Why polytheism? And why the shift to monotheism?

[rousseau]

I have some thoughts of my own on these questions, but am interested to hear the understanding of some of our members. So:

1) What were the central reasons that polytheistic religions developed?

2) Did monotheism often follow from polytheism, or is this a false premise?

3) What were the central reasons that monotheistic religions developed?

 

[LordKiran]

I'd argue we didn't really leave polytheism behind until we abandoned the declaration of patron saints which fill the same roles as minor gods in a pantheon.

 

[bilby]

Monotheism has dominated in the west for at least 1600 years. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy ghost, three men.

I suspect that most monotheist Christians just cannot let polytheism go.

 

[bigfield]

1) What were the central reasons that polytheistic religions developed?

Polytheism, at least around the Mediterranean, emerged in rapidly growing civilisations. The mother goddess and simple chthonic religions were supplemented with specialist deities who governed specific aspects of nature and society. As the society became more complex and specialised, so did the religion.

e.g. Egyptians, Etruscans, Greeks, Hittites.

2) Did monotheism often follow from polytheism, or is this a false premise?

3) What were the central reasons that monotheistic religions developed?

Monotheism, at least around the Mediterranean, developed alongside polytheism but tended to develop in civilisations that grew slowly, and where primitive beliefs were replaced with an all-purpose father god who probably served as a supernatural proxy for the monarch. As the state grew, the god grew with it.

e.g. Judaism, Zoroastrianism.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

1) What were the central reasons that polytheistic religions developed?

Polytheism, at least around the Mediterranean, emerged in rapidly growing civilisations. The mother goddess and simple chthonic religions were supplemented with specialist deities who governed specific aspects of nature and society. As the society became more complex and specialised, so did the religion.

e.g. Egyptians, Etruscans, Greeks, Hittites.

2) Did monotheism often follow from polytheism, or is this a false premise?

3) What were the central reasons that monotheistic religions developed?

Monotheism, at least around the Mediterranean, developed alongside polytheism but tended to develop in civilisations that grew slowly, and where primitive beliefs were replaced with an all-purpose father god who probably served as a supernatural proxy for the monarch. As the state grew, the god grew with it.

e.g. Judaism, Zoroastrianism.

Monotheism evolved from polytheism, historically speaking it seems. It wouldn't be so strange to think of polytheism as multiple cases of monotheism. In my way of thinking monotheism is the more primitive concept.

I've read articles that indicate true polytheism was a laborious undertaking, what with many gods to be appeased and venerated. Monotheism is much simpler and therefore more efficient, and this is why I think societies reverted back to practicing monotheism.

But as stated, monotheism is not monotheism when you have prophets, angels, devils, and all manner of spirit beings.

 

[Bomb#20]

I have some thoughts of my own on these questions, but am interested to hear the understanding of some of our members. So:

1) What were the central reasons that polytheistic religions developed?

To my mind, polytheism is a more natural theory to develop for those new to metaphysics. In the first place, the basis of all human thought is pattern matching. There's a pretty obvious scientific discovery that could easily have driven a thousand primitive tribes to independently come up with polytheism: figuring out that babies are caused by sex. A man squirts fluid into a woman and then new life appears out of the woman. With that fresh in his mind, how hard is it for a smart and observant but ignorant caveman to put it together that the sky squirts fluid into the soil and then new life appears out of the soil? Once you have mother earth and father sky, it's trivial to personify other lesser natural phenomena.

And in the second place, to put on my Dawkins hat, if a divine being exists at all, how can this be accounted for? The only proposal anybody has ever come up with that isn't completely ridiculous is that divine beings evolved from simpler more primitive divine beings. Thus you get Apollo son of Zeus son of Cronus son of Uranus son of Gaia daughter of Chaos.

2) Did monotheism often follow from polytheism, or is this a false premise?

3) What were the central reasons that monotheistic religions developed?

Well, how many examples of this do we have? Just because Judaism took over the world and left us with six billion monotheists doesn't make it more than one case; and it's hard to extrapolate from one case to a general conclusion. I think we have to mark this one "insufficient data".

