Monotheism or Polytheism?

[Salty Booger]

Monotheism seems to be a common idea throughout human evolution, which makes perfect sense to me. I suppose we could deify other aspects of life, which people have done, but I don't see the purpose in it. Doing so seems to complicate the matter of Spirituality, in my opinion.

I suppose the question for you is, do you prefer one God or many Gods? Also, why do you believe polytheism exists/existed?

I have included a music video for your listening pleasure while you contemplate the questions above.

 

[Desert Snake]

Monotheism seems to be a common idea throughout human evolution, which makes perfect sense to me. I suppose we could deify other aspects of life, which people have done, but I don't see the purpose in it. Doing so seems to complicate the matter of Spirituality, in my opinion.

I suppose the question for you is, do you prefer one God or many Gods? Also, why do you believe polytheism exists/existed?

I have included a music video for your listening pleasure while you contemplate the questions above.

Monotheism meaning worship, of One God,

with...

Demogods [[angels,

Sometimes the Angels might just be called 'angels'...

So, what I consider monotheism [[One God of worship

 

[Eyes to See]

Monotheism seems to be a common idea throughout human evolution, which makes perfect sense to me. I suppose we could deify other aspects of life, which people have done, but I don't see the purpose in it. Doing so seems to complicate the matter of Spirituality, in my opinion.

I suppose the question for you is, do you prefer one God or many Gods? Also, why do you believe polytheism exists/existed?

I have included a music video for your listening pleasure while you contemplate the questions above.

Actually I would call the history of human religion devolution from pure worship.

The worship of one God was pretty unique to Judaism, and later on among early Christians, and today in the pure form of worship of Jehovah's Witnesses who are the restored form of the first century Christianity, and God's chosen people, as the Jews were at one time.. It definitely was not a pretty common idea in most of human society throughout recorded history. Most false religions have been based on polytheistic beliefs.

An interesting quote:

"Regarding ancient creation myths in general, it has been stated: “No myth has yet been found which explicitly refers to the creation of the universe, and those concerned with the organization of the universe and its cultural processes, the creation of man and the establishment of civilization are marked by polytheism and the struggles of deities for supremacy in marked contrast to the Heb. monotheism of Gn. 1-2.”—New Bible Dictionary, edited by J. Douglas, 1985, p. 247.

 

[THOD]

Umm... Pantheism?
Which for me is the same thing as atheism.
God is everything.
God is nothing.

 

[danieldemol]

Monotheism seems to be a common idea throughout human evolution, which makes perfect sense to me. I suppose we could deify other aspects of life, which people have done, but I don't see the purpose in it. Doing so seems to complicate the matter of Spirituality, in my opinion.

I suppose the question for you is, do you prefer one God or many Gods? Also, why do you believe polytheism exists/existed?

I have included a music video for your listening pleasure while you contemplate the questions above.

I prefer one because I was indoctrinated into monotheism. So its what feels natural to me

 

[THOD]

I prefer one because I was indoctrinated into monotheism. So its what feels natural to me

You are okay with resting in indoctrination?

 

[danieldemol]

You are okay with resting in indoctrination?

Well the only other options are resting on someone else's indoctrination eg pantheism, or instead rejecting indoctrination altogether and turning to agnostic/atheism which goes against my intuitive thought process, so I'll stick with the former

 

[THOD]

Well the only other options are resting on someone else's indoctrination eg pantheism, or instead rejecting indoctrination altogether and turning to agnostic/atheism which goes against my intuitive thought process, so I'll stick with the former

It seems like you're confusing the terms doctrine and indoctrination.
Doctrine is simply a set of beliefs.
It is possible to arrive at a certain set of beliefs after some questioning and critical thinking.
Indoctrination is the teaching of a belief for the sake of the belief, void of any critical thinking.

 

[bobhikes]

Monotheism seems to be a common idea throughout human evolution, which makes perfect sense to me. I suppose we could deify other aspects of life, which people have done, but I don't see the purpose in it. Doing so seems to complicate the matter of Spirituality, in my opinion.

I suppose the question for you is, do you prefer one God or many Gods? Also, why do you believe polytheism exists/existed?

I have included a music video for your listening pleasure while you contemplate the questions above.

