It's often hilarious when I hear western analyses of Buddhism and the Buddha. It's like a trying to understand general relativity using analogies and guesses. You feel like you understand it, till you get to the Mathematics of it.
First of all drop your arrogance. And understand that your way of thinking is already shaped by deep underlying assumptions that often originated in a Christian backdrop, including western science. In orthodox Buddhism, like that in Sri Lanka, the path to understanding Buddhism is uncontroversial, difficult but uncontroversial. Like you would spend years studying in schools to become a Physicist or a Mathematician, put in that hard work and after that you might actually be in a credible position to tell the world what is mythical about Buddhism and what is not.
Story of the Buddha doesn't start at Siddhartha Gautama. It's a story that spans a time frame that is not humanly perceivable making what is mythical and what is not exceedingly relative. Of course when you attach a loaded word like "myth" to anything that you can't experience from when and where you are now, none of that matters anymore.
First of all drop your arrogance. And understand that your way of thinking is already shaped by deep underlying assumptions that often originated in a Christian backdrop, including western science. In orthodox Buddhism, like that in Sri Lanka, the path to understanding Buddhism is uncontroversial, difficult but uncontroversial. Like you would spend years studying in schools to become a Physicist or a Mathematician, put in that hard work and after that you might actually be in a credible position to tell the world what is mythical about Buddhism and what is not.
Story of the Buddha doesn't start at Siddhartha Gautama. It's a story that spans a time frame that is not humanly perceivable making what is mythical and what is not exceedingly relative. Of course when you attach a loaded word like "myth" to anything that you can't experience from when and where you are now, none of that matters anymore.