Monotheism was a Civilizational Advance Because _______

… because it represents the discovery of parsimony as an explanatory principle.

In a world where all explanations are theistic, this discovery manifests itself as monotheism.

In the world of syllogism and philosophy, this discovery manifests itself as Ockham’s Razor.

In the modern world of scientific explanation, this principle manifests itself as parsimony, the preference for simple and underlying causes, such as laws of nature.

Parsimony is a methodological principle, and by itself no guarantor of truth, but the search for single, underlying sameness has, historically, led to improvements in efficiency and discovery.

Ah yes, the peaceful polytheistic Aztecs… and the Maya… and the Assyrians…

But I suppose I should put sarcasm aside and in the spirit of charity assume that Prof. Barash actually wants to know what those of us who are monotheists actually see in it.

I would argue that the intellectual advance of the Egyptians was less the idea of monotheism than the idea of universal moral law- that there are principles of behavior that are applicable across class and culture and that have eternal consequences. Monotheism can flow from this- insofar as the law implies a lawgiver. It doesn’t need to, however, as one can see from looking at Buddhism. However even in the Eastern tradition, the “gods” are still bound by a deeper moral law.

I would argue that monotheism/karma makes possible the Golden Rule- because it implies that all are ultimately answerable to the same judgment. Unfortunately, however, this not a necessary consequence of monotheism. But I would presume that Prof. Barash would affirm that genocide as a societal survival strategy is not a necessary consequence of an evolutionary worldview!

Well, there is monotheism and there is monotheism. The admonition that you shall not have any other gods before me is, in the original context, an acknowledgment that other gods exist, but this kind of monotheism means simply that you should ignore them. After several thousand years, Judaism ignored them thoroughly enough to pretty much eliminate them from the pantheon, but it’s not so clear in other Mosaic religions.

The problem with “monotheism” in Catholicism is the problem of what a deity is. The Catholic universe is swimming with angels, saints, ghosts of your great- grandmother, and other supernatural beings who can change the natural world through their personal intervention (we wouldn’t have “saints” otherwise). It seems like splitting hairs to call “God” a deity but not these other powerful supernatural beings.

Islam, the other major Abrahamic religion, is also awash in jinns, angels, and other supernatural beings. “There is no god but God” may be an article of faith, but there are plenty of other deities.

As Emile Durkheim noted years ago, religious pantheons tend to resemble social hierarchies, and as powerful monarchs emerged, high gods were quick to follow. But a high god does not preclude other, lesser deities, anymore than a supreme leader or a single monarch eliminates the possibility of other powerful members of a royal class. Even in “monotheism”.

@briannafarrete:

No, I’m not a protestant — I’m an anthropologist. Your explication of native belief is interesting, and confirms what I wrote.

My first thought is that your school was simply celebrating our own American culture as better than others, so that our view of God, as troublesome as it is, is superior and thus worth mention in school.

Less cynically, perhaps monotheism itself wasn’t the advance, but the things that came along with it were. I was always taught in Hebrew School that the innovation that monotheism wrought was the law of Moses that saw rich and poor as equal. (This was always contrasted with Hammurabi’s code, where the poor suffered more for offending the rich than vice versa.)

If you must include religion, how about the new idea that there is one deity for all nations, and therefore all humans are to be treated by the same moral rules? I realize this has been historically breached more than honored, but the ideal is worth considering.

RAD

because it was the first human perception of the idea of one God. If there is only one God, and that God is All there is, then that God has many parts and manifests itself in many different ways.

How do the Egyptians get credit for monotheism? The way I heard it, they went back and forth a few times between monotheism and polytheism. What was that, trial and error?

For the record, there is no such thing as “monotheism.” All so-called monotheistic religious systems postulate numerous superhuman agents (devils, angels, ghosts, etc.). What monotheism may enjoy, though, is a cultural transmission advantage by “chunking” the multiple deities into an easy-to-remember small number (e.g. the Trinity).

