[BodoidearoLew]

Found this article today on BBC World Service....the issue about Religion, Myths and Metaphors keeps the world forever busy.
Its a long article and it is getting more to the (non) point near the end. The upper part I see as mere "bla blah" stuff.
Still it is an interesting read.

A Point of View: Can religion tell us more than science?

Thanks for posting that. I didn't see anything indicating who the author was.

The author clearly doesn't understand science and doesn't understand that atheism and science are not belief systems.

I found this claim to be particularly preposterous:

In most religions - polytheism, Hinduism and Buddhism, Daoism and Shinto, many strands of Judaism and some Christian and Muslim traditions - belief has never been particularly important. Practice - ritual, meditation, a way of life - is what counts. What practitioners believe is secondary, if it matters at all.

The idea that religions are essentially creeds, lists of propositions that you have to accept, doesn't come from religion. It's an inheritance from Greek philosophy, which shaped much of western Christianity and led to practitioners trying to defend their way of life as an expression of what they believe.

This is where Frazer and the new atheists today come in. When they attack religion they are assuming that religion is what this western tradition says it is - a body of beliefs that needs to be given a rational justification.
Of course, if it were all about practice and not beliefs, there would have been no wars and inquisitions throughout history over those beliefs, ever. And religions would not bother to push beliefs and myths as "true" like they do.

Myths and metaphors are fine teaching tools. The problem lies in the reification of these myths and the claim that they are truths that must be believed in their own right.