Transcriber: Robert Tucker
Reviewer: Nart Abaza Thanks so much Kavez and Alex
and Anna and Todd and all of you who worked so hard to bring
TEDx to William & Mary, really more to bring
William & Mary to TEDx. I know you've worked for so long and
the program has been so good -- so far! Lots of historic innovation, lots of tech, prezis, PowerPoint -- None of that with me! (Laughter) It's just myth and religion. And what could possibly be
historically innovative about myth and religion? Well, I'm glad you asked that question. Actually, we have a lot to learn
from studying myths and how they work in our lives, especially myths about religion. But before we can talk about it,
we have to know what we mean by myth. We usually think of myths
as simply false beliefs, and some myths about religion
really are just false beliefs. Like the belief that the stories
of the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an were uniquely revealed to the prophets. In fact, some of those iconic stories
have precursors in earlier texts, like the story of creation of the world
by a God who tamed the raging seas, and separated the Earth from the skies,
or Earth from the heavens. This story is told in the Book of Genesis
and in the Qur'an, but it's also told in the Enuma Elish
of ancient Iraq, the homeland of
the biblical patriarch Abraham, and that version probably dates to at least 1,000 years earlier
than the biblical text. Or the belief that the Qur'an teaches
that Muslims will be greeted in heaven by 72 virgins. The Qur'an does describe heaven
as populated with pure and ageless partners, and refers obliquely to
the ancient tradition of psychopomps, one of my favorite words, pure souls serving as guides
for the righteous across the narrow bridge
from Earth to the heavens. But these figures are not defined
as people who have never had sex, and nowhere is the number 72 mentioned. But many scholars don't use the term myth
to mean false belief. For them myths are stories
that may or may not be true, but that we cherish anyway
as part of our group's story, because they tell us who our heroes are,
and they highlight our values. Like the story of George Washington --
we've mentioned him before -- in the cherry tree. In religion, myths are stories about
things in the deep recesses of prehistory, or stories about things
in the far distant future. Stories that are beyond the realm
of science and history, and may even sound a bit fanciful
to scientists and historians, but we cherish them anyway, because they do highlight our values
and tell us about our heroes, and they help us answer the big questions, like why we happen to exist
in the first place, why life is so difficult sometimes, whom can we trust,
what might happen next. And when we hear these stories, we get a sense that we're in touch
with a higher reality, a transcendent, and we feel a measure of assurance
that things are basically under control, and that there is a reason
for us to carry on. In that sense, in their own way, these myths are true. In that sense, as the 4th century
historian Sallustius put it, "Myths are things that never happened,
but are always true." Very much like what Picasso
said about art, "A lie that makes us realize the truth." And in that sense, myths
are not separate from religion; these sacred stories are part of religion. Scholars like Mircea Eliade,
Joseph Campbell and Karen Armstrong take this approach to myth. But other scholars caution against
such a romantic view of myth, and advocate instead a more critical
approach to matters of belief, because too many people
can't tell the difference between this special,
or sacred kind of truth, and everyday reality. Too many people can't tell the difference
between transcendent myth and literal truth, and that can lead
to serious problems in real life. Take that creation story, that a single mighty maker
accomplished the job in 6 days. It's one thing to find in this story assurance that we don't
just exist by accident, and quite another to insist
that this story is literally true, and therefore to dismiss the science
that demonstrates otherwise as an attack on a higher
and more unquestionable authority. That is, to insist on choosing
between myth and science, in such a way that science loses. A 2012 Gallup poll indicates
that 46% of Americans believe the Adam and Eve story
is literally true. And that's up 2% since 1982, perhaps because of the increasing tendency
to teach the creation story, instead of science, and that despite
a 1987 Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the teaching
of the creation myth as science. The spread of anti-science
was alarming enough in Europe that the Parliament
of the Council of Europe passed a resolution in 2007 titled:
"The Dangers of Creationism in Education." The resolution warns that denying
the science behind the theory of evolution in favor of unquestioning belief
in our group stories can undermine the research necessary
to deal with major challenges facing humanity today, including epidemic disease
and environmental disaster. So, that's one of the major issues
identified by scholars who caution against romanticizing myth; the danger of sacrificing
scientific reasoning even in areas when we need to use it most. There's another danger involved in confusing sacred myth
with everyday reality though. It's one thing to believe
that Jesus founded a church with authorities headquartered in Rome, and quite another
to justify killing people who disagree with those authorities. Within 5 years of Christianity being
declared the official religion of Rome in the 4th century, the Church executed someone
for disagreeing about how to worship. In the same century, Augustine
became an authority of that church, claiming that the commandment
forbidding killing was not broken by those who wage wars
at the command of the Church. This paved the way for Christians
to serve in the military, which until then had been considered
