Poly-atheism
I've had my head up my ass reading (almost) nothing but Greek mythology, and thinking from there about that ancient world-view, factually so inadequate, but in spirit so much more like our own than that of tyrannical monotheism. We are a two-pillar civilization, with the Greeks forming one pillar and the Hebrews the other. Guess which one I favour? I will confine my remarks on monotheism to two, lest this lead to an explosive rant.
(1) Monotheism is good for tyrannical governments, having replaced polytheism as republican government gave way to imperial government in Rome. (2) Monotheism faces the Problem of Evil (if God is both all-powerful and all-loving, then how come there's evil and suffering?); we can play the theodicy game if you wish--I think I've got the first six or seven moves worked out...
But that's boring. Attacking Judaism, Islam and Christianity (in their more literal aspects) is as easy as it is pointless. Today I'd like to try a different tack: singing the praises of polytheism.
Now, I don't mean literal polytheism, because such literalness is pretty much impossible. Anything that's good about religions can be contained in poetry, and Greek mythology is an excellent source of that. It presents nature as it is, not as it is idealized and abstracted by some patriarch. (The idealization, incidentally, is what science is for.) Nature as an often violent interplay of hundreds of forces. It's true, the Greeks invented gods for pretty much everything. But what does it mean to invent a god. Here's my take: to deify something (anything: an occurrence, a feeling, a process, a higher-order pattern) is simply to flag it as an object of reverence. The stormy sea is an object of terror, but also a kind of self-transcending feeling; therefore, it is subject to reverence. Same goes for any force of nature beyond our direct control: thunder, the wind, the seasons, the cycle of the sun across the sky, the morphing of the clouds, the growth of plants (remember: this is understanding and control circa 2,500 years ago) , the welling up of the passions, inspiration, disease, death, falling in love, the feeling of tenderness, the birth of children, the reflection of our faces from a still pond, misfortune, pestilence, the forest, the babbling of brooks, calm days, fog, winter. The list goes on. But the commonality is that all these things are important to human life, and merit attention, whether positive of negative. Hence: gods. And I might mention that the gods of the Olympian pantheon are, in their form of social organization, almost republican. Zeus was never the all-powerful, all-benevolent god, so this pantheon never has to deal with the problem of evil (granted, they're vague on the topic). Zeus had to fight for his place, overthrowing his father Cronus in a long war with the Titans (as, incidentally, Cronus overthrew Uranus). An Zeus himself has been prophesied to face the same fate. Imagine that! Gods themselves impermanent. This seems to me like a much better way of organizing reverence around the cosmos we inhabit. A mad, crashing, sometimes senseless, sometimes tragic, sometimes joyous unfolding of some principle which may or may not be there, to which we mortals have to grow adjusted somehow.
One final remark: I have sometimes heard people talk about pantheism as if it can accomplish this kind of enchantment of nature, rendering it worthy of reverence. It can't. Why not? Well, value and reverence are differential concepts; you can't revere everything. That's not reverence, that's just excess in all directions, if it were at all possible. Pantheism asserts that God is All (or God is in all); i.e. that Nature is all there is, but with some intimation that this is worthy of reverence. Agreed, there are things to revere about nature, but this all-too-liberal cop-out tells me nothing of what this is. Polytheism at least makes a very compelling poetic and psychological suggestion: revere the refined arts as depicted in various deities, revere the muses that provide for inspired life, respect those things you have no control over, give a little of yourself to the world (sacrifice, not out of foolish altruism, but out of a need to be adjusted to it. Propitiate wrathful gods if it makes you feel better. Get together with your relevant others and sing hymns. Drink and be merry when you can be, and don't rage against forces more powerful than you. None of this is in pantheism.
Now, it bears saying I have no belief in Greek gods, but they help flag features of reality that I am interested in. Case in point: the muses are the daughters of Mnemosyne (the goddess of memory). When you feel inspired (which is the aspect of reality the muses personify) it is as if memory acts of its own accord, snatching up kernels, arranging them seemingly without effort, as if an external source were responsible. Ever since the concept of the unconscious came to the fore, we have a (slightly) less divine explanation. But in that case all the gods seem to identify interesting patterns of projection of our most burning unconscious needs into the "outer" world. (I suspect inner and outer, objective and subjective, to be somewhat misleading distinctions in this regard, but let's leave that.) Mythology (especially when done in a comparative manner) can unravel the vary general laws of all our minds. Just like literature, really, except mythology had the advantage of hundreds of years of Darwinian evolution in oral histories; the most "true to life" ones survived to be written down.
