Characters or situations you'd like to see in the books?

[EliyahuQeoni]

Indeed, myth is just a term for faiths people aren't using anymore. Klingons still believe in all that stuff so they're not myths. They are Faith.

I hate to be pedantic (Well, that's not true, I love being pedantic, but anyway...) but this is incorrect. In the field of religious studies the term "myth" is used to describe any sacred stories a culture or religion holds. It doesn't matter if said sacred stories are currently believed in or not. Those who believe in them do so out of faith, but they are still myths non the less. Some take exception to this because of the common usage of myth=false, but that isn't the way the term is used academically.

I don't believe any myth exists without a foundation in reality either via observation of nature or inspiration from the activities of human beings.

There is a huge difference between a myth being based on observations of nature and/or human beings in general and a myth being based on historical events. An ancient Klingon could have conceived of the story of Klingon's killing their gods because he philosophically felt they had no need for such things. Such a myth wouldn't have been invented totally out of nowhere, but still wouldn't really have a historical seed to it.

 

[DS9forever]

All this Klingon stuff makes me want to know more about the early expansions of the Empire... *shakes fist at everyone*

Not sure if its been touched but what about those Hunters that went after Tosk? I heard that a Tosk is seen in the DS9 Relaunch novels but don't know if the Hunters are seen. I was checking Memory Alpha the other day and don't know if its accurate or not but it says that the Hunters were going to be called Drai and were going to be implied members of the Dominion. But thats not what we saw on screen so...

The Tosk and the Hunters appear in Rising Son. Does anyone know if "Ochshea" (mentioned in the novel) is their name?

 

[Geoff Thorne]

I hate to be pedantic (Well, that's not true, I love being pedantic, but anyway...) but this is incorrect. In the field of religious studies the term "myth" is used to describe any sacred stories a culture or religion holds. It doesn't matter if said sacred stories are currently believed in or not.

Those who believe in them do so out of faith, but they are still myths non the less. Some take exception to this because of the common usage of myth=false, but that isn't the way the term is used academically.

Yeah, I'm not big on Terms of Art.

If you're still using it, it's a faith. People who beieve in Adam and Eve as real people are not describing a myth. They think they are descibing a fact.

People who talk about Zeus know they are only referreing to an old story that has no contact with reality. That's one of the differences between a Faith and Mythology. The former is active and relevant, the latter not.

There is a huge difference between a myth being based on observations of nature and/or human beings in general and a myth being based on historical events. An ancient Klingon could have conceived of the story of Klingon's killing their gods because he philosophically felt they had no need for such things. Such a myth wouldn't have been invented totally out of nowhere, but still wouldn't really have a historical seed to it.

If it's based on something that happened, i.e. a natural phenomenon, that qualifies as an event that occurred in the past. An historical event need not involve action from human beings. A volcanic eruption is such an event. The myth of Pele, for instance, assumes certain physical events took place based upon observation of the natural world and provides a supernatural framework to describe the meaning of those observations.

No individual ever made up a myth. That takes a group. Individuals make up stories.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

People who talk about Zeus know they are only referreing to an old story that has no contact with reality. That's one of the differences between a Faith and Mythology. The former is active and relevant, the latter not.

But what of people who talk about Zeus, Adam & Eve, or Noah and know they probably never existed, but still feel that those stories are relevant and have contact with their reality. One need not believe a myth to be a factual truth in order for them to believe that it contains truth. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman, Not all things that are true really happened and not all things that really happened are true (or contain truth).

And once again, mythology is mythology regardless of whether someone still "believes" it or not.

No individual ever made up a myth. That takes a group. Individuals make up stories.

But all myths begin life as stories. Someone had to be the first to tell a story that later became a cultural myth.

 

[LightningStorm]

I hate to be pedantic (Well, that's not true, I love being pedantic, but anyway...) but this is incorrect. In the field of religious studies the term "myth" is used to describe any sacred stories a culture or religion holds. It doesn't matter if said sacred stories are currently believed in or not.

