How reasonable is monotheism, even hypothetically?

[Kemosloby]

The President doesn't exist in a vacuum though - he's at the head of a power structure involving multiple people - a number of whom could potentially replace him. So your analogy actually implies polytheism.

Yes, if you go off on the completely wrong tangent it could mean that.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

How reasonable is having One supreme authority? Why don't we elect two presidents?

Is there a Vice-God?

The universe, with all its inhabitants, looks like it was designed by a committee.

A drunk committee ... who would rather shut down the heavens then compromise on what species to work on next.


Anyway, while I believe in a "single" divine reality, I am comfortable enough with the roots of my religion to accept at least henotheism, which is just "polytheism with an asterisk beside the god I like best" or whatever, LOL.

 

[Augustus]

Though speaking of that which came first, before man believed in multiple gods to fit what he saw in the world around him, he was an atheist.

Not necessarily, it's certainly possible that basic religious beliefs and practices predate the emergence of our species.

As we don't have any evidence regarding this, we can't make any assumptions as to how the first humans and their predecessors viewed the world around them.

 

[Mister Silver]

Not necessarily, it's certainly possible that basic religious beliefs and practices predate the emergence of our species.

As we don't have any evidence regarding this, we can't make any assumptions as to how the first humans and their predecessors viewed the world around them.

Greek and Roman mythology, which predate the mythology of the Judeo-Christians, were polytheists. Also, archaeological studies of primitive cultures that predate the Greeks and Romans shows that those people were also polytheists.

What I simply meant by man being atheist before he decided to attempt to explain the world around him with gods is that every single person is born atheist until the mythology of any given area is taught to the individual while growing up, with the exception of those whose families do not adhere to mythologies.

 

[Sundance]

The President doesn't exist in a vacuum though - he's at the head of a power structure involving multiple people - a number of whom could potentially replace him. So your analogy actually implies polytheism.

Specifically, henotheism...

 

[LuisDantas]

One thing before I go into specific replies:

The OP argues, certainly to my own personal satisfaction, that while monotheism is a natural occurrence for certain people at certain periods of their personal journeys, there is no chance whatsoever of it being "true" as such.

It will be true for certain people at certain circunstances. But if logic and faithfulness to the reality of facts are significant considerations, the realization must come that monotheism is not only too constraining, it is also inherently undeserving of any serious investiment of time or attention. It is demonstrably undeserving of being raised to a significant premise of any doctrine, as well.

Any person who is serious enough and reasonably skilled in his or her personal journey will either ignore monotheism entirely or eventually arrive at the conclusion that it literally does not matter whether it can be said that there is "one true god". Odds are better than good that it does not even matter whether the sacred can accurately be associated with any conceptions of deity, even.

Therefore, I will summarily disregard any suggestions that "there is a chance" that Abrahamic monotheism "might turn out to be true". No, there isn't, and if you disagree, that is a sure sign that you either don't undertand that OP or simply disagree with it. That is your right, but so is mine not to bother with a position that I have already considered and securely found wanting. In this very personal matter that is my undeniable privilege.

And please, don't even consider warning me about my immortal soul, the afterlife, or the wrath or loss of favor of God. Not to put too fine a point to it, I do not waste my time with such crapricious matters, and never will.

 

[LuisDantas]

The fact is god(s) asks more questions than they answer about reality. Every theist eventually has to retreat into the "mystery and hiddenness" of god(s) because you are talking about the invisible, the supernatural realm that cannot be explored (theists may disagree with that, but if it were really true we wouldn't have so many different religions would we?)

I don't think every theist disagrees. Hindus, specifically, sure seem to agree far more often than they do not.

 

[LuisDantas]

Not all 'mainstream' conceptions of the Abrahamic God are cataphatic though. The apophatic God can only be described via negatives. You can't say what God is, only what God is not.

This includes things like saying God is one, God is eternal or even God exists. You could say that God is not divided or God was not created though.

Sure you can. And that is not wrong, although it can be made catastrophically wrong (and is) when people take that notion and place it where it does not belong, then go on to build whole proselitist, imperialistic, quasi-nationalistic doctrines based on such a misplaced premise.

And then they actually take pride on declaring their stubborn adherence to the unreasonable, invasive, disrespectful and illogical. And call it "true religion".

No wonder the word has suffered so much in recent centuries.

 

[LuisDantas]

How reasonable is having One supreme authority? Why don't we elect two presidents?

That is quite the argument for atheism, since God is such an absentee and we have our consciences and our reason to fulfill every single significant role that he is supposedly necessary for.

 

[LuisDantas]

If you're comparing God to Donald Trump, we really have a problem!!

I don't often agree with you, even with the implied built disagreement.

 

[LuisDantas]

Monotheism makes the most sense, not in the sense that there is "one" god, but that there is "only" god. The mono prefix means "only."

