MONOTHEISM OR BELIEF IN ONLY ONE GOD IS BAD NEWS


The view that there is only one God, one who is a non-physical creator is very common.  This God is seen as the maker of all from nothing and he is closer to everything than it is to itself.  This God is a very late arrival in human history.  [Suspiciously too late.  God is more likely to be an idea rather than a power.] Even the Bible contradicts this God by saying he attacks his own work by commanding innocent people be put to death by stoning and using their adultery or idolatry as an excuse.

 

Monotheism implies rejection of any version of God but one. God by definition is that which is and should be the be all and end all in life. Belief in one God is not enough if it is not the real one.  Belief in one God can still be idolatrous.  If you believe the crystal on your coffee table is your one true God that is idolatry.


In romance and in life, the idea of "the one" does away with moral responsibility. It is up to the one to come to you for she or he is the one and nobody else will do.  It is fate or something like it for the one being the one has to be drawn to you.  For religion, its version of God is "the one".  The same thing happens but on a more destructive scale for God must surpass any love interest in importance and value and appeal.

 

The pagan religions of ancient Rome and ancient Greece had faults. But they should have known better for their gods were a million times better than the implacable Jehovah of Jesus Christ. The Bible and Jesus just made the world a worse and sillier place.
 
The pagans were usually polytheists – believers in many gods. Monotheists believe in only one God.
 
The advantage of the pagan approach is that the gods have faults themselves. They are just immortal human beings with the power to help humanity. They often mean well and have to hold meetings to decide what is going to be done in the world. So you can worship the gods and still put yourself first the way you should for proper self-love is the root of all good. You can even disagree with the gods and pray to them to try and make them see sense. You can relate to the gods and their problems and them to you. They do not threaten human autonomy much. They are not dogmatic jealous gods like the Christian God. Jesus sanctioned the Law of Moses in which God says he is a jealous God and will not tolerate any other. That God had to be so nasty and defensive shows that he knew he was inferior to the pagan gods. The gods solve the problem of evil for they are not perfectly good themselves and can be spiteful so we don’t have to pretend that evil is compatible with a good higher power and have a mystery. The mystery just leaves us not knowing if we are being blind or what. For that alone it is blindness.
 
So already we see that polytheism is the best. When a pagan says this, some would say he or she is being intolerant but lets face it. She or he would not be a pagan unless she or he thought it was the best. To condemn that as intolerance is to condemn the human right to think and decide what philosophy is the right one or the best one for you. To dispute this is extreme intolerance.
 
If there is only one God then he must favour one religion above all the rest. One of them must be the most right or the only right religion. So a lot of time and trouble and money must be expended on spreading this religion when it would be better to spend them on helping people and counselling them.
 
If there is only one God then there is only one being entitled to absolute obedience. This is dangerous. No being is entitled to that. You should be asked to do nothing without being made to understand what you are doing. God declares himself the king and the Supreme Being meaning he is the one that is important and that he has the right to do away with all people if he wants so he has to come first. His will is to be our prime concern for we are nothing and he is the one that owns us and all we have. The fact that he asks to be put first shows he demands absolute unquestioning obedience and even if we suspect that what we are asked to do is evil we still have to get on with it.
 
We all have different moral values because we all see the world differently. Nobody has the same values for one person will hold a value more dear than another will. Therefore if you believe in God you believe that God supports your values and so you will have to try and impose them on others. You can’t be easygoing in this for he comes first. But if God does not come first you can be tolerant and open-minded.
 
If there is one God then man or woman must be closer to his image. The Christian God is referred to as a male. The word God itself is a male word. Its opposite is Goddess. Man would be closer to the image of God because man is stronger and more aggressive when it comes to looking for power. Woman is not like God for she makes her young in her body while man does it in a more distant fashion like God who fashions creatures from powers that he has made but which are not part of him. Monotheism then is intrinsically sexist. Feminists who teach monotheism should not bother being feminists any more.
 
If there is only one God then suffering and cancer are gifts from him for he allows everything for a justifiable and good reason. This is particularly sick and vicious and implies we should be glad if we suffer instead of wanting to do anything about it. The gods of Greece and Rome had no excuse for doing that. Monotheism then is intrinsically disrespectful to human dignity and therefore a perfect background for violence. It is no coincidence that monotheism has been marked by a horrific amount of bloodletting.
 
Christianity and Judaism and Islam offer proofs that there can be only one God. They say God is infinite. You cannot have two infinite Gods. Why? Because if one has infinite power that means he has all power and there is none left for another God to have.
 
So God is infinite. That means all power is his and there is no limit to that power. He is spirit, he is that which exists but which has no parts or components. It is just like a gas that has no parts. God is absolutely one. So God doesn't have the power to be just or to create. He is those powers. If he had the powers they could be left out. He would be like a man who loses his sight. If the man is his sight he cannot lose his sight without ceasing to be a man. He becomes something else if it is taken away. Or he ceases to exist. But if he has his sight it can be taken away for he is not his sight and he can still be as much of a man as before. The idea that God is his qualities comes from the hypothesis that God is perfect. A perfect God cannot have perfect powers as if the powers were outside him. To be perfect, God must be the powers and perfections he has. So God is one beyond every way we can imagine oneness for it is complete oneness.
 
Then the Christians say that God is three persons which contradicts this. But that doesn't stop them saying that God is one being.
 
All three religions say that God is his qualities. They say that infinite wisdom is one of them. Another one is his infinite love. If you can imagine God then you can imagine a being that is infinite wisdom but is not infinite love. So God can be infinite wisdom or he can be infinite love instead. If so, then why can't there be one God who is infinite wisdom and ANOTHER one who is infinite love?
 
The only hope religion has is to pretend that God's infinite knowledge that 2+2=4 is love. This idea is incoherent. Knowing and loving are not the same. The idea of one true God is incoherent.
 



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