The Ancient Mistake.

I’ve been reading a lot about ancient indigenous cultures lately and their religions and colonizers and their religions and it all got me thinking.

MONO

In the ancient world, I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of cultures weren’t that into the whole single god idea (monotheism). It was a very multiple god (polytheistic) type of world.

I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that most monotheistic religions (especially the big three - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - which all worship the same god) originated, in part, from a single source: Zoroastrianism.

So, you’ve got all the Norse gods, the Greek gods, the Roman gods, the Buddhist gods, the Aztec, Inkan, and Cherokee gods and on and on… And then you have Zoroastrianism and its single god which most likely influenced Judaism which then influenced Christianity and Islam. (Hinduism is a worship one god kind of religion but it doesn’t deny the existence other gods.)

Since I’ve been on a “bigger” kick lately this all really got me thinking. How is it that the one-god religions all wiped out the lots-of-god religions? Is it because the idea of one god is more true or is it because it lends itself to a story that creates followers that are more likely to be motivated to do whatever it takes to convert people to its own god?

I’ve also been wondering what kind of psychological stuff it does to human brains to believe in one god compared to lots of gods? I mean once you have lots of gods you have much less of a chance of believing that your list of gods are the only gods because, after all, there are lots of gods and it’s harder to believe that you’ve managed to fence them all in. Or, it, at least, expands your horizons and creative thinking about gods.

INFINITE

But it’s not really the “one god” idea that was so messed up, it’s the specific “one god” idea that caught on. Why did “one god” get so small?

One infinite universe doesn't feel much smaller than multi-verses but that’s only because the one infinite universe is fucking huge and we get that. One infinite mystery doesn’t really feel smaller than multiple mysteries either. But, somehow one god just feels smaller than multiple gods, doesn’t it? I think that’s because the one god stories got pretty lame and tame - it seems somewhere, someone lost sight of the word infinite. And probably because when you add infinite on your god it’s a bit harder to conceptualize?

And maybe, more importantly, control.
Maybe, most importantly, control others.

GOTTA BE BIGGER

So, here’s my thought: It feels like the one god idea - instead of going with the one infinite universe idea - just picked a “one god” that was more like the gods already floating around. In other words, picking Zeus to be the one main god is a lot less cool than picking an infinite god that entails Zeus and all the others. Zeus wasn’t meant to be a one god because Zeus was just filling in a piece of the pie with other gods.

You can’t pick a piece of a puzzle that is meant to be with other pieces to fill in the whole picture and then call it the only piece to the picture. If you’re going to pick a single piece it has to be an infinite piece. Does that make sense?

In other words, Zoroaster I don’t know exactly what you did and maybe you did it right, and everyone else just screwed it up… but if you’re going to have one god - you better make sure it’s a fucking huge infinite thing so hard to understand that it basically becomes a lot less of what you think a god is and more of a big giant mystical force metaphor of being type of thing.

In other words, if you’re going to have one god, you better be sure it’s more of a universal mystery than a Zeus. But, being a missionary for mystery is quite a bit harder - and doesn’t really let you destroy the followers of others gods - so Zeus won out over infinite.

And it was a major, ancient mistake we’re still living in the wake of. Can we correct it?