I think you have it backwards, Polytheism is a common idea throughout human kind. Even today's religions that claim to be monotheistic have many types of God's some good, some bad. Some of today's religions claim one main god and many spiritual entities but that not really different from the mythologies of the past. There was always one main god and many other minor ones. The only difference being that the minor ones where gods and could work independently of the main God. The minor deities today work only towards the goal of the main God.

 

[danieldemol]

Indoctrination is the teaching of a belief for the sake of the belief, void of any critical thinking.

That's what pantheism looks like to me, a belief arrived at without critical thinking, hence my likening of it to monotheism.

 

[THOD]

That's what pantheism looks like to me, a belief arrived at without critical thinking, hence my likening of it to monotheism.

So you're saying that you tend to think monotheistically, that pantheism seems to be a belief that is settled upon without thinking critically, and that you are likening pantheism to monotheism in that way?
You're essentially saying that you, yourself, don't think critically.

 

[Erebus]

Doing so seems to complicate the matter of Spirituality, in my opinion.

I disagree, though it does depend on how you understand spirituality. There are a few issues faced by monotheism, particularly when you have an omnimax god, that just aren't relevant to polytheism.

The problem of evil is a classic example here. A monotheist who believes God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent has to contend with the issue of why their deity allows evil to exist. A polytheist doesn't usually have that problem as it's rare for a god to be entirely good. Those few who are entirely (or almost entirely) good aren't generally considered omnipotent.

I suppose the question for you is, do you prefer one God or many Gods?

Many gods for me, especially those gods who can be seen as synonymous with forces of nature. It makes the most sense to me.

Also, why do you believe polytheism exists/existed

That's a question I'm just not able to answer fully, particularly on an internet forum. I can only give my rough understanding.

It seems that polytheism evolved from the animism of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. They began with the notion that the world around them possessed some form of spirit or life-force. Trees, rocks, rivers and so on were seen as having souls of some form just as humans and animals did.

From that initial concept, they gradually added complexity and character to these spirits. They also began to add complexity and character to more abstract concepts such as death, love and war. These spirits were incorporated into mythologies* as powerful beings with their own personalities, history and goals. They became gods.


*An important note here: We have to be very careful about how we interpret mythology. There's a tendency for people to assume our ancestors took it all as literal truth. That's not necessarily the case. The extent to which these stories were taken literally seems to vary wildly between cultures and among people within a given culture.

To illustrate this, look at how people view the Bible. Some take it entirely literally, some view much of it as metaphorical. Ancient polytheists weren't much different.

 

[Revoltingest]

I prefer the idea of multiple gods.
1) A single god would lack company, & be lonely.
Humans are as ants & flies to a god....& would be poor company.
2) There could be zero, 1, or a whole pantheon of gods.
If we consider any given number equally likely, then
a number greater than 1 is more probable.
3) Multiple gods with different personalities is more interesting.

 

[Yerda]

Monotheism seems to be a common idea throughout human evolution, which makes perfect sense to me.

Isn't it the opposite though? I'm sure that monotheism is a relatively recent idea.

I suppose the question for you is, do you prefer one God or many Gods? Also, why do you believe polytheism exists/existed?

I'm a boring atheist and my opinions are just speculation but the world presents itself to us in a bewildering array of seemingly contradictory varieties. Perhaps some people find a polytheistic approach expresses this better.

Having said that, the idea of some kind of underlying unity to the world is quite attractive to me. One source with many faces. Some schools of Hinduism seem to point that way.

 

[Hellbound Serpiente]

I suppose the question for you is, do you prefer one God or many Gods? Also, why do you believe polytheism exists/existed?

As I believer in God, I feel like there is most likely just one God. If there's one thing I learned from experience, when multiple forces are operating on a single system, there is dissonance, variance, inconsistency and as such, it is nigh-impossible to run the system with perfect harmony. Take cycling, driving and such things, for example. If two or more individual are directing the bicycle or car at the same time, there has to be some inconsistency during cycling and/or driving, unless the multiple operators are in complete, perfect harmony with each other. However, that is not the case with our life and how things functions. Life and whole system is going on with perfect harmony.