Those who believe in them do so out of faith, but they are still myths non the less. Some take exception to this because of the common usage of myth=false, but that isn't the way the term is used academically.

Yeah, I'm not big on Terms of Art.

If you're still using it, it's a faith. People who beieve in Adam and Eve as real people are not describing a myth. They think they are descibing a fact.

People who talk about Zeus know they are only referreing to an old story that has no contact with reality. That's one of the differences between a Faith and Mythology. The former is active and relevant, the latter not.

I'm not sure how this is a Term of Art, rather than simply a word with multiple definitions. The word 'myth' does not always equal 'false' any more than the word 'table' always means an arrangement of data in rows and columns. Unless all words with more than one definition is a Term of Art.

People who believe in Adam and Eve as real people are describing a myth (an unprovable faith) even if that myth (the faith) is not a myth (a falsehood).

 

[Geoff Thorne]

But what of people who talk about Zeus, Adam & Eve, or Noah and know they probably never existed, but still feel that those stories are relevant and have contact with their reality. One need not believe a myth to be a factual truth in order for them to believe that it contains truth. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman, Not all things that are true really happened and not all things that really happened are true (or contain truth).

The quote is, "It never happened; yet it is still true. What magic art is this?" The magic art is fiction writing, in that case playwriting. Your corollary is not to be inferred. Everything that actually happened is, by definition, true.

And once again, mythology is mythology regardless of whether someone still "believes" it or not.

A scientist or an atheist might well say so but Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. do not believe their respective faiths to be mythology but revealed Truth. Preachers don't wander around spreading Christian Mythology. Only people who are not using those faiths, not actively believing in them, refer to them as myths, precisely because they aren't using them. Calling something a myth is to regulate it to the inactive column along with folk tales and fiction in general. Fun, interesting but practically irrelevant.

A myth is less than a fact and less than a faith- a mostly dead thing that only exerts a shadow of its former influence at best.

 

[KRAD]

I still remember a close friend (a Baptist) who got incredibly pissed and offended when I (an agnostic) referred to the Bible as mythology.

 

[David R. George III]

^ I don't believe in agnostics...

 

[hellsgate]

Correct. It was "The Left Hand of Destiny". Sorry. My bad. I was a bit asleep at the wheel there. I'd like to see more art on novel covers or (".pdf") / e-Book illustrations regarding the Hur'q.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

^ I don't believe in agnostics...

We believe in you.

 

[Christopher]

I never said that such an approach couldn't be interesting. I merely said that the other approach can be interesting also.

I think that's far more interesting as a myth than it would be as some cliched "ancient astronaut" interpretation.

Yes, exactly. Saying that A is more interesting that B is not saying that B cannot be interesting at all. It's scaling on a continuum, not making an all-or-nothing determination.

I don't believe any myth exists without a foundation in reality either via observation of nature or inspiration from the activities of human beings. Myths are not made up out of people's heads out of whole cloth but out of real events filtered/shaped by collective desire and agreement.

Some myths are based on real events, others are not. The Hawai'ian creation myth of Kane throwing a giant calabash into the air where it split, with the top half forming the sky, the bottom half forming the Earth, and the seeds forming the stars, is not based on some misremembered historical event; it's based on an archetype, a metaphorical association of a familiar image with an aspect of the physical world. The myth of Narcissus staring at his reflection in a pool so long that he turned into a flower isn't based on some misremembered event, but is an allegorical cautionary tale against vanity, and a work of imagination inspired by someone who saw that narcissus flowers tend to hang out over pools and identified that with the image of a vain person staring at his reflection. Again, an archetype, an idea, not a past event.

Well. That's what you think about your characters. It's valid. I disagree. Also valid. I find most of the cultural myths people live by to be pretty much arbitrary and that exploding those myths with actual facts tends to diminish their impact and influence which is, almost invariably, a Good Thing. My own life has been rife with the negative effects of people acting on their arbitrary mythological constructs. YMMV.

