[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[Acrobat]

What I'm about to say here is mostly speculative and requires imagination, but I can easily imagine how myths in general would have come about.

Let's say you live in the older days before Christ, before the influence of ancient Greek thought and such. You see an impressive rock somewhere in the wild on your path to wherever you're going. You look at it, admire it, and see if you can move it, only to realize it's immovable. You think hmmmm, the gods must have put that rock there. You tell that basic story to your family and friends, asserting it as true rather than wondering if it is or not. Your kids believe it, they tell other kids, these kids believe it as well. Your fellow adults believe it because it sounds like it's true. With time it becomes a very well-accepted story and people take it for granted. Extra details are added to the story to explain things that were pondered about the story ... such as why it was put there. One person believes there was a fight that happened between good God and evil serpent, and serpent was defeated and God placed a rock over the serpent's body. Quakes would happen often around that area, so people thought that must be the snake trying to shake its way out of where it was trapped. Others came with different explanations. All nevertheless intended to be taken as true. One of the explanations dominated the other for various reasons and it became the accepted truth among the clan. So now we have a case where a story started out as a simple basic statement then over time evolved to a more elaborate story that was still plausibly true given what they already believed, and all this happening without the need to lie or consciously make up stuff.

What would be the purpose of telling people that God put a rock there? Why would anyone care to believe it one way or the other?

Most people don’t care about the science of rock formations, why do you think civilizations with lot more pressing things going on would care just because someone said God formed the useless rock sitting over there?

Most of what is taught in school regarding science, is primarily because we see that knowledge as usual to possess, and to churn scientific curiosity and reasoning in others? Clearly it’s not this sort of purpose religious stories were attempting to mimic. They werent trying to get people to think historically or scientifically, so what purpose would this quasi-science have served, in such a context?

I think the explanation you’re trying to give for religious myths and stories, doesn’t add up, and doesn’t seem to recognize the unique aspects that form the role which science and history play in values and thinking today, that didn’t exist in the past.