The video actually does equate atheism with a lack of imagination and theism as having one. So to analyzing what and why he's saying it does seem to directly pertain to the topic of the thread. As I pointed out, theism can have just as much a lack of imagination as atheism. It has nothing to do with how one believes or does not believe in God. That lack of imagination applied to either results in very "factual" ways of looking at the world, either trusting God to tell you "the truth", or science to tell you "the truth".
This is of course incredibly insightful! I very much agree with this, and it is a point unimaginative literalists on either side of the theism question miss. Rather, can't see due to a lack of thinking outside their own boxes. That lack of thinking outside their own boxes is exactly, precisely what defines this lack of imagination!
Mythology is a type of metaphor. Science is also a metaphor.
The unimaginative take metaphors and makes them "descriptors of reality", and thus create dead-metaphors. The unimaginative literalize metaphors, be they mythological or rational in nature. They live in a world of dead-metaphors, which cannot function any longer to inspire the imagination. A world of dead metaphors creates a world of the unimaginative, in either science or religion.
I would say the point is not about the story, but rather they way one holds the story in their minds that assess the existence or lack of existence of imagination. It's not the stories themselves, but the way one interfaces with them. That's how you can discern the other's access to their own imaginative sense.
Yeah, and not so much. It can be viewed objectively. You can discern its existence or lack of it based on what you hear how the person utilizes them, how
literal they are. That's an observation thing, and that makes it "objective". How one goes about ranking or evaluating such a thing is another matter, but I'd say that is possible to do depending.
I very much agree with this. I think what the problem is here is that this person has heard the legitimate criticism of a lot of modern atheism having a lack of imagination, and there is validity to that, but then he mistakenly concludes that theism is more imaginative. That is false. The modern religious fundamentalist is equally lacking imagination as the neo-atheist they criticize. They are literally, simply flip sides of the same coin. Believing in magic as the literal way things happened, is not actually imagination working. It's reducing that way of picturing things to a
factual reality.