Well, sure, you can write stories in which all your characters who disagree with you are exposed to be wrong in the end. A lot of people will call that pedantic, but hey, it's your choice. But before they get to that revelation, before they get turned around to the mindset you advocate, how will you be able to portray their behavior in a plausible and 3-dimensional way if you aren't willing to get into their way of thinking? Part of being a writer is writing characters who think and act in ways you personally disagree with, or even find contemptible. But to write them convincingly, you need to be able to get out of your head and into theirs.

In Ex Machina, I did in fact end up revealing the historical truths that underlay the various characters' belief systems, and a lot of the characters either had to adjust their beliefs or were marginalized by their inability to do so. But I still had to understand where they were coming from in order to portray the "before" as well as the "after."

I want to see the truth behind the myth. I think it would be fun to have KRAD write that story.

But sometimes the truth of a myth is in the myth itself, the archetypal idea it symbolizes. It's very narrow and inaccurate to say that all myths are just distorted past events. Sometimes a centaur is just a centaur.

If you're still using it, it's a faith. People who beieve in Adam and Eve as real people are not describing a myth. They think they are descibing a fact.

People who talk about Zeus know they are only referreing to an old story that has no contact with reality. That's one of the differences between a Faith and Mythology. The former is active and relevant, the latter not.

That's actually not true. In general culture we tend to use "myth" as the opposite of "fact," but that's not the way the term is properly, formally used. A myth is simply a story that conveys some archetypal, spiritual, or ethical meaning to a society. The term doesn't formally have anything to do with its perceived truth or falsehood, any more than the formal definition of "theory" does.

In fact, I'd say that's a good analogy. A theory is a conceptual model that codifies and explains the universe or an aspect thereof. That's pretty much what a myth, or a mythos, is as well.

And once again, mythology is mythology regardless of whether someone still "believes" it or not.

A scientist or an atheist might well say so but Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. do not believe their respective faiths to be mythology but revealed Truth.

Again, that's incorrectly assuming that our modern, popular usage of the term is its only usage. It's only in recent times, in the age of science, that the term "myth" has taken on derogatory connotations. Checking Dictionary.com, it says the use of "myth" to mean "untrue story" only dates to 1840. But the word itself is from Ancient Greek, where it just meant "story." People in the past wouldn't have found it offensive to hear their beliefs described as myths. Indeed, they might have been fully aware that they were constructed, imagined accounts rather than literal history -- but they wouldn't have cared. Again, the distinction between provable, concrete fact and abstract imagination is one that our modern culture values more than many past cultures did. In the absence of scientific and journalistic methods for gathering the truth, imagination was often a culture's main way of engaging with the world, especially with the past or with realms beyond direct experience. That was all they had, so they didn't necessarily see it as inferior. Myth, folklore, and dreams brought them insights that they found useful in their lives, and that was what was true to them.

And since the more rationalist point of view is a product of our modern culture, not universal on Earth, it certainly won't be universal in space. Aliens may have very different definitions of reality and truth than we do.

I still remember a close friend (a Baptist) who got incredibly pissed and offended when I (an agnostic) referred to the Bible as mythology.

Which just shows the derogatory connotations the word has taken on in modern times. I doubt a theologian or Biblical scholar would have the same problem with that characterization. And there are plenty of people who know that a lot of the stories in the Bible are allegories and myths but who still believe in the underlying values and the existence of God.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

I never said that such an approach couldn't be interesting. I merely said that the other approach can be interesting also.

I think that's far more interesting as a myth than it would be as some cliched "ancient astronaut" interpretation.

Yes, exactly. Saying that A is more interesting that B is not saying that B cannot be interesting at all. It's scaling on a continuum, not making an all-or-nothing determination.

Except that the overall thrust of your responses to the very simple assertion that it would be fun to see was negative. You don't even entertain the idea. I do.

