The Trouble With Monotheism??????

Dauer, the world already has, many times over. Just forgetting the war against terror, because it's too recent, violent and pointless crimes can justified by:

- science and non-religious philosophies (social Darwinism, some forms of communism)

- Racism, the need for a scapegoat and fear of people different to us ( the holocaust in nazi Germany - although the nazis tried like hell to form a religious/mythological basis for nazism, but their campaign was mainly effective for other reasons ( such as mass starvation and the inherent fear of the jews) )


There are many, many examples and reasons which people create that are non-religious. I'd get into it in more detail but I have work to do . Sorry (stop smiling, damn you)

Perhaps work can wait a little bit longer. To answer your second set of questions:

a) People would find ways to persecute people who didn't believe, whose beliefs didn't match up with the standard ( heresy), or who are different. It's almost impossible for a group to share entirely the same belief because people view the world in other ways. Think of the inquisition, or just how many heretics had bee burnt to death in the middle ages. THink of the witch hunts in Salem and Old England. People are always afraid of people different to them, and

Also, think of Ireland where it the fold have just traditionally shared different forms of Christianity ( there are also political factors here, but the religion doesn't make it any easier) .

b) My god, my god, my god. Two words : Holy war. Think of the Crusades, for example. Even these days monotheistic religions clash violently.

Kind of comes back to my question - my impression is that monotheism is more prone to religious violence. Why?

My feeling is that quite a few monotheistic religions have a philosophy along the lines of "have no god other than me" with eternal condemnation or other terrible punishments offered to anybody who strays, so that people are more likely to go to great lengths to ensure that the religion is maintained, and that children and loved ones won't stray. I mean, think about it like this: If you have to choose between torturing or killing somebody for five minutes and risking somebody you love being tortured for eternity, which would you choose?

Also, perhaps the idea of having one god reflects the idea of having one ruler, and is more common in those societies. I'm not sure about this and it wouldd need to be tested ( that is, somebody look it up).

That said, I'm not sure I agree completely with that statement, Dlowan. It would be nice to have some statistics. There are plenty of polytheistic religions which use fear and violence to ensure compliane. One of my host fathers came froma tribe in Nigeria which used a mixture of christian and the traditionally polytheistic faiths, and was telling about a time the folks in his village killed a women they thought was a witch. Many other polytheistic faiths have traditionally participate inrituals involving blood sacrifice. The Aztecs and the Incas were tremendously bloody, and that in order to placate a number of gods, rather than just one. .

Yeah - as you wil see if you read my introduction to this thread, I am not claiming that polytheism is less violent - I specifically mentioned 'orrible sacrifices and such - I merely have a belief that monotheistic cultures are more violent about imposing their god on others.....

As I said in the intro, I stand to be corrected.

But I never made the claim you are challenging.

ok, sorry then

well, I'll stick with my first two reasons then.

I also think that we'd need more evidence to be able to say this. The ancient Mesoamericans, again.

Many "historians" of pre-historic times are convinced that human sacrifice became a common adjunct of fertility rites conducted at planting time so as to assure the harvest. According to such authorities, violence and bloodshed have been handmaidens of the gods since ancient times.

I do believe the Wiley Wabbit, however, has a point of the vehement, and frequently violent assertions of exclusivity by the fanatics of monotheism.

Belatedly removed to lessen the impact of this blatant evidence of encroaching senility . . .

heard you the first time --heehee....

She does have a point, Setanta, but I'm not so sure that it only occurs in monotheistic cultures. Claims of exclusivity and the resultant violence can also result from favouring one god amongst a pantheon. What we really need is some statistics.

Again, the three (or 2 and a haalf, since Judaism isn't so wide spread) major monotheistic world religions all derive from Genesis and the same idea of this vengeful god . Also, they all originate during a very bloody historical period in an extremely bloody culture. As such, i don't know if it's a good idea to generalise from these to all monotheistic religions. If christianity and Islamicism hadn't been so successful, would you have still came to those conclusions? I'm not saying your conclusions are wrong and that isn't intended as a rhetorical question. Would you have?