Monotheism quite neatly did away with goddesses and the feminine divine, since inevitably the one deity left standing was male. That’s only one of the several failings of monotheism, in my view.

I don’t see anything in briannafarrete’s rationalizations that counter barbarapiper’s statement that “The problem with ‘monotheism’ in Catholicism is the problem of what a deity is.” Moses smashed the tablets with the 10 commandments upon finding his people praying to a golden calf. How would he have reacted if it had been a statue of some Greek god, or by extension, some saint? The Trinity is also troubling, since it was formulated in the 4th century to reunite divisions in Christianity that had different viewpoints on the relationship between God and Christ. Sadly people have lost their lives for subsequently questioning the doctrine formulated at that time. Islam has had its own travails, most notably the closure of ijtihad, the ongoing development of religious thought, which some believe led to stagnation of intellectual achievement in Muslim societies, particularly in science. Its obvious counterpart in Christianity is the claim of inerrancy of Biblical text that some sects insist on.

Back to Mr. Barash’s original question, I think monotheism as an approach to religion was a significant step forward, because it moved societies that sought to practice it away from the locality of personal gods and superstition (although superstition is apparently so ingrained it is still a major element of all religious belief). The idea that there is something, however far beyond our understanding, that governs the universe has enormous appeal, call it God or what you will. Religions seek to demystify the idea of God (or fate) by use of intermediaries (living or dead) who are supposed to have better understanding, and so presumably better access to God. Since people prefer being more than a leaf cast about in a storm, it is hardly surprising they gravitate to religion as a means of influencing and explaining their destiny, a characteristic of human nature that has been exploited from time immemorial by those who cast themselves as religious authorities. The struggle we see today is the reluctance to advance religious thought as we gain understanding of ourselves, our world, and the greater universe in which we reside. The problem with monotheism as practiced to date is that it is still largely caught in how it was conceptualized more than a millennium ago and remains peppered with all manner of superstitious nonsense.

“… may be seen as an step”?

How about, there are some apple and oranges involved here and evaluating one or the other by the same standard doesn’t seem to be the way to go. For instance, an “advance” in science, say like splitting the atom, isn’t the same sort of advance in civilization as perhaps reaching a consensus that we ought to treat one another as we would want to be treated (regardless whether this was discovered or constructed).

Further complicating things is that even the term civilization “advance” can be understood in many diverse senses. These would include senses like utilitarian (telos) or some sort of “advance” we have a duty to perform without regard to the consequences to name two general ones.

These sort of questions can actually take even the “unproblematic” paradigm examples you cited like the gunpowder, the compass, etc. and make their “advance” much more ambiguous than you may think at first glance. Gunpowder may in the last analysis be very bad thing if its use leads to killing off every or nearly every living thing. And not to make too fine a point of it, there are those who argue we just don’t know what to think about these things.

But the thing I want to point out is that “advances” in metaphysics and religion deserve some special reflection as a separate category. They don’t seem, at least to me, to neatly fall into the same sort of advance category as a compass. Big deal. It seems to me that it could be profitable to think about these sort of things and if you want to play the skeptic about these sort of things, I shall want to play the skeptic about yours.

Dr. Barash, are you happy now? You must be quite amused sitting there in your office….I bet you can’t stop smiling.

Dr. Barash, to return to your original question, which was: ‘Is there any reason to consider that unlike the compass or algebra, there is any sense in which monotheism can objectively be seen as an step forward over, say, polytheism (the belief in many gods) or pantheism (that the world itself is imbued with the divine)?”
The key word being “objectively”, I would say the answer is “no”, the opinions of your middle school teachers notwithstanding. Perhaps you should try asking this same question in a forum on the TimesOfIndia website or someplace similar, and see what kinds of thoughtful, philosophically sophisticated responses you can get from educated non-monotheists.

