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LINK Humanist EDge: Appreciating Hypatia, Neoplatonist & Proto-Humanist - TheHumanist.com

She was a proto-humanist in more ways than one. For example, she said, “Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all” and also that “fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing.”
We’ll never know conclusively why Hypatia was murdered. However, we do know that she said this:

In fact human beings will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth—often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

Yes, that’s a humanist point of view!

zblaze 7 Apr 2
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“fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing.”

Maybe depending on the audience. A good story is worth my suspension disbelief, telling a fable to a child ought to fascinate them, and myths have many ways of living an subverting our beliefs regardless of you calling them names ha, ha

cava Level 7 Apr 2, 2018

When you tell a fable or a fictional tale to a child, are you presenting it "as the truth" cava??

If so, then I agree that it is a most terrible thing!!!

@zblaze I used to read my daughter stories, most caring parents can tell when their child can't take what they are hearing. You've never told a child a story?

@cava Of course I have, but I try to never present it as the truth. The one thing that will destroy trust is being lied to. No child should ever have to "take that".

@zblaze No, I disagree. A child ought to be fascinated by a story, believe in it, sure when you say "Good night moon" you are not saying goodnight moon, but they will understand this when the time comes.

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