I’m an atheist, so I’m not coming at this from the same direction that others might.
It seems to me, if I felt the universe was too complicated to have formed without a creator, then it’s also too complex to have been formed by one creator. Surely a great degree in specialist creating skills would be needed, suggesting a creator force of millions of superhuman beings, does it not? I mean, even something as simple as a stone pyramid wasn’t built by one person.
Who supervises all those millions of superhuman beings?
The God that monotheists believe in is the kind of entity that there can be only one of by definition. You can’t have more than one Almighty.
You’re coming very close to the hypothesis that our universe is likely to be a simulation, run by aliens. That’s a real possibility, and the only formulation of any kind of “god” hypothesis that I think has any credibility.
Technically perhaps this would not be supernatural, but I think again it’s the only formulation of “supernatural” that makes any sense. The technology involved would obviously be so far beyond ours that it’s unimaginable, and the aliens and their technology would exist literally outside our universe, possibly in a universe where the laws of physics are different.
And of course, the notion of singular/plural discrete entities might not apply to the aliens running the simulation, since their civilization would have progressed far beyond natural evolution into - god knows what.
I never understood why the change from polytheism to monotheism was considered such a great conceptual advance. But assuming it was, it is only a tiny further step to atheism.
Incidentally, the commandments don’t quite say there is only one god. Yahweh says only that thou shalt have no god before me. That seems to open it up to having many gods, but that one must come first.
Occam’s razor. Assuming you’re going to posit supernatural beings as the cause for observed phenomena, it seems more sensible to me to posit only one supernatural being than to posit multiple supernatural beings.
I’m an atheist, so… am I allowed to comment?
It boils down to Jewish history. Any time something bad happened, they moved toward monotheism and apocalypse beliefs.
Northern Israel was wiped out by the Assyrians, so Jews fled to Judah, and they brought with them “monolatrism”, the belief in worshipping only one god. This does not mean they didn’t believe in any other gods, but any other Jewish gods became archangels. (This is a very simplistic way of putting it. I’m sure someone will talk about the origins of El, Yahweh, Asherah, etc.) It helped that the king of Judah at the time was very young (and despite not being the high priest, had influence over the religion).
Later came the Babylonian invasion, which captured high ranking Jews (not all of them). Then came the Persians, which defeated the Babylonians and occupied Judah, but treated the Jews much nicer. Their religion, Zoroastrianism, had two gods: one good, one evil. Sound familiar? Demote the evil deity to Satan, and… return and make modifications to the official religion.
Judaism used to be a typical Canaanite religion with a chief storm god with a host of warrior deities. Presumably during that period, the usual “just so” answers emerged. The religion was modified over time.
Isn’t that like saying that it is more sensible that Intel has one computer programmer than a variety of computer programmers that specialize in different areas?
I agree with Czarcasm, I can’t follow the logic where One makes more sense than Many. To me many would probably explain things better.
With One, the creator appears to be a “Right Bastard” and not worthy of worship except out of fear and dread. With many at least them you get the capriciousness of life under such figures.
My understanding is that the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all hold their God to be omnipotent and omniscient. If your deity knows everything, and has unlimited power and ability, there’s no need for there to be more than one deity.
My understanding is that in Abrahamic monotheistic religions, there is only one God, but there are many supernatural beings who serve him.
Most polytheistic religions had a “head god”. Odin, Zeus, Jupiter and the like. I’m not sure what the real difference is between a god who serves the king of gods, and an angel who serves the one god is. What, ultimately, is the difference between Thor and Michael?
Isn’t this a bit like saying “I never understood why the change from polygamy to monogamy was considered such a great conceptual advance. But assuming it was, it is only a tiny further step to celibacy”?
Only if you’ve only heard of women by rumor and rough description.
My understanding is that, for the vast majority of cases, no god started out all-powerful and all-seeing and all-knowing. In fact, if evidence pointed to godlike beings, I would find it easier to believe in multiple gods that are very powerful than in one god with the Triple-All.
It would probably be a lot simpler if they did just have one programmer—with unlimited time and abilities.
Just like it would be a lot simpler if we had a universal food that satisfied everyone’s tastes. The problem with the “one god is easier” premise is that the aspects that one god is said to have just don’t work in real life.
Do we, in fact, have anyone on the SDMB who genuinely believes in multiple gods?
If we take the world we live in as given, and ask how many entities are ultimately responsible for its existence, is there anyone here who would answer a number other than 0 or 1?
If they answer “one”, because they follow Christianity, what do you think the answer would be if they believed in angels?
Are there any religions of note that allow for more than one deity to exist? Since we are (for the most part) influenced heavily by our environment, you would almost have to invent your own religion to believe in multiple gods.
Doesn’t Hinduism allow for the existence of other Gods? I know it isn’t really polytheistic but I remember some key phrase about allowing for the existence of other Gods.
There are, at least in the trinitarian view of Christianity adhering to the Nicene Creed and the Quicunque Vult, actually three individual and “consubstantial persons” in Christianity, notwithstanding Satan, who, if not actually a god at least has plenary authority over his domain. (The supposed ‘mystery’ that they are one and the same is really just a tacit admission that the theological underpinnings are broken and cannot be resolved by logic and reason, a common tact where religious believe contradicts itself or objective evidence.) Regardless, this bundled collection has all of the acumen required to make and presumably run the universe, if not well at least consistently.
This all begs the question: “If there is but one god, why is there a world?” As a palette on which to draw a motile artwork to impress others, a venue to compete for followers, or an adjunct to a higher plain of omnipotent beings, the world and humanity within it makes some kind of sense; we are not the audience but players, vying for the approval of this god or that one to satisfy their own generally petty egos, or servants to partake in some mortal shenanigans in an elaborate game of existential chess. If there is but one singular god, however, that created all rules and material within the world, of what possible use would we be, and what praise and worship would even be meaningful to such a being? Such a belief inevitably paints the monotheistic god as terminally narcissistic, creating the world and the lives within it just to celebrate himself even though such creatures are fundamentally incapable of appreciating the expanse of the universe and the complexity of it in any meaningful way.
There is, of course, no objective evidence for any gods, at least insofar as the omniscient and tantrum-prone bratty children they are almost invariably presented as by organized religions. The theistic animism of many supposed “primitive” cultures is at least sensible as a pre-scientific way of trying to explain real world phenomena and exert some agency in it. Hierarchically-organized religions, on the other hand, really serve as a little more than a way of controlling groups of people exceeding tribal dimensions where individuals cannot be held to immediate account via the imposition of arbitrary rules, divine punishments, and the imposition of guilt for disobeying the pre-determined order of things.
That modern science emerging from the European Enlightenment period tried and has consistently failed to determine a divinity in the order and structure of the natural world consistent with prior religious teaching and doctrine demonstrates that not only is there not an evidence for a Judeo-Christian god (or Zoroastrianism, or any other monotheistic belief system) but that there is fundamentally no need for a divine personality to create and run the world. Even if there is some ‘higher consciousness’ that generated the universe as we know it, it would not have any characteristics or motivations recognizable to us, and certainly wouldn’t be demanding worship or expecting us to seek a comprehension of it.
Stranger