I don't know where to put this... I suppose this is the place.
Do you believe in a G!d made in man's image? With human traits (and foibles)?
No.
We've got Thor and Zeus...
Personally, I wouldn't put Nordic and Greek mythology in the same class, but then I haven't really studied the Nordic myths.
Suffice to say in Greek mythology, 'all human life is here'. There's an essay on mythology and psychology
here. I doubt there's much new in psychology that's news to the Greek myths, and the Greek myths still set the archetypal models for modern psychology.
As you well know, you and I disagree on the origin and content of myths, as I do not accept your image of hoary old men sitting round the camp fire telling tall tales analogy. I think that's one of your 'nuclear bomb' statements that flattens everything. There are all manner of myths, they're not all the same at all, to be accepted or dismissed in one fell swoop.
There are myths in my family history, indeed in my own history, as there are in yours, and yes, these grow and take on their own lives in the memory and the telling (like your Catholic Boy Scout Troop – Wil, don't you see that if I applied your thesis of history; personal agendas, hyperbole, exaggeration, story-telling, then you'd be seriously unhappy about the outcome, the dismissal of those seven years as possibly something that perhaps never happened at all, but simply grew as a vehicle of your angst... )
... but I would not put them in the same category as Greek or Genesis Mythology.
We've got many Hindu views of Gods which have various human or animal characteristics.
But we also have balancing commentaries explaining the psychological and metaphysical aspects of their Gods.
We've got Michelangelo and his commissioned ceiling in the chapel...
But then you'd have to include all art, all music, all poetry, all literature to do with the Gods... I think this is subsequent to the main point you're focussing on.
We've got "He" and "Him" 'walking', 'talking', 'thinking', getting 'mad', 'vengeful', 'loving', 'spiteful'.
And we have ancient commentaries on all these references explaining the reasoning to ward against anthropomorphic assumptions.
One of the values of Tradition is that is presents us with the medicines that preserve against
fantasia.
Even thou I don't believe in a humanistic G!d being, or entity...my most comfortable anthropomorphism is a child me laying cradled in the ample bosom grandmotheresque G!d.
An anthropomorphic projection of what kind of Deity, that's the question. It holds currency for you. The anthropomorphic image of God as an old man sitting on a throne, I would suggest, holds a lot more relevance with regard to the Christian God, once one begins to contemplate the symbolism.
or is it out of convenience of language, or not calling G!d ...'it' that causes you to give G!d gender and human characteristics?
Well that's a start, but it goes on from there, and it's more profound that that. I would say it's to do with Immanence and 'interface'.
To you is it metaphor (anthropomorphism) or real?
I think the question is flawed.
A metaphor is a figure of speech that identifies something as being in some way the same or similar to something else. The term means "a transfer", "a carrying over", so there is the 'here' and the 'there' of a metaphor. 'All the world's a stage' as Shakespeare said. If you suppose that 'stages' don't exist, then there's no transfer, all the world is not a stage ... so a metaphor is either real, or nothing.
+++
The anthropological 'thing' is something that was, then gave way to a more profound understanding, be that Hinduism, Buddhism, the Abrahamics, what have you ... the Hebrew Scriptures one can trace the development from local polytheism to a mature monotheism. The Hindu texts, despite their plethora of gods, is underpinned by a monotheist and non-anthropomorphic metaphysic.
With the Enlightenment (17th century), man determined that science would give him the keys to control nature, and really he would fashion the world in his own image. In Enlightenment thought 'raw nature' was invariably portrayed as a wanton women, needing to be tamed.
Then along came the Industrial Revolution and its terrible consequences.
The average lifespan for man has always been in the 'three score and ten' region. The claim that in antiquity people died in their 30s or 50s is a common misconception, a misreading of the data. The average lifespan was foreshortened because of the high rate of infant mortality. Once you survived childhood, there was every reason to hope for a long life.
The Industrial revolution did put a spike in the statistics. Not only infant mortality, but in the dreadful conditions of the early factories, and early urban living without fresh water, sanitation, etc.
This gave rise to the Romance Movement, but the Romantics, in rejecting both tradition
and science, were doomed to repeat history and the pendulum swung back unchecked, and thereby gave rise to a new anthropomorphism in its thinking.
All this kicked off the Sublime in art, the Gothic Novel, spiritualism, spiritism, mesmerism, theosophy, anthroposophy, paganism, New Thought, Wicca, an interest in 'the esoteric' and the movements that flourished across Europe, etc., right through to Gaia and the New Age ... all of it shot through with an incipient anthropomorphism.