In conclusion: monotheism isn't very insightful, psychologically. Pantheism is a cop-out. Polytheism is a naturalistic psychological system, not a metaphysical one.
Consider: "Since I am so quickly done for / I wonder what I was begun for?"
(1) Monotheism is good for tyrannical governments, having replaced polytheism as republican government gave way to imperial government in Rome. (2) Monotheism faces the Problem of Evil (if God is both all-powerful and all-loving, then how come there's evil and suffering?); we can play the theodicy game if you wish--I think I've got the first six or seven moves worked out...
But that's boring. Attacking Judaism, Islam and Christianity (in their more literal aspects) is as easy as it is pointless. Today I'd like to try a different tack: singing the praises of polytheism.
Now, I don't mean literal polytheism, because such literalness is pretty much impossible. Anything that's good about religions can be contained in poetry, and Greek mythology is an excellent source of that. It presents nature as it is, not as it is idealized and abstracted by some patriarch. (The idealization, incidentally, is what science is for.) Nature as an often violent interplay of hundreds of forces. It's true, the Greeks invented gods for pretty much everything. But what does it mean to invent a god. Here's my take: to deify something (anything: an occurrence, a feeling, a process, a higher-order pattern) is simply to flag it as an object of reverence. The stormy sea is an object of terror, but also a kind of self-transcending feeling; therefore, it is subject to reverence. Same goes for any force of nature beyond our direct control: thunder, the wind, the seasons, the cycle of the sun across the sky, the morphing of the clouds, the growth of plants (remember: this is understanding and control circa 2,500 years ago) , the welling up of the passions, inspiration, disease, death, falling in love, the feeling of tenderness, the birth of children, the reflection of our faces from a still pond, misfortune, pestilence, the forest, the babbling of brooks, calm days, fog, winter. The list goes on. But the commonality is that all these things are important to human life, and merit attention, whether positive of negative. Hence: gods. And I might mention that the gods of the Olympian pantheon are, in their form of social organization, almost republican. Zeus was never the all-powerful, all-benevolent god, so this pantheon never has to deal with the problem of evil (granted, they're vague on the topic). Zeus had to fight for his place, overthrowing his father Cronus in a long war with the Titans (as, incidentally, Cronus overthrew Uranus). An Zeus himself has been prophesied to face the same fate. Imagine that! Gods themselves impermanent. This seems to me like a much better way of organizing reverence around the cosmos we inhabit. A mad, crashing, sometimes senseless, sometimes tragic, sometimes joyous unfolding of some principle which may or may not be there, to which we mortals have to grow adjusted somehow.
One final remark: I have sometimes heard people talk about pantheism as if it can accomplish this kind of enchantment of nature, rendering it worthy of reverence. It can't. Why not? Well, value and reverence are differential concepts; you can't revere everything. That's not reverence, that's just excess in all directions, if it were at all possible. Pantheism asserts that God is All (or God is in all); i.e. that Nature is all there is, but with some intimation that this is worthy of reverence. Agreed, there are things to revere about nature, but this all-too-liberal cop-out tells me nothing of what this is. Polytheism at least makes a very compelling poetic and psychological suggestion: revere the refined arts as depicted in various deities, revere the muses that provide for inspired life, respect those things you have no control over, give a little of yourself to the world (sacrifice, not out of foolish altruism, but out of a need to be adjusted to it. Propitiate wrathful gods if it makes you feel better. Get together with your relevant others and sing hymns. Drink and be merry when you can be, and don't rage against forces more powerful than you. None of this is in pantheism.
Now, it bears saying I have no belief in Greek gods, but they help flag features of reality that I am interested in. Case in point: the muses are the daughters of Mnemosyne (the goddess of memory). When you feel inspired (which is the aspect of reality the muses personify) it is as if memory acts of its own accord, snatching up kernels, arranging them seemingly without effort, as if an external source were responsible. Ever since the concept of the unconscious came to the fore, we have a (slightly) less divine explanation. But in that case all the gods seem to identify interesting patterns of projection of our most burning unconscious needs into the "outer" world. (I suspect inner and outer, objective and subjective, to be somewhat misleading distinctions in this regard, but let's leave that.) Mythology (especially when done in a comparative manner) can unravel the vary general laws of all our minds. Just like literature, really, except mythology had the advantage of hundreds of years of Darwinian evolution in oral histories; the most "true to life" ones survived to be written down.
In conclusion: monotheism isn't very insightful, psychologically. Pantheism is a cop-out. Polytheism is a naturalistic psychological system, not a metaphysical one.
Consider: "Since I am so quickly done for / I wonder what I was begun for?"
posted by A. D. at 1:45 PM
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