 

[Politesse]

Only sheer speculation is possible here, since our knowledge of the circumstances of the rise of polytheism, especially, is nearly non-existent.

1) What were the central reasons that polytheistic religions developed?

I can conceive of four trajectories that seem likely to me.

1. A natural progression from a more animistic perspective to something more like a pantheon. In theory, the difference between a spirit and a god is one of authority; does this entity have natural authority over a domain of life, or are they responsible only for their own choices within it? In practice, the difference between a very powerful spirit and a minor god is not necessarily obvious. The natural role of Amaterasu in Japanese tradition, for instance, is obviously god-like in nature, and she is often called the "sun-God" of Shinto by outsiders, even though "kami" is best translated as spirit and Shinto itself is generally considered Animist. And in many traditional pantheons, there are gods/theoi/deva whose roles are not clearly defined nor their power over human lives seemingly great, and look to all intents and purposes like personifications of everyday life not unlike those found in an animist culture. This leads to etic confusion often, with the same entity translated into other languages as "god" or "spirit" depending on the biases and expectations of the translator.

2. It would also be easy to see polytheism developing as a response to the locality of godly domains; if the neighbors honor a different god than yourself, imagining a sort of council of Gods with divided authorities as per Palestine during the Biblical era is a more mild alternative to insisting that only of of those gods exists.

3. You do not mention binary theism here, but as a subvariant of polytheism it is interesting. I see it as a response to the seeming paradox of human life, forever filled with abundance and suffering simultaneously.

4. Polytheism would be the most natural course for a system of ancestor worship to follow; if veneration of those passed on is the purpose of one's devotions, it is inherently obvious that the dead are many in number, even if only the totem of a clan grouping is the target there are always many clans.

2) Did monotheism often follow from polytheism, or is this a false premise?

By numbers, most monotheists belong to one of three faiths, all of which have a shared background in the polytheistic context of the ancient Near East. In a numbers sense, this seems clearly correct.

We shouldn't assume a polytheistic background for all monotheistic faiths, though. Monotheism of a sort was commonplace in the ancestral US Southeast, for instance, despite the absence of anything strongly resembling polytheism in the same area. Moreover, even relative to animism, anyone would tell you that the Great Spirit is not, substantially or connotationally, a spirit in the sense that first man, coyote, or spider are. This was something different.

3) What were the central reasons that monotheistic religions developed?

A more interesting question to my mind, as several monotheistic religions have arisen as the result of revitalization movements in recent memory. And the answer, almost to a one, is personal revelation. Monotheistic gods reveal themselves to a chosen prophet, whose authority extends over a small group of believers as a result, eventually elaborating into a religious structure should the group remain solvent following that individual's death (not a given). Someone here might correct me (?) but I have never actually heard of a religious movement that started with personal revelation from multiple deities at once.

Exception: Plato, who seems to have just reasoned his way into monotheism.

 

[Lion IRC]

I think the progression was from animism to monotheism to polytheism.
It stands to reason that before you can go on to have multiple gods you first have to start with the single idea of a God. Hence the prevalence of polytheistic systems which acknowledge a heirarchy of some sort.

 

[Copernicus]

I have some thoughts of my own on these questions, but am interested to hear the understanding of some of our members. So:

1) What were the central reasons that polytheistic religions developed?

Human cognition expands by associating existing experiences (starting with bodily sensations) with new ones. It is basically a network of associations that the brain uses to calculate future outcomes, i.e. to set up expectations. So  animism, which exists in all corners of the world, is very natural, because it attributes events to a very basic experience--volition. We cause things to happen by sensing and moving our bodies and using our bodies to sense and move external objects. It is reasonable to explain natural events in terms of our own experienced animism. Gods are basically personifications of natural forces. That is, we can attribute agency to forces that are beyond our control or comprehension, and, since those agencies are like us, we can influence them by treating them the way we treat ourselves. So we can gain some measure of control by bargaining, pleading, and cajoling deities that represent natural forces (wind, fire, volcanoes, seasons, etc.). IOW, polytheism likely arises from the our natural tendency towards animism. Even modern people have a tendency to personify--attribute agency--inanimate objects.

