Will someone please help me out and fill in the blank?
When I was in fifth or sixth grade, we had a “unit” on world civilizations, which was probably a worthwhile endeavor, an early version of today’s training in multiculturalism. We learned, for example, that we owed gunpowder, the compass, and printing to the Chinese; the numeric calendar to the Mayans; algebra to the Arabs; and that we should thank the ancient Egyptians for monotheism.
It all seemed self-evident and beyond dispute: Different societies contributed different things to the inevitable march of civilization, culminating, of course, in us.
But today I have my doubts – not about the compass, the calendar, or algebra, but frankly, I’m more than a little on the fence when it comes to monotheism. Even as a child I couldn’t help wondering whether pharaoh Akhenaton plumped for monotheism for his own selfish reasons, because he wanted his followers to see himself as a reflection of an all-powerful, unitary deity on earth.
My question is simply this: 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)? It is one thing, of course, to unthinkingly venerate monotheism as an “advance” simply because it is true, analogous to prizing the heliocentric universe over its less accurate geocentric predecessor.
Putting the subjective theology of the Abrahamic religions aside, however – and seeing it (if only for the sake of argument) as an invention rather than a discovery – what is the basis for concluding that monotheism isn’t a step sideways, or even backward? Is it one-half as good as papyrus?
Now that I’ve graduated from the sixth grade and its automatic presumption that the curriculum is the word of, well, god, it seems to me that a world-view that identifies a multiplicity of gods – one perched in this tree, inherent in that rock, animating that bird, inside me, you, a waterfall and a mountain – is far more likely to generate tolerance and live-and-let-live. After all, certainty about the existence of one true god seems likely to predispose toward comparable certainty that there is only one truth – itself sufficient justification, at least at times, to kill or be killed in its furtherance.
That said, I’m open to alternative arguments. So tell me something good about monotheism … aside from the fact that it is “obviously” the Truth and the Light and the only valid Way to envision the world.