Only difference I can find is that there are people who “believe” in religions but almost everyone knows mythologies are just stories. So why don’t religions have the same treatment? They’re essentially the same thing, stories about people who may or may not have existed.
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They aren’t. They’re all made up stories, its just that some have been maintained in the culture that some people still believe they’re true. A lot of the reason for their staying in culture have been societal pressure and the indoctrination tactics within the religious doctrines themselves that stop people questioning them.
this is just a general rule of thumb and not perfect, but from what i understand, mythologies are just religions that are no longer practiced
“Mythology” doesn’t mean “Religion we don’t believe in”, it means a collection of stories. One does not exclude the other, you can have religion without mythology and mythology without religion, but you can also have religion with mythology. Most living religions *include* mythologies as components. The Christian mythology is a thing and is mainly the collection of stories found in the Bible. Islam mythology is in large parts overlapping with Christian and Jewish mythology, but also includes the stories of the Prophet. Hindu mythology is the stories of all the Hindu Gods, contained f.i in the Puranas and the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics.
What separates religion from mythology is that religion includes all the “practical” aspects of organised religion on top of their stories: how is the religion practiced, what are their clerical hierarchies, what rituals do believers perform, what is the structure of the religious practices, what do the humans that actually believe in this religion do in expression of their faith, do people worship in special buildings or out in the woods, and so on and so forth.
The story of the last supper is Christian Mythology. The real-world ritual of the eucharist is Christian religion.
Most religions and mythologies are similar. Both are based on beliefs that some people have. It’s just that the religion that “won” or its adherents call the religions they displaced, myths.
They’re both basically the same thing. The only thing that really differentiates them in the context that you’re asking is that mythology tends to be something people used to be believe in but don’t really do so anymore.
A meaningful distinction between these two terms would be one that defines mythology as _a part of religion_. The Biblical stories would be Jewish and Christian mythologies, but there are also other components to Christianity (ethics, organization, practices etc.)
You cannot, however, make a meaningful distinction that would e.g. make the voyage of Argonauts “a myth“ and e.g. Exodus “not a myth”. Without any judeo-christian dogma, you just have to admit they are both myths of their respective cultures.
On a tangent note — there is also no objective demarcation between “religion” and “superstition”; between “liturgy” and “magic”; or between ”iconodulia” and “idolatry”. All these demarcations require you to accept some religious dogma as “true”.
Was Greek or Nordic mythology once a religion?
They are literally two words with two different meanings:
Mythology: the collection of myths of a people, concerning the origin of the people, history, deities, ancestors and heroes.
Religion: belief in a spiritual or metaphysical reality (often including at least one deity), accompanied by practices or rituals pertaining to the belief.
“mythology” and “religion” are different because they are two words with literally (and I mean “literally” as “literally”) two different meaning.
What i understand from watching lecture about Comparative Religion Study is that, anything can be turned into a religion, as long as they have 3 B.
Believe. It’s self explanatory, i guess.
Behavior. Unique ritual, habit, that separating them from other group.
Belonging. The group itself, who manifesting the first two aspects mentioned before.
That’s why some consider Jedi-ism as religion, because *technically* they fulfilling all the category.
Tl;dr Myth alone doesn’t make it a religion, *technically* it’s no different than another story…
Mythologies don’t demand faith in their own veracity. Religion does.
Star Wars fanatics don’t have to believe that the Death Star and the Millennium Falcon are real to be a Star Wars fan. But, Christians do have to believe in the resurrection of Christ to be a Christian.
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