If you go there, you basically have to take pains not to go all the way into pantheism, deism and/or atheism as the next logical steps, don't you?

 

[Ponder This]

We all should be at peace with the simple contemplation that it is not for humans to act as wardens of specific, rigid, limited understandings of the sacred. Such an effort is both arrogant and demeaning, regardless of whatever some speculative truth about the nature of the sacred might be.

The elephant in the dark room:

One person only touches the ears, one person only touches the trunk, one person only touches the leg, one person only touches the tail,... no one can agree on what it is.

Another person isn't even touching the elephant.
"There is no elephant. Stop trying to figure out the elephant."

 

[Mister Silver]

The elephant in the dark room:

One person only touches the ears, one person only touches the trunk, one person only touches the leg, one person only touches the tail,... no one can agree on what it is.

Another person isn't even touching the elephant.
"There is no elephant. Stop trying to figure out the elephant."

Those silly little stories never did make much sense to me.

Just provide a light source, and the elephant is there for all to see. Not to mention the fact that even in the dark each individual can move on from that one part of the elephant to feel the rest of it, coming to the ultimate conclusion that it is indeed an elephant.

The elephant is a real animal in the real world which can be proven to be real through empirical evidence. The same cannot be stated for a god.

 

[LuisDantas]

Personally I find monotheism as the only possible logical take on God.

And it clearly is, for people who happen to be at the proper place to find it so.

Polytheism doesn't make any logical sense.

The same consideration applies. What makes a god-conception reasonable is the mindset of the person considering it. Even observable facts are a distant second, if even that.

The illogical part of theism is that God is Omniscient and wants only one religion.

I take it that you mean some popular forms of monotheism, not theism as a whole?

That is actually logical enough if you do not particularly care for morality, virtue, decency or facts. A nasty result is that there is a very strong inverse correlation between the demographic expansion of monotheist doctrines and their actual merits, to the point that many of the most virulent (or by their own accounts, "succesful") have developed into full memetic diseases to be eventually purged from our midst.

A God that actually learns as time passes and changes with time makes far more logical sense. A god that tries multiple times to get a message across to humans is far more likely. One God that learns as time goes on is the most logical way things happen IMO.

If you must adopt monotheism, sure. But that happens at the expense of the "Capo di tutti Capi" model of deity. Which is a good thing, since such a model can only collapse under its own weight anyway.

 

[LuisDantas]

The elephant in the dark room:

One person only touches the ears, one person only touches the trunk, one person only touches the leg, one person only touches the tail,... no one can agree on what it is.

Another person isn't even touching the elephant.
"There is no elephant. Stop trying to figure out the elephant."

That is actually a valid point to raise.

If an elephant has to be pursued for it to be even perceived, how necessary is it to assume its existence, and how much of a right have people to demand its presumption of existence?

 

[LuisDantas]

Those silly little stories never did make much sense to me.

Just provide a light source, and the elephant is there for all to see. Not to mention the fact that even in the dark each individual can move on from that one part of the elephant to feel the rest of it, coming to the ultimate conclusion that it is indeed an elephant.

The elephant is a real animal in the real world which can be proven to be real through empirical evidence. The same cannot be stated for a god.

It was originally an attempt at making peace among various superficially conflicting claims that all presumed to be correct and supreme in some way or another.

God-beliefs are insane that way.

 

[dawny0826]

I don't think monotheism - the mainstream versions of its Abrahamic variety, at least - can be both true, accurate and important all at once. There is a serious logical contradiction in the attempt to give it all three atributes.

Differences between Abrahamic faiths doesn't negate that each is rooted in the belief of one God, the God of Abraham.

I self-identify as a monotheist. Unless I'm told by a Jew or Muslim that they don't identify as monotheistic, I have no evidence or reason to assume that they aren't.

Why? Because in order to quantify an entity we have to delimit it by some form of parameters. And yet those same doctrines that insist that there is just One True God also emphasize its supreme transcendence, the classic example being the claim that everything that exists needs a creator, the sole exception being their creator God himself.

So, how is it even conceivable that such an entity, presumably above any and all attempts of human classification and delimitation, somehow can only be correctly perceived as being one (as opposed to any other number, including none)? How can the claim be even attempted without presuming some form of human authority to decide what is proper divine form and what is not? And if we do accept that such human authority exists, what is then left of the transcendental nature of that deity?

This is where the spiritual element of faith factors in. Yes, God's Word was written by people. What non believers discount often is that for a believer, that Word is a living, spiritual thing. I believe in One God because of the evidence, both spiritual and physical, that I've seen.

It seems to me that there is a core mistake in attempting to have a rigid, well-defined conception of deity and then building a doctrine that relies on the accuracy of that conception.

For one thing, that is not very useful. Human beings are simply not likely to hold very similar conceptions of deity - or as I personally prefer to call it, of the sacred - and insisting that we nevertheless should act as if we did will only lead to pointless anxiety, fear, even moral dishonesty or at least the temptation to fall into it.

