Ojuice5001

Actually, there are more than three, but it is not practical to consider all of them. This post is about the three that I care about most: polytheism, atheism, and monotheism. I will say what I think are the advantages of each, and since I am not an atheist or monotheist, explain why I don't find those advantages convincing. I will consider the most important form of each worldview.

1. Atheism, as exemplified by modern naturalistic atheism The main advantage of naturalistic atheism is its great success in nullifying its opponents' claims. Both my apologetics, and those of the Christians, can be refuted by the atheists; certainly, at any rate, if they are construed as coercive proofs. And although I don't agree 100% that atheism is purely a default position, I can certainly see why it makes sense.

My take on atheism It just doesn't seem like the kind of world where only natural entities and properties exist. When I look at the sky and remember the past, they don't seem like they are nothing but themselves. They seem like they are related to another reality--Jupiter and Postverta, Father Sky and Sister Past. (My patron Postverta would not make a good mother figure; she's more like an older sister.) I also think that although no apologetic is successfully coercive, the aggregate of all apolegetics proves that it makes sense to consider this world to be in contact with a polytheistic or deistic reality. After all, there are a lot of weak but sound evidentiary arguments, and some non-evidentiary arguments use premises that might very well be true.

2. Monotheism, as exemplified by Christianity Christianity's main advantage (and its disadvantage--I'll get to that) is its theory of good and evil. Christianity has many counterintuitive moral teachings that, though not perfect, worked better than you would expect. I'm just saying, Christianity's teachings are so farfetched that if they were actually crazy, the world would never have adopted them, and kept them for more than a thousand years.

My take on monotheism Christianity has ideas about good and evil that, IMO, are not capable of justification. Hell, the Atonement, and God's policy of allowing people to remain ignorant of hell and the Atonement fly in the face of conventional justice. And the unconventional theories that allow them ahve nothing else going for them. Therefore, it is more rational not to accept them.

Also, Christianity has too much tendency to see the world in terms of good and evil. Look at Revelation: The subtle war between God and Satan becomes open. A titanic battle is fought, and everyone receives a fate appropriate for the very good or the very evil. This is implausible.

3. Polytheism, as exemplfied by the Roman and Greek gods

A. It does a better job of making the world connected to itself and divinity than either Christianity or atheism. See my reason for not being an atheist. This, of course, is why some people are returning to paganism.

B. It is a rational to believe the unknown is consistent with the known. It is more congruent with the world we see. The world is peopled with diverse forces, not a war between good and evil as Xians would have you belive. And as for naturalistic atheism, a subtler argument like this can be made. We see many entities that have purposes, namely, humans and warm-blooded animals. Naturalism postulates that the unknown aspect of the world consists of very strange physical and astronomical entities. I'm not saying these don't exist, but also in existence must be some unknown creatures with purposes for themselves--gods.

C. Every stable society has worshipped a stable god. You have your Jupiter, your Vishnu, your Amon-Ra. These societies have enjoyed moderately prosperous times for long periods because their gods were stable personalities. Pagan gods can be purely stable, but the Abrahamic gods are stable only if times are good. Look at Jupiter and friends. In the Punic Wars, Baal and Moloch used Hannibal to conquer Italy for a year or so. Jupiter didn't lose his cool, or give up. He simply got the Romans to strike back when the time was right, and he won. And when Constantine converted, Jupiter didn't cause those he influenced (who were still the majority) to destroy things. He accepted the new reality, and thereby kept a whole lot of influence. Contrast this with Allah, who in the past two years has picked a fight with both the Western gods, and now the Hindu gods.

My take on polytheism These advantages, and others, make polytheism a rational choice, and the best one around.

Bluenose

Do you define the root word ___theism the same way for your 3 topics ?

If you do, don't you get logical problems ?

If you define the g word differently in each topic, don't you end up with different problems?

I ask because I am trying to work through some of those semantic knots and finding it difficult to find the passages I remember from some of my old books. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Typhon

Ojuice5001,

Thank you for the interesting post. It looks like you put some time and thought into it.

In general I'm more easy on polytheists than monotheists, for a number of reasons. That said, I'm still a "god battler" who disputes that there is any fundamental reality involved in the worship of such pantheons.

You mentioned that your choice for polytheism, arose in a large part from a feeling that there was "more" to the world than could be accounted by naturalism. However, you are somewhat vague about any proof for this, and/or the presence of validating evidence.

I'm curious, what exactly do you think consists of evidence that any such entities (Jupiter, Mithras, Anu, etc.) exist as more than mere concepts in the imagination of man?