Some myths are based on real events, others are not.

That's a parse. All myths are based upon some physical, real-world event or phenomenon. Even the examples you used.

Well, sure, you can write stories in which all your characters who disagree with you are exposed to be wrong in the end. A lot of people will call that pedantic, but hey, it's your choice. But before they get to that revelation, before they get turned around to the mindset you advocate, how will you be able to portray their behavior in a plausible and 3-dimensional way if you aren't willing to get into their way of thinking? Part of being a writer is writing characters who think and act in ways you personally disagree with, or even find contemptible. But to write them convincingly, you need to be able to get out of your head and into theirs.

Odd choice of words as I have never, ever fallen into that trap. SoD is a perfect example of not injecting my personal views into this sort of debate. There are people who've assumed I'm a Believer based on how faith is expressed in the book as well as how it ends. They assume wrong.

There are a lot of ways to get into other peoples' heads. A scalpel is one. So is a brick.

But sometimes the truth of a myth is in the myth itself, the archetypal idea it symbolizes. It's very narrow and inaccurate to say that all myths are just distorted past events. Sometimes a centaur is just a centaur.

Nah. It was a guy on a horse. Probably a very impressive guy on a very impressive horse. Followed by a bunch of other guys on horses.

That's actually not true. In general culture we tend to use "myth" as the opposite of "fact," but that's not the way the term is properly, formally used. A myth is simply a story that conveys some archetypal, spiritual, or ethical meaning to a society. The term doesn't formally have anything to do with its perceived truth or falsehood, any more than the formal definition of "theory" does.

Language s fluid. Myth is, in colloquial terms, a limiting, mildly-to-very derogatory label that is hung on things which are either outlandish or erroneous. In the context of this discussion we are, quite clearly, not using general colloquial defs but only those that apply to Faith.

A myth is not conceived as a myth. It is the leftover story component of somebody's faith. That's why there is a difference between a Fable and a Myth. Fables are not derived from faith or meant to support it. The reason the myths we've cited are now classified that way is because the faiths that used to enfold them are no longer active. The faith component is dead.

Again, that's incorrectly assuming that our modern, popular usage of the term is its only usage. It's only in recent times, in the age of science, that the term "myth" has taken on derogatory connotations. Checking Dictionary.com, it says the use of "myth" to mean "untrue story" only dates to 1840.

Irrelevant. We're using current defs, not archaic ones.

But the word itself is from Ancient Greek, where it just meant "story." People in the past wouldn't have found it offensive to hear their beliefs described as myths. Indeed, they might have been fully aware that they were constructed, imagined accounts rather than literal history -- but they wouldn't have cared. Again, the distinction between provable, concrete fact and abstract imagination is one that our modern culture values more than many past cultures did. In the absence of scientific and journalistic methods for gathering the truth, imagination was often a culture's main way of engaging with the world, especially with the past or with realms beyond direct experience. That was all they had, so they didn't necessarily see it as inferior. Myth, folklore, and dreams brought them insights that they found useful in their lives, and that was what was true to them.

I believe I've alluded to pretty much all those things. The point is, if there's a factual account to be had, modern people tend to prefer that account. Even Believers (provided it shores up their Faith). So, to me, the truth behind the foundational Klingon myth, whatever it is, is infinitely more interesting than the myth itself.

I'd much rather read about T.E. Lawrence than Hercules. Especially if Hercules turned out to be T.E. Lawrence.

And since the more rationalist point of view is a product of our modern culture, not universal on Earth, it certainly won't be universal in space. Aliens may have very different definitions of reality and truth than we do.

I think we can pretty much count the Klingons as fairly literal in their interactions with reality. Romulans too. in fact, aside from the Bajorans and the Ferengi I'd say most Trek species are fairly literal.

From where I sit, when Klingons say they killed their gods, that's precisely what they did. With sharp, pointy things. Who those gods were and how the killing was accomplished is fodder for not just one but a series of books. And there doesn't have to be a single ancient astronaut in the mix. But, if there is, that should not be considered automatically less interesting. Certainly not in advance.

