This seems almost tautological? I'm a little confused here, is there some benefit to saying that an axiom is a form of narrative? What new insight can we gain if we say that an axiom can be thought of as a narrative?
Only that narratives/myths are more obviously cultural constructs based on culturally derived understandings of the world. How we explain to ourselves the foundation of our belief systems.
The term axiom seems to minimise the connection to cultural history.
Well maybe? I'd hazard that both religion AND science contributed to a unified humanity view.
What did science contribute to it? It is the epitome of human exceptionalism, unless you are aware of similar concepts being applied to other animals, which I am not.
So I'm happy to acknowledge religion's past contributions. But our understanding of the cosmos and of our own nature has marched on, and those bronze age perspectives are now mostly anchors.
Whether religion has a positive or negative role in modern society is largely beside the point.
It's historical legacy on the intellectual traditions of diverse cultures is significant though.
I think the 'leftovers' of specific religious traditions in modern secular and humanistic thought are often understated. This leads to an assumption that narratives are easily transferred across cultural boundaries - the error of universalism.
We are really value pluralistic, we can probably say some things are universally wrong, but much of what comprises our value systems is made up of competing narratives that favour one subjective 'good' over another.
The difference between the acceptance of value pluralism over value universalism is significant. It is the difference between aiming for a world a world where everyone gets along, and aiming for a world where there are lots of people we don't really get along with but we don't resort to violence against each other.
The former is (imo) impossible, and trying to hard to get other people to 'think like us', no matter how well intended, tends to make the latter harder to achieve.