And that leads to a far greater problem than simple inaccuracy of doctrine. Insistence on the claim of universal truth and significance of such a minor and deeply personal matter as conceptions of deity compromises the very worth of any doctrine. All too quickly it becomes too busy in defending itself from the fragility of its own premises and the unavoidable consequences, and the validity of the teachings of even its most skilled, best meaning adherents is put to waste.

We all should be at peace with the simple contemplation that it is not for humans to act as wardens of specific, rigid, limited understandings of the sacred. Such an effort is both arrogant and demeaning, regardless of whatever some speculative truth about the nature of the sacred might be.

Surely, if even reasonably average human beings can easily be skilled enough to have various aspects according to the people that they interact with and the situations that they find themselves in, then there should be no doubt that a true deity (if such exists) can hardly be limited in its manifestations in ways that would be unreasonable even to humans?

Isn't it as arrogant and demeaning when atheists or agnostics belittle a believer's perception of God? By your own logic, it would be as asinine to assign a polytheistic or pantheistic label to God as well. Surely, there couldn't be truth to so many different versions of deity?

Any rigidness in and through faith that results in the oppression and harm of others isn't justified.

The spiritual journey is a personal journey that can't fully be defined or understood by anyone else. We have the right to our own understandings of God (or lack thereof) and can and should be confident in our beliefs and the labels for which we self-identify, as long as we are not harming others.

 

[The Holy Bottom Burp]

Based on how the universe especially Animals there would be to much in fighting between the gods to keep creation going. One God that is learning as it goes is far more likely. I also don't believe God designed anything. God created something new and watched it develop.

Interesting take Bob, god is temporal, god learns as he goes? Definitely not popular orthodox Christianity, 21st century theists go on about god being "beyond space and time" whatever that means. You sound a bit heretical!

 

[Vouthon]

The shift from polytheism (which saw gods behind every part of daily life) to transcendent monotheism (which removed divinity from the affairs of man into some extra-temporal dimension beyond space-time) ultimately helped to undermine the theocratic basis of ancient society and enabled the political order to emerge as a sphere distinct from religion, grounded in the will and collective conscience of the people.

By the early sixteenth century, it had led Christian thinkers to utter statements like the following by a Spanish Jesuit intellectual of the Salamanca School:

"...No king or monarch has or has had directly from God or from divine institution a political principality, but by the medium of human will and institution..."

- Domingo de Soto (Defensio Fidei, Book III, 1613)
​

Such reasoning would have been impossible in any pre-axial age polytheistic society. Take Ancient Rome, where worship of the Emperor was the official state cult and the Emperor was the Pontifex Maximus: the high priest of the Roman state, which was seen to be synonymous with the Roman polytheistic religion. Gods were everywhere - there were sea gods, land gods, gods of agriculture, war, peace, sex - you name it, the "gods" governed every facet of life. Religion was everywhere, embedded in society. The head of state was a priest-king whose legitimacy ultimately stemmed from his divine status.

The monotheism of Christianity completely undermined this worldview. God, through the Christian inheritance from Judaism, became in essence a transcendent "other" who was completely distinct from the earthly realm governed by men. All of the objects which ancient people had viewed as divinities were stripped of their sacral significance. When there's only one transcendent deity removed from the world, the entire world is thereby stripped of the sacred but equally opened up to new possibilities because man has freedom to chart his own path in, and with, it free from the "gods".

What's more, in the Christian religion God was thought to have become incarnated solely and uniquely in the son of a Jewish carpenter who had been executed as a condemned criminal - a man at the lowest level of the social ladder; a pauper riding about on a donkey without any political power. He alone was the Son of God.

This belief made it impossible to truly "deify" political rulers and the state in the way that ancient polytheistic peoples had with their priest-kings. The real and only Son of God, in the Christian mindset, hadn't had any earthly power at all.

Ideologically, the political order was stripped of any religious trappings or sacral underpinnings.

In time, this made it possible for secularism and atheism to emerge out of societies constructed on the basis of their monotheistic faith in an utterly "transcendent God" who had become physically manifested solely in a politically powerless Jewish peasant who had uttered the immortal words: "Render to God what is God's and to Caesar what is Caesar's".

This was summed up well in the book entitled The Disenchantment of the World by the sociologist Marcel Gauchet, who argued that monotheistic Christianity in particular should be viewed as "the religion of the end of religion" or the "religion for departing from religion" because it so thoroughly undermined the foundations of the ancient, polytheistic worldview in which there was no separation between church and state.

 

[Mister Silver]

Interesting take Bob, god is temporal, god learns as he goes? Definitely not popular orthodox Christianity, 21st century theists go on about god being "beyond space and time" whatever that means. You sound a bit heretical!

It is not a new concept. Anne Rice incorporated it into her fictional vampire chronicle novel "Memnoch the Devil."