It's all in the telling.

 

[Sito_Jaxa]

Situations I would like to see:
Sisko v. Borg

That would be cool.

What book was my namesake in? I want to see her show up in the new TNG books!!!!

 

[JoeZhang]

Robert April - ready to tie-in to the new film!

 

[Christopher]

That's a parse. All myths are based upon some physical, real-world event or phenomenon. Even the examples you used.

They use real-world phenomena, but they're based on ideas and archetypes. They're about meaning, not occurrence.

Language s fluid. Myth is, in colloquial terms, a limiting, mildly-to-very derogatory label that is hung on things which are either outlandish or erroneous. In the context of this discussion we are, quite clearly, not using general colloquial defs but only those that apply to Faith.

How is that clear? The discussion I tried to start was about the value of myths as symbols giving insights into a present-day culture's worldview and ethos, as opposed to being altered tellings of historical events. My point had nothing whatsoever to do with "Faith" or religion. As Trent (I think) mentioned, myths aren't limited to religion. America has the myth of Columbus proving the world was round, the myth of Washington chopping down the cherry tree, the myth of Ben Franklin flying his kite, the myths of the conquest of the West and Manifest Destiny, etc. You were the one who recast the discussion in terms of religion. I think the problem here is that we're having two very different conversations.

Irrelevant. We're using current defs, not archaic ones.

Speak for yourself, please. You are having a discussion rooted in a single, inflexible set of definitions. I am having a discussion whose whole point is that different cultures have their own distinct definitions of reality, and that I find it interesting to explore those differences in worldview.

I believe I've alluded to pretty much all those things. The point is, if there's a factual account to be had, modern people tend to prefer that account. Even Believers (provided it shores up their Faith). So, to me, the truth behind the foundational Klingon myth, whatever it is, is infinitely more interesting than the myth itself.

I'm interested in the truth too. My point is simply that, if the truth behind the myth is that it's just an abstract archetype that a culture invented to codify a belief that means something to them, that's interesting too. Inventiveness and imagination are interesting. Poetry and metaphor are interesting.

I'd much rather read about T.E. Lawrence than Hercules. Especially if Hercules turned out to be T.E. Lawrence.

But would you be interested in reading about the Greek society that had the myths of Hercules as part of their shared cultural zeitgeist? For that matter, Lawrence has become something of a mythic figure himself. His meaning to a civilization, perhaps to two civilizations, has grown beyond the mere historical facts of his existence.

I think we can pretty much count the Klingons as fairly literal in their interactions with reality.

The same Klingons who have a vivid and rich mythology, particularly of the afterlife, dominating their culture? The same Klingons who believe worthy events must be codified in song, and freely embellished in the singing? (How many Jem'Hadar did Klag slay single-handed in the latest telling?) Klingons aren't literal in their interactions with reality. They seize reality and force it into conformity with their mythic archetypes. You don't woo a Klingon woman by speaking of literal things, but by casting yourself as Kahless and her as Lukara, by ritually embodying the archetypes of myth.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

But what of people who talk about Zeus, Adam & Eve, or Noah and know they probably never existed, but still feel that those stories are relevant and have contact with their reality. One need not believe a myth to be a factual truth in order for them to believe that it contains truth. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman, Not all things that are true really happened and not all things that really happened are true (or contain truth).

The quote is, "It never happened; yet it is still true. What magic art is this?" The magic art is fiction writing, in that case playwriting. Your corollary is not to be inferred. Everything that actually happened is, by definition, true.

The exact quote I was thinking of:
"Oh, but it is true. Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot."

Calling something a myth is to regulate it to the inactive column along with folk tales and fiction in general. Fun, interesting but practically irrelevant. A myth is less than a fact and less than a faith- a mostly dead thing that only exerts a shadow of its former influence at best.

