h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For those who don't understand or believe that monotheism predates polytheism, there is a simple logical exercise you can do.

First, imagine very early humans that have no thoughts, beliefs, or opinions on anything remotely resembling a god-being.

Now try to imagine polytheism sprouting before the first monotheistic god proposed.

I find it very simple to imagine:

a bunch of people sitting around having a craving for mammoth steak decide to pray to the Great Mammoth Spirit to bring the mammoth herd along. If they have a craving for wild onions to roast with their mammoth steak, they pray to the Great Onion Spirit. At night they pray to the Great Sabre-Tooth Spirit that It might have mercy on them in the dark. They don't pray to the Great Generalized Spirit. Imbuing the natural world with a multitude of specialized supernatural entities appears to me to be a natural human tendency. I find it hard to imagine very early humans coming up with an overarching god figure without first going through some sort of polytheism.

There is no ancient culture that we have records of which started out monotheistic and there are a number which discarded polytheism and replaced it with monotheism.

That's an excellent point. I recall when the christians came to America they had a difficult time getting the natives even to understand the idea of a god as a thing distinct from the spirits that everyone 'saw' all around them.

The creation myths- sorry- the creation stories usually had these spirits being created along with everything else.

Everyone creates their own personal version of reality. There are currently 6 000 500 001 universes. The one real one and the individual imaginary ones.

Of course, Fords does have a valid point: at some point that first person said to themselves for the first time ever 'Great Mammoth Spirit, bring us the herd' and for a brief moment there was only one god. But then, almost instantly, that person or another beside that fire said 'and, Great Onion Spirit, help us find some onions' and polytheism was born.

I would argue, however, that the Great Onion Spirit's existence was implicit in the discovery of the existence of the Great Mammoth Spirit.

I agree. I would add that 'seeing' spirits would be that much stronger for things that move, that seem to have life in them. I remember, as a small child, when I first heard that so called primitive people thought the wind was a spirit because it could move trees about and ripple the grass. It made perfect sense to me because I still had that same idea myself.

The monotheists just economize on the idea my having one magical being to do everything that they don't understand. A spiritual Wal-Mart so to speak.

squiggles:

I thought warner only left (temporarily) because we started talking dirty.

"I would argue, however, that the Great Onion Spirit's existence was implicit in the discovery of the existence of the Great Mammoth Spirit."

And I nominate this for quote of the day!

(How does one do that actually?)

I don't know how one does it Dogster, but


I'm flattered.

Hi FT,

>try to imagine polytheism sprouting before the first monotheistic god proposed.

"Hey, what can we do to keep the tigers away? Perhaps we could leave offerings for them."

Gif

Hi Dogster,

>And I nominate this for quote of the day! (How does one do that actually?)

(1) You post something on a thread that's not controversial and likely to put off newcomers like, oh, say one of the religion threads.

(2) You wait for The Powers That Be to pick it. But be warned, they move in mysterious ways. You may like to sacrifice a small animal.

Gif

What instructions does Leviticus give for the distribution of a gerbil's organs?

I think it's clear that a gerbil is a kind of unclean bird.

Gif

My interest in polytheism (or indeed, just lots of gods being around in general) and monotheism is more to do with the 'evolution' of Yahweh and 'the one and only god' blah blah. From a historical point of view it leads more wieght to Yahweh being made up and created to reduce the problems of a polythiestic area of the world i.e. North Africa.

http://www.b3ta.com/board/9221096

More:
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/evolution/popular/

Don't miss mine (it took ages)

http://www.b3ta.com/board/9219072

Also

http://www.b3ta.com/board/9223698

It's quite interesting that Catholicism is still quite polytheistic in many ways because of the importance of the virgin and the many saints that are prayed to.

It's odd. Even the most Atheistic of religions, Buddhism, is polytheistic, what with all its boddhisvatas and whatnots. And look at Islam, with its angels and saints and hidden Imams and Mahdis and the like (yeah, yeah, warner. We know you'll tell us there's only one god). Maybe there's a general propensity amongst the religious towards polytheism. You can't keep a good god down.

*On the other hand*...it has been said that 'All religion aspires towards Atheism.' The more serious theologians in any religion tend to reject the angels and djinns and miracles and whatnot and creep closer and closer towards some kind of intangible god-thingy.

>>The more serious theologians in any religion tend to reject the angels and djinns and miracles and whatnot and creep closer and closer towards some kind of intangible god-thingy.<<

Ed, I've noticed that about some individuals. Karen Armstrong starts out believing in the whole Catholic thing with its Feast of the Allsorts and so on. The more she writes about it, the less she seems to believe in any of it. It seems that the more you shine light on some things, the smaller they get.

Which is the opposite of science where the more you look at it the clearer it gets.

although one could see it as a maturing and development of their search for truth.
Talking about christians here as thems the ones I know.

Many of the more liberal or less dogmatic believers I know are also on a quest for truth. They keep asking the questions and peeling back the layers to what is underneath. OK, they are operating within a theistic environment where the concept of god is accepted as valid, but still they look for the underlying turth in the word of god.

In my observations of the process they progressively reject or term as 'metaphor' (which is the same as rejecting the story except this way they can introduce some other concept and claim that instead and appear to still be following the word of god) the more outlandish claims then move on to rejecting or metaphorising () the non-scriptural based claims and requirements of their religion.

What they end up with is a fuzzy god concept that is broad and non-specific and a central message of "hey, let's be nice to each other - wouldn't that be great?" which, to be fair, I have to agree with.

What they are doing is using their reason and intellectual capabilities to reject a lot of the supernatural stuff with no evidence, a lot of the myth and legend that has no evidence exactly the same way atheists do.
The difference is they don't go that one final step.

It tends more towards humanism than any specific concept of atheism. After all, the benefit that is to be gained from following their way is to humans. The negatives to occur from not adhereing are enacted by humans and affect humans.

The most important component of their world view is humans (they may disagree with this I'm sure, but it is a human centric view). They don't actually need a god concept tacked on to the view but they keep it there for some reason.

In the most liberal anglican I have heard the role of god is basically in being a kind of template or signpost showing us humans the way to live a more happy and agreeable lifestyle. This is what they mean by the coming of the kingdom of god - humanity transformed into a bunch of loved up hippies (but without the drugs, obviously!).

I don't think we need a god concept to show us that. I think humans are plenty capable of working that out ourselves. We're also capable of working out that it is a fairly naive concept in reality. Nice, but never gonna happen.