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Myths, Fictitious or Reality?

A myth, according to Bruce Lincoln, is an ideology in narrative form. It typically involves supernatural characters and is endorsed by rulers or priests. Its purpose is to teach, to establish behavioral models and convey religious or idealized experience. The reality of these traditional stories is still in question up to this date but the purpose of the myth is without a doubt solid. Many have studied, questioned and compared myths for centuries. In the 19th Century, myths were reinterpreted as the evolution of science but this interpretation was rejected by many of 20th Century theories of myth and they see myths as almost anything but an outdated counterpart to science.

Nowadays, myths are no longer just specific to legendary stories. Modern definition of the word states that a myth is an invented story, idea or concept. Another modern definition says that it is a false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution. Despite of the negative perception of the people about myth, the same people find it fascinating. For some reason, these stories are adored by many audiences. However the cultural need to see, hear or read a story prevents people to accept myth as truth but will only accept it as one when it is presented in a patently factual manner. And that's why we have modern day TV programs such as Mythbusters that uses science to test the validity of myths, popular beliefs, rumors, stories, etc. The show casted special effects experts with thirty years of experience to test these myths and follow a two-step process, the steps were to replicate the circumstances then duplicate the results. With this method, they conducted experiments on many myths, internet rumors, and stories with the exception of paranormal concepts, such as ghost and aliens. The program has given light to some of the long questioned theories of myths and popular beliefs. But there are still a lot of other myths out there that remained a myth, whether it's the truth or it contained truth or just an invented story, the choice to believe is within us.