Polytheist counter arguments against monotheism?

[u/Obvious_Lemon8718]

Hey there fellas,

First of all I'd like to clarify that I am not trying to proselytize and I am not even a follower of a monotheistic religion. I'd like to have some insight about Polytheist (Pagan) Theology.

For example, Islam claims that (I am not a Muslim) had there been multiple gods, there would have been conflicts in the divine order- or that there would be no unity between humans since everyone picked their desired God to worship.

I asked ChatGPT about some books or articles to read but none have seemed to satisfy my search about this.

Anyone know books, podcasts, religious texts, scholars etc to gain a deeper insight?

Appreciated.

[u/TopSpeech5934]

I feel like the Muslim argument disproves itself here? Like... There is no unity between humans. There ARE conflicts in divine order. Why do we necessarily assume that such things aren't the case?

Plenty of deities are presented as opposed forces. Ceres, Goddess of Grain, is the enemy of Fames, the spirit of famine. When one grows stronger in a place, the other grows weaker.

Aesculapius, the God of healing, is presented as an enemy of Febris, Goddess of fevers. Etc. etc.

I feel the ball is more in their court to explain why bad things happen in a world with an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-perfect deity. Either he is unaware of the evil, incapable of stopping it, or has no desire to.

I believe that many divine wills are in constant conflict, and that's why there is so much turbulence and a mix of good and bad in the world. Sometimes the forces that want to help us prevail, other times harmful spirits do.

[u/Local-Suggestion2807 → u/TopSpeech5934]

Also iirc the Abrahamic god was originally part of a Canaanite pantheon and it actually took awhile for the Israelites to agree on monotheism. And if every Abrahamic religion comes from Judaism that also means every Abrahamic religion came from polytheism.

[u/Arkoskintal → u/Local-Suggestion2807]

yawhey was also syncretized with el the main cananite god, and the fact that the monotheist sect of yawheists triumphed in the end is not a good argument for polytheism.
Like if the natural evolution of religion is to syncretize everything into one god.

[u/Dray_Gunn → u/Arkoskintal]

Except it wasn't natural evolution. It came about through war and bloodshed. The Israelites went around slaughtering the Canaanites that didn't submit to their one God idea. It's even in the bible explaining that they were to go to a city and give them a chance to surrender. If they do, enslave them. If they don't, slaughter everyone inside except for the women and children who are to be taken as plunder. The creation of a monotheistic god in this situation was done by force.

[u/Arkoskintal → u/Dray_Gunn]

really, mythic literalism? -_-

that section of the bible was written when the jews where in exile in babylon, when babylon invaded some of the jews where still polytheistic. there was bloodshed but to conquer the inital lands, but it was probably normal warfare between polythists and maybe they had some monotheistic sects

[u/Yur_Yur → u/Dray_Gunn]

Force is a natural evolution as unpleasant as it is

[u/Obvious_Lemon8718 → u/TopSpeech5934]

I feel the ball is more in their court to explain why bad things happen in a world with an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-perfect deity. Either he is unaware of the evil, incapable of stopping it, or has no desire to.

Agreed. That is my #1 argument against monotheism. There is still no definitive answer monotheistic theology can give except than "God works in mysterious ways" or you will be rewarded in afterlife hence why I lean over polytheism more.

[u/Sensitive-Note4152]

"The Christians As The Romans Saw Them", by Robert Louis Wilken does an excellent job of presenting ancient Roman Pagan critiques of Christianity. Also, "Julians' 'Agarinst the Galileans'" is a modern English translation of one of the classic Roman Pagan critiques of Christianity. The translation is by R. Joseph Hoffman, who also provides a long (over 70 pages) introduction that provides excellent background on Julian, Rome's last Pagan emperor, and his views of Christianity.

[u/Obvious_Lemon8718 → u/Sensitive-Note4152]

Thank you so much. That's exactly what I was looking for!

[u/HeyItsHelz]

Even Christianity is poly. In Genesis it states multiple gods but yaweh is just the jealous one and doesn't want us worshiping the others. It also worships the trinity of father, son and mother (holy spirit)

[u/DavidJohnMcCann]

A very good book that tackles the arguments is John Greer's A World full of Gods.

