Interbane wrote:RT: "The problem here is to separate 'truth' and 'stickiness' within the metaphor. For religions to be sustainable, their 'sticky' ideas need to have a connection to truth,... ." There's no need for truth in the idea of god. All that is needed for sustainability is stickiness. If the topic overlaps items so superfluous and intangible that we can come to no concrete conclusion, any idea that fits within the framework of a person's worldview would suffice without fear of refutation. This doesn't mean the idea is true. What's considered a "connection to truth?" To say that there is no truth to there being a man on the moon doesn't mean there isn't a formation that vaguely resembles a man. To take our sense datum and infer is to construct, and in this process what is physically or temporally true can be connected via perception to a false idea. That there is something we're perceiving doesn't mean the result of our deliberation is true.
Interbane, I don't think your comment grasps the nature of truth in myth. The stickiness of myth is a function of its adaptation to human needs. Only the most adaptive myths, which speak most deeply to human sentiment, can flourish. There is a fairly tough evidence-based criterion - if a myth is out of tune with sentiment it will die. Different sentiments are in conflict, for example acquisition is in conflict with empathy. We can see such conflict played out in mythic narrative. The way the texts of the Bible, and of other religious traditions, were mixed and changed through generations of oral tradition, adapting to need and competing with other popular mythologies, shows the unconscious utility that determines the success or failure of myths.
A key theme in religion is that ideas of high insight are imbedded within stories which have multiple levels of meaning. It is this 'high insight' that I consider a 'connection to truth'. The persistence of religious ideas of high insight such as the golden rule of love is an indicator of their innate moral truth. The insight that cooperative and generous ethics produce a healthier society has been at the heart of the human religious impulse, but too often the ethical meaning is obscured by other agendas.
The problem with your suggestion that religion only needs stickiness is that it provides no basis to assess truth or merit, or to see the memetic evolution of religious ideas. Creationism seems to be sticky, but its falsity means that it lives in constant tension with efforts to disprove it. It can only adapt by responding to its critics, hence the rather forlorn and threadbare effort of intelligent design.
This problem of the need for even the stickiest idea to adapt to its circumstances probably will mean that Christianity, to avoid rank hypocrisy, will have to accept modern knowledge, not only about evolution but also about the fraudulent history of the church and the manufacture of dogma. A sticky idea is only sticky as long as it is accepted. In the face of mortal challenge, sticky ideas must adapt or die.
RT: "...otherwise they are pure fantasy without long term meaning and purpose"
I'm not sure that truth or a connection to the truth is a prerequisite for a story to have lasting meaning and purpose. I don't doubt a few of the things Saul of Tarsus wrote, but I still reject a majority of the bible as false. False or not, the authors have written some good wisdom into those false sections. So I could reference those parts and say that "they are pure fantasy, but still have long term meaning and purpose".
The long term meaning and purpose is the same as the good wisdom. Hence it is necessary to assess the text to separate truth and falsity. The good wisdom is not fantasy, but is imbedded in a fantastic context.
One of the great things about
American Gods is how Gaiman seeks to imbed good wisdom in a fantastic context, through deliberate fiction. The contrast with Christianity is that the fantastic story of Christ came to overwhelm the good wisdom behind it. Hence Gaiman presents the church in a very dark light, responsible for the destruction of indigenous wisdom, with priests a censorious self-serving elite.
Wednesday's tie pin, a silver ash tree, is a symbol of how Odin connects both to the roots of the tree deep within the earth and through the branches and leaves of the tree to the starry heavens above. Here we have a connection to the natural truth of earth and sky as the source of meaning and purpose. The death of Odin, and his vulnerable frailty in forgetful America, is a symbol of the tenuous weakness of this natural religious connection to truth.