Mythos addresses truths about the deeper meaning contained
in things.  Its secular close equivalent is poetry, which takes the reader
right up to what can not be said in words, and enables them to make that final
step.  Mythos does the same,
but in terms of spiritual truths.   Logos by contrast is what
we call rationality today: instrumental logic of the form “if…then”
and not addressing internal value.  

Pagan religions have
historically been expressed primarily through mythos.   The Roman Pagan Sallustius  observed that “a myth has never happened, yet it happens every day.”  From Sallustius’s perspective, properly
understood, myth reveals the deepest of truths about meaning that are capable
of being revealed, but it does not record a supposed historical event.  As he put it,  “one may call [even] the world a myth, in which bodies and
things are visible, but souls and minds hidden; the outer shell veils the inner
realities.” From a mythic perspective logos explores the outer shells, mythos plumbs the inner realities.

Biblical religions
originally were a combination of mythos and logos oriented texts with no clear way of determining which was which. In his Confessions,
Augustine describes his encounter with the early Church father Ambrose,
writing “I was delighted to hear Ambrose in his sermons to the people saying,
as if he were most carefully enunciating a principle of exegesis: ‘The letter
kills, the spirit gives life.’ Those texts which, taken literally, seemed to
contain perverse teaching he would expound spiritually, removing the mystical
veil.”

One
problem with this tradition was the many arguments breaking out as to
which Biblical parts were taken as literally true and which parts were mythic.
 Over time myth usually lost out to literalism. 
Beginning with the Reformation mythos was gradually eliminated from a
great deal of Christian theology because both Catholics and Protestants found
that their side gained when they could argue the text’s literal meaning supported
their side.  Protestants took this process farthest.  This trend was
strengthened because this way of reading came most easily to lay readers
unconnected with long traditions of scholarship. In Religion and the Enlightenment James Bryne observed both Protestants and Catholics were “Stuck with
Biblical literalism and doctrinal integralism in which the truth of
Christianity as a whole stood or fell with each of its parts.” Because of this
“the Christian churches were for the most part incapable of responding
creatively to scientific advances which conflicted with their own orthodoxy.”

This means that
conservative “Biblical Christians” are reading their Bibles in very modern
ways, adopting a scientific-style ‘objective’ interpretation, and then when
science does not support their position, shifting over not to mythos, but to a
simple will-to-believe which is utterly irrational because it is closed to any
attempt to communicate with and learn from other points of view. They feel they have no choice.  

Consider their argument
that the fetus is a human life. 
Theirs is an entirely physical literal argument: the fetus is
genetically human, and if left to develop will be born as a human being.  Therefore all that counts is encased
within a purely physical definition of human.  Biblical passages that suggest a person in some way was known
to God before their birth are interpreted in the same way, that the person
existed in the womb, period. 
Ironically the same passages often suggest the person was a spirit
unconnected to the fetus, but those passages, being mythic, are ignored. (For
example, Psalm 139:13-16) 

That something disturbing emerges from this style of thinking  is demonstrated by their reaction to equally literal readings that do not support their views.  The longest Biblical passage I have found discussing the loss of a fetus
explicitly indicates it is not a human life in the inner moral sense that other human
beings are.  The passage is Exodus
21:22-25.  

 And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with
child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall
surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as
the judges decide.  But if there is any further injury, then you shall
appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for
hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

At the time I first drew
attention to this passage several years ago, my argument was backed up with
comments by religious Jews, who reported the Torah always said murder should be
punished by death and so its argument that the death of a fetus should be
punished by a fine was definitive for Jews that abortion was not murder.  In addition, they said the Torah commands
abortion when necessary to save the life of the mother.

In other words, in the
strongest Biblical passage dealing with causing the death of a fetus, the
literal reading indicates abortion is not
murder. This would seem to be decisive to people who read texts literally.  

Fascinatingly to me, these
arguments had absolutely no impact on conservative and right wing Christian
commentators, nor are they likely to now that I bring them up again. But I pass
this passage along anyway because it illustrates a very disturbing point.

Spiritual literalism
degenerates into irrationality. 

This is in the very nature of the project.  When certain principles are held as absolutely true, they will of their very nature be interpreted as absolutely true in different ways.  All readings must be interpretations that are better or worse, with the possibility of error always present.  So when a person believes they have the ‘literal’ meaning as God’s word, they exempt themselves from the very human capacity for error.  As a consequence they must reject evidence they error by ignoring ‘literal’ passages that contradict their ‘literal’ interpretation.

By reading sacred texts in a purely logocentric way they ultimately trap themselves and cut themselves off from all spiritual
insight because as Sallustius and Augustine and Ambrose all recognized, they cannot be read that way wisely.  When the ‘literalists’ interpretations are contradicted by historical evidence or scientific
discoveries, because they have rejected myth they have no way to incorporate new knowledge into their spiritual
understanding, and so new knowledge must be rejected.  The earth must be 6000 years old or
there is no truth in their Bible. 
Jesus had to be around dinosaurs or there is no truth in the Bible.  And so on, absurdity after absurdity.  Mythos is unavailable to them and logos contradicts them so
all that is left is the irrational commitment, a will-to-believe regardless of
the evidence.

When such people do change their views – and this happens – it is because their hearts rebel at the implications of their doctrine.  This is to their credit.  But for many, when doctrine wars with their heart, doctrine wins.  I do not know how to get to such hearts, though if they engage in interfaith work, that can happen.  But most close themselves off from this. The result is a religion of irrationality.  As we see about ourselves, it easily spills into irrationality elsewhere.

Because most Americans are
more reasonable than this, it is in our interest as well as theirs for us to
challenge the religious right at every juncture, throw their scriptures in
their faces, and make as clear as possible that the will-to-believe is the
ultimate spiritual pride: that because I believe it, I speak for God. There is
no greater pride.