WHY IS MONOTHEISM AT WAR WITH POLYTHEISM?
WHAT IT MEANS FOR SANATAN DHARMA – THE LAST SURVIVING POLYTHEISTIC RELIGION OF THE WORLD

“Sigmund Freud – Religious intolerance was inevitably born with the belief in ONE GOD”

PART 1 – ORIGIN

There is something to human nature that drives us to imagine the existence of a higher power . We may call it by any name :-

  • Yahweh
  • Elohim
  • Zeus
  • Jesus
  • Allah
  • Jehovah
  • Nature
  • Higher Power

Religious beliefs & practices began with the origin of humans.Gods and religion were created at the same time as humans started creating art. Scientists have come to believe that the idea of God is hardwired into our brains. We seek and find solace in the concept of a higher power. Neanderthals had created elaborate ceremonies to consecrate their dead. The evolution of the Homo sapiens gave these ceremonies structure. These ceremonies, over centuries got so intertwined into the daily life of the early humans that they started to fill their emotional search for God. The Gods so created needed ceremonies, procedures & order that formed the earliest religions. The Homo sapien – the thinking human was/is also Homo religiosus – the religious human

Human nature in any way does not suggest the inevitability of the notion of Only One God. Instead humans have in every age, civilization and geography have worshiped literally thousands of Gods and Goddesses. Polytheism has been the default setting of human psyche through the ages. It was very late in the development of Homo religiosus that Monotheism or One God-ism emerged. One striking feature of monotheism has been that whenever some king, cult or prophet sought to impose it on human race, ordinary people have risen up in revolt. To the human mind, the very idea of monotheism was appalling.

But monotheism survived and thrived because it bred in its followers a ferocity and fanaticism that was alien to polytheists.

To the polytheist, religion was open minded and easy going. He believes that there are many Gods and there are many ways to worship the various forms of the divine. In contrast, the monotheist has the unshakable belief that there is only ONE god and that his own rituals etc are the ONLY true ways of worship. It is this basic difference between beliefs that made GOD GO TO WAR AGAINST GODS. It is a war that has been fought with unbelievable cruelty and brutality for the last 3000 years.

THE FOUR KINGS

Thomas Cahill called monotheism, a gift of the Jews but it is a mistake born out of ignorance. Monotheism has its 4 kings. They are –

  1. AKHENATON (1400 BCE)– An Egyptian pharaoh (king) who first experimented with “One God-ism” or monotheism. It is most likely that the Israelites borrowed the idea from the ancient Egyptians. He was not a prophet preaching a new religion. Akhenaton was the fiery ruler, with power of life and death over his people. He forbade the worship of all other gods, closed their temples, destroyed their statues and monuments, murdered their priests. But it was not a lasting victory and after Akhenaton’s death his son Tutakhamon decreed the return of the old gods of Egypt and had banished all symbols of his father’s rule. This marked the end of the first battle of God vs Gods
  2. KING JOSIAH (700 BCE)– With Moses, Monotheism travelled out of Egypt during the period of the Exodus. The Israelites too resisted this new religion of One God-ism and majority of Israelites rejected the strange and sometimes appalling teachings of the self appointed prophets starting from Moses. But it was under rule of King Josiah that the ancient religion of Israelites was finally purged of its pagan taint. Like Akhenaton, King Josiah too enjoyed the power of life & death over his subjects. However Josiah’s victory against the gods was not a lasting one
  3. EMPEROR CONSTANTINE (300 CE)– The final victory in the war of god against gods was not achieved until the arrival of a new superpower in the ancient world – the empire of Rome. Rome was the melting pot of the ancient world to which all religions, familiar Hellenic gods & goddesses in their various avatars, the weird and exotic deities from all over the ancient world came and settled. Among them was the strangely zealous sect, who worshipped only one (self avowedly declared) all powerful deity – The Jews. Along with them came an obscure sect of Judaism called Christianity. The Christians had taken over the zealotry that was written in large & plain words in the pages of the Bible. They called themselves, Soldiers of Christ. Constantine was the emperor and like the previous 2 kings held power of life and death over his subjects. He ruled a mighty empire larger than the world had seen. It was his will that saw mainstreaming of the zealous creed of Christianity that would soon destroy the prevailing “pagan” (how I hate this word) cultures and beliefs on a global scale.
  4. EMPEROR JULIAN, The Apostate (360 CE) – Grandson of Constantine, he tried to remove all Christian influence from the roman empire (now the Christian empire). For that, he is ridiculed by the church as an apostate. Julian was a philosopher, planner, administrator in the best of roman traditions. He was the last one to wage a valiant but futile resistance on the side of the gods of the old religions. Though he is hugely admired for the prosperity he brought to the empire, his reign was short lived and with him Polytheism lost its battle to monotheism

THE ONLY TRUE GOD – Why Monotheism hates?

Historian John Holland explains that “to a Pagan, Paganism does not exist. So much so that before Christianity, there was no Roman religion but only worship, expressed in a hundred and one different ways”

Note:- Paganism & Pagan are disparaging names coined out hate and derision for all beliefs that are not Christian

Monotheism insists that a single deity is worthy of worship simply because only one deity exists. It is at this point Judaism, Christianity & Islam agree. It is the identity of the “True God” that varies – Yahweh, Elohim or Allah. To a polytheist, Supreme God, Higher God are concepts tat easily sit within the theology of Polytheism. But to a monotheist, the other gods are not only inferior but are also not true gods (denounces them as demonic even). These words by St Paul describes the obstinate orthodoxy of monotheism “For though there be gods many and lords many but to us there is but one God”

to be continued in Part 2 – MONOTHEISM AT WAR WITH SANATAN DHARMA

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