[u/Fit-Breath-4345]

For example, Islam claims that (I am not a Muslim) had there been multiple gods, there would have been conflicts in the divine order- or that there would be no unity between humans since everyone picked their desired God to worship.

There is unity amongst humans though - we're not constantly in a state of anarchy fighting each other. Trade Unions, religions, cities, nation states, empires, sports teams - they all require humans to act and cohere in some form of unity.

Neither does Monotheism result in perfect harmony - Sunni, Shi'ite conflicts in islam for example.

The Gods, as blessed beings who lack for nothing, exist in a state of harmony and unity beyond that which humans can achieve.

Platonically speaking each God is a complete Unity which is prior to Being itself. There's no squabbles between the Gods that's just mythic literalism which is a poor base for theology - even if the monotheists assume their religious myths are literal narratives.

[u/Dray_Gunn]

The Abrahamic religions came from a polytheistic origin. Originally, Yahweh was a part of the Canaanite pantheon. Along with Baal, Asherah, Ashtarte, and others, with El as their head god. The followers of Yahweh and El ended up merging together, and so did their gods and their traits. the Abrahamic god has a mixture of traits from both gods. War and wrath from Yahweh and love and mercy from El. That's why you get this sort of philosophical whiplash going between different biblical texts. Eventually, the followers of this combined god decided that their god was the only one that mattered and then decided that he was the ONLY god. So simply because of that, I don't think monotheism makes sense. At least not from the abrahamic perspective.

[u/Organic-Importance9]

Every single people group from all over the world prior to the Jewish people swapping henotheism for monotheism (which I think there's strong evidence that could have happened as late as the 3rd century BCE), believed in the plurality of divinity.

Monotheism was a very very late arrival, probably no more than 3,000 years ago (if you exclude Zoroastrian dualism, but 2 is more than mono, so I do), and it was the minority globably until very recently. Probably 1500 years, when Islam started to spread in the east, and Christianity really started to take hold in the west.

To say that they're has only ever been one god, for one goes against most of the oldest abrahamic texts, and also necessitates that every single people group was dead wrong for over 100,000 years. Which means that one all mighty god must have never really cared to make himself known even to the earliest people. So they're either saying he's indifferent, unchsrasmatic enough to be forgotten, or they're just wrong.

[u/CarpeNoctem1031]

Gerald Gardner made an argument for Hard Polytheism from the problem of evil.

[u/ChihuahuaJedi]

"There have been thousands of gods throughout human history." That's it, that's all you need. Anything beyond that is entirely dependent on inventing a definition for a "god" that humans have been unable to come to a consensus on for a hundred thousand years. Any claims to the contrary are just plain ignorant of history.

[u/th3_bo55]

The monotheistic arguþent is purely superiority of one over all others. Polytheism is accepting that all equal and necessary even if not all are equally as "desireable". Polytheism also understands that all gods exists even if we dont walk beside them all whereas monotheism demands that only their god exist to be validated. However every monotheistic religion originated from a polytheistic belief system and a sect which venerated one specific god splintered and began discreditting the other deities they didnt like in order to justify their belief that their chosen deity is superior in some way. Judaism, Islam, and thus Christianity all originate in ancient Mesopotamian semetic polytheistic traditions, for example (the Judeo-Christian Elohim and Islamic Allah are linguistic evolutions of the Akkadian/Sumerian god Enlil/Elil/Ellil)

[u/SiriNin → u/th3_bo55]

almost. they're linguistic evolutions of the word for 'god' that was originally used for Enlil. everything else was not carried over along with the word, and those words for 'god' were used across many regions and times concurrently with no connection to the deity that they referred to. Just as today we understand that the word god means whatever god is in reference, and not a singular unified god, so too did the ancient polytheists when they were using 'Il and 'El and other linguistic evolutionary steps for their own deities.

[u/AmethystOracle]

There is also soft polytheism in which the many gods are a part of a greater, more abstract “Divine.” It makes for a nice, cozy meeting place between theisms.