Global Polytheism?

[Dude_Doc]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytheism

(an article on polytheism)

So. Many of you have probably heard about the, what should I call it, "theory" of all great religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism etc) being different sides or parts of the one and same religion. Some also point out that they all started in the Middle East, at least Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

But my question is pointed at what people believed in before monotheism. Where I live, we had Norse mythology, in Greece they had the Greek gods, in Egypt they had theirs. In Asia, Japan, South America - even Indians, I believe, had something in common in those times: the belief of "many beings". Some made them into great "religions", some as spirits who helped them.

My question here is why polytheism all over the world, before today's great monotheistic religions, was so similar? I mean, are humans so alike that even when we live at completely different continents, not even knowing that there are other humans, make the same conclusions? Or, is there something... "more" to it?

"Genes or spirits - that's my question."

 

[GUNWOUNDS]

Both

Genes - the fact that we are human means we have a wekaness...human weakness is naturally drawn to a form of false religion that is worldly, pompous, ritualistic, anthropomorphic, polytheistic, infected with magical thinking, and that values human accomplishment more highly or more practically than the work of God (divine grace) is valued.

Spirit is also involved too... some say that islam is a demonic forgery of christianity.  And the various other religions could have been authored by man's penchant for lableling everything with an entity.  Similar to the Roman mythology deities.  God of wine God of war god of sky , etc, etc, etc. 

I think after intellectual thought became prevalent in regards to theism,  that people realized that the greatest possible entity in the universe can have no equal and that polytheism is fallacious.  having a God for wine, sky, dirt, and water is too simple minded and paradoxical (how can two seperate greatest beings exist?),  when you can have one God (monotheism) that none other equals that rules over all, which makes a little more sense. 

[ant222]

Politheism in its heathen form emerged in the dark ancient times. The pristine people feared of the forces of nature like fires, thunders, storms, e.t.c. They didn't know why harvests were different from year to year, why suddenly, without any apparent reasons, their cattle suffered murrain... So, they animaed various forces of nature, explained their problems by the anger of the spirits. Now, when they had invented spirits, they could pray to them, make sacrifices. Now they feeled better, because they were no longer alone. Having reduced all unknown phenomenas to the acts of spirits, they eliminated the fear of uncertainty.

As to the origin of Christianity, I'd suggest

[Dante]

My personal opinion - and I would like to emphasise that it is nothing but that - is that religion is psychological. I think that man is incapable of surviving without some sort of psychic comfort blanket. Something to either solve or block out the questions that can't be answered. And that includes us atheists. We just don't depend on... what was the phrase? 'Invisible sky wizards.' So my answer is that it's neither genetic (in the sense of some people having a weakness to it and some not), nor 'spiritual.' It's an inherent weakness of the species. Or an inherent trap of 'higher intellience.' Doesn't make much difference.

Regarding polytheism, I think that it was just a logical step that everyone took. Birds and bats evolved flight in completely different ways and with no connection, and this would be a similar event. Peoples all over the world sought an answer to their questions (Why do people die? Where did water come from? What is that big yellow thing up there that hurts when I look at it?), and found it by creating 'other entities' to explain it. Whether these be spirits, gods, personifications of natural events or creatures, it doesn't matter. They served the same purpose. To remove questions. Later they took on other purposes, such as social managagement and entertainment.

And then some bright spark took it too far. Perhaps they just hit on a new idea. Perhaps they just wanted more power. I suspect that someone, or a group of people, forgot that those creations were supposed to serve mankind and reversed the positions. They placed the explanations in a position of power and men in the position of servitude. From there it was a quick step to monotheism. Maybe more than one developed, maybe it was just one that morphed and spread into the different kinds around today. Either way, man's creations become more powerful than he did, because man let them.

Of course I may be wrong. It's not a topic I have looked into or have a pressing interest in.

[Anathema]

Now this is an interesting topic :)

On his campaign in Gaul, Julius Ceasar wrote that the Gauls wrote gods such as Mercury, Mars, Minerva...of course the Gauls didn't worship those Roman gods, but they worshipped very similar gods.

It's possible that the Roman/Greek gods (wich mostly are the same, the Romans copied their pantheon from the Etruscans, who copied it from the Greeks) and the Gallic gods share some much older Indo-European "ancestry", though that'd be hard to prove. At any rate cultures in Europe tended to develop a male god of war, female god of fertility etc, wich is of course a logical development.

