@OwlInASack Yes, I agree with you on that point. However, Hitchens goes further.

@OwlInASack
No, I don’t think that is what Campbell was referring to here, although that may be true too. Instead of saying there are bits of literal truth to be found in all religions, I think he was saying that all religions are entirely true when understood metaphorically rather than literally. The problem is that we have lost the capacity to understand metaphor. Since the Age of Enlightenment, we have retrained ourselves to see words only in their literal sense, to a large degree (not entirely, but especially as it applies to religion). And if it doesn’t make sense literally we assume it makes no sense at all.

@OwlInASack
Everything you say there is true of course, when seen in light of today's popular understanding of the word religion. My only beef with Hitchens, Dawkins, et al. is their careless use of the word religion where they are clearly complaining about fundamentalism instead. Campbell used the word when referring to mythology, which, I think, is a more proper understanding of religion in its historical context.

The way we use the word religion, since the seventeenth century or so, refers to more than one thing. In many places, before that time, it was just referred to as "The Law." And a lot of it was just local law and expected social and health practices. Since religion is considered sacred, people have been afraid to update it or tamper with it in any way, so all the old local laws and outdated science are still lodged in the mythology and defended as a unified whole.

But the heart of religion, as Campbell understood, was never its legal or dietary or sexual admonitions, but its capacity to balance our hunter-gatherer psychology against the complexity of living in the ever-changing material world. We still, as a species, have that need, and a purely materialistic outlook does little to serve it. Mythology is how the human mind dances through that obstacle course, and it can no more be done away with than any of our other natural instincts like xenophobia or altruism or fear of death.

The potential progress that the "New Atheists" have made against the destructiveness of fundamentalism is sadly and possibly fatally flawed by their refusal to recognize this very important point even while it has been fairly well described by philosophers, thinkers and scholars for a few centuries now.

Our major religious systems' refusal to update themselves is a serious problem. The fact that they exist is not. I believe it is the responsibility of thinking people to decide the terms on which religion will be met, rather than to accept the terms those religions set out. Religion, just like science, is a phenomenon much larger than the sum of its practitioners' errors.

@OwlInASack
That’s a good way of putting it I think. The leftovers of religion are now largely rancid and making us sick - not at all helpful, to say the least. My sense is that among those ruins are possibly some helpful hints as to how to construct a modern practice that would serve the need without offending the sensibilities of science, though the job of sifting the debris like an archeologist might admittedly be a smelly task.

@OwlInASack
Likely true, for the most part. The pressure for reform will probably have to come from the outside. It won’t be received well.

@OwlInASack
Beautiful! Those people do exist. They are just usually not the loudest voices, and religion at large is often judged by those loudest voices.

@OwlInASack
I’ll take her interpretation of religion over the Pope’s any day. Sounds to me like she was doing more than wishful thinking. I’m betting she was seeing the metaphorical truth of religion instead of being distracted by its literal words. You are fortunate to have had such a wise role model in your life. Not everyone is so lucky.

@OwlInASack That religions exist and that most make exclusive faith claims does not imply any of them is right, wrong, or sometimes right. Nor does this imply that all of them are wrong. Hitchen's argument is not logical. That's why atheists in his academic world are sometimes embarrassed by his arguments.

@OwlInASack Yes, I agree. Islam and Christianity are mutually incompatible. My problem with Hitchens is that he excludes the logical possibility that one or more religions may be true based on the fact that there are many religions. That's a non sequitor. Some religions are compatible with each other.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not arguing the case for the truth of any religion- my doubts are too deep for that. But I think Hitchens does damage to the atheistic cause with poor arguments.

@OwlInASack As I understand it (other will have read more than I on this) the answer is yes. Some religions are vague when it comes to dogma. And I've met some Buddhists who also think of themselves as Hindus. That connection for some goes back a long way.

@OwlInASack But for the sake of the argument, let us assume for a moment that every single religion does make exclusive truth claims, thereby rendering others false from that religion's point of view. Hitchens is still wrong logically to argue the most reasonable conclusion is that all religions are wrong. That is not a valid logical inference. It would mean the options are: all are wrong or 1 is right.
However, some religions have very vague truth claims (eg some Aboriginal spiritual beliefs) and they are often taken to be compatible with other religions. That makes the Hitchens comment even more problematic.