Monotheism is a hard stance to maintain.
The Hindus, of course, make no effort to be monotheistic, and cheerfully bow down to what sounds like thousands of supernatural beings, some of them borrowed and most of them of great antiquity, positively a museum of gods.
The Jews do their damnedst. But they have the Messiah, the devil, ascended masters of various types (think of the Lubivitchers), and of course the legend of the Gollems of Prague and Warsaw, miraculous beings endowed with magical power by rabbis of more than human kabbalistic cleverness.
And every year at Passover, an invisible angel gets a place set for him!
Popular Buddhism long ago adopted devils and saints and bodhisattvas and who knows what all; Buddha himself was elevated to deity status pretty early on. The Buddhists have even borrowed Heaven and Hell from (I suppose) the Christians, to combat declining enrollments.
Muslims have had a Devil from the very beginning of their sect, and have also kept the angels and djins they had before Mohammad (to whom the more besotted of them pray). The famous Black Stone is an ancient cult object, apparently a much-bopped fertility goddess lying on her side; she was just too full of mana to kick out of the temple. The Muslims have even added saints remarkably like Catholic saints.
And Catholicism! Talk about a polytheistic religion! Father, Son, Spirit, Virgin, Satan, saints, angels, demons -- holy ghost, Batman! Catholics are more tangled up in gods than any Hindu - and plenty more deities are coming down the pike, including a sour-pussed old Albanian nun who wanted poor people to suffer just because it was good for their souls.
Maybe Protestants will assert that they at least are pure-quill monotheists, but I fear that a confused two-headedness, the idea of Jesus as both father-god and son-man, is intrinsic to Christianism. Don't most Protestants buy the Trinity too?
The religious will object that I'm widening the definition of God to include other beings - and so I am, because, after all, once you admit the reality of supernatural creatures, who's to say which one is a deity? Wouldn't it be safer to send a little devotion Beelzebub's way, just in case? Hadn't we better re-gild that idol of the Madonna? She's bodily up in Hebbin', and who knows what superpowers she may have now!
Why is true monotheism so rare, maybe unheard of? Because it's boring! The continuous multiplying of gods illustrates the teeming nature of the subconscious: so many aspects of the self, so little time to embody them all!
This is just to say that religious people make things up and then believe them -- no news to skeptics, but challenge a devout person with it and watch him burst into righteous fire and smoke.
The Hindus, of course, make no effort to be monotheistic, and cheerfully bow down to what sounds like thousands of supernatural beings, some of them borrowed and most of them of great antiquity, positively a museum of gods.
The Jews do their damnedst. But they have the Messiah, the devil, ascended masters of various types (think of the Lubivitchers), and of course the legend of the Gollems of Prague and Warsaw, miraculous beings endowed with magical power by rabbis of more than human kabbalistic cleverness.
And every year at Passover, an invisible angel gets a place set for him!
Popular Buddhism long ago adopted devils and saints and bodhisattvas and who knows what all; Buddha himself was elevated to deity status pretty early on. The Buddhists have even borrowed Heaven and Hell from (I suppose) the Christians, to combat declining enrollments.
Muslims have had a Devil from the very beginning of their sect, and have also kept the angels and djins they had before Mohammad (to whom the more besotted of them pray). The famous Black Stone is an ancient cult object, apparently a much-bopped fertility goddess lying on her side; she was just too full of mana to kick out of the temple. The Muslims have even added saints remarkably like Catholic saints.
And Catholicism! Talk about a polytheistic religion! Father, Son, Spirit, Virgin, Satan, saints, angels, demons -- holy ghost, Batman! Catholics are more tangled up in gods than any Hindu - and plenty more deities are coming down the pike, including a sour-pussed old Albanian nun who wanted poor people to suffer just because it was good for their souls.
Maybe Protestants will assert that they at least are pure-quill monotheists, but I fear that a confused two-headedness, the idea of Jesus as both father-god and son-man, is intrinsic to Christianism. Don't most Protestants buy the Trinity too?
The religious will object that I'm widening the definition of God to include other beings - and so I am, because, after all, once you admit the reality of supernatural creatures, who's to say which one is a deity? Wouldn't it be safer to send a little devotion Beelzebub's way, just in case? Hadn't we better re-gild that idol of the Madonna? She's bodily up in Hebbin', and who knows what superpowers she may have now!
Why is true monotheism so rare, maybe unheard of? Because it's boring! The continuous multiplying of gods illustrates the teeming nature of the subconscious: so many aspects of the self, so little time to embody them all!
This is just to say that religious people make things up and then believe them -- no news to skeptics, but challenge a devout person with it and watch him burst into righteous fire and smoke.