Most of the other respondents to this article imagine polytheism as one of two systems: the jealous human-like passions of the ancient Greek/Roman gods, or “a god in every tree that does what it wants” animism. Hinduism, on the other hand, offers a much more complex theology in which the deities themselves are restricted by a set of natural laws that even they can’t violate, namely dharma, karma, and the cycle of reincarnation. It’s well known that Christians have utterly failed to convert Hindus en masse over the centuries because, unlike the other religions that Christians encountered, Hinduism has a very complex and well-developed metaphysical system that can more than stand up to any claims Christians make for superior Truth, and a very long history of written scholarship of its own to back it up.

Actually, just as Catholicism has an apparently schizophrenic concept of Trinity-yet-monotheism, something similar exists in Hinduism, as the day-to-day practice of what appears to be rampant polytheism is undergirded with a “all gods are just aspects of the One” (or maybe “Three” depending on which Hindu branch they follow) theology that the casual Western observer wouldn’t know is there.

If your intent is to seriously explore the value of non-Mosaic beliefs, rather than just to rile up the readers of the CHE web site, I strongly urge you to find a serious Hindu scholar (not just some Christian-believing professor of religion who teaches a course in Hinduism), and have a nice, long metaphysical discussion with him/her.

Dr. Barash- you say “I find myself wondering if one possible intellectual benefit of monotheism over polytheism is that it facilitates a separation – assuming that’s somehow a good thing – between the material world and the world of “spirit.”

That’s it- that’s the problem: Separation between “this” and “that,” between “you” and “me,” between “I” and “Thou.”
Monotheism may have been an advance in evolution (see Freud’s Moses and Monotheism)but it’s just that, a step on a continuum with no end.

There is no difference; no “other” no “material ” no “spirit.”
Blessings on the Blended, for we will never be extinct!
Who cares what we believe in- BELIEF is a human construct.

ricardtaborgreen said it the best:

“If beer, sex, fun, jokes, irreverence is forbidden and one has to spend all da..m day telling some emotionally fragile god how central in the universe he (not she) is, then hell is for me.”

Although this sounds more like freshman year at Party U….

“My position is that most Catholics view religion as a form of a magic, they won’t admit it out loud, but why else do people evoke saints, angels, Mary, or whatever else is in the beastiary of the Catholic supernatural zoo.”

You have no objective way of knowing what Catholics are up to, so you resort to mind reading? Let’s hope you don’t you don’t have a job teaching people for a living.

People seem to forget that the “golden rule” was proposed by Confucius (no monotheist there!) five centuries before Christ plagiarized…

In any case, I beg to differ from everyone in determining whether there is any such objective thing as a “civilization advance” at all! In order to decide what is objectively a “civilization advance” we need to first decide and have everyone agree upon: (a) what is civilization and (b) what constitutes an advance.

Definition of civilization (from the dictionary):

Civilization: “a human society that has highly developed material and spiritual resources and a complex cultural, political, and legal organization; an advanced state in social development”

By this definition, monotheism is an advance simply because it has “highly developed spiritual resources”. However, this begs the question. Perhaps we need to go further. Hobbes considers the “state of nature” in which we are in a constant “state of war” to be that state predating the establishment of Leviathan (i.e., political instutitons). But political institutions are merely a mechanism for social control. Therefore, looking at everything through the social control lens, does monotheism represent an advancement in our ability to engineer social control (and thus advances civilization)? The answer is yes, just like everything else that Dr. Barash mentions!

You see, depending on our definition, we could see monotheism as an advance or we could see all sorts of things “objectively” defended by Dr. Barash as advances:

gunpowder: increased death and destruction of other societies so as to increase social control
compass: enabled us to find other societies so we can kill them off in order to ensure social control
printing: provides a much easier mechanism for social control (i.e. propoganda)
numeric calendar: allows us to more easily plan our death and destruction of others in our quest for social control
algebra: allows us to carry on higher math so that we can invent things like the atomic bomb, which furthers our quest for social control through the death and destruction of others

Hmm… from my perspective, everything is an extension of social control and religion is the ultimate in social control! Stop people from bickering over a multitude of gods and unite them under the one true god — oh, and if others object, kill them! Yes! Much easier to unite forces against other (erroneous) doctrines when we have the one true God!

