Why monotheism is a bad thing
Dr. Michael Conley (February 14th, 2002)
In a recent exchange, I received as a response to my assertion that
monotheistic traditions have brought many evils a polemic query as to whether
these various monotheisms "have brought significantly more evil than the
parallel polytheistic or atheistic traditions?" My rejoinder - with no one in
particular in mind immediately - is "Yes!" The issue has popped up in yet other
contexts, as an example in the framework of joining in, shoulder to shoulder,
with professing Christians on social or ecological projects of larger popular
significance. I take this occasion to spell out my stand on this matter of a
single or multiple godheads.
There is a proposition that has enjoyed some credulousness among
anthropologists to the effect that mankind's earliest religious profession -
back 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, but also among more recent, but very primitive
tribes before the White Man's missionaries reached them - was a primitive,
imperfectly articulated form of monotheism. Thus The Naskapi of Labrador (F. G.
Speck, "The Savage Hunters of the Labrodor Peninsula," Oklahama, 1935, p. 82ff.)
speak of a human-like, white-skinned personage wearing black clothing and
dwelling in a cliff-side cave who issues directions to hunters, specifying the
fashion in which they are permitted to hunt and the number of animals they may
take. His equivalent among the Quichè in Guatemala (Leonhard Schultze-Jena,
"Leben, Glaube und Sprache der Quiché von Guatemala," Jena, 1933) actually leads
the hunters, keeping a close check over their numbers and quota they may
take.
The Taulipang of northern South America call this personage, Keyeme and
relate that he takes on the appearance of a water snake when he draws on his
skin.(Theodor Koch-Grünberg, "Vom Roroima zum Orinoco," Bd. III, Stuttgart,
1916-1928, p. 176ff.) The Pygmies of Gabun (R. P. Trilles, "Les pygmées de la
forêt équatoriale," Paris, 1931) believe in an almighty, Khmwum, manifest in the
rainbow, who withdrew from mankind causing their lot to deteriorate. And to
mention but one example from the Greek classical world, the god Proteus (Homer's
Odyssee, 4, 450 ff.), master of the seals, rightly belongs to this order of
higher deities as well.
Proof is, of course, quite impossible. Keyeme, among the Taulipang, as an
example, is accompanied by Rato, the father of all aquatic life who's stupendium
for his labors is paid off in tobacco. Rato admonishes the fishers not to allow
their catch to rotten. And the pygmies of Gabun also worship a certain Gor, the
chief of the elephants. Theya possibly mix him up with Khmwum, asserting that
when either of these being appear in dreams, they are actually alternate
manisfestations of a single deity. One's wishful thinking will necessarily play
a major role in such propositions.
Humanity, however, has very clearly experienced monotheism repeatedly
beginning in the Second Millennium `Before the Common Era,' i.e. `B.C.E.'
Historic records permit us to judge the matter in four basic forms:
- the Amarna of Echnaton
- the Yahweh of
Jerusalem
- the God of Christianity
- the Allah
of the prophet Mohammed
When Moses "was exposed, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as
her own son. So Moses was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, a powerful
speaker and a man of action." (Acts 7: 21-22) This must be understood as an
assertion that Moses did not learn his religion through a revelation in Sinai
from a burning bush, but from the mystery cults of ancient Egypt. If one would
understand it otherwise, he/she must repudiate the NT to uphold the tale told in
the OT. Moses' master, then, was the Pharaoh Echnaton, the earliest prophet of
monotheism and that in the land in which Moses by chance grew up!
What do we know about Echnaton and the town he arbitrarily erected, Amarna,
seat of the original monotheism? Relatively little. But an examination of the
texts, but particularly the sculpture and plastics that remained for the
archaeologist once his seat of power was destroyed by his successors (who return
to the polytheism of their ancestors) shows us predominantly armed men,
soldiers, seemingly indispensable to the maintenance of his new religion during
his lifetime. His monotheism, then, was superimposed upon an unwilling folk and
could be sustained only as long as the military force requisite stood at the
Echnaton's disposal.
And what did the theologians of Amarna teach? If we are imperfectly
instructed by the remaining documents from Echnaton's day, we may find his
message again in the dictums of Moses:
1) the `true' religion as against the `false' one! There can be
but one truth - namely mine! - and those who preach another must be
eradicated.
2) the degradation of women-kind! Since `God' must necessarily
be MALE, women are a lesser breed.
If the polytheist could easily afford a wealth of female deities, since there
were never ending possibilities of introduce new ones - a point of considerable
importance in the growth of one sect, one cult after the other at Rome.
This possibility was, per definition, out of the question in monotheism. No!
For the monotheist, to murder the opponent, to subjugation women or to engage in
an endless list of other, `self-righteous' forms of oppression, is to act in
God's name. Religious fanaticism, or call it better `ideological' fanaticism for
the two terms are interchangeable in every respect, appeared full center in
human life and drew a trace in blood through the following millennium, aye - we
all know it - into our own days!
In the Roman Empire it was not necessary to subordinate Isis to Jupiter or
Astart to Apollo. No! They might exist tranquilly, the one next to the other.
The empire's sole demand was that all - in addition to the worship of their own
gods! - likewise bowed down to the god's of the emperor himself, assuring the
latter in this fashion, POLITICALLY, their compliance with the Roman state.
