Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies. Joseph Campbell
About This Quote

When we accept a metaphor as a fact, we believe that whatever is described by that metaphor is true. If we do not accept the truth of the metaphor, then we do not think it is true. It is as if we use a metaphor as a way of explaining something that we don’t understand. But this does not mean that the metaphor is not real. The reason why we might not understand something is because it goes beyond what our limited human minds can comprehend.

Source: Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

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