And furthermore...

Karen Armstrong says almost all religious groups have what may be called "founding myths," stories about their founders and the origins of their faith. These myths have varying levels of historicity, but their historicity isn't what's important. These myths tell profound truths. The Jewish patriarchs and Mohammed were examples of faithfulness to the ideal, and their ideal God was faithful to them - "slow to anger and rich in kindness," as the Hebrew Scriptures say. Jesus was a paragon of compassion and love and justice for the downtrodden, despite certain contradictory stories like the cursing of the fig tree. The Buddha was the supreme example of wisdom and Enlightenment, disconnecting oneself from the trivialities to seek the simplicity of the profound. In the same fashion, there are profound truths expressed in myth in Native American and Celtic spirituality, and in most Asian, African, and other religious creeds.

Now, if you're a legalist, whether you accept or respect a religious creed or not; you seek only to prove or deny the historicity of these myths, and fail to see the profound truths that are at their center - truths like compassion and tolerance and wisdom and love and family and peace and justice.

-Joe-