Let us hold fast then to the fact that the first experiment with monotheism
required arbitrary armed force to sustain it. And if we believe the tales in the
OT testament, violence, massacres and arbitrariness was Moses inheritance once
he commanded Jews. This continued to occur in the times of David and his son
Solomon. Israel, the separate kingdom to the north of Judea in which other gods
were tolerated, was reduce and added on to Judea with force and monotheism was
preached with the sword. But once centralized authority crumbled in Jerusalem,
Israel separated itself off from Solomon's Judean monotheism once again and
returned to the polytheism that had long characterized its inhabitants.
But violence and the subjugation of women played no lesser role in the rise
of Christianity. No revelation of God's will intervened in the course of this
particular historical escapade, rather atrocities provoked knowingly
characterize early Christianity's rise. Self-imposed martyrdom - one thinks of
the so-called Palestinian `terrorist' - became a means of promotional
recruitment. Indeed, there is a vague similarity between the tactics of the
Christian church and the wilfully provocation of the Falun Gong in China at the
direction of its `master,' Li Hongzhi. There, confrontations with the Chinese
Communist leadership are systematically sought out. I'll not venture into this
matter here any further. (See further my essay, originally published in the
"Journal of Higher Criticism," Drew University, on Saint Ignatius in this
website for closer details.)
But beyond the early second century C.E. (i.e. `Common Era'), conflict, the
misuse of women and open warfare, as is generally known, played a major role in
the spread of Christianity on into the early modern period, first across Europe
and in the 18th and 19th centuries, the continents of North and South America.
Nor was it any different in this respect with the rise and spread of Islam.
Mohammed personally commanded troops and supervised the massacre of
infidels.
From the beginning up to today, monotheism provided the mind-set for the
`true believer' and within the USA of today, fundamentalism blankets large
portions of the country and in the sense of the Journalist Professor in Austen
Texas, Marvin Olasky, would reach out for support and commendation even into the
office of the President of the United States! (`Compassionate Conservatism!) The
latter, irrespective of his private, personal beliefs, fully appreciates the
tactically advantage accruing to him who plays out this trump with purpose of
mind.
The destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E by the
Romans and the defeat of the Bar Khokba insurrection 132-135 C.E. secured
antique polytheism within the Roman Empire for the moment. But the classical
world crumbled in the succeeding centuries. Since then the trials between
monotheism and polytheism have uniformly ended to the former advantage, and at
the cost of balance and impartiality within the western world. In the name of a
"sole and ultimate monotheistic truth', we may yet provoke our eradication from
the face of the earth.
Monotheism, from its very nature, is saddled with a constraining imperative,
its universal inheritance from its malodorous past: Assuring its monopoly on
`truth,' presupposes the dictating institution's capability to either employ
force unilaterally or - as became the case in the later medieval period - to
obliges others, beholden to it, to employ force at its instigation. There where
these possibilities have been taken from the religious institution in question
in the historical meantime by the instruments of an impartial national
government, the same ends will be sought through collusion and indirection. The
policy of the Catholic Church in the southern German state of Bavaria, as an
example, utilizes this approach in the conflict surrounding the issue of
displaying the crucifix in the classrooms of public schools. As a poor
substitute, where strong-arm tactics and threats are no longer available,
open-air assemblies, well advertised by the mass media, encampments and the like
remain a last resort.
No matter in which direction the monotheist strikes out, however, survival,
but even more important, growth presupposes rigorously taut, disciplined
internal organizational forms - there where the public is not ken to power's
flow-lines - and a heavy emphasis on seemingly low-key recruitment drives among
the uncommitted, aye, youth in particular.
Facet: Fully alert to my words, I should like to suggest, that there is a
sharply cut, fundamental conflict between monotheism and ecology. You can pursue
the one or the other, but not both!
The proclaimed readiness of a monotheist organization to participate in
`ecumenical' movements as the joyful comrade of other groups, quite distant from
itself in matters of faith, remains ever a secondary - if not tertiary goal -
for monotheistic involvement. By their very nature, such a group views the
uncommitted with whom they rub shoulders as potential recruits, ripe grapes that
will fall into their aprons if only they succeed in their carefully studied,
tactical approach. A disinterested commitment to extra-organizational issues,
though they profess the like in their public statements and whimsical exchanges
with the youths about them, is quite foreign to their presence. They're on the
outlook for the innocent credulous, the trusting chump, for pliable cattle, or
as the phrase is coined in German, "nützliche Idioten." cynicism!
I would encourage my reader to make way for a genuinely ecologically oriented
religion that genuinely incorporates us in the beauty and majesty about us
before we turn it into barren wastelands. Turn to the pagans with their myriads
of gods and chthonic deities, turn to Chris Wood a confessing pagan who is one
of the highly engaged organisers of the Norwich Pagan Moot in England. He has
written me this very day, assuring me that "We are not only of the same material
substance as the rest of the cosmos, we are also of the same spiritual
substance. We are part of the cosmic whole, part of various deities of humanity,
part of the 'world soul' (if you like), yet also able to relate to these
entities as separate manifestations. Look up the web-site:
norwichmoot.paganearth.com where you'll find his own address
as well. Chris is most intent upon the elaboration of a quite different attitude
toward the earth and man's place in the cosmic order of things. Hurry on! We've
not much more time!
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Figure of the four-armed and four eyed mythical hero of the Nuraghean
High Culture of Sardinia (Italian: Eroe Quattrocchi e Quattro
braccia), recovered by archaeologists who data it back to early
in the second millennia B.C.E.
The second pair of arms are largely hidden from sight by the two
shields the figure holds before himself; the additional eyes are at the
pinnacle of the tendons above the creature’s head.
An extended essay, dealing with these people - contemporary with the
early Hittites of Anatolia! - is being researched. |
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