But if you can find in any of these prophecies, details of modern events spelled out in explicit detail then I say these are just stories. Fun to read and discuss but for the most part just speculation.

Again my two cents.

reply to post by onequestion

You have intuited a revelation that has been examined by many thinkers, and seems to be a consequence of our reliance on language to communicate meaning from one individual mind to another. It is not that myths and mythological thinking is a conspiracy orchestrated by a few to manipulate the whole, it is that myth is a fundamental mode of transmitting meaning, something built in to us (DNA?). It satisfies basic emotional needs, it provides a framework upon which the chaos of life experiences can be organized. The mythologic is alive and active, not old and dead. The various stories we internalize about our families, our homes, our country, are both manufactured and mythologic, in that they reflect emotional (imaginary) needs and motives of the culture and society that creates the model, yet we need this faculty because it allows us to unite under a broader mytho-historic narrative, and look back at our ancestors for inspiration and caution, while pushing the story forward. The down side to this habit of perception, is the need to continually refresh the story to keep it viable, making one vulnerable to manipulation through modification of the story.

A passage by Michel Foucault from "Nietsche, Genealogy, History" about how "effective history" (the constructed story we tell about past events) functions:

"History becomes 'effective' to the degree that it introduces discontinuity into our very being-as it divides our emotions, dramatizes our instincts, multiplies our body and sets it against itself. 'Effective' history deprives the self of the reassuring stability of life and nature, and it will not permit itself to be transported by a voiceless obstinacy toward a millenial ending. It will uproot its traditional foundations and relentlessly disrupt its pretended continuity. This is because knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting."

The myths, the stories that tell us who we are, where we come from, true or false or neither, are in a sense, living constructs that function as communication/psychological tools, that have a life of themselves, need to reproduce, and to do so they must kill the old story, to "disrupt its pretended continuity", and cut a violent path to new meaning by destroying the "myths" of the past, the "true" stories that suddenly become lies, manipulations, and falsifications.