Why Isn't monotheism the first form of spirituality?

[The Kilted Heathen]

Attempting to answer as I read it:

Who is "we"?

All of humanity, I imagine.

1. "Classical monotheism" does no such thing.

Sure it does. God is removed from reality, having created all of it. He is above reality, rather than a part of it.

2. Overall unity is "meaningless"?

How often does Sunday Mass or the Pope's Easter vigil relate to August 5th of any given year? Homilies try to tie the bible's lessons to daily life, but ultimately most people aren't thinking of Paul's fifth letter to a Greek village when they're working their 9-5.

3. I don't see what that has to do with monotheism, per se, or how monotheism even leads to that viewpoint, necessarily or otherwise.

ONE Catholic, apostolic church. Not several thousand churches the world over, but one.

Australian Aboriginal culture is tens of thousands of years older. I'm sure African religions are about as old. Maybe there's some cultural bias on your part here?

Not really, no. The earliest known notions of spirituality come from Homo heidelbergensis, who performed funerals for their dead somewhere around 100,000 BCE. Neanderthals took this further by excarnating their dead around 98,000 BCE. Comparatively, the earliest funerary rites in Australia were at 40,000 BCE.

In terms of religion - structured faith - the absolute earliest known depiction of a deity is the Aurignacian Löwenmensch figurine, found in Germany and dating to around 38,000 BCE. The first notions of organized religion comes in at 9831 BCE, with the Neolithic Revolution. This reached mainland Africa around 7,000 BCE, though the revolution itself began in the Fertile Crescent some 3,000 years before that.
@Saint Frankenstein @Satans_Serrated_Edge @Lorgar-Aurelian @beenherebeforeagain

 

[Lorgar-Aurelian]

You mean south Asians, East Asians, Africans, Australians and New Guineans, and Native Americans didn't have any religious or spiritual "notions" before the Indo-Europeans came up with them and exported them worldwide?

Edit: sorry, my computer is loading slow today, and I didn't see others had already addressed this...

A Better way of saying it was the earliest evidence we have of anything we might recognize as spiritual today starts in Europe.

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

Monotheism is a lot older than commonly thought. Many African and indigenous tribes are effectively monotheist (of a sort) in that they believe in a Creator and subordinate spiritual beings such as in traditional West African religion, some indigenous American religions and Australian Aboriginal religion, which is similar to what we see in most of Christianity. The oldest (thought to be) religious artifacts are of buxom females, thought to be divine mother figurines.

This assumes that indigenous religions of some African tribes and First Nations haven't altered at all in the hundred or even thousands of years since they encountered Christianity and/or Islam which is tenuous to say the least. This also assumes that these indigenous cultures view any Great Maker as a 'god' as opposed to a spirit which is more powerful than others in the world.

If you're referring to the Venus figures, as with most artifacts from prehistory, there's a lot of guess work - it's also worth pointing out that claiming these are reminiscent of a monotheistic mother goddess cult, there's a fair amount of projection on the part of monotheists. They tend to assume that because there's is the 'one true way' that monotheism is natural or the norm ergo other cultures must have been predominantly monotheist. Monotheism, until we receive concrete evidence to the contrary, is a recent phenomenon in human sociology, only emerging in the last 3-5 millennia.

The idea of hard polytheism with discrete pantheons is probably a result of classical studies of Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern cultures at certain time periods. The reality is a lot murkier than that.

Actually it's more common than you'd think. Shinto has an identifiable core pantheon consisting of a small number of kami (well, small in comparison to the sheer number of folk, ancestral & nature kami who have smaller shrines across the country). Religious Taoism also has a pantheon of deities & celestial beings commonly consisting of the Three Sovereigns, Five Emperors & Three Pure Ones, as did Wuism generally although the venerated beings did tend to change as dynasties rose & fell. Sometimes it was Shang Di, other times it was Heaven, other times it was ancestral emperors like those of the Han. The same could be argued of Hinduism as well - a lot of gods there.

