MRiGnS, who are you questioning?

just a little spam.

this is a very interesting thread. but all I wanted to say was already said, so I felt this evil power down inside my soul.

and I bumped the thread. maybe I'm posting something relevant later

Religion is a problem historically. Look at the wars which have been spawned by religion, or even the most severe bloddy conflicts. Governments have profited from religion, and they have also experienced problems from extremists. Do you think that governments or humanity will ever turn on religion?

Roman and Greek gods were very contentious but they didn't destroy each other the way human beings do.
One god per human characteristic (bad or good ones) let people share those single good qualities everybody has.
That way of thinking wouldn't lead people think someone is more developed (the good guys) and someone else less developed (the bad guys).

What a big "IF" ... :-)

In many ways, it seems like the world has gradually become more secular throughout time. I'm not sure that it will solve anything, but a world without *organized* religion seems inevitable.

If things continue on the current path, I think people will adopt a more cafeteria-style approach to faith, taking a scoop of several religions, mixing them together, and adding something creative. Or they will reject religion altogether.

Why would someone who is polytheistic think any of the gods is better? Why would someone who is monotheistic believe other monotheists believe in the same god? It indeed, as suoko said, is a big IF.
What about atheists? It seems silly to me to base peaceful coexistence on beliefs like belief in god, which do not affect how people interact. What affects how people interact is their values and morals, and focus should be on that.
Also, it sounds awfully close to the 'only monotheists can be moral' thing.

I would also like to add that my father once argued that Christianity(or at least often named so) is polytheism; they just conveniently replaced the word 'god' with 'prophet'.

It can certainly be aargued that way, the whole father/son/holyspirit thing is like the hybrid of the monotheistic world. The OT is more polytheistic, god refers to a we, and tells others not to pray to other gods, and similar things.

That the gods didn't destroy each other is irrelevant. What is relevant is that throughout polytheistic mythologies, the most violent wars are described as 'two Gods had a disagreement, and settled it by pitting their respective worshipers against each other'.


Not as big as you think. Most Jews interpret their monotheism this way. Most Christians and Muslims I personally know also do, because I tend to associate with intelligent and spiritually strong people who understand their own beliefs.

Why would someone who is polytheistic think any of the gods are better? I would think that the reason is obvious: you acknowledge that many deities, that are in many way similar to humans, exist. Some of them are weaker, some of them are stronger. Some of them are wise, and some of them are stupid. Just as people sort other people, so do they sort the gods. But even if this doesn't convince you, just look at histories of polytheistic religions. That's exactly how polytheism was interpreted: our city believes that god X is better than god Y, and we are willing to fight for X's glory.

And why would someone who is monotheistic believe that other monotheists believe in the same god? Well, first of all, because that's how many verses in the bible have been traditionally interpreted and still are today. That's the fundamental concept on which Judaism is built. Even the radical Muslims believe in it (they say that Jesus was a prophet of Allah, and acknowledge that Allah is the same as the Jewish God, and the same as all other philosophical conceptions of the supreme being, ultimate reality. This indeed is something that the majority of monotheists agree upon.

If you want an explanation of this, you would have to further study religion and philosophy, since it is a rather complicated topic. But the basic idea is this: words like 'God' (as opposed to lower case god, deity), 'Allah', 'Brahman', etc. mean not specific deities, but what Aristotle would call 'unmoved mover' or 'ultimate reality'. When defined this way, it doesn't make any logical sense to say that there is more than one such Being. So, a Hindu can say that a Muslim is wrong in believing that Muhammad is a prophet of Allah, or that Jesus is the son of God, but it would make no sense for him to say that Allah is not Brahman, since they represent the exact same philosophical idea, that by definition can only be singular. It's the same as arguing that the Roman 'VII' and modern '7' and the Arabic '۷' represent different things. They don't; they are different words to represent a very specific mathematical idea.

History is not exactly a good judge of how things will work, most history with polytheism is in a certain setting of civilization. Maybe polytheists think their gods should learn to live together, just like humans should.

Also, historically, different monotheisms have waged war too.(but history might be a crappy judge.) The analogy people took with their wars and religion might only be symbolic, and perhaps their actual wars were about other things.

Also, what do you think about seperating beliefs and coexistence into only what that affects one-another, as i stated in previous post.

As already said, probably we should separate religion from wars since current wars are mainly caused by money, oil, etc....
However we can't forget that there is a certain sense of detestation between the countries where most people adopt one of the two main monotheistic religions, while neither "polytheistic" people nor atheists are involved in nowadays media covered wars.
I think that polytheistic religions are an easy step towards a natural religion (where Nature, which comprises MANY DIFFERENT events, is THE god).
If people were afraid (and fascinated) of nature, people "might" forget skin colors differences (don't tell me it's a solved issue, please) and so on.
I'd prefer people afraid of Godzilla (a sort of Tsunami god) instead of Bin Laden (OT: I believe more in conspiracy theories than in media theories)

As a Pantheist, I am sympathetic towards the worship of nature as God, but I see this as the very definition of monotheism, rather than polytheism. How can you advocate polytheism and use a word like 'THE god'?