2) Did monotheism often follow from polytheism, or is this a false premise?

That seems to have been the historical trend. Pantheons had family structure, and modern Abrahamic religions still treat God/Allah as a "father" of sorts. Lesser deities became holy beings with great powers over time--saints and demons. Modern monotheism has not lost its deep ties to anthropomorphism, although believers seem uncomfortable with admitting it. They often deny that their version of God is anthropomorphic at the same time that they pray to God as if it/he/she would respond to human influence. When tribes and nations went to war, their gods also went to war. Polytheistic societies captured the god totems of their enemies and often incorporated them in their own pantheons. Babylon had warehouses full of god totems from conquered peoples.

3) What were the central reasons that monotheistic religions developed?

I think that it had a lot to do with the growth of empires and globalization of civilization. As lots of different religions came into contact with each other and communities of believers merged, it made sense to consolidate. Religious communities have converged on a one-size-fits-all system of faith. Monotheism makes that convergence easier.

 

[lpetrich]

Polytheism is typical of small-scale, preliterate societies. Just about every society has entered the written record as having polytheism, and it is plausible to conclude that humanity has believed in polytheism for nearly all of its history. I don't know what got polytheism started,

Monotheism emerged only in large-scale, literate societies, though it emerged more than once, and in different ways.

The first monotheist on record was the heretic pharaoh Akhnaton, who lived around 1350 BCE. He worshipped the Sun as the only god, Aton, but his new religion never got very far, and his successors tried to erase his name from the historical record.

After the big disasters of 1200 BCE, societies got reorganized, and over the Axial Age, roughly 800 - 400 BCE, new religions and belief systems emerged. Some of them were monotheist, like Zoroastrianism and Yahwism, and the rest were either mixed, like Greek philosophy and Hinduism, or more-or-less atheist, like Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The atheist and mixed ones all tended to believe in a Universe that is ruled by impersonal laws of nature.

Zoroastrianism and Yahwism, like Atonism, were essentially exclusivist, opposing the worship of other deities, and often denying their existence. Yahwism may be called an early form of Judaism, and Judaism has had offshoot sects Christianity and Islam, all of them keeping exclusivist monotheism going. However, some sects of Xianity and Islam have lots of saints, a kind of backdoor polytheism, and the Xian Trinity is also rather polytheistic.

Hindu monotheism has an inclusivist approach, stating that the numerous Hindu deities are aspects of a single deity. This is the ultimate in syncretism, something that many polytheists had done as they learned about other religions and sects. Thus, if you worship a weather god and you discover that some neighboring people also worship one, you might decide that their weather god is another manifestation of yours. Likewise for a grain goddess and other deities.

Greek philosophers had a lot of different opinions, but they generally didn't consider the deities of Mt. Olympus the real rulers of the Universe. They considered those entities to be lesser beings, subject to either a big Universe-ruling deity or else impersonal laws of nature. However, even very skeptical philosophers thought that one ought to worship one's society's deities. They were thus inclusivist monotheists or else more-or-less atheists.

 

[lpetrich]

I've also seen spellings Akhnaten, Aten, and Atenism. Egyptologists often use "e" for vowels that they are not sure about, since ancient Egyptian writing did not usually include vowels.

Xenophanes (ca. 570 BCE - ca. 475 BCE) had some interesting opinions about deities. We only have fragments from him: Fragments of Xenophanes - Wikisource, the free online library

#7: And now I will turn to another tale and point the way . . . . Once they say that he (Pythagoras) was passing by when a dog was being beaten and spoke this word: "Stop! don't beat it! For it is the soul of a friend that I recognised when I heard its voice."

Making fun of Pythagoras's belief in reincarnation.

#11: Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another.

#12: Since they have uttered many lawless deeds of the gods, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another.

Plato went further, citing such misconduct as why the stories of his society's religion should be banned from his Republic.

#14: But mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form.

#15: Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds.

#16: The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair.

That is, black people make gods that look like black people, northern Europeans like northern Europeans, and Mediterranean-basin people like Mediterranean-basin people.