Pre-christian paganism generally was very open and while most tribes or cities had only one two patron gods they worshipped, they acknowledged the existence of other gods.

Gods were also exchanged among different peoples. Ares, the Greek god of war, was adopted from the Thracians for example.

Finally some people's gods were equated with those of other people. Zeus, the Greek supreme god, was at one time established as being the same as his Egyptian counterpart Ammon, who ended up being called "Zeus-Ammon" by Greek writers.

[nemafakei]

"My question here is why polytheism all over the world, before today's great monotheistic religions, was so similar?"

That's quite easily resolved by argoing that pantheons are merely aspects of an underlying divine power. Hindus generally believe that god is many, but at the same time the different representations are argued to be "aspects of the same god", I think the stock phrase is. The Ancient Greeks certainly were not domatically polytheistic: yes, they believed that there were lots of gods, but "god" crops up in the generic sense far too often for it not to be significant in the debate.

And if you think about it, Christianity is not so different: you've got the father, the son, and the holy spirit. The first has more of the omniscient creator in him - a Zeus figure, if you will - the second is the facet with which we can identify, a historical and a cthonic god, like Castor and Pollux or Osiris, and the third is the part of god that is active in this world, comparable with influential figures like Ares, Aphrodite, and Athene.

[GUNWOUNDS]

"My question here is why polytheism all over the world, before today's great monotheistic religions, was so similar?"

That's quite easily resolved by argoing that pantheons are merely aspects of an underlying divine power. Hindus generally believe that god is many, but at the same time the different representations are argued to be "aspects of the same god", I think the stock phrase is. The Ancient Greeks certainly were not domatically polytheistic: yes, they believed that there were lots of gods, but "god" crops up in the generic sense far too often for it not to be significant in the debate.

And if you think about it, Christianity is not so different: you've got the father, the son, and the holy spirit. The first has more of the omniscient creator in him - a Zeus figure, if you will - the second is the facet with which we can identify, a historical and a cthonic god, like Castor and Pollux or Osiris, and the third is the part of god that is active in this world, comparable with influential figures like Ares, Aphrodite, and Athene.

However i would not compare the Trinity to  the god of wind, dirt, air, sky, water, fertility, etc , etc... the Romans obviously overdid it and hence the polytheism is differentiated from monotheism.  Saying God has a personal and impersonal side and saying His power (holy spirit) also deserves seperate recognition is pretty far from being considered comparable to polytheism.  Although i understand what you are trying to say.

Guns

[Dude_Doc]

But doesn't the whole question become interesting when we take a look t around 2-3000 years ago, when there seemed to be a shift in beliefs - people found "one god" more interesting than many. Islam, for example, has the One God. Exactly everything is explained there - how the universe came to, what roles we have and so on. I mean, isn't it much easier to worship a single entity than having ten or twenty other entities? Or better, why did people worship gods in the first place (kind of off topic here)? Why did people back then look into something that didn't exist? Where did the idea of worshipping a god came from?

[steve12553]

There are a lot of questions here, so just to make it interesting, let me add some more. If there is no God, does that mean that the universe accidently was created, the laws of Physics and Chemistry just happen to come about. Mustn't there be something that we don't understand that caused things to happen as they did? That doesn't say that any religion is right or wrong but it does pose questions that makes atheism hard to believe. I much rather say I don't know than say I know there is no force or being greater than ourselves. We know (as well as we can know) that hundreds of years ago humanity did not understand science as we do today, does that mean that we know nearly all of it or is humanity going to discover things so radically different in the next decades or centuries that will make everything we know look like the pagan rituals of the past? Or thinking today seems to dictate that if one religion is right than the outhers must be wrong. Maybe our thoughts are just so narrow that we can't see that maybe many are right at the same time and we can't see past the contradictions. We very well may not be culturally develope enough to see the truth or even the possibilities.

[Dude_Doc]

If there is no God, does that mean that the universe accidently was created, the laws of Physics and Chemistry just happen to come about. Mustn't there be something that we don't understand that caused things to happen as they did?

