Your title says it all.
This is the shame about religion, its followers, and leaders: The richness of the teachings lies in the myth and yet the whole idea goes over everyone’s head. This is also true of Buddhism, where, like Christianity, millions of people are staring at the finger pointing at the moon. But unlike Buddhism, which some experts say was a model for Christianity, Christianity does not teach followers how to do what Jesus did, which is to become enlightened. Instead, the religion is about adoring and worshiping Jesus. The leaders who are experts in the scriptures are experts and worthless prose.
Joseph Campbell does a good job pointing out the mythic qualities and lessons in Christianity, but he is seen as an outlier.
Because Christians by and large cannot recognize the myth in, or beneath, their religion we are left with wondering whether they are not intelligent enough, were never taught about myth and its benefits, or do not actually want what myth can offer them.
Myth makes one think and it leads one to turn the attention around from the object to the subject. This means to turn away from the words on the page and apply them to your own life and psyche to reach beyond the ego. Christianity, like many other religions, does not have a mandate to do much more than soothe the ego with promises of security, protection, and resolution of personal problems. The goal is to learn something about the psyche and one’s lot in life. But when you have millions of followers who instead really want security in a belief system then myth will have no appeal. There must be a desire to learn about something. To apply what is taught in myth takes a certain amount of effort and introspection. Who needs to do all that work when the religious teachers just give you all the answers in a convenient, yet illogical and improbable, package?
In the middle of your argument/article, you write, “…why accept only Christian miracle claims?” My answer is, because the mind is selective based on its biases, culture, and conditioning. I do wonder, however, what the correlation is between religious beliefs about miracles and beliefs about non-religious, improbable stories. If we see Christianity as a closed system, as all religions are, then we may see that followers are given no choice to believe other religions’ claims that are outside of the system.
If we were to ask a devout Christian, as I have done on occasion, whether they have ever in their lifetimes seen a man walk on water, change the weather pattern, or turn golf balls into chicken McNuggets, they will say no. Yet they believe this happened thousands of years ago (and, of course, also argue that Jesus was God and no one they know has even come close to being a god). Miracles do still happen, many followers say, and they look so hard for them that they create them in their minds, failing to look for any logical or plausible explanation. All of this tells me one thing: When you need to believe in miracles then that’s enough to believe in miracles.
My last thought on this is that the concepts of history and religion are conflated by religious devotees, pure and simple. Well, not so pure, but definitely simple. To religious believers it just doesn’t matter what science or history has proven; it’s a nonissue. We have seen this with the millions of Trump supporters who go around repeating all the lies and propaganda without caring to know the facts. Their ignorance of history is a great asset to Trump and the right wing; it makes their job easy. With Christianity it’s the same model: repeat implausible ideas until they are not questioned.
I have taken (wasted?) a lot of time trying to find out if Jesus was even an historical figure and there is no proof at all. Christians consistently point to their proof that is not proof at all. Given that the story of Jesus is to be found in several myths and religions predating Christianity by thousands of years is enough to raise serious doubt about the claims. There are plenty of coincidences in life, but the story of Jesus is nothing more than a knock-off.
I once heard Al Franken say that we are entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts.