However,

#23: One god, the greatest among gods and men, neither in form like unto mortals nor in thought . . . .

#24: He sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over.

#25: But without toil he swayeth all things by the thought of his mind.

#26: And he abideth ever in the selfsame place, moving not at all; nor doth it befit him to go about now hither now thither.

 

[lpetrich]

The author of Xenophanes notes what other philosophers said about him:

Aristotle remarks that, for Xenophanes the one God cannot have been born, unlike the traditional Greek gods, who, even immortal, still came into being at various times. Aristotle writes, "For instance, it was a saying of Xenophanes that to assert that the gods had birth is as impious as to say that they die; the consequence of both statements is that there is a time when the gods do not exist" (Rhetoric 1399b 6-8). It follows that, if God is unborn and does not die, then God is eternal. Diogenes Laertius reports that Xenophanes holds the eternity of God (Lives, 9. 19), as does Hippolytus (Refut. 1. 12). In fact, God's eternity is implied in Xenophanes criticism that the traditional view that the gods were born (fr. 14).

As to God's form,

If God is supposed to be unlike human beings, Xenophanes's detractors would no doubt demand to know from him what God is like with respect to his outward form. In the surviving fragments of Xenophanes' works nothing is said about the issue, but later writers say that Xenophanes teaches that the outward form of God is spherical. Simplicius reports that Xenophanes' view about God was that "Being homogeneous throughout he is a sphere in form" (Phys. 23. 18). Later Diogenes Laertius writes that for Xenophanes, "The substance of God is spherical, in no way resembling man" (Lives IX. 19). Likewise, Hippolytus comments, "He [Xenophanes] says that God is eternal and one and similar in all directions and spherical and endued with perception in all parts" (Refut. 1. 12) (see also MXG, 977b 1 [A 28]; Sextus, A 35; Theodoret, A 36). As spherical, God is finite, because a sphere needs boundaries or limits (i.e., finitude) in order to be a sphere.

There are hints that Xenophanes believed in pantheism, the theory that God is all of the Universe, or at least its soul.

 

[Kharakov]

Hey Joe, who fucked the cow while I was gone?

Definitely Zeus. There was thunder and lightning. I wouldn't be surprised if a 1/2 cow, 1/2 man thing popped out. You never know- but Gods look a lot like humans, so that' the reason a 1/2 man, 1/2 cow thing would be born. Definitely Zeus.

Ohh, I heard he did it somewhere else to. Like, on this island, and a 1/2 man, 1/2 cow hybrid lives there.


"Why haven't people seen it?"

Well, it lives in a maze, you see. And you don't want to go there. It's guarding the entrance to the underworld.

"You fucked the cow, didn't you?"

I tell you, it was a God that did it!

 

[J842P]

I have some thoughts of my own on these questions, but am interested to hear the understanding of some of our members. So:

1) What were the central reasons that polytheistic religions developed?

To my mind, polytheism is a more natural theory to develop for those new to metaphysics. In the first place, the basis of all human thought is pattern matching. There's a pretty obvious scientific discovery that could easily have driven a thousand primitive tribes to independently come up with polytheism: figuring out that babies are caused by sex. A man squirts fluid into a woman and then new life appears out of the woman. With that fresh in his mind, how hard is it for a smart and observant but ignorant caveman to put it together that the sky squirts fluid into the soil and then new life appears out of the soil? Once you have mother earth and father sky, it's trivial to personify other lesser natural phenomena.

And in the second place, to put on my Dawkins hat, if a divine being exists at all, how can this be accounted for? The only proposal anybody has ever come up with that isn't completely ridiculous is that divine beings evolved from simpler more primitive divine beings. Thus you get Apollo son of Zeus son of Cronus son of Uranus son of Gaia daughter of Chaos.

2) Did monotheism often follow from polytheism, or is this a false premise?

3) What were the central reasons that monotheistic religions developed?

Well, how many examples of this do we have? Just because Judaism took over the world and left us with six billion monotheists doesn't make it more than one case; and it's hard to extrapolate from one case to a general conclusion. I think we have to mark this one "insufficient data".