Hehe, well, this question has been debated here before. How far can humans reach before we find a limit? Yet, we haven't found any limit - we have sound theories, we know that we don't know everything, but that's it. But something did create our universe. And if not God, then some other mechanism. And in turn, something created that mechanism, and so on. The question here is if there ever was a First Cause, or if "everything" is circular - our universe are created, then dies, then are created again, and so on.

Oh well...

[Acriku]

Both

Genes - the fact that we are human means we have a wekaness...human weakness is naturally drawn to a form of false religion that is worldly, pompous, ritualistic, anthropomorphic, polytheistic, infected with magical thinking, and that values human accomplishment more highly or more practically than the work of God (divine grace) is valued.

Wow you almost summed up Christianity right here. Worldly, sure, ritualistic for sure (baptism, bread/body and wine/blood consumption), anthropomorphic (Jesus, God walking through Eden, God expressing emotions, etc), polytheistic (elohim, many references to "us" or "we", holy trinity), magical thinking (talking asses, burning bushes, water to wine, water to blood), etc.

Anyway, the popular theory at where I work (since somehow the topic of God comes up a lot, ahem) is that all religions are manifests of the same god. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc, are all really about one god. I think that this is grossly simplifying it. If you say A is the same as B, then traits of A should coincide with traits of B in the most quintessential aspect (ignoring small details). I just don't see this in every god in the major religions. But I would suggest the underlying message here is pretty valid: that the thinking involved to consider of a higher being of creation is similar with people all over the world, with their cultures influencing the details. The idea or 'meme' is a basic one and does not require much thought (which is why it's so popular), and a lot of things were thought out to be logically-based (like having women gods ruling feminine things, and vice versa).

[GUNWOUNDS]

Wow you almost summed up Christianity right here. Worldly, sure, ritualistic for sure (baptism, bread/body and wine/blood consumption), anthropomorphic (Jesus, God walking through Eden, God expressing emotions, etc), polytheistic (elohim, many references to "us" or "we", holy trinity), magical thinking (talking asses, burning bushes, water to wine, water to blood), etc.

One who misinterprets Christianity or is ignorant of the definitions of Worldy, ritualistic, anthropomorphic, polytheistic, and magical thinking might say that.

Christianity is definately not of this world... mans carnal nature is to be everything a christian is not.  Jesus says forsake the world.  Yet you say "worldly sure"  .. your credibility is blown by this first comment alone but i will debunk the rest.

Anthropomorphic as a fault means actually believing the symbolism is TRUE and that God is an old man with a grey beard in heaven.  Or that he actually has hands and feet.  Which of course he doesnt have since he is a spirit.  Jesus isnt anthropomorphic.  He really WAS a man.  Anthropomorphism is symbolic. Many people in error believe the symbolism to be literal, hence the reason anthropomorphism was listed in the list of faults.  IF i say God puts us under his wing and the person thinks he is a bird with feathers then they are committing a natural human error brought on by their weakness of comprehension....the fault is that they do not realize that anthropomorphism is symbolic.

Polytheism means having seprately worshipped entities that are 100% independant WHICH MEANS they would be capable of disagreeing with one another.  There is no disagreement in the Trinity.  Many Gods plotted to overthrow Zeus however.  There is no such independance in the Trinity.  The Trinity does describe 3 distinct beings but that is only because it is describing certain aspects of ONE God .... and it makes sense that aspects of one God could be separately recognized.

Magical Thinking means having power without a deity.  Wizards from D&D dont have their power bestowed upon them thru a deity.... the magic is "naturally" infused within them... it comes from no greater source.  God performing an act is not magic... as it has a divine source, God knows exactly what is going on.....Magic means there is mysticism, an unknown force controlled by man who has no idea what is and if there is no God then the magical force can never be understood and therefore the mysticism remains.  Magic is man manipulating miraculous events on his own without any help or need of a higher force.  The "Force" From Star Wars would be a good example.  A Nameless force with no identity or will that is manipulated by man. Hardly comparable to the Christian God.  Man Manipulating this force makes HIM the God. (guess thats why Jedi are so popular ;D)  Magic has connotations of Man-worship and man's independance from God.  Hardly comparable to the Christian Faith.   God performing a miracle is no more magical than a man performing an ordinary act.  Its only magical when a man (or some other non-deity) performs a miracle independantly of a Deity.

Guns.