In addition, I'd like to hear if/why you think some such entities exist and not all (if all, then what exactly is their relationship to one another), including those gods which claim to be "the only true god."

Thank you in advance,

.T.

Never Panic.

[ June 02, 2002: Message edited by: Typhon ]</p>

Ojuice5001

Bluenose,

I do define the words differently. Monotheism and polytheism are separate questions in principle, but practically they are rival systems.

The god of monotheism is the Supreme God. I won't hazard an exact definition; we all "kinda know" what monotheists mean by God. But if the Supreme God exists, the question becomes "Does he intervene in human affairs?" If someone says no, they are a deist. This form of monotheism is completely compatible with polytheism. But it is important to note that the God of deism has much less existential importance than gods, supreme or otherwise, that do act in the world. So I would say that a deist should only count as a monotheist if he doesn't believe in other gods--not because the other gods are the same kind of thing, but because they and the creator god are in competition for a person's mental resources.

Monotheism in a narrower sense means that God does intervene in events in the world, and wants to be worshipped, especially to the exclusion of all else. This kind of monotheism is not compatible with polytheism, as normally understood. After all, most non-supreme gods want to be worshipped, and if the Supreme God actively rules the world, mere finite gods are nothing but his pawns. (So are we, but that's another issue....)

So it's not like monotheism and polytheism are strict contraries. But though you can believe both, you can't (IMO) assign equal importance to both. As for me, I am a Supreme God agnostic and a polytheist.

Ojuice5001

Typhon,

Well, if events in the world seem to act according to a plan, then that's a reason to suspect the existence of gods. For example, the rise of a Mediterranean (Roman) empire was an event that a priori could have gone a lot of ways, but ended up being a rather orderly process of amalgamation into a great and relatively peaceful civilization. The nucleus of events centered around the invention of the printing press also led to the modern world (and what lies beyond). Peter Kreeft said, "The strategy of hell is more than the strategy of earth. Only one thing is more than the strategy of hell, and that is the strategy of heaven." Not that the gods are divided into "heaven" and "hell," but if we see something that is more purposeful than you might expect, that is one way to see whether the gods exist.

The relevance of a culture's pantheon is determined by a sort of elitism. A successful culture's pantheon is a superior snapshot of a divine society. For example, Rome was a successful culture, and their religion is true enough that we can talk about the doings of Jupiter. (And the Greek gods, IMO, are clearly a sort of second perspective on the Roman gods, or vice versa.) Less successful cultures, such as the fifth-century Franks, have inaccurate mythologies, and when they worship their gods, they are actually worshiping a nearby successful culture's gods. The Norse gods are much thought about, and their culture is near the border between successful and unsuccessful. I don't know whether their gods are distint from Romans or not, or what are the implications for Asatru, which after all has more believers than the Religo Romana. They once had unviolated territories, but the modern world forces them into contact with each other.

Gods who claim to be the one true god--I assume you're talking about the Abrahamic gods. They certainly exist--who else would have destroyed the Roman religon? I think there are only two--Jehovah, who rules the Christians, Jews, and associated sects, and Allah, who rules Islam and associated sects. They both come from the Middle East, and they were once merely parts of the Middle East pantheon. But they have tapped into some source of power, and now have ambitions for world rule. Telling humans they are the one true god was a strategy to gain worship and support, and it was wildly successful. They now control the areas where they are worshipped, and they are like an emperor to the gods of the regions they control. (But the gods of Europe have retained much more control than those of the Middle East. Europe always has believed more in freedom than other cultures.)

Synaesthesia

Ojuice5001,
I've never seen any other kind of world, have you? I am not only unaware of any unnatural thing, I don't even know what it means not to be natural.

As far as I am concerned, nature is simply that which can be shown to exist. Expanding the scope of my ontology is a very simple matter, but I must be able to justify it. If it is the case that 'natural' things are not all that exists, where are these oh so elusive vapours?

Sweeping gestures at a mass of individually failing arguments is generally no more than glazing over othe essential shortcoming which they all share.

If you think there is a meta-argument to be made, please share it rather than assuring us that it is convincing.

No need for a deus ex machina to guide the story of a culture. That is a cheap plot device to compensate an author of limited imagination. The unfolding of real events requires no recourse to such skyhooks.

Jamie_L

The human brain is a pattern-recognition machine. That's what it does. That's what it likes to do. It wants patterns. Patterns make it feel good. Secure. Make it feel like it knows what's going on, and that everything will be alright. It'll find patterns where they're at, and sometimes it'll find 'em where they're not.