 

[Kenny]

I’ve often wondered why monotheism isn’t the first form of religion we see historically if things like christianity are true. You would think if God only wanted us to worship him and would punish us otherwise he’d be sure to be the very first spiritual concept humans understood.



Of course this doesn’t really work against a Universalist god. One that isn’t overly concerned with how you worship but is more concerned with how you behave. After all this sort of God would be fine with our understanding evolving over time so he wouldn’t have to make sure he was the first one we thought of.



What do you think? Do you agree or disagree and why?

I think the problem here is data (verifiable).

For an example, let us take the TaNaKh. If the verbal transmission of history is correct, then the first few generations were, in fact, monotheistic.

Since writing wasn't used, in those days, we have no way to verify this issue. In other words, there is absolutely no way to say that monotheism was the first form and visa versa. Since I'm a Christian, i would trust the TaNaKh to be accurate in that it was the first form.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

For an example, let us take the TaNaKh.

The Tankah dates to the second century BCE; 150 BCE. By this time, it has been preceded by literally thousands of years of polytheism.

 

[Lorgar-Aurelian]

I think the problem here is data (verifiable).

For an example, let us take the TaNaKh. If the verbal transmission of history is correct, then the first few generations were, in fact, monotheistic.

Since writing wasn't used, in those days, we have no way to verify this issue. In other words, there is absolutely no way to say that monotheism was the first form and visa versa. Since I'm a Christian, i would trust the TaNaKh to be accurate in that it was the first form.

We have pretty much no reason outside of faith to trust the Tanakh, numerous events in the Torah didn't happen so it's pretty safe to assume the tanakh is a collection of parables at best and outright lies at worst.

Numerous civilizations predate Judaism, numerous religious predate Judaism. Infact Judaism as we know it is roughly as old as Buddhism.

 

[Kenny]

We have pretty much no reason outside of faith to trust the Tanakh, numerous events in the Torah didn't happen so it's pretty safe to assume the tanakh is a collection of parables at best and outright lies at worst.

Numerous civilizations predate Judaism, numerous religious predate Judaism. Infact Judaism as we know it is roughly as old as Buddhism.

Yes, but in every case, we are still in a quandary. Both Buddhism and Judaism began with oral tradition. It would be an unequal weight of measurement to call Judaism nothing but outright lies but Buddhism truth.

And just because it wasn't written doesn't mean that it wasn't as old as other religions. I personally believe it all began as a monotheistic belief system and changing over time. Can't back it up, but we are on equal footing in this case.

 

[Lorgar-Aurelian]

Yes, but in every case, we are still in a quandary. Both Buddhism and Judaism began with oral tradition. It would be an unequal weight of measurement to call Judaism nothing but outright lies but Buddhism truth.

And just because it wasn't written doesn't mean that it wasn't as old as other religions. I personally believe it all began as a monotheistic belief system and changing over time. Can't back it up, but we are on equal footing in this case.

No we'd be on equal footing if I held up that one of these beliefs has the right to claim authentic history without evidence.

 

[Deidre]

It could be that different cultures had different revelations about spirituality/faith and how they interpreted a deity. (or set of deities)

 

[arthra]

I’ve often wondered why monotheism isn’t the first form of religion we see historically if things like christianity are true. You would think if God only wanted us to worship him and would punish us otherwise he’d be sure to be the very first spiritual concept humans understood.
Of course this doesn’t really work against a Universalist god. One that isn’t overly concerned with how you worship but is more concerned with how you behave. After all this sort of God would be fine with our understanding evolving over time so he wouldn’t have to make sure he was the first one we thought of.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree and why?

I believe there is an ancient monotheism that appears in religions that also make mention of various gods.. some of these I believe were a way of describing attributes of God.. but let me suggest an article here:

From wikipedia:

"Quasi-monotheistic claims of the existence of a universal deity date to the Late Bronze Age, with Akhenaten's Great Hymn to the Aten. A possible inclination towards monotheism emerged during the Vedic period[16] in Iron-Age South Asia. The Rigveda exhibits notions of monism of the Brahman, in particular, in the comparatively late tenth book, dated to the early Iron Age, e.g. in the Nasadiya sukta."