[Caid Ivik]

There is a reason why we shouldn't worship matter, as stones won't tell you what to do. Well, this discourse was already very active on the Middle East about 2,5 millenia ago...

[Acriku]

One who misinterprets Christianity or is ignorant of the definitions of Worldy, ritualistic, anthropomorphic, polytheistic, and magical thinking might say that.

Christianity is definately not of this world... mans carnal nature is to be everything a christian is not.  Jesus says forsake the world.  Yet you say "worldly sure"  .. your credibility is blown by this first comment alone but i will debunk the rest.

Tell that to the loaded priests of Christianity making millions off of their fellow believers.

Anthropomorphic as a fault means actually believing the symbolism is TRUE and that God is an old man with a grey beard in heaven.  Or that he actually has hands and feet.

So you don't believe that God showed emotion back then? That's anthropomorphism in a sense. I'll tell you, any Christian you might ask would agree that God does show emotion.

Polytheism means having seprately worshipped entities that are 100% independant WHICH MEANS they would be capable of disagreeing with one another.  There is no disagreement in the Trinity.  Many Gods plotted to overthrow Zeus however.  There is no such independance in the Trinity.  The Trinity does describe 3 distinct beings but that is only because it is describing certain aspects of ONE God .... and it makes sense that aspects of one God could be separately recognized.

Your first statement reminds me of the angels trying to overthrow God. There's your disagreements. You don't have to worship them, only to acknowledge that they exist, for them to considered polytheism. In the trinity, Jesus begged to God, why hast thou forsaken him, or was that all for show? And God and Jesus are pretty different beings. The former advocates all those child stoning, women bashing, and genocide, while Jesus advocates love and neighborly goodness. You can't tell me there's no disagreement there, if anything an unspoken disagreement.

Magical Thinking means having power without a deity.  Wizards from D&D dont have their power bestowed upon them thru a deity.... the magic is "naturally" infused within them... it comes from no greater source.  God performing an act is not magic...

So Jesus is a man up till he does miraculous things, in which then he is God? That's pretty convenient.

[gunner154]

If it's that difficult to think of the Trinity as one being, think of the Executrix.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Acriku: Tell that to the loaded priests of Christianity making millions off of their fellow believers.

Gunwounds: So you have a problem with Conmen taking advantage of people's faith and exploiting their weaknesses.  This tells me you have a problem with conmen... which is understandable... however it has nothing to do with christianity and therefore is irrelevant to the conversation at hand.  If i see an atheist who is a rapist i do not assume all atheists are rapists.  Therefore one cannot assume all priests are Conmen. Period.

Acriku:  So you don't believe that God showed emotion back then? That's anthropomorphism in a sense. I'll tell you, any Christian you might ask would agree that God does show emotion.

Gunwounds: NOT human emotion.  When the Bible says God regretted making mankind ... or that God was angry... or that God was pleased.... the anthropomorphic symbolism is to help us understand the consequences of our actions and how this spiritual entity would view them if He were human.  When a human is "Happy" their brain release dopamine which causes the body to experience euphoria.  Do you honestly think that God has a brain releasing Dopamine?  When a human gets angry he is releasing cortisoids that induce stress and tension and intiate a flight or fight response.  Do you think God has a brain that releases cortisoids in order to defend himself?  Anthropomorphism is human symbolism.  Its ok to use anthropomorphism to attempt to understand God but the fallacy is when you take it literal and think he is an old man with a grey beard sitting in heaven.  

Acriku:  Your first statement reminds me of the angels trying to overthrow God. There's your disagreements. You don't have to worship them, only to acknowledge that they exist, for them to considered polytheism. In the trinity, Jesus begged to God, why hast thou forsaken him, or was that all for show? And God and Jesus are pretty different beings. The former advocates all those child stoning, women bashing, and genocide, while Jesus advocates love and neighborly goodness. You can't tell me there's no disagreement there, if anything an unspoken disagreement.