Only if you're using it the colloquial sense of meaning "a falsehood," which--as I stated above--I'm not. The term myth describes a type of story, regardless of whether the story is currently held sacred by a current religion. And yes, people not familiar with this usage often take offense at having their sacred stories called "myth," but use of the term in this matter is not a judgment of value, historical veracity or current influence. But I also know plenty of devout Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, et al. (Some of whom are also clergy in their religious community) who are Anthropologists and/or Religious Studies scholars and use the term "myth" in exactly the way I've described without feeling that it is in any way an attack on the value of their faith. Such offense is the result of people confusing two completely different definitions of myth.

I would also argue that "folk tales and fiction in general" are far from "practically irrelevant." To say so vastly underestimates the power of storytelling and myth-making

 

[Christopher]

I would also argue that "folk tales and fiction in general" are far from "practically irrelevant." To say so vastly underestimates the power of storytelling and myth-making

Absolutely. I'm amazed that someone who writes fiction professionally could argue that fiction is irrelevant to a culture. Heck, we Star Trek and superhero-fiction authors are contributing to the modern mythology of our culture, the tales that become familiar symbols and metaphors to the society and are passed down and reinterpreted by each new generation.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

Hmmm.

I think that the impact of storytelling as an activity can't really be oversold, certainly. I don't think humans go more than a few hours without telling or hearing a story. We're made of them. As a delivery system for all sorts of information the story is awesome.

But, when comparing the sorts of stories and their relative impact, there is a hierarchy and a continuum.

The "story" of Jesus has more cultural, more tangible, practical impact than that of Dionysus, even in Greece, where the latter was worshipped for longer than the former. Dionysus is a figure of myth. Jesus is the founder of an ongoing faith. He is not a mythological figure despite his similarities to Dionysus. If humanity doesn't put Christianity down, Jesus will never be relegated to the status of myth. Nor will Muhammed or Buddha or Moses. Zeus, by contrast, is a comic book character. Not quite the same position as the one he used to occupy and his relative practical influence is equally small.

I neither elevate nor denigrate our position as Storytellers. I love us. We are talking about the difference between myths and faith, folk tales and fiction. As much as I love Star Trek and comics, their cultural influence, even on the aggregate level, is considerably less than the stories in the Quran.

LotR had some impact on my life, certainly, and on many lives, but the pull it exerts on our society is nearly unobservable. In practical terms it is invisible, ethereal. The difference between those very detailed, multi-faceted and much loved fictions and equally loved and complex Faiths (actually faith has a considerable edge in the love dept.) is not their story component but that of Belief.

Klingons talk in hyperbole and they are a spiritual people but they live in a universe that operates according to different physics than ours. Their afterlife, for instance, can be visited and returned from. The existence of the Q alone changes the meaning of any mythological construct, not to mention the other superbeings that populate the Trek-verse. The mass of existing material, not to mention the intent of the creator of the Trek-verse, is that stories involving magic of any sort are based on actual events during which no magic was performed. This theme is repeated often enough to be considered a trope.

Knowing this sparks my imagination when thinking about that Klingon story. "We killed our gods" is a bold statement. It the Trek-verse it indicates an actual physical conflict of some sort is more likely than not. I want to see those events. I don't much care what form the events take, provided the story is fun and engaging. Alien astronauts. Hyper-evolved proto-Klingons. Insidious non-magical God-kings and Queens. I don't care. But the myth, alone, is, to me, insufficient. It has no weight because there's no underlying evolution as there is with an actual faith.

And the society doesn't exist that sits down and calmly decides to believe in Olympus rather than Heliopolis. These constructs are all part of survival mechanisms, not sober consideration. If the Klingons say they killed their gods, I'm assuming there are some god corpses around somewhere.

And Mr. Gaiman is an awesome writer, no doubt, of a order far superior to my meager self, but even that sentence is not true. It's just his opinion (maybe) or, rather, that of one of his characters. Emotional "truths" are by their very nature transitory, varying from person to person, culture to culture and era to era.