a violation of Jesus' pacifist teaching, and it would ultimately legitimate wars
to expand Christian sovereignty, wars against pagans and heretics. So, this is an example of another danger
involved in valorizing uncritical belief; belief in our own stories to the extent of sacrificing those
who do not fit into them. Need more examples? If you think pagans and heretics
had it bad, what about Jews? After Christianity was politicized
in the 4th century, if you didn't accept
Trinitarian Christianity, you were at least potentially a traitor, and at best looked upon with suspicion. In times of turmoil, war,
depression, disease, people tried to figure out
why such bad things were happening, and sometimes resorted to just finding
someone to blame. And that's when stories
about the treachery of Jews went viral. The most common one was that Jews killed
Christian children to drink their blood because of its purity, or to make matzos! I'm not making this up. There's the famous case
of the English child who was found dead in a well in 1255. 90 Jews were accused
of participating in torturing him, draining his blood and crucifying him
to mock Jesus. 18 were hanged, and King Henry
confiscated their property. Miracles were attributed to the child. He was called a saint and he got a shrine
in Lincoln Cathedral. It took 700 years for the Anglican Church to disavow this story
of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln. And this kind of slander wasn't limited
to just the ignorant masses. In 1534, Martin Luther wrote a book
titled, "The Jews and their Lies." In it he said that Jews were nothing
but thieves and robbers who wear and eat only
what they have stolen from us through their accursed usury. They suck the marrow from our bones. "What shall we Christians do
with this rejected and condemned people?" he asked. He suggested burning their synagogues,
schools and houses, forbidding rabbis to teach
on pain of death, and confining Jews to their homes. This, Luther said, is to be done in honor of our Lord and Christendom, so that God might see
that we're Christians. You see the Jews
didn't fit into the story. It's not very difficult to see
a connection between such teaching by one of the founders
of the Protestant Reformation and the horrors of the Holocaust
some 400 years later. A connection that's been acknowledged by
Lutheran groups in apologies since 1994, and by the Roman Catholic Church
since 1998. Again these two issues, rejecting science and demonizing those
who aren't a part of our stories, call uncritical belief into question. This does not mean that
there's no room in our lives for the myths that enrich us, that give shape to the shapeless
mysteries of existence, and that motivate noble behavior
even in our darkest days. But it does point to the importance
of understanding myths, so that we can appreciate
when its unique sacred realm, the realm of life-sustaining paradigms, when the boundaries of that sacred realm
have been breached, and its stories perverted. Some of you may have been watching
the dramatizations of biblical stories that have been showing on TV
for the past couple of weeks as people prepare for Passover and Easter. It's pretty terrifying stuff. Death and disaster everywhere, confiscation of property
by divine command. What can happen when
people take those stories out of the sacred plane and use them
for political programs? Here's an example. In 1630, the governor of
Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, declared that God had called
upon the English settlers to build a model Bible Commonwealth. "If we are faithful to our mission,"
Winthrop wrote, "we shall find that the God of Israel
is among us, when tens of us will be able to resist
a thousand of our enemies, we shall be as a city upon the hill,
the eyes of all people upon us." That biblical allusion became
a powerful motivator for colonial expansion, or exploration
as it's euphemistically called. In 1845, an article
in The Democratic Review called for Americans to take
more land on this continent, saying that it would be the fulfillment
of our manifest destiny. A destiny that had been allotted
by providence for the free development
of our multiplying millions. How many native Americans
lost life and property in confrontations with zealous
European settlers? Enough for US Congress to pass
a resolution of apology to native peoples, acknowledging "The years
of official depredations, ill-conceived policies,
the breaking of covenants, violence, maltreatment and neglect inflicted on American Indians
by US citizens." But that wasn't until May 2010,
after the damage had been done. The Chief of the Cherokee Nation,
Chad Smith, spoke at the ceremony marking
the congressional apology. He said that apologies
for atrocities are difficult, the past obviously can't be changed, but we can learn from it. The real question, Chad said, is:
What happens from this day forward? So, what can this study of myths
and religion tell us today? That our sacred stories can be sources
of inspiration and consolation even if they're not
empirically verifiable, but also that we have to be careful
how our stories are used. Are we responsible for
how other people use our beliefs? And how do we even know if our stories,
if some of our beliefs, are impacting other people
in negative ways? These are the questions raised
by the study of myth and religion. And I have the audacity to hope that asking them could change
the way we look at belief. As President Obama said last week when he visited Yad Vashem
Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, "We see the barbarism that unfolds, when we see other human beings
as less than us." "We have the choice to ignore
what happens to others," he said, "but knowing what can happen when we do, it is our obligation to act." "For us in our time," the president said, "this means confronting bigotry
and hatred in all of its forms." The courage to do that, I believe,
can also be found in our sacred stories. Thank you (Applause)