Judaism itself evolved from polytheistic to "accept other gods but only worship our god" to "only one God".

 

[Ramaraksha]

I have some thoughts of my own on these questions, but am interested to hear the understanding of some of our members. So:
1) What were the central reasons that polytheistic religions developed?
2) Did monotheism often follow from polytheism, or is this a false premise?
3) What were the central reasons that monotheistic religions developed?

Think of the difference between a Communist/Dictator led country and a Democratic one - in the former, there is only one leader, new ideas are not allowed or are restricted, in the latter, there will be different and new leaders, freedom of ideas is tolerated. Basically it's the same with monotheistic (Dictator/Communist) & polytheistic (Democratic) religions. In the monotheistic religions there is only one way, their way, obey and be rewarded. Follow our God or else! Much killing has been the result and it is a bit sad that people seem to have forgotten the mass killings in the name of religion in the past

Today the mass killings may have gone, but the threats remain. All Atheists are familiar with such threats - i fear pressure - if climate change comes true and life becomes much harsher, the mass killings in the name of religion - "they don't pray to our God and that is why he is angry and not coming to help us" - will come back

I always say if the Buddha had been born in Christian or Muslim lands, he would have been branded a heretic and tortured to death! His writings burnt, his followers killed, there would be no Buddhism today. No Sikhism, Jainism either! Half of the worlds top religions came from Hindu India and that is not a coincidence

The 2nd answer to your question is the view of God - different religions made God using different views - for Christians and Muslims - God is a King, a Master. The King or master protected his subjects and gave them a reasonably good life in a violent world - that was the template that they used. A slave may serve only one master, hence the One God. Religions that proselytized found the One God rule useful in that they could dangle the carrot of heaven and the stick of hell to drive conversions. You can't have several Gods or have respect for other religions in this view

For Hindus and Buddhists, God is a Teacher, not a Master. In life we can have many a Teacher - hence the many Gods in Hinduism, the Buddha was included in our pantheon of Gods, because He is a Teacher. Hindus have no problem including other Teachers into this pantheon

In Christianity and Islam, we don't matter, God or the Master matters. We must bow down and swear loyalty to the master, please him so that he will GIVE us the good life - the operative word is Give here

In a Teacher faith, we matter, what we do matters. The Teacher does not judge our papers, He or She will give the grade that it deserves - here the operative word is EARN

Lastly, you get what you pay for - if you want something to be given to you instead of working for it and earning it, well you get what you worked for. Since you didn't work for it and it was given to you it is worth less. Take a beggar - he begs for money or food - he gets money - with it he can buy food, shelter, sex

But what if he wants knowledge? Like art, philosophy or say he wants to be a physician? Become a musician follow in the footsteps of Mozart? The latter cannot be given, they have to be Earned

 

[rousseau]

Polytheism is typical of small-scale, preliterate societies. Just about every society has entered the written record as having polytheism, and it is plausible to conclude that humanity has believed in polytheism for nearly all of its history. I don't know what got polytheism started,

Monotheism emerged only in large-scale, literate societies, though it emerged more than once, and in different ways.

The first monotheist on record was the heretic pharaoh Akhnaton, who lived around 1350 BCE. He worshipped the Sun as the only god, Aton, but his new religion never got very far, and his successors tried to erase his name from the historical record.

After the big disasters of 1200 BCE, societies got reorganized, and over the Axial Age, roughly 800 - 400 BCE, new religions and belief systems emerged. Some of them were monotheist, like Zoroastrianism and Yahwism, and the rest were either mixed, like Greek philosophy and Hinduism, or more-or-less atheist, like Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The atheist and mixed ones all tended to believe in a Universe that is ruled by impersonal laws of nature.

Zoroastrianism and Yahwism, like Atonism, were essentially exclusivist, opposing the worship of other deities, and often denying their existence. Yahwism may be called an early form of Judaism, and Judaism has had offshoot sects Christianity and Islam, all of them keeping exclusivist monotheism going. However, some sects of Xianity and Islam have lots of saints, a kind of backdoor polytheism, and the Xian Trinity is also rather polytheistic.