Monotheism - Wikipedia

 

[Dawnofhope]

I think the problem here is data (verifiable).

For an example, let us take the TaNaKh. If the verbal transmission of history is correct, then the first few generations were, in fact, monotheistic.

Since writing wasn't used, in those days, we have no way to verify this issue. In other words, there is absolutely no way to say that monotheism was the first form and visa versa. Since I'm a Christian, i would trust the TaNaKh to be accurate in that it was the first form.

Arguments about the authenticity of the Tanakh aside, the main point made you have made hits the nail on the head for me. There is a limit to how far back we can go to verify with relative certainty whether a culture was monotheistic or polytheistic. Even if it we find evidence that a culture was polytheistic, there is still a reasonable likelihood the culture believed in a supreme Deity judging from what we know about ancient cultures.

We can cite the sacred texts of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism but will they meet widely agreed standards of historic reliability.

Lets say we can agree that a religion 10,000 years ago was either poly or monotheistic. Human history goes back much further and so we still haven't answered the question.

 

[Kenny]

No we'd be on equal footing if I held up that one of these beliefs has the right to claim authentic history without evidence.

It sounds like, by this statement, you are holding on to the position that polytheism was first without any evidence to support your position. That is flimsy footing.

 

[Quintessence]

How often does Sunday Mass or the Pope's Easter vigil relate to August 5th of any given year? Homilies try to tie the bible's lessons to daily life, but ultimately most people aren't thinking of Paul's fifth letter to a Greek village when they're working their 9-5.

When I was framing that second bit, I was moreso thinking about monotheistic pantheism, whose theology is immanent and often naturalistic instead of transcendent and supernaturalistic. It seems to me that to reconcile that with the diversity of reality, you have to ignore the level of reality we perceive on a day-to-day basis (where we know rocks are not rivers and rivers are not squirrels) and think about reality on the subatomic level. I call that meaningless, because it's not how we experience things as we go about our lives.

Regardless, it just seems plain counterintuitive to witness a diverse reality - where there are trees, foxes, humans, clouds, computers, and skyscrapers - and then create a system of theology where there is one deity when the reality we experience is multiple. Sometimes, I frame it this way - monotheism is like saying that my mother and your mother and everybody else's mother is somehow the same (even though it clearly isn't).

 

[sealchan]

I’ve often wondered why monotheism isn’t the first form of religion we see historically if things like christianity are true. You would think if God only wanted us to worship him and would punish us otherwise he’d be sure to be the very first spiritual concept humans understood.



Of course this doesn’t really work against a Universalist god. One that isn’t overly concerned with how you worship but is more concerned with how you behave. After all this sort of God would be fine with our understanding evolving over time so he wouldn’t have to make sure he was the first one we thought of.



What do you think? Do you agree or disagree and why?

I would argue that religion developed out of the extraordinary experiences of individuals who found deep meaning and motivation out of some sort of encounter with another reality. These personal experiences found value in a collective setting to the extent that the personal experience spoke to the community. Experience became story, ritual and law.

The idea that behind all such spiritual experience there is a single, focused intelligence probably developed as the idea that each person was a single Central intelligence did. It also developed as larger and larger groups of people found themselves in a single collective governed by a single, divine individual. Once the notion that one person, usually a man, could be the focus of all that power and that he could wield it more or less in a tyrannical way (without a more connected or cooperative care for his people), then it became evident that the was a pyramid of power and that as on Earth, so in heaven.

With the removal of the Pantheon we lost the feminine principle of spiritual reality. In its most extreme form the monotheistic, patriarchal god's slogan might be: One God to rule them all, one God who is the best, one God only to worship and to the darkness with the rest.

