Wonderful thread Narkissos,
A noticeable confusion among recent theist / atheist posts is a common misunderstanding of pantheism. If fact, one could say that pantheism can be theistic in many respects; one God who sets the rules and created everything we see, and atheistic; God Jehovah or God Zeus are human constructs and confuse the understanding of nature.
steve
Polytheism, Monotheism, Atheism: a logical sequence?
by Narkissos 23 Replies latest jw friends
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stevenyc
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done4good
I would agree it is a logical progression. But a BIG step, indeed. Obviously, with 90% of the world still clinging to a basic belief in some god, be it theistic or deistic, there seems to be a disconnect getting from monotheistic, (or deistic), belief to atheism.
j
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Narkissos
A noticeable confusion among recent theist / atheist posts is a common misunderstanding of pantheism. If fact, one could say that pantheism can be theistic in many respects; one God who sets the rules and created everything we see, and atheistic; God Jehovah or God Zeus are human constructs and confuse the understanding of nature.
Did you mean deism perhaps? A pantheistic "God" would be its own "rules" and "creation," making the latter notions ultimately meaningless.
with 90% of the world still clinging to a basic belief in some god
Seems a very high figure to me. Anyway, I guess that the "second step" (which needs not be second, as dilaceratus pointed out) sounds way smaller and more natural from a Western European perspective like mine than from an American perspective.
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dilaceratus
Narkissos: I very much agree that monotheism is not a necessary stepping stone between polytheism and atheism. That's why I mentioned the underground tradition of practical if not overt atheism running parallel to philosophical monotheism in the Greek world. And we can suspect that "atheism" was not unthought of in the Jewish sphere either. The motto "there is no god" ascribed to the "fool" in Psalms may well express (as well as try to repress) a very serious question, which most Bible commentaries (taking for granted that "atheism" was unthinkable to the Ancients) explain away by making it a purely practical or moral stance.
Having long admired your thoughtful and informed posts, I didn't really suppose you were suggesting some sort of historical necessity to the ordering. My comments to that end were more of a preface.
Even as historical descriptions, though, I think the succession you propose is muddied by Catholicism having arguably moved in some important ways away from a tightly formatted monotheistic structure, which would seem to imply a retrograde historical sequencing, prior to the Enlightenment. (Although this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that most post-Enlightenment atheism was the product of regions with strong Protestant populations-- again, the tendency to iconoclasm.)
More importantly, I question whether the genuine intellectual premise of modern atheism has any more connection to a-, mono-, or polytheistic notions of the ancients than modern neuroscience does to Aristotle's take on the function of the brain, and therefore whether there is any justifiable sequence there at all. Not that there is not some sympathy and genesis in ideation between ancient ideas and modern, but that they are, at heart, more different in their foundations than they are alike.
It's been a long while, but I believe that it's in the first chapter of The Blind Watchmaker that Dawkins offers his argument that there wasn't a genuinely rational, evidentiary case for atheism prior to Darwin, a position I favor. The ideas expressed (and, very good, repressed) prior to Darwin are developmentally interesting to the growth of Western individualist thought, and, although tending towards reason and away from the supernatural, in point of testable fact, these epistemological and metaphysical atheistic claims rested on no more than a philosophical preference-- the same as theistic claims. (Unlike the heterodox or skeptically analytical materialist readings of Christianity and its tenets, which informed atheistic rationale, but are not a basis for a logical rejection of any creator, per se.)
I would therefore suggest for discussion that modern atheism has its underpinnings in the revolution in Western views of evidentiary, materialist science, rather than any ancient knowledge, or counter-knowledge. I also suggest that the philosophical roots of this Western science might be arguably traced to the dualistic iconoclasm that came up through the Abrahamic traditions.
I'd very much welcome comments on this topic from a theistic standpoint.
I think the modern theistic position is laid out ably here...
John Dryden, Religio laici, or, A laymans faith
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Thus man by his own strength to Heaven would soar:
And would not be oblig'd to God for more.
Vain, wretched creature, how art thou misled
To think thy wit these god-like notions bred!
These truths are not the product of thy mind,
But dropt from Heaven, and of a nobler kind.
Reveal'd religion first inform'd thy sight,
And reason saw not, till faith sprung the light.
Hence all thy natural worship takes the source:
'Tis revelation what thou think'st discourse.
Else how com'st thou to see these truths so clear,
Which so obscure to heathens did appear?
Not Plato these, nor Aristotle found:
Nor he whose wisdom oracles renown'd.
Hast thou a wit so deep, or so sublime,
Or canst thou lower dive, or higher climb?