Hindu monotheism has an inclusivist approach, stating that the numerous Hindu deities are aspects of a single deity. This is the ultimate in syncretism, something that many polytheists had done as they learned about other religions and sects. Thus, if you worship a weather god and you discover that some neighboring people also worship one, you might decide that their weather god is another manifestation of yours. Likewise for a grain goddess and other deities.

Greek philosophers had a lot of different opinions, but they generally didn't consider the deities of Mt. Olympus the real rulers of the Universe. They considered those entities to be lesser beings, subject to either a big Universe-ruling deity or else impersonal laws of nature. However, even very skeptical philosophers thought that one ought to worship one's society's deities. They were thus inclusivist monotheists or else more-or-less atheists.

Thanks for the post.

From what I can gather our predisposition to assume agency where there was none caused us to attribute natural events to the supernatural. The logic chain would have been something like:

- this thing that's significant to our lives can be impacted by random events (agriculture, fertility, disease, war)
- it gives us a sense of control and peace to assume we can appease the Gods and make these events go our way
- therefore there is a God of every individual thing, and if we appease all of those Gods things will turn out better for us

It's a bit of a leap but I guess monotheism was just a bit simpler conceptually and ritualistically. Easier to appease one God than twenty.

- - - Updated - - -

And a bit deeper than that, I'd guess that because people and animals were animate, this gave early humans a sense of a spirit world, hence why they so easily concluded that the supernatural existed.

 

[bilby]

When you look around and see that whole there are lots of important people in the tribe, but only one chief, it's not a huge leap to assume that of the lots of gods, one is the boss. And a sufficiently powerful god doesn't need you to worship his subordinates. Why pray to Mars for victory in battle, and Venus for good fortune in love, when you could pray to Jupiter and have him bring both Mars and Venus into line on your behalf (for likely a net reduction in offerings and sacrifices on your part)?

So: Predisposition to assign agency -> Animism -> Polytheism -> Heirarchy of gods -> Monotheism.

 

[Ramaraksha]

When you look around and see that whole there are lots of important people in the tribe, but only one chief, it's not a huge leap to assume that of the lots of gods, one is the boss. And a sufficiently powerful god doesn't need you to worship his subordinates. Why pray to Mars for victory in battle, and Venus for good fortune in love, when you could pray to Jupiter and have him bring both Mars and Venus into line on your behalf (for likely a net reduction in offerings and sacrifices on your part)?
So: Predisposition to assign agency -> Animism -> Polytheism -> Heirarchy of gods -> Monotheism.

it's a primitive view that thinks Gods are just like us - an earth like God country where different Gods have different powers and some have greater powers than others etc

A being who made this vast universe can only be one - but just as we have so many nationalities, religions and languages, we have different views of God and different names that we use for God - what Hinduism is saying with its different Gods is that you may call a chair a chair i may call it Kursi and some other nationality may call it something else but we are referring to the same thing

God Rama is Krishna is Jesus is the Buddha is Allah is and so on

But this view unifies us as people whereas religions bent on conversion do not like that one bit - the only way they get converts is to divide and preach hate - Your God, My God and of course My God is so much better than your God and he will give you what you want whereas your God won't etc

Talk about One God while actually saying there are different Gods? That my God is better than your God?

Live in a democracy with different views and appreciate the freedom of different opinions and yet when it comes to religion we turn communist/Dictatorship is preferred?

Amazing that such hatred and division actually works

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Most polytheistic religions have silly mythologies. The Canaanitic stories of El and his 70 sons was obviously the start of Israelite religion, and had a lot of rather silly stuff in it. I strongly suspect that the silliness of such things drove some to look for a more sensible and believable mythology, and to jettison the nonsense tall tales. By the times of Jesus, pagan religions were beginning to fade. Judaism instead focused on their history with their new concept of God, rather than the unedifying style of mythological tall tales that were the core of pagan beliefs.

And now we are seeing the final logical conclusion to all of this, the rising abandonment of Christianity in the West with it's God that is all powerful and perfectly good but does not seem to be able to deal with the problem of evil.