Dlowan, I'm not trying to attack you or your opinion and I'm no expert on religion or spirituality either. All I'm saying is that it's probably not a good idea to draw conclusions before we have all the relevent material, or attribute it entirely to religion when there are also a series of political factors to consider. It's very difficult to completely distinguish between what is politically expedient and what just occurs as a result of genuine religious faith. Which returns to an earlier point you were discussing earlier, I suppose.

My 2 cents for what they are worth ( not counting inflation) :

I see religion as being the work of man not the work of god. The hand of a human put down the writings of old texts and scrolls not an omnipotent source.

Religions from the earliest of times tried to do 3 things.

1) Explain the unknown
2) Control the fear associated with the unknown
3) Extend a new fear through controlling the unknown that would induce moral structure

As time has progressed science has been able to explain more and more of the unknown. As science progresses in any civilization on any habitable planet the need for and belief in ancient religions will diminish. The unfortunate side effect of this is that as the need for and belief in religions digresses so does the moral structure that came with it so as time has gone on, in particular over the last 40 years or so generation after generation is being brought up to see the world much differently than the generation before them and so lots of ancillary morality has likewise diminished.

This process will continue until one of a small number of things happen.

A) Science can once and for all beyond any reasonable doubt prove the existence of GOD
B) Science can once and for all beyond any reasonable doubt disprove the existence of GOD
C) Science can prove the existence of a higher form of evolution capable of doing some of the items that have been attributed to GOD in the holy texts.

But back to your actual question, sorry if I strayed off topic. Christian religions stemming from Hebrew religion(s) carried with them the concept of a single GOD. I am not sure how the Koran or Qur'an and Allah began but they in fact believe in the same GOD as the Hebrews and Christians. God has been referred to as Elohim, Yahweh, Adonai, and Allah but it is still accepted they refer to the same GOD. I am pretty sure that Jesus is mentioned in the Qur'an so it would seem to follow suit that the old testament which is part of the new testament which is some ways is referenced by the Qur'an must have come first.

So now we need to go back 5000 or 6000 years or so to the time the old testament was written and think about what may have brought it about. Obviously this is all speculation because until I can get my time machine that I made from an old DeLorean to work I am stuck with speculation. The way I see it the Old Testament must have been written close to or after the time that Moses came down from the mountain with the 10 commandments. It was probably started around this time and added to and added to until at some point they stopped adding. The reason it was written, explain the unknown, control a fear of the unknown, instill a new fear, and set up a moral structure. At the point in time it was put onto scrolls they were freed from Egypt because of the desire of their "one" God the same God that gave them the 10 commandments. So maybe it was the fact that as Moses continued to pressure the Pharaoh to let his people go and he continued to reference His God in the singular that the Old Testament became monotheistic.

Had Moses claimed that His God's want his people freed then the old testament would have been polytheistic and the move towards a monotheistic religion may have happened later with the birth of Christ. It is possible that Moses and a group of very smart Hebrews planned all the plagues of Egypt and executed an elaborate hoax and it is possible that a similar hoax was executed by Christ and the apostles. And if so then maybe GOD has never really interacted with our species or maybe there is no GOD.

That is one possibility. Many would disagree but some might consider it.

There is also the possibility that a higher form of evolution from a distant world saw the slavery in Egypt and decided to put an end to in and reached out to Moses then eventually a few thousand years this being was bored of watching us and decided to try to see what it would be like to take on human form and thus an immaculate conception.

There is also the possibility that there is a GOD, a single infinite omnipotent GOD that did everything the old and new testaments claim. A GOD waiting around for an infinite period of time then one day saying hey I am bored of all this nothingness, lets liven things up so he creates 70,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars and one planet with life on it and watched over this one single planet very carefully at first, then planted an off-spring, watched a little longer, then went quiet to watch us slowly destroy our planet. Oh and GOD will also make a place for some of us to spend eternity. That means god existed for an eternity, got bored, created humans, and then bestowed upon us the gift of eternity. Well we know our planet will eventually perish one day so in a trillion to the trillionth power number of years from now if we were in this eternal place I don't see that the time we spent on this planet or the entire existence of this planet as having much meaning.

