In Which I Don't Go For Polytheism
Jan. 3rd, 2007 01:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsythOkay, so last year I talked about part of how I don't get monotheism. Though in retrospect, I'm not sure saying "I don't get it" is quite the right way to put it, but it's the easiest and closest thing I can think of. Maybe it just doesn't work for me.
Polytheism doesn't work for me. Yeah, it addresses the problems about all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, since the gods usually are none of the above. So when bad things happen? Well, it's because Loki's a dick. Or because Zeus was busy chasing ladies and not paying attention to who was driving the chariot of the sun. Or something along those lines. There's no Problem of Evil, because well, there's evil gods and good gods and mostly gods in between.
There's a couple problems with it still, for me. Firstly, that well, most of the gods are dicks. That's not really a glowing recommendations. And yeah, some of them could be not dicks, but they'd still be gods. They (in theory) have all this power, power we don't have. It's nearly impossible to have any kind of meaningful relationship with that kind of power differential. Hell, most people just tell their boss at work what they think the boss wants to hear, and a boss doesn't have anywhere near the power a god theoretically would. I think Cohen the Barbarian said it best, in The Last Hero, to paraphrase "Temples and such are just people trying to make friends with the biggest bullies on the playground." Those kinds of gods aren't worth worship, of any kind. And if you try too hard, you just end up with Stockholm Syndrome. That just doesn't work for me. I guess it's slightly ironic that I first learned about how communication is nearly impossible between people in different positions of power through Discordianism, which is nominally a religion. But not very many Discordians are all that reverent to Eris, and I don't think she cares.
But there's another major reason I can't really make polytheism work for me either. It just seems like it makes the world more complicated. Simple isn't always the best or right answer, it's true, but there's no reason to add things that don't need to be there if a simpler explanation works, either. Why add a god in charge of making sure it rains, for example, when rain can be explained just as well through the interaction of things that are already there? Wind, sun, air, water, and thence rain. It doesn't really need an anthropomorphic representation to make it work. So really, I don't care if there is a god of rain or not.
I can see using gods or demons or angels or whatever as metaphors for parts of personalities and stuff, and not literal, that I can see. I'm in no position to say anything bad about that, what with my own little supernatural cast of figments hanging around LJ. But I'm not really sure if that'd count as religion.
I know there's factions that'd take offense at the first point I made way up there. After all, I'm daring to judge gods, and project my own limited human understanding onto them, when their ways are mysterious and beyond our ken. My reaction to that is pretty much just "Yeah, so?" The only understanding I have is my limited human one, so that's the one I have to use. The only other alternative is to not even try and understand or think, and that's not faith, that's just stupid.
I keep thinking there were a couple other points I wanted to make, but this one's been half-written in my head for a month now, so if I remember it later, I'll update this or make another post. This one's waited long enough. Wonder how many people this'll get mad at me.
Polytheism doesn't work for me. Yeah, it addresses the problems about all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, since the gods usually are none of the above. So when bad things happen? Well, it's because Loki's a dick. Or because Zeus was busy chasing ladies and not paying attention to who was driving the chariot of the sun. Or something along those lines. There's no Problem of Evil, because well, there's evil gods and good gods and mostly gods in between.
There's a couple problems with it still, for me. Firstly, that well, most of the gods are dicks. That's not really a glowing recommendations. And yeah, some of them could be not dicks, but they'd still be gods. They (in theory) have all this power, power we don't have. It's nearly impossible to have any kind of meaningful relationship with that kind of power differential. Hell, most people just tell their boss at work what they think the boss wants to hear, and a boss doesn't have anywhere near the power a god theoretically would. I think Cohen the Barbarian said it best, in The Last Hero, to paraphrase "Temples and such are just people trying to make friends with the biggest bullies on the playground." Those kinds of gods aren't worth worship, of any kind. And if you try too hard, you just end up with Stockholm Syndrome. That just doesn't work for me. I guess it's slightly ironic that I first learned about how communication is nearly impossible between people in different positions of power through Discordianism, which is nominally a religion. But not very many Discordians are all that reverent to Eris, and I don't think she cares.
But there's another major reason I can't really make polytheism work for me either. It just seems like it makes the world more complicated. Simple isn't always the best or right answer, it's true, but there's no reason to add things that don't need to be there if a simpler explanation works, either. Why add a god in charge of making sure it rains, for example, when rain can be explained just as well through the interaction of things that are already there? Wind, sun, air, water, and thence rain. It doesn't really need an anthropomorphic representation to make it work. So really, I don't care if there is a god of rain or not.
I can see using gods or demons or angels or whatever as metaphors for parts of personalities and stuff, and not literal, that I can see. I'm in no position to say anything bad about that, what with my own little supernatural cast of figments hanging around LJ. But I'm not really sure if that'd count as religion.
I know there's factions that'd take offense at the first point I made way up there. After all, I'm daring to judge gods, and project my own limited human understanding onto them, when their ways are mysterious and beyond our ken. My reaction to that is pretty much just "Yeah, so?" The only understanding I have is my limited human one, so that's the one I have to use. The only other alternative is to not even try and understand or think, and that's not faith, that's just stupid.
I keep thinking there were a couple other points I wanted to make, but this one's been half-written in my head for a month now, so if I remember it later, I'll update this or make another post. This one's waited long enough. Wonder how many people this'll get mad at me.