 

[bennyrex]

Wow. This has been quite the discussion to observe. There's a number of points I wanted to address, and I realize I might be sidetracking the discussion a bit, but I feel like this needs to be said.

And once again, mythology is mythology regardless of whether someone still "believes" it or not.

A scientist or an atheist might well say so but Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. do not believe their respective faiths to be mythology but revealed Truth. Preachers don't wander around spreading Christian Mythology. Only people who are not using those faiths, not actively believing in them, refer to them as myths, precisely because they aren't using them. Calling something a myth is to regulate it to the inactive column along with folk tales and fiction in general. Fun, interesting but practically irrelevant.

A myth is less than a fact and less than a faith- a mostly dead thing that only exerts a shadow of its former influence at best.

EliyahuQeoni has mentioned this already, but I want to ground what he said earlier a bit.
I am a Christian. A Mennonite if you want to get into the nitty-gritties. You might consider me a bible-scholar, though I'm very much in the amateur/laymens catagory there. I very much think of the Bible as mythology, and of many of the stories within the bible as myths. But they are still of great importance to me and huge factors in how I see the world, and how I live my life. I don't know if this really factors into the discussion as a whole, but I'm a bit uncomfortable with the blanket statement Redjack is saying here... Some Christians, muslims and Jews? Definitely. But not all, by any stretch of the imagination. My pastor preaches about the myths of the bible, so pastors who do this are definitely out there. When I stop to think about it, there's lots of them, and a lot of high profile ones you can look up. John Shelby Spong, many figures in the Emerging Church Movement, including Brian MacLaren. These are the ones off the top of my head, but if you look for more of 'em, you'll find them.

And if we're talking about current definitions as opposed to archaic ones, we (my pastor and I) don't see referring to these things as myths as negative or demeaning in any way, and the faith component is most certainly not dead.

And in regards to

A myth is less than a fact and less than a faith- a mostly dead thing that only exerts a shadow of its former influence at best.

It was only when I started thinking of aspects of my faith as myth rather then fact that they were able to take on real meaning for me. A shadow of its former influence? Not at all. Redjack, I'm curious what experience you're drawing from to form these opinions... I don't want to seem like I'm jumping down your throat or anything, and I hope my words don't seem like that. It's just that what you're writing directly contradicts my own experience, unless we're just using different definitions of words... but I don't think that's it, because what forms a definition seems to be part of what's being discussed here.

An amusing side note. Just yesterday I had a discussion with a (Mennonite) friend who looked at me disparagingly when I showed her the Star Trek book I was reading. (Summon the Thunder, which I'm LOVING, by the way...) I told her about how socially relevant Star Trek can be, and how they really make me think about a huge range of issues. I could tell I wasn't really getting through to her... if only she could see this board, eh?

 

[Christopher]

But, when comparing the sorts of stories and their relative impact, there is a hierarchy and a continuum.

The "story" of Jesus has more cultural, more tangible, practical impact than that of Dionysus, even in Greece, where the latter was worshipped for longer than the former. Dionysus is a figure of myth. Jesus is the founder of an ongoing faith. He is not a mythological figure despite his similarities to Dionysus.

Again, you're drawing a black-and-white distinction that ignores a wealth of historical and philosophical subtleties. It's the overlap, the ambiguity between history and myth, that offers endless possibilities for a storyteller exploring how cultures differ from one another in their way of looking at the world. And to me, that's the most fascinating part of writing science fiction, as well as the most fascinating part of studying history.