If the entire Universe is infinite and GOD is infinite then our planet is but a speck of dust that in the grand scheme of things will exist for such a small length of time that if there is an infinite god I doubt it has any concept of our existence or struggles. That does not mean that there may not have been a much higher form of evolution from a distant world that may not have seen things happening on this planet and decided to intervene. That would make the being we referred to as GOD in scripture as just another product of an evolutionary chain.

My 2 cents, (rebate forms available upon request)

Now I happen to by the way believe in GOD, the infinite GOD. There are things I have seen in my life that lead me to believe in an underlying energy force all around. Energy is everywhere and is the basis for all matter and all life. The amount of energy is infinite.
The sum of the limit of all this energy in an infinite universe may in a way we can never understand have its own consciousness. How can so many different cells in any living creature seem to instinctively know how to work together with a general consciousness when each by themselves is nothing?

I also believe the infinite GOD did not interact with our planet and was not responsible for anything written down in scripture. If a higher form did interact with our species and the instances of GOD's interactions were not Hoaxes pulled of by mortals then this GOD was a god, not the GOD. A higher form up the ladder of evolution that passed by and may have moved on, may have perished, or may still be watching ??

Oh - I am not feeling attacked - nor do I have a fixed view on this - I want to explore the issues. I thinkthem interesting - which is why I raised them.

I DO get mildly peed off when people are arguing things I have already covered in my intro - and trying to negate things I didn't say - but that is just because I am an impatient person who eads fast, and I can't understand folk who cannot read a simple question!


Which monotheistic religions are you saying might be counter examples?

A point of historical order--prior to the rise of Christianity and then Islam, Judaism was one of the most successful proseltizing religions of which we know. In fact, the Yemenis, from whom Mohammed was descended, were very nearly exclusively Jewish, by religious conviction, before the rise of Islam. In the five centuries before the rise of Christianity, Judaism spread west to the Atlantic coast of Africa, and east to China. Both Christianity and then Islam followed in the footsteps of the Judaic missionaries in their respective eras.

This is a crucially important point, because the notion of a unique, and a violent and jealous god, preceded both of those newer religions, and help to set the stage for the bloody excesses of each.

You're kidding! I had no idea Judaism had spread!

Pantheism probably followed animism, the belief that all things, living and dead, contain a material spirit.

I believe that the basis for religion is, ultimately, personal mystical or religious experience. During this experience, the illusion of self and identity with that self is transcended. The feeling is of a unity with and relationship to all living things and the suroundings. This experience is overwhelming and life-changing and, for want of a better word, referred to as god.

This is a subjective experience, which is impossible to communicate, and all attempts to do so are bound to fail. Yet everybody who has this experience will try to communicate it, because it is so important.

I think that cults often form around a charismatic leader who has had this experience, and the cults occasionally form a religion. The idea of unity and oneness becomes projected outwardly by the follower through misinterpretation, thus monotheism.

Here is a quote by Kuvasz1 (from Abuzz) that really cuts to the chase: "That divinity which you seek outside, and which you first become aware of because you recognize it outside, is actually your innermost being."

This thread bores me, but here we go:


1) Correlation does not imply causation. Repeat three times daily and put under your bed until symptons fade. This goes for everybody who has posted on this thread, including myself.

2) The real reason that wars are waged and their justification often differ. People who believe that they have the one and only god are more likely to use this because it is important and more useful at stirring up the folks than "We want our neighbour's land". Less ethical dilemmas, you see.

3) Aggressive, war-mongering polytheistic cultures: Mayans, Romans, Persians, Spartans, Aztecs, many African tribes, etc, etc.

4) The question was which others you would consider to be probe to religious warmongering, since it is your argument/theory. Read my post again, buddy, since you are such a fast reader.

I was going to justify the old post which inflamed you folks so, but then I reread it and can see you came to the conclusion which you did. Also, I've already mindlessly apologised so it would sort of be out of place, even though i'd never mean t it that way that it waas read, and it was also to include . It doesn't matter, anyhow, so it can be left as it is to rot like so much stale meat. Just like A2k, for that matter.

Then please, by all means, do not come here to be bored - and I have no idea what you are on about - who on earth was inflamed? Not I, I assure you.

I was speaking generally re the people who don't even read the question properly - did you not do so? If so, I had quite forgotten.

Perhaps you require a liver remedy?