Some people can say that why can't there multiple Gods who operate in complete and perfect harmony with each other? Sure, they can be. But for that, we have to make a baseless and highly unlikely assumption that their will is in complete and perfect alignment with each other. However, in my humble opinion, is extremely unlikely. As experience and logic has taught me, there is always some tension when two or more wills are acting upon something. A bicycle is highly unlikely to travel in a straight line harmoniously when two or more cyclists are exerting their influence on it at the same time.

Using Occams razor, I feel like the one God argument is comprised of less assumptions than multiple Gods theory, even if they both can be true. As such, I am drawn towards one God theory.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Monotheism seems to be a common idea throughout human evolution, which makes perfect sense to me. I suppose we could deify other aspects of life, which people have done, but I don't see the purpose in it. Doing so seems to complicate the matter of Spirituality, in my opinion.

I suppose the question for you is, do you prefer one God or many Gods? Also, why do you believe polytheism exists/existed?

I have included a music video for your listening pleasure while you contemplate the questions above.

Monotheism has been comparatively rare in history, especially strict monotheism. Even many of the monotheistic religions are functionally polytheistic with their pantheons and hierarchies of sacred beings (saints, angels and sages). It doesn't seem like monotheism really comes naturally to humans. It usually has to be forced on a population, which is how the Abrahamic religions really started. The Jews were originally Canaanite polytheists and Yahweh was the offspring of the major Canaanite deity, El. But eventually the cult of Yahweh grew really strong and they kicked out the other members of the pantheon and enforced henotheism and then monotheistic worship of Yahweh, such as under King Josiah's religious reforms. These people, like the Maccabees, were really what we'd call religious fanatics and similar to modern day jihadist militants in their ideology. It's just that they won the conflict in their day so we remember them as heroes and not lunatics and terrorists.

I prefer polytheism as it's more natural to human psychology and more logical. Classical monotheism, especially when paired with dualism, poses too many problems that polytheism doesn't have.

 

[Gargovic Malkav]

When people show me two gods, I see a Third One.
The Third One is the true definition of the word,
the others are just bearers of titles because they are revered and feared by many.

Whenever they get along, the Third One has given them peace.
Whenever they fight, the Third One has made them forget about the benefits of peace.
Whenever one of them loses the fight, the Third One has broken the sword of the loser.
Whenever the victor becomes too proud of their victory, the Third One has made them forget about the reason of their victory.

This is an example of how the signs manifest themselves to me.

 

[Quintessence]

As others have mentioned, monotheism was/is something of an aberration in human thought - people naturally understand that the world is composed of distinct objects and concepts and in polytheism, these various aspects of nature or social concepts are deified. We understand that trees are not rivers, that rivers are not warfare, that warfare is not creative inspiration, and so forth. They are different things and different gods. Monotheism (in most cases soft monotheism) became dominant in Western culture through a series of historical quirks, as I understand it. It's been a long while since I've read it, but a decent academic work on the subject is: God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism by Jonathan Kirsch

 

[Brickjectivity]

Monotheism seems to be a common idea throughout human evolution, which makes perfect sense to me. I suppose we could deify other aspects of life, which people have done, but I don't see the purpose in it. Doing so seems to complicate the matter of Spirituality, in my opinion.

I suppose the question for you is, do you prefer one God or many Gods? Also, why do you believe polytheism exists/existed?

Up in the night sky there are beautiful but unfathomable patterns of lights. All around is a world that functions in ways we don't understand. I think people, until modern times, understood that life was filled with questions without answers. To us this feels odd, because we are used to having our questions answered. We are like knowledge druggies. They expected to live and die not knowing. They wrote stories without answers I think because they saw questions as more real than answers. The question "How many gods are there?" is more real than the answers to it. Is that strange?

 

[danieldemol]

You're essentially saying that you, yourself, don't think critically.

I'm saying that neither the monotheist (in this case me) nor the pantheist think critically.

But both of these statements are demonstrable using critical thought process because neither is there any evidence for a single supreme ruler that is both omnipotent and omniscient, nor is there any evidence that the universe has a consciousness, a will etc.

The universe is nothing more than a collection of crude matter. If you wish to call crude divisible matter God of course that's your choice, but the universe is quite an uncaring place, so you would be having adoration for something which will ultimately destroy you without the slightest concern or care, and that strikes me as an oddity.