 

[Robert Vincelette]

The difference between monotheism and polytheism is made more complicated by a modified model of Plato's analogy of the cave. In Plato's cave we are immobilized so that we can only see the shadows of objects passing us by outside the cave. The shadows seem real but only the objects themselves that we can't see that are outside the cave are real. Suppose the cave in on a planet with several stars in the sky. One object casts several shadows so that we cannot tell that the several objects are really shadows of one object. The shadows seem different but they are not. For example, it is possible that a low class trailer park and a colony of typhoid bacilli might be shadows of the same unity outside the cave. They have much in common. The low class trailer park digests and consumes by poisoning the environment around it by excreting noise pollution, cigarette smoke, garbage from junk food wrappers and liquor containers, etc the same way the malignant bacilli excrete its poisons that break down tissue around it. What is more, under a microscope, the typhoid bacilli look remarkably like a low class trailer park does from an airplane.
Thus, polytheism might be many shadows of one god outside the cave.

 

[sealchan]

When I was framing that second bit, I was moreso thinking about monotheistic pantheism, whose theology is immanent and often naturalistic instead of transcendent and supernaturalistic. It seems to me that to reconcile that with the diversity of reality, you have to ignore the level of reality we perceive on a day-to-day basis (where we know rocks are not rivers and rivers are not squirrels) and think about reality on the subatomic level. I call that meaningless, because it's not how we experience things as we go about our lives.

Regardless, it just seems plain counterintuitive to witness a diverse reality - where there are trees, foxes, humans, clouds, computers, and skyscrapers - and then create a system of theology where there is one deity when the reality we experience is multiple. Sometimes, I frame it this way - monotheism is like saying that my mother and your mother and everybody else's mother is somehow the same (even though it clearly isn't).

Ironically I think that what you have stated here is the essence of the mystical tradition...Namely the essential unity underlying all distinctions.

This mystical unity was likely an early personal experience as it is something that anyone can experience quite apart from any religious belief system.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

Thus, polytheism might be many shadows of one god outside the cave.

I've seen a lot of applications of "The Cave" that were bad, but that one's right up there. There are far too many problems presented if all polytheistic gods are "many shadows of one god".

 

[sealchan]

We can also see in the book of Genesis that the experience of the one God emerged from the separate experience of the patriarchs up until Moses where collective experience of the other, the divine were had via the Exodus.

The author of Genesis literally took available stories from other polytheistic cultures and crafted a narrative that features only a single God. The author doesn't make this explicit as he does the evolution of God from personal to communal.

 

[Liu]

I've seen a lot of applications of "The Cave" that were bad, but that one's right up there. There are far too many problems presented if all polytheistic gods are "many shadows of one god".

Would you care to elaborate? From my understanding, it only leads to problems if you consider "the divine" of pantheism one single conform being. I'm pretty much agnostic about what the divine exactly is - actually I get more and more convinced that it's outside of human comprehension anyway - , but just being a pantheist doesn't mean breaking everything down to a "simple" principle, it can also mean saying that while the one divine is one coherent entity it's still as complex as it's for a polytheist. If not more so - to me, the separations between different deities/parts of reality that polytheists make often rather seem like ways to reduce complexity.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

Would you care to elaborate?

Sure.

To do such - all gods are the reflection or shadow of one god - quite literally ignores everything that is known and believed of the gods. Significant elements are ignored; if Thor and Odin are the same deity, just different shadows, how is Thor the son of Odin? How could Thor be birthed by Jord, if they are the same? The inevitable answer of "Those are just stories" could be given, but at that point you might as well not be recognizing Thor, Odin and Jord. In fact, you wouldn't be; because to recognize those Gods is to recognize them as they are. Parentage and all.

That's essentially what pantheism is; the Universe is a manifestation of God, and all gods are permissible as "aspects" of that god. But the gods are not permitted in full, they're included in name only.

while the one divine is one coherent entity it's still as complex as it's for a polytheist. If not more so - to me, the separations between different deities/parts of reality that polytheists make often rather seem like ways to reduce complexity.

I don't think polytheism is that complex at all.