What we ARE calling a phallic symbol is the Olympic Torch.

In the case of the Buddhas, it is not their duty to prevent human or natural calamities. Buddhism is about the next existence, not he present one. I believe the same is true about the core beliefs of Christianity. Folk beliefs among the laity, however, and practices of previous faiths, fuse themselves into all religious traditions. I am reminded that it was the Eastern Christians who became the iconoclasts, and the western Christians (previously Romans or Roman subjects) who peopled their churches and homes with myriad saints and blessed virgins. For those East Asians to whom Buddhism was a bit austere in the divine help department, they simply added Daoist or Hindu gods and goddesses to their local pantheon, or opted to attend Daoist services as part of their religious repetoire. I am reminded of Taiwan’s Goddess of Mercy and Korea’s Mountain Spirit temples, both of which exist to obtain powers of protection or better fortune for their adherents. As for the Christian cross being a phallic symbol, I must disagree. Had the Christ not been crucified, it would hardly have been incorporated as a christian symbol. And in this light, it is interesting to note that other Christian crosses (v.g., Saint Andrews, etc) are also meant to remind believers of how that Saint died. I fail to see how an implement used in a tortuous death qualifies as a phallic symbol.

I’ll have to read up about the recent history of the games and its symbols before I can comment there. But while I agree that the mob was in many cases acting with phrases defined by the propaganda departments, I still think they are responsible for the nonsense they have been talking.

Now responding to your points seriatim,

“…even as good Catholics, aren’t you taking this a bit far?”

You misunderstand our premise and our argument. The problem we have with the Torch-as-religious-symbol is not that it disagrees with our religion. We tried to make that clear by contrasting the torch-religion with non-Christian religions such as Buddhism and Islam; those other non-Christian religions are not ours, but we respect them because there is a lot of truth and authenticity in them, and their symbols really do HELP their believers to transcend suffering. But the Olympic Torch does not, because it is an inauthentic, commercially manufactured symbol, and even worse, it is a symbol of glorified power/strength for power’s own sake.

“I mean, it’s just an Olympic torch, it is mostly a mob that calls it “sacred””

No, the “mob” did not come up with this idea spontaneously. The idea was manufactured by the Communist Party’s propaganda department. This is our objection, that the religious symbolism of the torch did not arise from the People or their culture or customs; it was commercially manufactured and then imposed upon the People from above. Now, one could retort that Christianity has often been imposed from above for political purposes (at least in the past, like in Rome circa 300s AD), but the symbols of Christianity originated in ancient customs (which the Torch IS NOT! The Nazis invented it) and (contrary to Marx) their origins were not commercial or political, but authentically spiritual and/or “psychological.” The same goes for the symbols of Islam, Buddhism and other traditional religions and mythologies. The Torch is categorically different because it was literally manufactured for cynical commercial purposes.

“Besides, I think that any religion, plus the Olympics and its symbols, can be for good or bad.”

We are not saying authentic religions cannot be used (or rather, abused and corrupted) for bad purposes. We are saying that the Torch is an inauthentic, manufactured symbol which – because it is inauthentic – has absolutely no power for any good religious or psychological purpose.

“We’ve known this about religion for a long time”

I repeat, we are not saying the Torch is a religion. We’re saying it’s a cynical, manufactured simulation of religion.

“and as for the Olympics, if we didn’t care about that before, we sure do now. But I’d say the fact that it has been sinisised and anti-sinisised (or -pekinised) recently doesn’t mean that the Olympic Charter is now meaningless, does it?”

The problem is not that the Olympics have been “Sinicised.” Sinicisation of the Olympics would be a good thing, IF the Chinese Communist Party really had anything to do with traditional Chinese culture. But it doesn’t. (Catherine is Chinese and can elucidate this better than I.) If anything, the Beijing Olympics are very AMERICANISED! Americanised in their cynical employment of commercial kitsch, “public relations” and advertising. “China” has not made the Olympic Charter meaningless, but the Olympic sponsors like Coca Cola have, and so have the mostly Western whores of the IOC.

“Where for Jung the archetypal contents of myth arise out of the unconscious, only in some works of Campbell do they do so. Even then, sometimes the unconscious for Campbell is, as for Freud, acquired rather than, as for Jung, inherited. Other times the contents of myth – contents that Campbell calls “archetypal” simply because they are similar worldwide (Ned’s note; this is very different from Jung’s speculation about “collective unconscious”) – emerge from the imprint of either recurrent or traumatic experiences. (Ned’s note: the recurrent floods of ancient Eygpt would be a good example of how this works.) In all of these cases, as for Jung, each society creates its own myths (Ned’s note: but Campbell did not attribute this to a “collective
unconscious”, but rather to historical conditions) – whatever the source of the material it uses. Other times, however, myths for Campbell, in contrast to Jung, originate in one society and spread elsewhere.”

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=bDfiFlTbWGYC&pg=PR10&lpg=PR10&dq=joseph+Campbell+%22I‘m+not+a+Jungian%22&source=web&ots=spjF3ufPM-&sig=WfJtTMeHNISTon7F3McuN9KO-e8&hl=en