I’ve been here for alittle while, and have yet to start a thread. So here goes. This is a question going out to all you religous dopers out there (I hope i don’t regret this) :). Also, anyone who is not religious but has participated in religious debates is welcome to respond. How do Monotheistic religions explain polytheism. Why do those other people worship multiple gods? I’ve heard the reply that it is because Satan decieves them. But wouldn’t it be easier for Satan to just get them to worship one god?
What I’m looking for is a two fold debate.
how/why do religions explain those who worship other gods.
how/why did this split devolop and why has it lasted so long.
This is something of a quetion, but I expect a debate to form around it. I thought I’d save time and just post it directly here.
Thanks
As far as we know, polytheism has been around longer than monotheism. It may only have started off with the idea that certain places or things were home to a particular kind of spirit, and then people ascribed more and more power to those spirits, elevating them to the status of gods. Places, things, events, concepts, people . . . all of them had a particular god or goddess that ruled them.
Throw in the patterns of the night sky, and our habit of finding patterns where none exist, and you can see where multiples link up with multiples all over the place.
The first reference I know of to monotheism was a Pharoah (Amun-Ra? The father of Tutankhamun and husband of Nefertiti), who tried to force his people into monotheism. Didn’t work out so well for him.
I read in a Philosophy textbook that one of the theories on the origin of monotheism was as follows.
Tribe A is at war with Tribe B. So A says to B; “My Gods are so powerful, they will defeat yours in a second.” and B says; “Oh yeah, well I have ONE God, and He is All-powerful, and he is the only God who really exists, so you A’s are all Godless, powerless and nyah!”
I’ve always wondered why I was taught in school that monotheism was a sign of a society’s advancement, eg the amun-ra thing and how much of a “backward slide” it was when they reverted to polytheism. It is just a case of western society being the “pinacle” of civilisation What do you guys think?
Well, the Midrash says that idolatry (and, by extension, polytheism) began when someone decided that the heavenly bodies, since they were G-d’s servants, deserved honor due to their status as such. Future generations corrupted this idea (which was, according to Judaic theology, wrong to begin with; only the master himself is worthy of worship) to worshipping the heavenly bodies as powers unto themselves. Presumably the anthromorphization of these powers was a later stage of this line of thinking.
As for why it has lasted so long, it’s probably a common impulse in human psychology to wish to latch onto the visible and tangible rather than searching for or believing in the essentially ethereal.
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
Well I must say that I agree with lunasea, I inherently don’t see why believing in only one god is more reasonable or theologically “correct” than believing in multiple gods.
This is pretty acurate, if a little simplified. Primitave man needed a way to explain how things occurred. Orignal ideas about divinity are very confused among primitive people. Individual dieties were not clearly concieved nor distinguished from one another. The only real distinction comes from localization. Every spot or object that arouses the fancy of primitave man seems to be a place of gods. These local gods and fetishes weren’t distinctly idividual. Many had the same names. *“Among the Israelites and Phoenicains many gods were called El (plural, Elohim) and other were called by the Phoenicians, Baal, the lord. ‘Despite the identity of names all these Baals counted as quite distinct beings. Often nothing more was added to distinguish them than the name of the place i nwhich the god in question was worshiped’”*From Pietshmann, Geschichte de Phonizier.
Polytheism only developed when art and skill had devolped enough to give form to these seperate gods. This allowed people to keep them seperate in their mind, the invisible became visible. The gods were permanently distinguished and confusion among them became impossible. It was actually easier for peopple to jump from this primitave conception of god to monotheism than from polytheism to monotheism.
There are many gods which Christians reject. I just believe in one less god then they do. The reasons that you might give for your atheism toward the Roman gods are likely the same reasons I would give for not believing in Jesus.
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
G-d, whatever his reasons, did not want to create a bunch of robotic yes-men when he created humans. He wanted creatures with free choice which were capable of deciding on their own whether they would follow him or not.
Oh, that one’s easy. God wants you to choose Him of you’re own free will, so He doesn’t make you believe the right God if you get it wrong. People may be misled by charismatic leaders of “false religions” who preach false doctrine to better use their followers for their personal gain. Another possibility is that a “false doctrine” may be more attractive than the “true” one (often a charge leveled by fundamental Christians who object to the “everybody can go to heaven” stance of some more liberal religions). Or they can explain it by the psychological attractiveness of specialists (as I mentioned); having a bunch of little specialist Gods somehow seems like you’ll get more personal attention. It’s like why people pray to saints instead of just God (I am not saying Catholics are polythiests). Or maybe people who worship the “wrong God” are overly influenced by personal reasons; family traditions, stubborness, fear, etc. There’s a ton of reasons why people can explain why others don’t worship the “right” God, most of them unflattering.
Akhenaten was the Nefertiti’s husband and the pharoah who instigated the movement towards the worship of solely Ra. Perhaps Amun-Ra is a nickname, if you will. I have never heard the name, but I am sure that Akhenaten is the “proper” name of the Pharoah in question.
What do you guys think?