Canst thou, by reason, more of God-head know
Than Plutarch, Seneca, or Cicero?
Those giant wits, in happier ages born,
(When arms, and arts did Greece and Rome adorn)
Knew no such system; no such piles could raise
Of natural worship, built on pray'r and praise,
To one sole God.
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unfortunately, it's from 1682.
[Notice that in this snippet Dryden is actually arguing against the Deists, but I think it still works.]
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bernadette
An interesting topic Narkissos - It made me think of Jesus words "you will know the truth and the truth will set you free". The wts tells us that we are set free from false worship but really they then enslave us by their absolutist theistic rules and regulations disguised as truth which imo all religion does to a lesser or greater extent.
I think I'd see atheism as "truth setting us free" and therefore as progress because it allows us the freedom (and responsibility) to bring our own sense of judgement with regard to values and morals into play. (excuse me misapplying the scripture but it makes more sense like that, to me).
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stevenyc
Narkissos: Did you mean deism perhaps? A pantheistic "God" would be its own "rules" and "creation," making the latter notions ultimately meaningless.
I wouldn't necessarily say deism, as, in my understanding of deism: by knowing nature we can know / discover God. And, implies the existence of a separate deity.
However, my understanding of pantheism is: the sum of the laws of nature and the universe is God. The same God of Einstein, Feynman, and Hawkin.
I would say that this definition does make those latter notions meaningless, however, I have found that this tack seams to be the closest to any 'common ground' in debate.
steve -
slimboyfat
Fascinating post as ever Narkissos. I am reminded slightly of Steve Bruce's rather complex paradigm of secularization in which he posits as perhaps the foundational root of the modern turn from religion the Jewish adoption of monotheism. Although he paints the history somewhat different. Where you see the formation of the Trinity as a slight reversal for monotheism he sees as far more significant the medieval veneration of Mary and saints elevated to divine status. So in his depiction the reformation swept all that away (without dispensing with the Trinity of course - which was not really an obstacle to critical thought in the way the multitude of mediators were) preparing the way for a more extensive critical penetration of faith during the enlightenment, which is now in turn perhaps giving away to doubt in even the apparatus with which the enlightenment discredited the dogmas of the murky past.
Slim
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poppers
I loved your answer Satanus.
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Narkissos
Perhaps I should have stated right from the start that by "logical sequence" I didn't mean progress.
And that tracing back phenomena to one "genealogical" line always implies a measure of arbitrariness and oversimplification. Only on large-scale maps do the rivers appear to have only one source and one linear course.
It seems that actual divergence from the pattern I offered for discussion is frequent. The case of middle-ages popular Catholicism (which both dilaceratus and slimboyfat rightly point out) resembles, to an extent, the development of angelology and demonology in post-exilic Judaism -- in the centuries following the official shift from polytheism to monotheism. Resurgence, comeback of the repressed? Whatever, along with popular imaginary creativity some "intellectual ascetism" went on, with negative theology on one side and Aristotelian Thomism on the other, depriving "God" of adequate expression or representation...
While the development of technology during and after the industrial revolution(s) gave "wings" to the scientific approach, by exponentially increasing the opportunities for research and experiment, one can still wonder about the particular intellectual mindset (even resulting from collective "philosophical preferences") which made the whole development possible within a Christian and post-Christian culture rather than elsewhere -- along with political and economic factors, of course, but everything is connected somehow. It is a commonplace argument (positive when handled by Jewish or Christian apologists, negative when used by post-Christian ecologists or neo-"pagans") that the de-sacralisation of the world in monotheism contributed to the modern secular and scientific approaches. Exaggerated and overrated as that may be, there may still remain a parcel of truth to it.
To be continued...
(stevenyc: thanks for the clarification; Einstein's tribute to Spinoza is famous indeed.)
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Borgia
I wonder whether atheism is a logical subsequent consequence of the others.....Where there no atheist back then? Or rather, people who thought the nice stories about gods, half gods to be.....for the lay people, to put them at rest? Who performed their duties in front of the eye of the people, because it was politically appropriate? Or even people who had concluded, since no god of their time was of any help, not even a reply was given, that gods in human form did not exist?
Apart from the unknown god remark with Paul in Acts 17 I could not find any referecne to atheism per se. Or one should regard the struggle between JHVH and the gods of Egypt including the Pharoa, Golden Calfs, Molechs, Tammuz etc in such light. I cannot help but wonder why an almighty God imprinting his followers with fear and awe at his might is stuck with people so easily deviated from his ways.......Because he did not exist?
Cheers
Borgia