Probaly the same as archeology versus grave robbing
Mythology is the rules invoked to justify a religion.
I use this framing to explain how finance is the rules invoked to justify an economic model.
They’re both control mechanisms conjured by the ruling class to maintain class division, the newer incarnation just substituted smiting with accounting.
Follower size.
Number of living believers.
That is incorrect. Active religions (e.g., Christianity) still have a mythology.
Mythology is only a part of religion (and often survives after the rest of the religion has withered away). Mythology is the stories that try to explain why the world is the way it is.
A living religion will also feature doctrines (a set of teachings, typically about morality, correct beliefs, prescribed or proscribed attitudes or sayings or practices) and rituals.
That makes more sense thanks
Christian mythology is the Jesus was baptized, or transfigured, or died and was resurrected.
Christian religion is that you must be baptized, or be confirmed, or receive communion.
None really. Once active believers are gone its treated as mythology. Are they fall below a threshold where they can support the beuracracy of an organization.
Myth is stories. Religion is community.
The playbill is not the play. The script is not the actors. But everyone coming together, audience included, to take part in a production of theater is all of it.
I see myth and religion being connected like that.
A religion is what its believers call it, and what non-believers call it because it has believers.
A religion becomes mythology when it stops being popular, nobody believes its particular set of nonsense anymore and it and slip into history.
What they are at the end of the day is living or dead cults.
Not much. Alan Watts had interesting talks on this. Myths are just stories. The Bible is just a collection of stories. Religion goes beyond the written stories, sure, but it’s still nothing without them (spoken and written) and everyone has their own personal mythology.
Like many self-described Christians these days think Jesus is weak/woke and what other people(definitely not themselves) really need is tough love not ‘sissy/pussy Jesus love’(choice words I’ve heard at services from the pastor at the podium, along with rantings on how lgbtq will burn in hell and the whole congregation is cheering, crying, and/or talking in tongues… It’s fucking creepy.)
This is especially common in pentecostal and Evangelical sects. Quite rare in mainstream protestantism or Catholicism (though you may get guilt-tripped. My mom said her Sunday school teachers said paying tithings was fire insurance - it keeps you from burning in hell. What a great lesson for children!) Sadly, modern Christianity practice includes things I think would absolutely appall Jesus, canonically. But that’s the great thing about religion, the scriptures are often vague and people genuinely don’t really care about what the Bible actually says unless it’s something they like (Cherry picking, selection/confirmation bias, etc.), like the beatitudes sound great but practicing them is harder than preaching.
The gullibility of the person hearing the tale.
If it’s currently used and ritualized it’s a religion, if it’s in the past and no longer practiced it’s myth.
A mythology is a set of shared stories that define a culture—its values, its productive metaphors, its identity. They may or may not be believed in as actually true—even when they are, they’re generally understood to have occurred in a place and time distinct from the culture’s current reality.
But the point of a mythology is the relationship it establishes between community members, while the point of a religion is the relationship it purports to establish between its adherents and the divine.
Active practioners perhaps?
Speaking for myself, parts of my current “religion” (belief system) literally stems from what’s often referred to as “mythologies”, such as ancient Mesopotamian beliefs. I’d say this word is (wrongly, IMHO) used to describe any polytheistic belief system which existed in the past and are believed to hold no living devotees nowadays (which is also referred to as “dead religions”), except… It’s quite of a biased assumption, given how I myself worship goddesses such as Ereshkigal and the one who was initially known as Lilitu, Lilith (and I’m not even a Sumerian person).
IMHO, there’s no such thing as a dead religion or dead language, if a random someone can try to revive the ancient system, even if idiosyncratically to ground their personal worldviews on something that was once well-established. By the way, there are many other modern attempts on reviving ancient religions such as Temple of Sumer (a religious organization trying to restore and bring awareness regarding Sumerian and other Near Eastern religions). I particularly don’t belong to any religious group (yet; sometimes I really long for one, as I used to belong to a Luciferian sect a few years ago before Lilith suddenly pulled me into Her burrowing-owl-y nest underground like the rabbit (cunicularia) pulled Alice into the Wonderland to meet the Queens), my belief system is quite of a temple of one human, with me being the devotee and the preacher to myself preaching about the Dark Mother Goddess, cosmic Queen of the Night.
