@oldnightcrawler:
Actually, all of it is. They are all myths.
Not going to get into an in depth theological discussion about religion and god ... but you simply do not know that.
I'm not trying to say I can prove one way or another that there is no god/gods/creator of the Universe (though I do think it's unlikely), I'm just saying that all the stories about him/her/them/it are made up by people, they're all made up by human beings.
Teachings are distorted through time, and a lot was taught through metaphor (which some choose to take literally), but there is a lot more hard proof showing historical figures like Buddha and Jesus were real people - people who might have just figured out what life is all about (or not). But none of us can claim any brand of hard coded truth about religious teachings on a whole being fictional or real. Those who've experienced certain truths as real have no way to share so subjective an experience or prove it as truth (though physicists today are astounded by what the atom and antimatter are revealing).
There's some evidence of those characters having been based on actual figures, but it's hardly irrefutable and has been deemed as either speculative or wishful thinking by many others. To me it's inconclusive at best. So, while we may never know the actual truth behind these stories, we can neither cast aside that they are extremely unlikely, more than likely symbolic, and by that nature, that they are stories.
I think you make a great point that there are great truths to be found in singular, subjective experiences and the symbolic resonance they evoke, and perhaps a truth is worth more than a fact, but a thing can be true (or contain some truth) and still not be a fact.
Thousands (millions over the centuries) have had experiences validating many of the core principles found in many of the world's religious doctrines; i.e. life after death (there is no real death), god - or the concept thereof exists (a benevolent life intelligence behind all life impetus), reincarnation (life is a school and we keep returning till we graduate type thing), karma (do unto others ... ) and etc. All are principles that have stood the test of time in the guise of many different indoctrinated religious texts while certain of the more blatant fallacies fall by the wayside.
When we look at the history of religious dogma, generally we see a set of primarily pragmatic rules that people agree to follow under the pretense of an explanation for something that makes sense only in that it is conceivable when no better data is available.
Religious dogma persists because people want to believe that there is order to the world, that it is inherently wrong for someone to kill you, or that when you die your life isn't really over, or that if you're in love with someone they should always be there for you, because these are things we want to believe. And, hey, no harm, no fowl.
But I do think it's worth considering that these types of principals, while meant to give us a sense of security and even harmony in our lives, are the same ideas that have over time come to shape our definitions of right and wrong, back to the foundations of all of our laws, and thus all contain some moral justification for what is essentially a socializing agent. Even the idea of what constitutes a sin or vice is based on what is either useful or superfluous to a given society, rather than what it means to an individual necessarily, and that's still something that shapes our sense of morality now. So by trying to bring order to the world, religious thought has imposed order at least as much if not more than it has revealed it.
As societies have changed, they've reexamined which of these rules are still pragmatic and seen that many are either impractical in today's world or based on a classist agenda to begin with. Why would we discard those notions but not be able to let go of the implausible, subjective nature of of the stories that they are based on?
I mean, some people will argue that there's a historical basis for Dracula as well, but we all still consider vampires to be creatures of myth, despite whatever symbolic truth they represent for us that has made them withstand the test of time.
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