Gunwounds:  Angels are not Gods they are creation.  Their disagreement means nothing.  Jesus cried out "why hath thou forsaken"  because for the first time in history the Word was temporarily seperated from the rest of the Godhead.  It is incomprehensible to understand what that experience was like. For a person it would be like getting ripped apart and then being put back together.  And such a bizarre event cannot used as the "norm" for discussion as it was a one time occurence that will never happen again.  And Jesus and God never disagree.... One fulfills the other.  God demands something that MAN cannot fulfill... so God fulfills it Himself.  There is no disagreement.... God basically asked man for something and man could not deliver so God did it Himself.  God demanded Perfection in Regards to Morality and Obedience.... and man could not deliver... Therefore God Gives Himself what he wants.  Disagreement would be if Jesus told the Father that what he wanted was wrong and that the Father was in error.  This is not so.  Jesus gives God what Man could not and thereby saves man.  

As far as Jesus Advocating Love and Neighborly Love... ummmmm... "Love thy Neighbor" is an Old Testament Command.  duh.  And even Jesus whipped the Money Changers in the Temple and showed great disdain and distaste for the Pharisees.  So Jesus didnt disagree with the concept of punishment.  Jesus didnt disagree with Man's fallen state being his own fault and that punishment was justified...he understood all that and never disagreed with the Father... Jesus was just preaching that things were going to be different after His Sacrifice and that the punishments would be paid for and unnecessary....even though they were justified.  Jesus understood the debt was valid.... He was just preaching what he was preaching becuz he was trying to get everyone to understand that the Debt was going to be paid.  This way after He died everyone would already understand what happened and that way people wouldnt be standing around going "hey why did that guy die?"

Acriku:  So Jesus is a man up till he does miraculous things, in which then he is God? That's pretty convenient.  

Gunwounds:  Jesus was God manifested as Man... therefore although He was in a Human Form he had all the abilities and knowledge of God.  There is nothing magical about that.  Jesus wasnt some Jedi using a nameless unknown force to create miracles.  When a Jedi Uses "force heal" or a Mage uses "Restore" they are using "unknown" magical energies that basically give credit to man.  True Magicians believe that magical energies flow through man naturally.   When Jesus healed the sick.. he did so with the the power of God and he let it be known.  He let it be known that man was simply a vessel through which God worked.  All power and creative energies must come from God alone.. if it is attributed to anything else then it is magic.  And thats where it is wrong.  Man in his weakness wants to believe that he has the power himself and so therefore is drawn to "magic" because who needs God when you can have your own magic powers?

Guns

[GUNWOUNDS]

If it's that difficult to think of the Trinity as one being, think of the Executrix.

Yes we've been over this before... The Trinity can be comprehended in terms that do not satisfy polytheism.  I Talk about my Mind, my flesh, and my spirit.... i am a tri-part being... but i am one.

So are there 3 of me?  Or one of me.  Well i am composed of 3 entities but i function as one.  My body is flesh, bone, and blood, 3 parts but its all one body.

True Polytheism is completely seperate Entities that do NOT form together as ONE... who are independant enough to disagree with each other or even wage war against one another....and who do not have anything to do with the other in certain cases.   (Jupiter was in the sky and had nothing to do with the Sea....which was Neptune's Domain.)

That is true Polytheism.  And to apply it to Christianity is a stretch at best.

[Acriku]

I'll talk more concerning Christianity and its polytheism in a new topic later tonight (I'm excited, aren't you!)...

As for what the topic is about, I would go so far as to say that the similarities between different seemingly polytheistic religions are often derived from culture influence and adoption. We see many ideas in certain religions that newer religions took part of or outright stole in attempts to further its popularity. Opening trade to other countries ended up in trading far more then goods - beliefs, languages, and rituals. Also, deities were often thought to control over what were basic and everyday things in the lives of the people worshipping them - wind, fire, trees, etc. Typical attempts to explain what was around them, and with the entrance of the concepts of reward and punishment these attempts ended up as being very useful in keeping the masses in check.

[VigilVirus]

True Polytheism is completely seperate Entities that do NOT form together as ONE... who are independant enough to disagree with each other or even wage war against one another....and who do not have anything to do with the other in certain cases.   (Jupiter was in the sky and had nothing to do with the Sea....which was Neptune's Domain.)

That is true Polytheism.  And to apply it to Christianity is a stretch at best.

Well, couldn't you say that the Father and the Son can function as two separate entities? From the Bible, you could see that Jesus didn't really want to die as he was a man and inherently wished to live, but he knew he had to. As opposed to a human composed of flesh and bones - your organism cannot function well without its significant parts.