That's my whole take on supernaturalism. The brain looks at the big jumbled mess of a universe and thinks - "There must be a pattern. There must be a reason. There must be MORE." Throw in a healthy fear of the unknown and natural phenomena that defy explanation for the simple observer (if we didn't have some confidence in science, would any of us believe something as ridiculous as relativity? Quantum mechanics?).

Supernaturalism explains the unexplained, overlays order on chaos, and makes people feel happy. It also often makes them more prone to obey authority. All that will of course make for more stable societies - especially in older times when the number of unexplained things was much bigger. But that doesn't make any of it true.

At least, that's my take.

Jamie

[ June 03, 2002: Message edited by: Jamie_L ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

Sure it does.
So what?
The word 'compelling' might be preferable to 'coercive'.
Not, it does not.
As you so well demonstrate.
You've suggested nothing to even aproximate such a thing.
Again, so what? There are farms and tornadic activity in Kansas. The Wizard of Oz uses 'premises that might very well be true'.
What 'theory' is that? What ethic would you assert is uniquely Christian?
What 'counterintuitive moral teachings'? Whose expectations?
Astrology, UFO sightings, ...
The sentence is meaningless. Polytheism does not 'make' anything.
No doubt.
Hence, atheism. Do you find Trivia/Hecate and Faunus/Pan 'rational'?
No more so than Mother Goose.
Given that this is writen by someone who finds Pan 'rational', it's anybody's guess what might be meant by 'very strange ... entities'.
Pantheism 'must' be true because pantheism 'must' be true. Got it.
So much for syncretism. Your grasp of history/sociology parallels your grasp of astronomy/physics. What was the 'stable god' of the Roman Empire from Julius Caesar through Theodosius I?
Let me guess, you've added something to the 'Ojuice' ...

[ June 03, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

Ojuice5001

Syneasthesia:

They're right with us just as ultraviolet rays are right with us. They influence random events (in and out of a human and warm-blooded animal brain), and that is the only thing they routinely do to the material world.

Most evidentiary arguments for theism make theism more likely than they would be without them. For instance, take my three arguments in the original post, and add them to fine-tuning, the fact that people have invested so much in their gods, and the fact that, unlike anything in the experience of antiquity, the society of gods gives the females an amount of power almost equal to males. I'm saying that theism is more likely than it would be if none of those facts were true. Don't you think so? And if there are enough of those facts, "more likely" becomes "likely enough to be true."

If a culture's history seems to have a meaning, as our own culture and the Roman Empire do, there must be someone to mean it. Relatively pointless cultures, like that of Haiti, are the ones that don't need an intelligence guiding them. Without the gods, it is likely that our culture would be relatively pointless like Haiti.

Disclaimer about Haiti: I am only saying that the culture of Haiti is pointless, since it leaves so many in poverty and does nothing that other cultures don't do better. It would be a fallacy of division to say that the life of everyone in Haiti is pointless. In fact, their lives are not that much more or less pointless than those in America.

[ June 03, 2002: Message edited by: Ojuice5001 ]</p>

Jamie_L

It is generally true that something is more likely to be true if people say it is true than if nobody is saying anything about it. But that doesn't mean it's much more likely to be true. But a bad argument or bad evidence is still just as flawed no matter how many people believe or repeat it. If you didn't think John Edwards was a real psychic when he was on the Sci-Fi channel, would you change your mind when he went into wider syndication?

I'll take them - and take issue with them.

Arguement A - I took issue with this in my first post above. Feeling like the universe is spiritually connected is poor evidence for that connection - especially when other reasonable alternatives are available.

Arguement B - It can be rational to assume just that, especially after you gain experience uncovering something that used to be unknown. We're discovered all sorts of previously unknown things, and so far EVERY ONE OF THEM is consistent with that which was known before (i.e., every explanation so far is natural). This seems a very good reason to believe that other unknown things will turn out to have natural explanations.

Arguement C - I'm not sure that this is anything other than an unfounded assumption. What is a stable god? What is a stable society for that matter? And even if we got some adequate definitions that I accepted, and I accepted this were true, my first post also addresses this. A well-constructed religion may indeed bring stability and prosperity to a society. That has little to do with whether or not it's supernatural claims are true.

That's a vague generality. This statement alone has no bearing on whether there IS enough evidence to make supernaturalism. And even if there is a lot of "evidence", if most of that evidence is meaningless, the quantity makes little or no difference.

Jamie