I prefer the "good old days" when theology was just story-telling (mythology) and...

[Viva_Daddy]

...you could interpret the stories any way you wanted. Then"philosophers" discovered theology and screwed it all up by over-analyzing everything.

[AtheistCrusader]

1. Now you've done it.

[Htom Sirveaux]

2. Handing down the collective wisdom of pre'literate tribes in the form of mythology makes sense.

Human brains remember stories about agents much better than bare recitations of facts (according to either Daniel Kahnemann in Thinking, Fast and Slow or Kenneth Higbee in Your Memory, I can't remember which, ironically. Maybe I should have told an agent-related story about it). But I've personally found philosophy to be a priceless contributor to my understanding of theology.

[Promethean]

6. Before you start bandying about words like "wisdom" you should go read the book.

I was fully convinced god and all his favored people were evil before I was even halfway through Genesis. Jacob cheating his father, brother, and then his uncle. Abraham selling his wife, twice. Lot offering his daughters up to a mob for them to be raped.

Remember these were supposed to be the protagonists. They were rewarded while their victims were further punished after doing these things.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. I thought it was always mythology.

Now if you believe a particular story is true, then that makes it religion, and thus theology has to justify the truthfulness of that belief.

As all mythologies, as far as I know, are stories attempting to explain natural phenomena and human behavior, their relative truthfulness resides in the belief of those who believe it, not in objective fact. Science is objective, observable, measurable, repeatable fact, which experiments either prove or disprove a hypothesis.

Joseph Campbell's lectures are helpful in understanding mythology and the various narratives repeated in different ways throughout history.

[intaglio]

4. According to legend Socrates tried that ...

It was the mob that insisted on his trial.

Don't talk to me about the Samaritans.

Marcion tried it as well.

So did the Celtic Christians.

The Hashishim tried it too.

The Sikhs became warriors because of it

[cbayer]

5. I think theology still is story telling to a large extent.

I don't get much out of the debates about what is true and what is myth, because no one knows.

Philosophical debate is fun but it's rather pointless.

[Warren Stupidity]

7. lol. I can't believe you think nobody knows what is myth and what is true.

Noahs Ark: no one knows.
Sun "stopped in its tracks": no one knows.
Dead person gets up and walks around for a few days: no one knows.
Sky-daddy creates earth and surrounds it with stars and such: no one knows.
Sky-daddy impregnates earth woman: no one knows.

Yup "because no one knows".

Being an agnostic is not the same as being ignorant.