For all we know, the mythic figure of Dionysus may indeed have been based on some historic cult founder (and aren't you now contradicting your earlier argument, wherein you insisted that every myth was based on a historical reality?). And there's actually some debate about whether Jesus really lived, at least in the generation he's supposed to have lived. All the gospels were written at least a generation after his supposed lifespan, and there are only one or two known extra-Biblical references to his existence (I think Tacitus mentioned him briefly once). There probably was a man who was the basis for our cultural-founder figure of Jesus Christ, but most of the specifics of his life as told in the Bible and folklore are mythologizations, in the same way that Washington chopping down the tree is. Many aspects of the Biblical account of Jesus's life appear to be adapted from the myths surrounding earlier, similar religious figures such as Mithras and Moses. (The gospel that tells of him being spirited away to escape the slaughter of the innocents is essentially a retelling of Moses's "origin story"; the writer of that gospel was probably intending to say that Jesus was the Messiah, the new Moses who would lead the Jewish people to freedom from their oppressors, by the allegorical means of inventing a biography that paralleled that of Moses. Contrary to what the Biblical literalists believe today, people in that culture had a tradition of favoring allegorical and symbolic writing over literal accounts. To them, the distinction we draw between "truth" and "myth" would have been baffling. They made stuff up all the time, and knew it, but to them the truth was in what the stories symbolized, not in their surface content.)

History and myth are parts of a continuum of human interpretations of the past, not mutually exclusive opposites. Our popular culture does tend to define the words in that way, but that's a simplistic misconception that falls apart on close analysis.

I neither elevate nor denigrate our position as Storytellers. I love us. We are talking about the difference between myths and faith, folk tales and fiction. As much as I love Star Trek and comics, their cultural influence, even on the aggregate level, is considerably less than the stories in the Quran.

You seem to think it's important to draw dividing lines and define the world in terms of opposites and hierarchical rankings. What I'm saying is that different cultures can have very different ways of defining these things. You yourself acknowledge that the "influence" of figures like Zeus and Dionysus in past cultures was once comparable to the "influence" of Jesus in our culture. So what makes our perspective so much more fundamentally "truthful" than theirs? We're just one more culture occupying one tiny slice of time on one portion of one little ball of dust in the cosmos. Who's to say what different opinions and definitions people 2000 years from now will have? Who's to say there won't one day be a church worshipping the divine Kirk and Spock and their prophet Roddenberry?

Klingons talk in hyperbole and they are a spiritual people but they live in a universe that operates according to different physics than ours. Their afterlife, for instance, can be visited and returned from.

Only if you choose to take "Barge of the Dead" literally. The episode itself was at best agnostic on the issue, and to me its climactic scenes implied very strongly that B'Elanna's "visit" was merely a psychological manifestation. If she had really, literally been in some afterlife, then why was she suddenly seeing shifting visions of her crewmates repeating passages from her memory, and why was her mother dressed and behaving like Janeway? Come on, how Freudian can you get? It was a hallucination. Her mind was interpreting her inner turmoil through her culture's very powerful archetypes.

The existence of the Q alone changes the meaning of any mythological construct, not to mention the other superbeings that populate the Trek-verse.

Just because beings exist that can perform feats resembling those of divine figures from myth, it doesn't remotely follow that all myths arise from such beings. It creates the possibility that a myth may have a basis in such a being, but possibility is not proof.

The mass of existing material, not to mention the intent of the creator of the Trek-verse, is that stories involving magic of any sort are based on actual events during which no magic was performed. This theme is repeated often enough to be considered a trope.

Again, that's drifting well away from the topic I was discussing. I don't believe in magic. What I believe is that it can be interesting to explore a culture's psychology and ethos through an examination of their symbols and archetypes. You and I are just not having the same conversation here.

And the society doesn't exist that sits down and calmly decides to believe in Olympus rather than Heliopolis.

Now you're just making up straw men. I think you're actually continuing an ongoing argument you've been having with somebody else, because you aren't engaging the actual points I've made at all. The ideas you're refuting and questioning just bear no resemblance to the ideas I've tried to raise, so they have to come from somewhere else in your experience. I feel like I'm becoming a spectator in a debate you're having with someone or something else. I don't think this is going anywhere constructive and I think we should just let it go now.