Logic and Myth

I admire logic and I cannot overemphasize its importance in the world. For the sake of not being repetitive, I won’t go into detail about how much I love it, and why I think it is very important. In any case, just to make it clear, logos, not mythos, “rules in my world.”

Though, I still have to admit that some of my thought patterns can be considered mythos in that they are irrational and somewhat superstitious. There is no place in my life for religion or faith, so in that sense, I am not mythos. (And yes, I do consider modern religions to be myths, in the sense that ancient Greek religion is now considered a myth. The only reason we don’t call modern religions myths is because people believe in them and we want to be politically correct. We certainly don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.) But, there are certain belief that I hold, none of which I can name off the top of my head, that are somewhat superstitious and I look down upon them with disdain, though I still hang on to them nonetheless. I strive to be as rational as possible and to rid myself of these beliefs, but it is hard to be completely rational. At least I can pride myself in the fact that I am probably more rational and less superstitious than the average human being.

Is Science the Western mythos? I don’t exactly understand what is meant by that question. From my understanding of the reading, mythos and logos are simply two different approaches. Mythos is a superstitious approach that strives to explain things by evoking the gods and logos is a rational approach that strives to explain things with science. In that sense, to say that science is superstitious is inaccurate, since science is the opposite of superstition. Perhaps the question is suggesting that science is the western counterpart to mythos; that while the rest of world was seeking supernatural explanations, the West relied on science. That may be somewhat untrue, since there was science in the rest of the world and there were supernatural and religious elements in the West as well. But, this is more a historical question and I don’t think I know enough to answer it.

Or, maybe the question is suggesting that science is like religion, which is absurd. Many elements of religion, including superstition, rituals, faith, and moral beliefs, are absent in science. Science attempts to explain phenomena through the interpretation of empirical data, rather than through superstition. And, it certainly does not advocate any moral beliefs. If it were to do so, it would no longer be objective or reliable. When scientists advocate certain ethical actions, they are no longer engaged in science. Science is cold and completely indifferent to your feelings. And that is how it remains objective and incorruptible.

The works of skeptics like James Randi and Penn and Teller were really enough to convince me to reject mythos, not that I was superstitious to begin with. After reading more about skepticism, it is obvious how easily humans can be fooled by taking advantage of placebos, our greed, our willingness to trust, ability to see patterns out of randomness, and our willingness to assign meaning to random events. Instead of believing in supposed psychics and alternative medicine, we should test these pseudoscientific claims using science. And this is where logos comes in, because logos adopts this scientific and logical approach and this is the approach that I admire.