[Anathema]

You could certainly say that. While the trinity doctrine is commonly accepted amongst most denominations today, it certainly wasn't in early times. Arianism, a doctrine wich said that Jesus was simply a man, was wildly succesful early on till Emperor Constantine outlawed Arianism with the Caesarian and later Nicean creed, and even then it still lived on till the 8th century.

I think after intellectual thought became prevalent in regards to theism,  that people realized that the greatest possible entity in the universe can have no equal and that polytheism is fallacious.  having a God for wine, sky, dirt, and water is too simple minded and paradoxical (how can two seperate greatest beings exist?),  when you can have one God (monotheism) that none other equals that rules over all, which makes a little more sense.

The Roman/Greek gods were thought of as powerfull...but not all powerfull. So your point is moot.

[GUNWOUNDS]

You could certainly say that. While the trinity doctrine is commonly accepted amongst most denominations today, it certainly wasn't in early times. Arianism, a doctrine wich said that Jesus was simply a man, was wildly succesful early on till Emperor Constantine outlawed Arianism with the Caesarian and later Nicean creed, and even then it still lived on till the 8th century.

The Roman/Greek gods were thought of as powerfull...but not all powerfull. So your point is moot.

Actually my point isnt moot.... my point is reinforced by your statement..... becuz... if they didnt considered the their gods to be all-powerful then they mis-labelled them as gods and so i stand by my point that the old polytheistic gods were poorly thought out and that theism today is much more refined.

Guns

[Edric O]

If you're going to create a pantheon of gods for various things in the world around you, those gods are going to depend a lot on what the world around you looks like. Two different peoples living in similar environments (like the Romans and the Gauls) will see similar things around them, and therefore create similar gods.

For example, it should be no surprise that most pantheons include a god of fire, because fire is an important part of human life. Also, any culture that has seen thunder and lightening will have a god of thunder. Likewise with the gods of love, sky, death, and various other things that all humans share, see or experience.

[Dante]

And having gods that are not all-powerful is not necessarily mislabelling. Gods do not have to be all powerful, as their very existence shows. In the same way as any other god exists that is.

[GUNWOUNDS]

And having gods that are not all-powerful is not necessarily mislabelling. Gods do not have to be all powerful, as their very existence shows. In the same way as any other god exists that is.

It is mis-labeling becuase if gods are not all-powerful then anything could be a god which makes no sense.  Angels could be gods... man's immortal spirit could be a god.... Satan could be a god.  But this is impossible... man's spirit, Satan, angels, and anything else cannot be a god becuz they all depend upon something else for their existence and power and substance.

To whore out the name of "god" upon any creature that can do anything resembling a "power" totally devalues the label "god" and waters it down to the point of it becoming meaningless.

Therefore unless the entity is all-powerful it cannot and should not be called a god.  The Roman gods should be called super heroes, not gods,  a mutant like Wolverine with his healing factor and near immortality could be considered equal to some Roman god and the mutant Storm could be comparable to Zeus with her ability to throw lightening bolts around.  However we can all agree that Wolverine and Storm are not considered gods.  Superman is the only superhero that comes close to god-status.... and even he has an explanation for his existence and powers.

Even the Q on Star Trek are not true gods... as their powers can be stripped of them by higher Q's.  If you have an equal or a superior then you cannot be considered a true god.  A powerful Alien maybe...a mutant super hero maybe..... but not a god.

I stand by my statement that the polytheistic gods were poorly thought out ... the natives just wanted something to worship or explain something and they werent necessarily trying to imagine God in an intellectual way.  In more recent times, however, much more thought was given to the mandatory characteristics of God.

Guns

[Dante]

There are no characteristics that all gods have to have. They're kind of known for not following the rules that the rest of us do. Gravity, time, causality, etc. If something or someone is worshipped as a god, then it is a god to its worshippers and thus for all intents and purposes a god. Any and all actions can be attributed to 'holy miracles' even if there is a more rational explanation. If those worshippers choose to believe that the god is male, female, neither, both, black, white, blue, bipedal, tripedal, quadrapedal, good, evil, dead, immortal, omnipotent or not; then that is what their god is. Gods conform to the beliefs of their worshippers, in the same way that the worshippers conform to what they tell themselves their god believes.