Oh, and for the record, I’m a monotheist.

Yet, social control is not something that we would typically associate with advanced civilization, even though it is absolutely associated with it (where would Hitler be without the social control given to him by civilization? Just another angry man without any ability to do anything about it).

No, my problem with the original phrasing is that it sets up a dichotomy that DOES NOT EXIST. There is no “objective” truth in life. One only arrives at objective truth when one confirms that both sides agree on the premises–and one of those premises happens to be logic. Only then can one “objectively” argue for one position or another.

Perhaps instead, we should concentrate on “advancement” instead of civilization. Then we could consider advancement to be increased freedom for all. Uh oh. That’s a problem.

You see, I deny your initial premise that civilization has “advanced” at all because I would consider civilization a regression from the “perfect” state of anarchy.

Would you not agree that anarchy is the antithesis of civilization? Yet, just as the law and government (and all of civilization) depend on social control, anarchy is its polar opposite and the epitome of freedom. Freedom is secured only by anarchy and not be government. Thus all of civilization is a logical regression, not an advancement, from the state of nature (contra Hobbes).

Therefore, Dr. Barash, your argument may be logically valid but it is still unsound.

@micmaranda:

I’m not sure who you are arguing with, so I’ll just make a couple of simple points in reply.

First, social scientists try not to confuse official doctrine with actual practice. For example, a recent report noted that roughly 80% of American Catholic women use artificial birth control, and 78% of American Catholic women felt that the use of artificial birth control was not incompatible with being a good Catholic. If I write that Catholics believe that artificial birth control is acceptable, and use it at a rate comparable to members of other religions, I am being accurate, sociologically. The validity of this observation does not rest upon anything the Pope, or any official doctrine, says.

Similarly, the claim that the universe of Catholicism includes a wide variety of powerful beings – saints, angels, demons, etc – is not true or false because of doctrinal ideology, but can be measured against actual practice. You may not believe that Catholics worship saints – I’m not sure who here made such a claim – but I know from many years of research in Latin America and West Africa that saints, and even bits of saints housed in reliquaries, are objects of religious devotion, and have attributed to them the power to perform miracles, among other magical acts. And some posters here – and at least one of the ‘natives” – may believe that all supernatural beings are simply different avatars of the same ‘spirit’, but I’ve seen Catholics worship The Virgin Mary in ways that suggest that she is rightly regarded as an independent deity.

My reading of the sociology of religion – and I’ve published extensively in the anthropology of religion – suggests that these are not even mildly contested points. If you’re reading different sociologists, I’d appreciate the references.

It’s Confusion and Catholicism. Sorry for the hasty misspelling.

Regardless of the number of gods, religion for the most part has been–and will continue to be–a source of violence and deception. I’m disappointed to see that there are members of this forum who did not survive another negative force: indoctrination.

s there “any sense in which monotheism can objectively be seen as a step forward over, say, polytheism (the belief in many gods) or pantheism (that the world itself is imbued with the divine)?”

Well, I would argue that monotheism, in theory anyway, can be seen as a step forward over polytheism and pantheism because it gives an intellectual assent to the super natural goodness in all people regardless of faith – a sense of justice, compassion, truthfulness, faithfulness and holiness. Such an intellectual assent gives us less to argue about and therefore, in theory anyway, fewer divisions. Further, Monotheism is capable of being understood pluralistically in many subtle and complex ways that allow for the infinite variations in human nature. The Trinity is a good example of this subtlety and complexity.

Sorry Dr. Barash, but after more than two weeks, I feel that you should cross out of Brainstorm the brain part, and reduce the storm to a drizzle.

The last thing my Translation students worked on this semester was an excerpt from “La region mas transparente.”  It provided both a challenge and a sense of accomplishment. We have lost a giant but he has left an impressive legacy.